Pam Peirce

Amazon's business plan is to offer whatever consumer goods people want online, from one web site, and offer to deliver it fast. As a company, they are the ultimate in factory employment, using time and motion study to get as much as possible from their warehouse workers and delivery workers. They are hoping to maximize profit by using drones to deliver some goods.
 
I do not buy from Amazon, but I had an "associate" relationship with Amazon for a fewl months several years ago thinking, "if you can't beat 'em, maybe join 'em." I got a very small amount of income through people buying my book and a couple of other things from Amazon through my site. Then California threatened to charge sales tax to Amazon buyers in the state. That very afternoon, Amazon wrote me saying they were ending my associate status. I immediately wrote back that I was also ending it. Amazon threatened to pull all of its warehouses out of California. I don't know how it ended, but I still do not shop using Amazon, and I now have a bookshop.org link on my web site, through which visitors to my web site can buy books—mine and others and support independent bookstores. I am a bookshop.org associate, so I get a very small payment when someone buys books through the link. The buyer gets a bit of a discount.
 
I am pleased not to be associated with Amazon, though I do use their website as a reference, to learn the names of publishers, publication dates, and ISBN numbers of books. They tell you this important information, though you have to scroll down quite a bit to find these details near the bottom of a book's listing.
 
Apparently, many do buy stuff from Amazon.Are there two classes in America now? Those who work for places like Amazon and feel the "whip" of time demands they can barely meet and those who enjoy the convenience of buying from such businesses? Is it like the pandemic lock-down that divided the nation into those who could work from home and order whatever they wanted through online apps and those who had to keep going to work to provide the home deliveries? Is that the division that brought us Trump?I recently read a Facebook post wondering if Walgreen's would sell less with things locked up. Someone commented that they simply stood by the locked up item and ordered it from Amazon.