As we finally exit the COVID-19 pandemic, one thing we should all do is to break our collective addiction to Amazon and shop, instead, at our local small businesses.
Shopping small isn’t a new idea, but it’s an urgent one. The pandemic and lockdowns have wreaked havoc on so much in our world. Small businesses bore the brunt. Amazon saw a 35 percent increase in revenue during the first nine months of 2020. Small-business revenue dropped 12 percent during the same period.
Even before the coronavirus hit, we were heading for a future where shopping malls and main streets would feature few stores, leaving Amazon as the only option. But COVID-19 put that process on steroids. We have to act now to stop it.
I was an Amazon-aholic during the pandemic. Boxes would arrive at my door daily. I stocked up on toilet paper in February 2020, Lysol wipes in March, board games in April, masks in May. Today, I listen to Amazon music, watch movies through my Amazon Prime account and listen to books on Audible, Amazon’s audiobook service. It’s a very difficult habit to break.
But we are already feeling the ramifications of putting all our money, and trust, into one gigantic business. When we finally re-emerged from our homes in the spring, it was hard not to notice how many streets were completely desolate, owing to small businesses shuttered for good. Whole blocks in Manhattan are boarded up. So many Main Streets across the country are, too.
Terrible lockdown policies and anarchist race riots helped crush those businesses, but we Amazon shoppers helped, too. In limiting our in-person socializing, we limited our in-person shopping, too. While technology kept us connected, it became creepy just how much of our lives got transferred to a virtual realm.
There are other reasons to break the habit. Amazon keeps flexing its muscles in a scary and authoritarian way. In January, the retail giant barred the Twitter alternative Parler from its hosting service, on the ground that the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was organized on Parler. In fact, there is plenty of evidence that the attack on the Capitol was planned on Facebook, which faced no repercussions whatsoever.
Amazon has also played the role of book censor, dropping titles like “When Harry Became Sally,” a 2018 book by social-conservative scholar Ryan Anderson.
The firm claims Anderson’s mainstream, scholarly work on gender ideology is tantamount to hate. Yet Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” remains for sale on Amazon in a variety of formats, with an average customer rating of 4.5 stars.
Publishing houses saw the move for what it was: a threat not to print controversial work. We will no doubt see the result of that in the coming years, with fewer books published that challenge leftist thought — lest Amazon remove them from its digital shelves.
You don’t have to use Parler or want to read critical takes about transgenderism to understand how this is a problem. Our city centers are cratering while we spend all of our money at a Web site that wields inordinate control over what we can buy.
The argument against limiting purchases on Amazon is that Amazon is too big to care: What’s the point? You think Amazon is going to care that you’re not buying paper towels from them anymore? Maybe not. But the local store will absolutely feel it when you start buying all your Bounty towels and other basic goods there.
And anyway, the point isn’t to destroy Amazon. It will still have its place, when you need something next-day delivery and can’t get to the store. Frantic 11 p.m. purchases will keep Amazon afloat, I promise you.
Limiting what we buy on Amazon is about returning our purchasing power to our local communities and building up our neighborhoods.
Do we want to live in ghost towns of closed shops, or are we willing to leave our homes and bring back retail in our towns and cities? Americans should view shopping local as a post-pandemic patriotic duty. And then fulfill it before it’s too late.
