A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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Image description:
Text: Amazon's electric cargo bikes have arrived in DC.
Image: A four-wheeled vehicle that appears to be a cross between a bicycle, a go-cart, and a mini-truck
Response text from high t alpha shemale @gluetaster: that's not a cargo bike man that's a loopholemobile
If people would stop buyung shit from Amazon this wouldn't happen. I can't believe so many folks don't care. People I know still get stuff from Amazon. It's like talking to a brick wall.
It's called a captive market and platform capitalism for a reason. Thanks to the network effect, buyers and sellers gravitate to Amazon. Amazons main product is selling access to it's walled of market to third party sellers (and attention to advertisers). All of this is to avoid competition and extract monopoly rents. "Ethical consumption" (just telling people not to use Amazon) is not enough to break this monopoly. It will never work as a strategy. Instead, you need massive organizing for worker and consumer strikes and/or internationally coordinated state power to forcibly break apart the monopoly.
Dont worry, everyone will be as broke as me someday soon.
The thing that gets me is why people buy stuff from Amazon to begin with. Their search feature is horrid now, the products on there are all cheap Chinse crap that's way overpriced, the reviews aren't reliable, they're shitty AI is 100% collecting your data and selling to advertisers, the number of delayed deliveries has been increasing over time, and the list goes on and on. Like it's genuinely bad product now. I remember Amazon in 2016 was elite, but in 2026? It ain't worth a quarter. This is on top of their shitty labor practices.
I mostly buy from ebay and direct websites when I can. Although in certain circumstances, I feel trapped; I'm trying to buy specific airsoft BBs and all online retailers only offer one jar and I would need to buy 3 jars for free shipping, I'm fine with that but they all have 1 in stock, only Amazon stocks like 14 in their warehouse