You obviously didn’t understand my comment. I may not have been clear, sorry if that was the case.
So did you just skip the first half of my comment, or did you not understand the words?
Newsflash: not everyone in America lives in a major urban area where a wide variety of shops are available, let alone small independent shops. I live 30 minutes from the nearest city, which is a small city. There’s a huge amount of products that are not available in either my immediate area or even in the closes city. I don’t mind paying extra to avoid major chains, and I typically look elsewhere before resorting to Amazon, but paying extra and spending 2+ hours in a car to avoid Amazon is not a viable alternative.
If you’re going to talk about the “natural state of things”, then I assume you simply go out into the nearest forest, cut down a tree, and build whatever you need using the assortment of stone tools you’ve hand crafted?
zloubida@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Marruk@lemmy.world 1 year ago
No, your comment was clear: anyone who doesn’t make whatever level of effort it takes to never shop at Amazon infuriates you. Furthermore, you assume that there are always other choices besides Amazon and Walmart. What you obviously still aren’t getting is that those other choices besides Amazon and Walmart may not be practical for everyone.
Amazon is bad. No one is disagreeing. But if I need a left-handed monkey wrench and my choices are either buy from Amazon or drive 2 hours to the closest major city, go to a big box store that let’s be honest, isn’t really much better than Amazon in terms of economic impact, and then drive 2 hours back, you being infuriated by my choosing to not waste half a day to choose the slightly-greater-of-two-evils is a lovely demonstration of privilege.
zloubida@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Furthermore, you assume that there are always other choices besides Amazon and Walmart.
I said explicitly the contrary…
Marruk@lemmy.world 1 year ago
And why do you think you have no other choice than Amazon and Walmart in America?
That’s what you said, which is somewhat ambiguous phrasing. It could mean “why do you believe that there are no other choices, because there are?” or it could mean “yes, you have no other choices than those two, but how do you think that happened?”
Given that you started off by arguing that it was infuriating that anyone would ever shop at Amazon, and have been pretty consistent in your other comments that the solution is to just go to “an actual shop”, the first interpretation is much more appropriate to the context.
If you really meant “yes, you have no other choices than those two”, then sure, I’ll accept the back pedaling. It doesn’t change that you are infuriated that anyone would shop at Amazon, and accuse those that do of personally destroying the climate because we are lazy. The fact that you are aware that many people simply don’t have a better option, and yet you still judge them so harshly, only makes you look worse.
RomeCallen@lemmy.world 1 year ago
ya thats my problem too. at least an 1.5 hr drive one way to get to “shops” that are not ace hardware or safeway. i live in a town of about 2k up a steep mountain pass. i would love to ditch amazon but its really really hard to
Marruk@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yeah, I’ve been making a real effort to look for alternatives to Amazon whenever possible. It’s hard, though, depending on what you want. Sure, there’s a ton of stuff on Amazon that I can get local if I’m willing to put up with some inconvenience. I don’t buy books off of Amazon anymore, for example, because I’d rather call the small independent book shop that’s about 35 minutes drive from my house, have them order the book for me, and then drive out and pick it up.
But the sheer volume of things Amazon sells means there’s going to be LOTS of things that they have that just aren’t available around me. A new fan for my specific model of laptop? A replacement knob for my specific washing machine (for less than a dollar)? Amazon it is.