Could you survive without Amazon Prime?
And would you want to?
Guess who’s being sued this week? It’s Amazon, baby!
The skinny is this: The FTC and 17 states sued the behemoth for functioning like a monopoly. Amazon employs a host of features that makes it just about second nature for the customer to buy shit and almost impossible for retailers to sell things anywhere but the platform.
I learned about the lawsuit from my pandemic-bestie-turned-lifelong-partner Michael Barbaro on Monday’s episode of The Daily. Barbs interviewed Times reporter Karen Weise, who explains Amazon’s defense. The company claims its foremost priority is serving the customer. This translates to supersonic shipping speeds and the lowest prices on the internet.
Amazon has gotten so good at so-called serving the customer, that it has “fundamentally changed what we all expect” from online shopping, Weise (the reporter) says.
Amazon makes it so when you need (want) something, you can get it within a one to two-day time period. It’s hard to remember that it didn’t always work this way. We used to go to stores. We used to watch commercials and pine for something momentarily and then ultimately forget about that thing. We used to have to do without.
What we lose when we have access to everything
Now, with Amazon’s extreme efficiency, we lose almost all friction.
We lose the mental logistics required to figure out how to acquire something.
We lose the time we had to reflect on whether we really want/need something.
We lose the yearning for something as well as the time required to lose interest in something.
We lose the moments to consider whether we could borrow something, find an alternative, make it ourselves, or just go without.
I kind of miss pining for things. And forgetting about them.
Of course, there’s real world benefits to the machine that Amazon’s built: For one, it has provided access for so many who didn’t have access before. But I’m not dwelling on the upside just yet.
Weise says that she and her husband decided to go without Prime for the last year as an experiment. What changed? She found that she had to plan for things a bit more in advance (like, if you needed to get a kid a birthday present, you couldn’t just order something the day before the party). And she realized that her orders are rarely as urgent as Amazon’s speedy shipping had her once believing. (I want an Oompa-Loopa now.)
In theory, I would love to quit Amazon Prime and I would feel smug about doing so. TBH, I was making a more conscious effort to buy less on the platform mid-pandemic — until I learned I’d be birthing twin babies.
Ahead of their arrival and during physically stagnant moments where my head spun, frantically pacing over whether I had enough crib sheets or bottles or diaper cream, I’d assuage the mental chaos with the click of a button.
Amazon trained me in a whole new way: I could pre-relieve myself of any worry over having enough (impossibly tiny harem pants, unscented and tear-free shampoo) just by carrying the knowledge that Amazon exists and anything my little potatoes could need would arrive in a couple of days, max.
Now that the babies are here, the ability to replenish diapers and wipes and formula without moving my body anywhere — that’s a godsend, right?! I’ve heard I’ve really got my hands full 🥲.
Then there’s this second tier effect: dog food is on subscription, as is coffee (though we don’t use Amazon for these — anyone giving out points for this?), which permanently erases things from my to-do list. Oh the mental load is lightened!
Life is more convenient this way, which ostensibly means I can spend more of my time doing more meaningful things. And in that sense, Prime is good.
But because the difference between the essential (dog food) and the excess (4 different kind of ergonomic sippy cups that still no one will drink from) is harder to see clearly, I find myself spending a lot of that time pressing “add to cart” rather than frolicking barefoot on grassy fields.
Why not “have it all” when there are so few hoops to jump through?
I feel a little lost about a resolution here, so here are a couple of things I know to be true:
People had babies (and pets and families and neighbors and friends) long before they could buy things online. And everybody was mostly ok.
We were not put on this planet to spend our time buying things.
Maybe I’ll quit Amazon Prime when my kids are older, or when the company is sued and I can get my favorite tamarind paste for the same price at a different store or when I live in a more walkable city or when…
A bit of a messy report/reflection but I would love to hear your thoughts about any of this. Could you do without Amazon Prime? Would you? Do you want to?
How do you differentiate necessities from desires? Anybody out there? See you in the comments.
I think this post really sums up the dilemma! Ultimately, I think we should bring it back to the issue that’s out of our control — that it is basically a monopoly now (and that that is why they’re being sued!) Most of us who care about the planet and people and good things agree Amazon is evil, but they also have the power. While we could live without it, we also need affordable alternatives then. Right now, Amazon is the most accessible and affordable option in many cases, and for say, disabled people, that’s huge. Sometimes it’s life or death. People had babies and families and everything before Amazon and were mostly okay, but honestly, depending on how far back you go, disabled people were much less okay at a much higher rate. I’m not necessarily saying Amazon specifically tipped the scale, but things like affordable grocery and medication delivery have been game changers. And Amazon did normalize that accessibility. The downfall is that the companies that own most affordable delivery services are run by… evil people in power. But… such is capitalism. We’re unfortunately not the ones in power, we’re just trying to live. 😭
Great read, Kate! I really appreciated how you didn’t just say “let’s all quit Amazon” because it truly is more complicated.
Your wonderful post made me think of a friend who studies the history of farming. We were all lamenting how we spend too much time looking at cat videos online and how we could be -- should be -- frolicking in the grass. But my friend reminded us if we weren't watching cat videos (or ordering diaper cream and license plate covers on Amazon), we'd probably be out toiling in the fields as subsistence farmers. I think in many ways we're romanticized pastoral living (see #tradwife) as somehow being more noble, when the issue is about corporate homogeny. Sure, there's every reason to hate on Amazon (let me count the ways), but I don't want to go back to a world where I can't get the particular supplement I need for my connective tissue disorder or where polio is still a threat. The technology itself isn't necessarily the problem but how we use it. Fire can be massively destructive, but it can also be constructive and helpful. Prime and all the other modern manifestations are another kind of fire. What we choose to do with it will determine whether we burn ourselves to the ground or whether we use it to provide equity, accessibility, and help.