The sneaky thing about Amazon’s increased dominance in so many key aspects of our lives is that much of the perniciousness is hidden. No one’s going to tell you about all the retailers who have gotten pressured or destroyed via its tactics while you’re happily clicking “add to cart” and smiling about 2-day free shipping. In this sense, it can be best compared to the evils of factory farming. Most people just simply have no idea about the immense damage going on behind the scenes as they indulge in incredible convenience and what looks like a good deal.
– From my November 15, 2017 post: Amazon Poses a Serious Threat to Freedom and Free Markets
Today’s post should be seen as an update to last year’s article referenced above. In the months that have followed, I’ve been consistently frustrated by the lack of interest when it comes to the dangers presented by Amazon and its richest man in the world ($165 billion as of last count) CEO Jeff Bezos. The following Twitter exchange is a good example of what I mean:
Sure it does. Bezos is on a board advising the Pentagon and Amazon has a $600 million contract with the CIA. You're a smart guy, I'm sure you know this. https://t.co/kUNs2yXMsG
— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) August 30, 2018
I’m not trying to pick on Bill here. He’s been a reader of my work for some time, and I consider him an intelligent person who genuinely cares about having a positive impact on the world around him . This is precisely why this sort of thing is so frustrating to me. There seems to be a gigantic society-wide disconnect between people’s perception of Amazon and the reality.
Rampant ignorance has plagued the U.S. population when it comes to the deployment of technology, which has allowed the platform monopolies of Facebook, Google and Amazon to rise to dominance with disturbingly little scrutiny. Specifically, these companies have been able to take advantage of a massive knowledge arbitrage between themselves and their users. In other words, these companies have been so far ahead of the general public when it comes to technology, they were able to create incredibly profitable surveillance companies without anybody noticing or caring until very recently.
People were so thrilled about the ostensibly “free” product of Facebook when it first came out, virtually nobody wanted to know how the company operated under the hood. How was it able to generate such an enormous amount of revenue with a “free” product? Nobody wanted to know.
It took over ten years since the founding of Facebook (and the election of Donald Trump) for people to even pretend to care on a meaningful level. As I noted in the post, The Only Reason We’re Examining Facebook’s Sleazy Behavior Is Because Trump Won:
Trust me, there’s nobody more thrilled to see Facebook’s unethical and abusive practices finally getting the attention they deserve from mass media and members of the public who simply didn’t want to hear about it previously. I’ve written multiple articles over the years warning people about the platform (links at the end), but these mostly fell on deaf ears.
That’s just the way things go. All sorts of horrible behaviors can continue for a very long time before the corporate media and general public come around to caring. You typically need some sort of external event to change mass psychology. In this case, that event was Trump winning the election.
The more I read about the recent Facebook scandal, it’s clear this sort of thing’s been going on for a very long time. The major difference is this time the data mining was used by campaign consultants of the person who wasn’t supposed to win. Donald Trump.
This is why willful ignorance is such a pernicious thing, and I’d argue Jeff Bezos and Amazon are riding a similar wave of willful ignorance towards dangerous levels of market dominance and power concentration. Although public opinion is starting to turn on Facebook and Google, public opinion on Amazon remains far behind the reality curve.
As Stacy Mitchell noted in her excellent article, Amazon Doesn’t Just Want to Dominate the Market—It Wants to Become the Market:
By the fall of 2016, the share of online shoppers bypassing search engines and heading straight to Amazon had grown to 55 percent.
Since many people start and end with Amazon’s portal for all their online shopping, it is through this narrow experience that public perceptions of the company are formed and it’s almost impossible to imagine online shopping without it. But the reality of the situation is Amazon is far more than a retail shopping website — it has extensive and growing ties to the military-industrial-survelliance complex.
It’s important to have this sort information at your fingertips the next time someone describes Amazon in warm and fuzzy terms, so here are few examples:
1. Amazon Web Services (AWS) has a major financial relationship with the CIA.
A 2017 article in Business Insider summarized some of what’s going on:
2. Jeff Bezos was named to the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Advisory Board back in 2016.
*Update: Two years after he was named to the Pentagon board, we learn from SF Gate:
“Both parties mutually agreed to have Mr. Bezos provide individual advice to the Secretary of Defense, rather than continue to pursue his formal nomination to the board.”
3. Vanity Fair recently reported on how Amazon and its lobbyists have seemingly rigged the process of awarding a $10 billion Pentagon contract in favor of the company.
“We recently became aware of serious and possible criminal violations related to the Amazon cloud DOD contract process,” says a high-ranking congressional staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “We are concerned about the implications of the appearance of conflicts of interest and impropriety related to how Pentagon personnel with close ties to Amazon may have influenced multi-billion-dollar cloud contracts.”
A pleasure to host #SecDef James Mattis at Amazon HQ in Seattle today pic.twitter.com/JnQZoSOnFN
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) August 10, 2017
4. Amazon is selling a creepy and dangerous facial recognition product known as “Rekognition” to police departments across the country (see the following from the ACLU: Amazon Teams Up With Government to Deploy Dangerous New Facial Recognition Technology).
Given the clear links between Amazon and the surveillance state, am I the only one who finds it mind-boggling that so many people are willing to place an Amazon created “virtual assistant” named Alexa into their homes and treat it as part of the family?
Those are just a few points highlighting Amazon’s deep ties to the military-surveillance state, and we haven’t even discussed its perverse impact on competition in the free market for goods. As Stacy Mitchell notes:
Amazon has also used below-cost selling to crush and absorb upstart competitors. In 2009, it acquired the popular shoe retailer Zappos after reportedly losing $150 million selling shoes below cost in order to force the rival company to the altar. Likewise, when Quidsi, the firm behind Diapers.com, emerged as a vigorous competitor, Amazon offered to buy it; when Quidsi’s founders refused, Amazon slashed its diaper prices below cost. Bleeding red ink, Quidsi eventually agreed to Amazon’s offer. Over time, this behavior has had a restraining effect: Start-ups intent on challenging Amazon are unlikely to find investors and so never get off the ground. “When you are small, someone else that is bigger can always come along and take away what you have,” Bezos has said.
Many Americans have started to recognize the dangers of Facebook and Google over the past year, partly as a result of the companies’ increasingly sloppy use of censorship, yet the public remains in complete denial when it comes to Amazon and Jeff Bezos. I suspect this will change in the years ahead, and I hope my articles on the topic will serve as useful resources for those who care. The sooner we admit what’s going on the better.
As Amazon stock surges toward a $1 trillion market cap, I strongly suggest everyone listen to this discussion.
Bezos wants to use it to control and dominate significant aspects of the U.S. economy. https://t.co/46HRNjIgKZ
— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) August 29, 2018
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A Whole Foods store was recently opened in the town in central Massachusetts where I live. If you check out, the cashiers ask you if you’re a member of Amazon Prime. If you are, you get an extra 5% or 10% off.
As anti-trust law has been explained to me, this is a flat out violation of anti-trust law. A conglomerate cannot use one arm to give another a competitive advantage.
Yet, this promotion is openly done with no apparent fear that anti-trust law will ever be applied to Amazon.
Yep, Amazon is the online, larger version of Wal-Mart. Eventually they’ll fill the “company store” role for a lot of people. It is humorous how many people think poorly of Wally World but cannot mentally connect them to Amazon.
I’ve also met my share of people that condemn the Fed, MIC contractors, and politicians but cannot see much wrong with giant tech companies. Maybe there is a misheld belief that monopolies are no longer possible? More cynically the positions of FAANG stocks in their portfolios may encourage them into defend those firms much more vigorously than they otherwise would.
This is probably also the result of fatigue, where people desperately want to hold onto some aspect of modern American society as right and just. They know the two party system is corrupt, they know the military isn’t really a global force for good, and they know monetary policy benefits only a tiny minority of the population. They don’t want to declare the whole thing rotten and start over, and this leads people to see Amazon as one of the cleaner dirty shirts in the hamper.
Yes Tengen, the aspect they desperately want to hold on to as “Right” is actually what is called “The American Dream”. – Looked at honestly, this is the ability to take advantage of our fellow man. The origins of the ubiquitous “scam”. It will not be easy to deprive them of this dream.
All Americans should be concerned about Amazon’s ties to the CIA and NSA. Amazon is not our friend and of that, we should take note. Before embracing Amazon people should consider and think about what kind of society and world future generations might want to live in. The company has ravaged America’s retail landscape destroying jobs while at the same time exploiting a slew of taxpayer subsidies.
Several of the cozy arrangements they have enjoyed over the years with our government pale in comparison to the deal Amazon is now trying to push through Congress. The technology giant which is no stranger to sweetheart deals that line its pockets at taxpayer expense is quietly moving in a direction that is destined to create even more controversy. Amazon is on the verge of winning a multibillion-dollar advantage over rivals by taking over large swaths of federal procurement
Recently Amazon seems to have increased the number of cross-company promotions that offer up Amazon Prime for free in an all gloves off effort to expand their customer base and weasel into the lives of those who have resisted its advances. The article below delves deeper into this company and urges you to loudly just say NO!
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2017/11/to-amazon-loudly-just-say-no.html
The very reason I do not have anything to do with Amazon, it’s products, and it’s services. Or FaceBook, Google, Twitter, et.al., also. There are all SCUM.
What annoys me? The same retailers, who may be adversely affected by Amazon, are selling their products on Amazon at a price cheaper than on their own web sites.
I’d be happy to buy directly from the retailer/manufacturer if the price and shipping was the same as their offerings on Amazon.
An alternative? Check Walmart’s site. Or have they also been bought?
“””The same retailers, who may be adversely affected by Amazon, are selling their products on Amazon at a price cheaper than on their own web sites.”””
I noticed that and will not participate in it. I just go elsewhere. I have discussed this conglomerate issue with husband, but until now, haven’t noticed it being aired. Good for you, author. And every day, I vow to just say no.
‘Puritanpride’ is also selling through Amazon..the same tablets I pay shipping for, I can get at Amazon w. free shipping..gee…what’s a girl budgeting gonna do??
And ‘they’ know that.
“Tucker Carlson Channels His Inner Bernie Sanders to Blast Tech Oligarch Jeff Bezos”
https://observer.com/2018/08/tucker-carlson-channels-bernie-sanders-to-blast-tech-oligarch-jeff-bezos/
Sounds like Bill is a voter. Never go full retard Bill.
why are the people of Florida voting for this snake ?
Rubio sure played dumb, didn’t he? Oh! He is dumb, silly me!
Well, everyone in the DOJ must own Amazon stock so they will never kill their own portfolio, will they? And what if the entire DOJ had to recuse themselves because they are stockholders? Anyway, imagine these dolts trying to build a case. I bet the two examples cited above where Amazon deliberately crushed their competitors would be enough to bring anti-trust convictions by the DOJ in 1918. But today? Naw, the DOJ would throw out the complaint and buy Jeff Bezos’ attorneys lunch to apologize.
Isn’t funny how Amazon never made a dime until a couple years ago? Now they are a Trillion Dollar company. Gee! How did that happen?
Amazon does not FORCE you to buy anything. If you get mad at them there is still stores around you to buy from. Some may even be better bargains or convenience at certain things.
Revive towns and malls again. It’s your choice. Get out of the house once in awhile. Live again, maybe?
“Amazon does not FORCE you to buy anything.”
Hey Blather (appropriate name BTW).
There isn’t a single thing that Michael wrote in this piece that comes close to saying that Amazon forces anyone to buy anything.
But the overarching point is that in Bezos’ perfect world anything you did want to buy, you’d have to buy through Amazon. Which BTW, is the exact same business model Sam Walton created.
What makes Amazon and Bezos far worse than the Walton’s is the fact that Amazon is now joined at the hip with the MIC.
I agree with you, Blather. I refuse to feed the beast.
Okay, let’s get this straight. It’s way, way too late to do anything about this. All the attention in the world will have no more impact on changing the Amazon monopoly anymore than the Patriots were able to change the crap that Obama was doing.
It’s over. Flat, plain and simple. It’s over. Neither you (the rest of the world) nor me are going to be able to change this. The corruption supporting Amazon is so deep, so trenched in, so corrupt, that no one is going to be able to change it.
So, Michael, don’t get frustrated because few are taking notice of this issue. Doesn’t matter who takes notice of it. It’s way too late to change now.
A defeatist acceptance that nothing can be done, Keith, ignores the simple fact that change is inevitable. There will always be some Copernicus, Darwin, or Satoshi to come along and challenge the status quo. Eventually the new way becomes the status quo.
I don’t see Keith’s comment as defeatist per se. Change will definitely come, but it will arrive in the form of economic collapse. That’s not Amazon’s doing, that’s the inevitable result of central banker policies in the ZIRP/NIRP era.
However, just because the end of America (as we know it) is coming doesn’t mean we can rest on our laurels. There is much work to be done getting our own houses in order to prepare and position ourselves as best we can.
“Change will definitely come, but it will arrive in the form of economic collapse.”
For a very large portion of the population that already occurred 10 years ago.
So I assume you are referring to round 2?
Had friends making money on the margin selling thru Amazon. Then Amazon rose tthe rates for sellers and they went out of business. Amazon can drive any mom and pop business under with their policies. Big fish eats little fish
Whomever the Banking King Rothschild wants to succeed will succeed whomever he wants to fail will fail. You can bet, long before Amazon started making it big Bezos had a meeting in England with the Banking King, the rules were laid out to him and he is complying. If he fails to comply he will be reduced to nothing or ended. What is the game, population reduction, how can Bezos help, he already has, he is a face, a company, an idea, selling the whole world of people out.
Oh how wondrous a trillion dollar company, compare that to hundreds of trillions, understand his wealth is determined by the dollar, Bezos is nothing, undoubtedly unhappy, I think his life will end quite quickly and dramatically, when he begins to think he can have things his way, f-the King. Since Hitler and Kennedy the Rothschild’s have had no competition, a Bezos form of money, a Bezos Bank, a Bezos owned competitor to Hollywood or the Television Networks, CNN, Ted Turner, you can bet is right now sowing discontent in the ranks of the rich, there is no hatred like the hatred of jealousy.
ANY entity involved in usury, the charging or paying of interest,
IS a part of the global war machine directed from ROME through Washington. Ignorance is no excuse and everybody will pay to play.
Amazon and WalMart are well on their way to owning all retail products business in North America.
The entire USA can be shut down and entirely disabled in 3 days or less.
As they say ‘you bought it, you own it’.
Free Enterprise huh?
Fakebook users be all smart and shit. Giving your info away for free so a third party can profit off of it is super duper smart.
BRB-I have to update on Fakebook how I walked across the room and looked out the window.
Later I will use my Google medical degree to make the doctor laugh out loud.
Two family relations work for Amazon in Seattle. One of them says Amazon’s objective is to sell, rent, lease all products and all services to all people. My guess is Amazon is imagining what the Amazon religion will look like. We are all becomes Amzons, medicated consumer bots worshiping the the great Amzon.