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[deleted] wrote

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celebratedrecluse wrote

i mean, it's not like your Amazon account is the reason why he's going to be a trillionaire.

This isn't even an individualism vs. collectivism point. Amazon's web store hemmorages money, it's not profitable.

The most ridiculous and unbelievable thing about Amazon's story is that it runs the world's largest logistics chain...without profits in sight. Instead, it is Amazon's "side hustles" like AWS which make the real money. They host basically every major website. Even your favorite private messenger probably uses their servers. As an individual, you can rent those same servers to run crypto miners or password crackers, and their price point, user friendly GUI and technical sophistication is hard to find equaled elsewhere in the technology world. Their forays into AI and other emerging fields are probably the only way which they'll be able to automate their logistics operation enough to make it comfortably break even.

This all begs the question...why? Why run this logistics chain, which everyone knows them for, if it's never really turned a profit overall?

The US government has a long history of the intelligence services running long-term fronts for its global operations. What better way to organize a global empire, than through a privatized and largely tax-avoidant megacorporation, whose main stated "business" in the offline world is delivering packages in unmarked white vans? Which collects and stores literally millions of individual credit cards, social security numbers, utility bills and health insurance cards, home addresses, and of course the sum total of all their purchases and likely their online activity too...all voluntarily provided, and with no watchdog to exercise oversight.

It's hard to think of a more complete means for institutional abuse of power and grifting than such an enterprise, until you remember that many major newspapers and news agencies in the USA are owned by none other than jeff bezos himself.

Is it so surprising then that several years ago it was discovered and widely reported that Amazon was secretly sharing its data with, of all the possible suspicious agencies this story could include, the fucking USA Central Intelligence Agency?

So here's the thing. You shouldn't shop at Amazon, but it's not because you're contributing to some horrible but avoidable consumerist nightmare. No, no amount of liberal consumer choice would have averted this confluence of state and capital power.

You should instead close your account because this corporate nightmare arose due to a clearly corrupt cronyism with the state and its legal gangsters, who could easily use this information to find ways to harm you.

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