For years now, Amazon has been inflicting untold damage on the American people, whether by squashing small businesses, paying low wages to workers while hoarding unprecedented wealth, or baldly exploiting the economy for their own tremendous gain. It’s a corporate behemoth that avoids paying taxes and wreaks havoc on the environment, yet we’ve long ignored these ugly realities so that we can continue enjoying the company’s unbeatable prices and ultra-fast shipping. However, we can no longer turn a blind eye to Amazon’s misdeeds. America must take a stand and stop supporting Amazon as soon as my new badminton set comes in the mail.
I’ve turned on text notifications for my package, and I just got a message that said it should be arriving today. So hopefully in a few hours the badminton set will arrive on my doorstep, at which point it will be time to say goodbye to Amazon for good.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, is the richest person in the world. He makes millions of dollars per day while the workers in his factories spend long hours laboring in poor conditions for unlivable wages. When we spend our money on Amazon, we’re saying we don’t care about these workers. We’re saying “I prefer to give my money to a mega-billionaire instead of those who really need it, and I’m willing to let you suffer so I can save $7 on a Franklin Sports Volleyball and Badminton Set,” which I honestly think Amazon workers would totally understand, as everyone loves saving a buck, but that’s besides the point. We need to show the workers that we’re on their side, not the corporation’s.
The reality is that America doesn’t need Amazon, as we got by just fine for hundreds of years before they came along. Honestly, there’s nothing at all forcing you to order from them. You can easily go to a local sporting goods store and buy a badminton set there, which is what I tried to do, but none of theirs doubled as a volleyball net like the one on Amazon, or had nearly as good reviews as the one I ordered that had a 4.7 star rating, compiled from over 500(!) Amazon users, so you know it’s actually going to be good. We should be supporting local businesses as much as we possibly can, although with occasional exceptions, such as when you’re too tired to actually drive somewhere to shop or when you’ve got a lot of things you need to buy at once and can get them shipped bundled together in a single package, thus helping the environment.
Sure, a Prime membership means that I can get a badminton set shipped to me just in time for a party I spontaneously planned 48 hours beforehand, and we as adults can understand why this was really my only option, but for the most part, there’s no excuse for abandoning our values for the sake of convenience. We’re better than this, and if we want to prove it, then we need to do the right thing and cancel our Prime memberships.
Although, to be clear, I’ll probably keep my Prime membership for a couple more weeks just to be sure that the badminton set is working okay in case I need to return it using Amazon’s incredible easy return service. And I still haven’t finished season three of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, so obviously I need to hang onto Prime until I have that wrapped up, and if it ends up being really good, I might have no choice but to hold off on cancelling for a bit longer since I think they’re dropping season four at some point in the not-too-distant future. But you can see how my hands are tied here, and please believe me when I say that I would 100 percent cancel Prime this very second if I could.
Also, I hear great things about Fleabag, so I might check that one out, too.
But when it comes down to it, where you spend your money matters, and once I secure a summer of endless fun via an incredibly well-priced badminton set and get all caught up on the prestige television that Amazon holds exclusivity on, then it’s time for us all to come together and use our purchasing power to show Amazon that we won’t allow them to keep treating their workers and our planet so badly anymore. Yes, Amazon is amazing, and yes, it’s helping American families saving much-needed money in a time of historic economic instability, and yes, it protects us from COVID-19 by allowing us to safely shop from home. But this is all superficial bullshit, and at the end of the day, what truly matters is occasionally greatly inconveniencing yourself to throw a few extra bucks in revenue towards struggling mom-and-shop businesses and giving them the false hope they need to prolong their miserable trudge towards the inevitable bankruptcy one signs up for when they foolishly choose to pursue the myth of the American Dream and all its impossible promises.
Enough is enough. Let the countless fun memories I’ll make this summer with my badminton serve as a stark reminder of how evil Amazon truly is as we fight for a better world that’s free of all the remarkable benefits the company has to offer.
