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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/26Hwkdo:
My queue spit out that post about the marketing of the lie of individual responsibility for climate change, and I reread it and thought about it more, and like– yeah– it’s just so frustrating to live in a “representative” “democracy” where your vote doesn’t count, and it’s also frustrating to live in late-stage capitalism where you can vote with your limited dollars but if you dig deep enough almost all your options are a) horrible and b) identical.
So I guess I just wanted to point out that– yes, engaging with your consumption is a good and healthy thing to do and you should vote with your dollars wherever possible
but I’m also super over judging people who don’t because the vast majority of us have so little actual choice in our lives that it super sucks to get browbeaten about the few choices we do make.
So like. Live how you live and do what you gotta do. and if you can, seek out ethical consumption choices and vote with your feet and your dollars. It is empowering and makes you feel better; it’s lovely to succeed at finding local producers of stuff, and even online, making connections with small businesses truly does make you feel better about the shit you have to buy anyway.
And I’ll point this out– even Amazon. Most people don’t know how Amazon works. But part of their evil genius is that they don’t actually sell most of the shit on their website. Go in and search for a thing you want. Look at your buying choices. If it’s something popular, you’ll probably get an automatic product page where you can just add it to your cart. But if you look, usually there’s more than one person selling it.
Do you want to know how Amazon works, from the perspective of someone who uses the site as a seller? This may be a weird aside, but I’m going to explain it:
If it says “ships from and sold by Amazon.com” it’s really them. If it says “Fulfillment by Amazon” it means some other company owns it but has sent it into Amazon’s warehouse so that when it is ordered, Amazon will pack and ship it. Since Amazon gets better rates with UPS and other carriers, that means the “free shipping” the customer gets costs less than it would directly cost the company who owns the product you’re about to buy if they shipped it themselves. If it says “ships from and sold by [some other company]”, then you’re buying whatever it is directly from this other company, and Amazon gets a cut but has no other actual involvement. (There won’t be Prime shipping on this because Amazon’s not shipping it. I get confused questions about that a lot. No, I don’t have access to Amazon’s loading dock, I can’t give you Prime Shipping, I’m just some lady with a tape gun and some recycled alt-newsweekly papers and a box, and a UPS pickup scheduled.)
This is why the tiny local camera shop I work for is still in business. Because of Amazon. Our local market could not sustain a camera shop. But because of the platform Amazon gives us, we sell all over the world and can just about scrape out a living. It’s pennies per item, but a huge volume. We pre-buy large amounts of things and send them to Amazon’s warehouse for them to use for Fullfillment By Amazon orders. That in turn has propped up the business enough that we can keep retail locations open and offer classes and field trips and community events, and keep employing our sales floor staff who mostly show little old ladies how to use their smartphone cameras.
So, even things like that– just know who you’re buying from, when you use the world’s largest retail site, and maybe you’re still shopping local. Local to somebody, anyway.
My queue spit out that post about the marketing of the lie of individual responsibility for climate change, and I reread it and thought about it more, and like– yeah– it’s just so frustrating to live in a “representative” “democracy” where your vote doesn’t count, and it’s also frustrating to live in late-stage capitalism where you can vote with your limited dollars but if you dig deep enough almost all your options are a) horrible and b) identical.
So I guess I just wanted to point out that– yes, engaging with your consumption is a good and healthy thing to do and you should vote with your dollars wherever possible
but I’m also super over judging people who don’t because the vast majority of us have so little actual choice in our lives that it super sucks to get browbeaten about the few choices we do make.
So like. Live how you live and do what you gotta do. and if you can, seek out ethical consumption choices and vote with your feet and your dollars. It is empowering and makes you feel better; it’s lovely to succeed at finding local producers of stuff, and even online, making connections with small businesses truly does make you feel better about the shit you have to buy anyway.
And I’ll point this out– even Amazon. Most people don’t know how Amazon works. But part of their evil genius is that they don’t actually sell most of the shit on their website. Go in and search for a thing you want. Look at your buying choices. If it’s something popular, you’ll probably get an automatic product page where you can just add it to your cart. But if you look, usually there’s more than one person selling it.
Do you want to know how Amazon works, from the perspective of someone who uses the site as a seller? This may be a weird aside, but I’m going to explain it:
If it says “ships from and sold by Amazon.com” it’s really them. If it says “Fulfillment by Amazon” it means some other company owns it but has sent it into Amazon’s warehouse so that when it is ordered, Amazon will pack and ship it. Since Amazon gets better rates with UPS and other carriers, that means the “free shipping” the customer gets costs less than it would directly cost the company who owns the product you’re about to buy if they shipped it themselves. If it says “ships from and sold by [some other company]”, then you’re buying whatever it is directly from this other company, and Amazon gets a cut but has no other actual involvement. (There won’t be Prime shipping on this because Amazon’s not shipping it. I get confused questions about that a lot. No, I don’t have access to Amazon’s loading dock, I can’t give you Prime Shipping, I’m just some lady with a tape gun and some recycled alt-newsweekly papers and a box, and a UPS pickup scheduled.)
This is why the tiny local camera shop I work for is still in business. Because of Amazon. Our local market could not sustain a camera shop. But because of the platform Amazon gives us, we sell all over the world and can just about scrape out a living. It’s pennies per item, but a huge volume. We pre-buy large amounts of things and send them to Amazon’s warehouse for them to use for Fullfillment By Amazon orders. That in turn has propped up the business enough that we can keep retail locations open and offer classes and field trips and community events, and keep employing our sales floor staff who mostly show little old ladies how to use their smartphone cameras.
So, even things like that– just know who you’re buying from, when you use the world’s largest retail site, and maybe you’re still shopping local. Local to somebody, anyway.
