[Newspoetry] good time to start boycotting amazon.com

[Joe Futrelle]

One thing I like about Amazon is that it is a good source of
information about books, so one alternative to it would be to work
with the appropriate people (the digital library community, for
instance) to develop free, on-line information resources that met or
surpassed Amazon's ease of use and informativeness.

On Fri, Dec 31, 1999 at 12:15:20AM -0800, Sam Markewich 2 wrote:
> 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"
> 
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Joe Futrelle                  | "How did they decay?" -- Paul Ralph
Team Leader, Emerge           | Maltby 
Scientific Data Tech. / NCSA  | 
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