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this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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The practices of those businesses, and people choosing them over other options, is exactly why you don’t have other choices now
It's an extreme-case prisoner's dilemma. For shoppers to prevent a Walmart/Amazon monopoly, people would have to both give up convenience AND affordability in hope that everyone else had the same radical values. There were PLENTY of boycotters for both, but they just weren't anywhere near enough.
At some point, when you're starving and Sam Walton comes by and offers you food your family can afford, you pull the trigger. And I don't fault someone who does that.
For real. It would obviously be better if they didn't use such destructive and predatory practices, but "vote with your dollars" isn't an option for a lot of the people these businesses earn most of their money from.
It turns out that there is, in fact, a case to be made for regulation and labor organizations in these situations.
And what should they do now? Protest it by not having any formula? Don't victim blame
I agree. Buy formula, but not non-essential knick knacks that can be purchased for the same price on another website
And when the other website costs more, has worse return policies, slower shipping, and possibly is even a scam site? The problem with Amazon is how good it is even when it's being evil.
As I said elswhere, I look EVERYWHERE before Amazon first. That involves me checking out BBB on mom&pop storefronts and trying to filter out the scam stores or the ones with significant issues. It involves me price-checking, coupon-checking, seeing if services like Rakuten can get the price to match Amazon's. I don't expect most people to do all those things and neither should you.
And even then, I end up buying from Amazon about 2/3 the time. Because I won't pay 20% more in some meaningless protest that isn't going anywhere.
I’m not blaming them. I acknowledged they may not have any other choice. Just pointing out the harms for the benefit of anyone with the option to do something about it
sorry twins -- daddy isn't a puppet of capitalism