[Newspoetry] good time to start boycotting amazon.com

[Sam Markewich 2]

Opinions? 

W

Being asked to boycott Amazon.com is like being asked to give up the first
amendment. 

Given that the first amendment is the main stay of the libertarian party, the
KKK, the pornography industry and many other conservative, often overtly
violent, parties, organizations and ideologies, it might not be such a bad
idea to consider giving up the first amendment, at least as it has become
situated within liberal/conservative ideology and legal practice.  It would be
worth doing to come up with a revised freedom of expression amendment that
proctected the public from companies like amazon that seem to enhance freedom
of expression while in fact seriously diminishing it by making it difficult to
survive as an independent local book seller and making it hard for people to
think very much at all before, during and after expressing.  Freedom of
expression currently works largely against freedom to develop a self that
expresses things other than the language that oppresses true freedom of
expression.  At some point if America is going to move away from general
avarice even artists, like all of us on newspoetry, who want to read hard to
find things are going to have to make a choice between doing so and trying to
put exploitative companies out of business through things like boycots.   


Being able to buy obscene, dissident, and otherwise
semi-marketable literature - even through a creepy e-market economy and
dubious corporations - is one of the fundamental definitions of a decent
society. For me. There can be no desirable society without Kathy Acker - and
easy access to her writing - pushing the boundaries of what's writeable. For me.


The ultimate difficulty you're asking about here concerns a foundational
contradiction inherent in a capitalist market, namely that products and
services that are not frivolities, as well as those that are, get consolidated
into very few owner's hands, which is anti-democratic yet extremely difficult
to revolt against because of the scarcity it brings about of alternatives to
obtain these products and services.  So, I certainly don't blame or shame you
or anyone who chooses to buy through amazon what s/he can't find somewhere
else without much difficulty.  And, the "For Me", you write does bring up the
question of what criteria we can use to differentiate the value of your "For
Me" from that of a person who buys Nikes or shops at Walmart.  The fact is
that the same contradiction is at play in the instance of someone who shops at
Walmart as is at play in your case.  If that contradiction isn't met head on
in practice I don't know how we're ever going to get out from under it.   


So should I shop at barnes and noble dot com or borders dot com?
Monopolizers, union busters, independent bookseller slaughterers?
I'd love to support my (one) local independent bookseller - even though I
don't like their store very much - except that ordering books through them
takes four weeks longer and I don't have a car to drive out there.
Also the taxes go to Savoy, which is only sort-of local.

I won't say what you should do.  I have decided never again to shop at amazon,
not only because they put independent local booksellers out of business but
also because of their labor practices, which are quite exploitative.  But,
then, I also live in the independent local bookstore meca of the U.S. of
A-hole.  One alternative to shopping at amazon that I can suggest to you is
setting up a mail charge account with Modern Times Bookstore in San Francisco
(full of semiotext, Kathy Acker, etc. &c., so forth and so on, thus and such)
and Cody's Books in Berkeley (bigger than any Borders Books I've been in and
full of all of the same kind of stuff and variety, and independently owned. 
Or, perhaps you and I could set something up where you e-mail me a monthly
book list and I buy the books here at a local place and send them to you. 
True, taxes would go to Berkeley or San Francisco, which is not exactly local
for you, yet at least it would enable you to boycot amazon and the others
while supporting small business folks who actually really take an interest in
the books they sell, treat their employees decently and are well liked by all
of us locals out here.  Plus you'd be supporting a couple of the grooviest
cities in Amerikkka with your sales tax.

- Sammy "Mr. Y2K"