3236 - Online Shop


Things change. Here we have a brick’n’mortar shop advertising its own online shop on the fence of its parking area.

Actually there’s wide-spread resistance among people against online shops, and of course there is massive resistance against Amazon. I know quite a few people who never ever buy from Amazon, some who always look for local alternatives first, some who at least try to buy online but elsewhere.

I’m well aware of the problems that monopolies create and I am aware of the fact that Amazon, although not a monopoly technically, is damn near being one. The problem is, they are so incredibly good at what they do, and they have whatever I need. Maybe I shouldn’t buy there but I do. I even bought one or two lenses there, something that I normally avoid.

Our individual desires go far beyond our needs and they are unfortunately opposed to the needs of the collective. As a society we should either decouple income from work, at least to a degree that a decent living is provided for everyone (what is “decent”?), or we should make sure that everybody has work and sufficient income from that.

Of course that doesn’t happen. There are experiments with unconditional minimum income, but they are frowned upon (to say the least!) by those who work, and work is increasingly shifted offshore or automated.

It does not take a prophet to come up with the conclusion, that we are running into a problem.