I had the thought that the only way to really fight against large corporations and billionaires is to compete against them. Start your own business. Amazon relies on third-party sellers more than anything in their business. So start a business and sell your items there. Don’t have anything to sell? People are a creative bunch, make something. Find a local producer of something and make a partnership to sell on an independent web site.
You know that Amazon has so much money that it can sell at a loss for years if necessary to ANNIHILATE all its competition, right?
No one can compete against Amazon, or Google, or Microsoft, or any of the big companies with profits that exceed the GDP of countries.
You can’t win by playing THEIR game, with THEIR pieces and THEIR rules.
We have to break stuff, THEIR stuff.
“The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”
Did you know that Amazon charges fees to sell on their site? When people buy products on Amazon, the company makes nothing. The third-party seller has paid a fee to sell on Amazon, a fee for Amazon to store the product each month, and then a fee once it sells to cover the Prime shipping costs the buyer thinks is free. There is no loss. If the third-party sellers, who usually are small businesses duped into thinking this is the best way, would pull out, that is the real money loss for Amazon.
Yeah, but that’s because they have no competition now. If you start your own business that’s anywhere close to being a threat to them, they’ll start lowering their fees until you physically can’t compete.
Which fees will get lowered? Prime? The sellers still have to pay fees to cover it. Amazon won’t care unless the people who are actually paying for everything leave. Be an example and start competing. Doesn’t even need to be a business that sells stuff to compete. Start a blog with talking about sites to buy everything outside of Amazon and Walmart.
oh no, it’s libs reinventing free market capitalism again
OH NO! It’s someone slapping a label on an idea to make it sound bad. Yeah, maybe we should reinvent the wheel. What good does this do to fix the problem? Call it what you want, but give me an alternate solution at the same time. Something that anybody can do.
you will never be able to outcompete the 1% because the only way to do that is to exploit workers more than they do. liberal propaganda may talk a lot about how growth without harm is possible, but it’s all just that, propaganda.
what I and a lot of anti-authoritarians propose is starting co-ops whose aim is to fight against competition, and to abolish the profit motive as much as possible. also organizing into neighborhood councils that function based on consensus democracy to autonomously govern the neighborhood against the wishes of oppressors like the state, the cops, landlords and the owning class.
the only way to escape late-stage capitalism is to go against this cancer cell ideology called infinite growth by adopting this thing called degrowth.
the Argentinian example is extremely inspiring for workplace self-management:
if you prefer podcasts, here’s an episode on Fabricas Ocupadas (occupied factories).
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anarcho-argentina-one-year-on
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/jose-antonio-gutierrez-d-workers-without-bosses#fn10
Go protest to get your government to make corporations follow laws and pay taxes. Vote for the politicians that work towards that.
Vote for the politicians that work towards that.
Kind of like asking him to vote for a norwal. Sure, they exist, but they don’t even attempt to make any REAL progress towards closing the wealth gap.
I was kinda assuming not everyone lives in the US and in some countries it might actually be viable
And how’s that been going for you? When people shout enough, the ones that need to listen start to tune it out. But start hitting wallets? Can’t tune that out.
What you propose isn’t hitting wallets, it’s refilling them
You can’t. In most cases it is economically impossible. Because corporations get resources much cheaper than you. They pay taxes less than you. They can do what is straightforwardly forbidden to you.
So your options are limited: reselling shit, selling potatoes on the market, barbery or manufacturing useless trinkets. Programmers have very cheap tools so they have a chance to actually compete. Extremely small negligible chance.
So what you are telling me is that the options are so limited that we shouldn’t even try? That the only way to fight is to give up and buy crappy clothes from Walmart and be glad for it? Chain restaurants are the only option for dining options? Eat your Big Mac and remember your fries.
And those resources available to large corporations, there are resources available to small businesses too. Tax breaks are out there for different reasons. Negotiate for cheaper resources. Don’t give up.
And those resources available to large corporations, there are resources available to small businesses too.
It isn’t the case. And the price is very different those those resources that are still available for small businesses.
options are so limited that we shouldn’t even try?
You can try, of course, it’s just you don’t have many options to choose from.
Have you tried? I’m trying.
Good shower thought but not really practical on its own.
Amazon will completely destroy a small business at every category except being a small business. Even if you could, Amazon still mandates that vendors have the lowest price on Amazon.
With that being said, I do like that many other companies are getting on board with the Amazon style. It is nice to have options at least.
How to prevent those small businesses to sell themselves to the big companies?
