Posted on 03/29/2018 11:40:30 PM PDT by blueplum
In the early 1900s, Charlie Harger, a writer for this magazine, visited a small country store on “the frontier” to talk to its proprietor. (He did not mention, in the eight full pages of the story where exactly that small retailer was located, because that’s how journalism was done in those days.) The unnamed proprietor was looking out beyond his windows stocked with hoes and pancake flour, to the parcels sitting at the train depot that were mail-ordered from Chicago and New York. The rise of mail-order delivery was going to drive him out of business, he worried. {snip}
Just how package delivery should work and whether it would ruin local businesses was a hotly contested issue in the early 20th century, and the debate about the role that the Postal Service should play in delivering packages from private merchants lasted for decades. {snip}
The debate over whether the Postal Service should subsidize the delivery of packages to consumers’ homes was just as fraught then as it is now. “The simple act of carrying a parcel from Chicago to a farmer’s lane became freighted with a panoply of issues agitating the nation,” Richard Kielbowicz, a professor at the University of Washington, wrote in a history of the debates over the U.S. Parcel Post. The issues then were very much same as the issues today—whether consumers everywhere had a right to get cheap products delivered to their doorstep, and if so, what role the government should play in facilitating the process.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
BOYCOTT AMAZON - 100%
It/they have disgraced American Southern heritage in an unforgivable manner . Not one dime . Zero .
Patronize other companies .
If you need a book or some music - Barnes & Noble
works just fine .
But Alexa says I have nothing to worry about from using Amazon.
This is not exactly the history of internet retailing as I remember it.
When it started internet retailing did have the sales tax advantage, but they had the disadvantage of shipping costs and shipping time. 20 years ago I used to order computer memory on line and waited weeks for delivery. I could get it from a local store in minutes, but the price was higher.
But, and the big but, is that Amazon was not the dominant player. There were hundreds and thousands of internet retailers.
Amazon did not have 20 years to dominate the market and eliminate brick and mortar competition. Internet retailing had 20 years to get started, and Amazon beat out other internet retailers.
Amazon innovated, cut shipping time and innovated some more. Competitors fell by the wayside because they could not keep up.
Amazon has done a lot of good. I retired to a rural area, but have access to the same goods as if I lived in a major city. And at reasonable prices.
Plus, and the real advantage for me is that I can avoid the time I spend looking for what I want in brick and mortar stores. And get fast shipping.
Amazon has not done anything unfairly, just better, faster and cheaper than the competition. Just what is wrong with this in a capitalist society?
not one dime....
I also live in a very rural area and base my shopping on three things, price, price and quality. Our local people do not understand pricing nor quality nor will they let a name brand store into our community so it is either drive 40 minutes one way to shop at a big box store or over the internet.
Now we are back to pricing
Why go to a big name tire shop when I can have 6 tires delivered for my truck and save $480 after having them mounted for the same exact tire with tire manufacture date within normal range for sale. AND I did not have to wait an hour to have them put on
Why go to an electronic store and try to purchase from a person with wires growing out of their head, not knowing if they are talking to you or even listening to you to spend 25% more for a 300 watt sound bar that you can find on the internet with same warranty.
HEck, I just bought cattle wormer over the internet to do 80 head and saved enough to do them TWICE. Why would I NOT buy over the net vs local?
I do a lot of online purchasing, I also do a lot of local mom and pop buying. Because if those local neighborhood shops close up, people move, towns dry up, and monies that can go to help the local economy go elsewhere.
In some cases you might pay more for the same item if purchased locally, but did you ever consider where those extra dollars go?
” Amazon is disrupting local retail by offering free delivery and low prices for items sold remotely that local small businesses could otherwise sell.”
It must be noted that local retail sometimes shoots itself in the foot. I went into Auto zone for 2 clearence lights for an 02 f350. Found them and decided to grab an extra set of tail lights as well. 30.00. When I most forcefully balked the mgr told me that they were 10.00 lights. They were old, standard incandescent bulbs. I walked out and checked Amazon and found that 30.00 wold buy me bulbs till the Second Coming. Sometimes local retailers are idiots with whom I do not care to deal.
Absolutely nothing...until Bezos went and bought the Washington Post.
And long before Amazon you could change that sentence from reading "online buying" to reading "Wal-Mart" and it would be just as accurate.
President Trump said “use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.)” in his tweet the other day referring to Amazon. Excuse me Mr. Trump but doesn’t the USPS have Managers that make these deals with Amazon? Also, the USPS is not the only “delivery boy” as I get 99% of my items from Amazon via United Parcel Service and a few by Fedex.
If POTUS doesn’t like the deal between Amazon and the USPS he should cancel it instead of whining about it.
Before Amazon every politician was complaining about Walmart causing mom and pop stores to shut down.
Exactly. Its your money and how you spend it is nobody’s business but your own (or should be).
“If POTUS doesn’t like the deal between Amazon and the USPS he should cancel it instead of whining about it.”
POTUS does not control the post office. The postmaster general is no long a member of the cabinet. Congress made the post office an “independent” agency in 1971 and it reports to a commission. Ultimately Congress is responsible for the USPS. Direct and indirect subsidies given the post office by Congress total $18 billion per year. http://fortune.com/2015/03/27/us-postal-service/
Congress should not be giving the Post Office subsidies from the treasury which allows the post office to benefit some customers (Amazon) while most taxpayers pay higher rates. Congress has three options:
1) Continue the current practice of subsidizing the Post Office and allow it to favor some shippers.
2) Fully privatize the Post Office and end the subsidies. It remains independent, but will be subject to the marketplace. If it cannot redefine its business model to make a profit, it will descend into bankruptcy and liquidate.
3) Continue the post office as an independent commission but eliminate all subsidies and preferences. If the Post Office cannot reform its economic model to make a profit, it will descend into bankruptcy and liquidation of assets.
Under scenarios 2 & 3 the post office will not be able to survive if it continues to subsidize Amazon shipments. It will have to raise its rates to Amazon. If it raises rates to a level higher than its competitors, Amazon will use other services. Such is the invisible hand of the marketplace. It forces all companies to become efficient. Subsidies only encourage inefficiency.
Given the solution is the responsibility of a freestanding Congress nothing will be done. Congress is happy to create more debt to prop up the Post Office and subsidize Amazon. After all Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, owns the Washington Post and likely has the goods on most of the members of Congress.
And, when I need oddball size tires, getting them from Amazon is not only cheaper, it is faster.
Date codes have always been very recent from Amazon.
I do that every time -- they stay right in my bank account, where they do a lot more good than in someone else's bank account.
And, on Amazon I get to read reviews of how the product actually works in real life. In a local store, the item with the largest profit for the store is usually the one they push.
If I want the absolute lowest price, I can look on eBay, where the item is frequently of unknown provenance. If I want a warranty, I go to Amazon.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Now the other big deal is that Amazon keep track of what I buy. You might think "lack of privacy", but I know for sure that when I have a problem with an item, I get great service because they don't want all that business going somewhere else.
Every once in a while, I write a bad review for a disappointing product. Either Amazon, or the outside vendor, has always contacted me the next day. I either get a replacement product, or a refund in short order. Never even have to fill out the complaint form. And for small items they don't even want the bad one back.
If I take something back to a local merchant, getting a refund or a replacement is like pulling alligator teeth.
My take on the USPS deal is that their delivery service has improved substantially since they started contracting with Amazon. Deliveries on holidays, and on Sundays. Instead of leaving a note in my mailbox to come down to the local PO, they drive up to my front door and put the package on my doorstep.
Why has this happened? Fear, plain and simple. Mail volume has been declining for years, because of the internet. Now UPS and Fedex are eating their lunch on parcels. I think management explained to the union that their jobs were disappearing and were going to be gone if they did not up their game. All of a sudden, surly postal workers became a rarity instead of the usual.
Chalk up one more benefit for Amazon.
Where is Paul Harvey when you need him. The last holiday season, our small town was inundated with USPS mail delivery vehicles delivering packages 24/7. They packages were all from Amazon. Something strange here - I have used USPS to mail a few packages and there is no way that Amazon could use the postal service for their package delivery and make any money, the rates are way too high. About 5:30 am one day on my morning run, I was able to talk to one of the delivery persons. I discovered that the packages were delivered to the local post office multiple times per day with a large truck from Amazon. Amazon had done 90-95% or more of the effort before the postal service had ever seen the package. The USPS cost to deliver the package was as close to zero as it is possible to get.
If one digs a little the Wall Street Journal gives a clue on how this is possible https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-the-post-office-gives-amazon-special-delivery-1499987531?mod=trending_now_1 : “Amazon is big enough to take full advantage of “postal injection,” and that has tipped the scales in the internet giant’s favor. Select high-volume shippers are able to drop off presorted packages at the local Postal Service depot for “last mile” delivery at cut-rate prices. With high volumes and warehouses near the local depots, Amazon enjoys low rates unavailable to its competitors. My analysis of available data suggests that around two-thirds of Amazon’s domestic deliveries are made by the Postal Service. It’s as if
Amazon gets a subsidized space on every mail truck.”
I do not agree with this person’s conclusion in that to me, it appears that Amazon is subsidizing the postal service by using this technique.
I tend to avoid using Amazon, but in most cases, your local small business will likely be using them to order small quantities of specialty items for you and give you a markup.
Thank you, that’s well said.
I know Jeff Bozo is a laudable target.
But if he’s really going after such inequities in the digital economy, he’d best address the suicidal cabbies who paid big money for their medallions—and the sub-minimum wage “contract” drivers for Uber and, especially, Lyft who are being taken advantage on the other side of the equation.
Same for AirBNB and hotels. There needs to be parity in regulatory costs.
The buggy whip manufacturers sure got a raw deal as well.
It is up to those in the economy to adapt—except were serious regulations tilt unfairly one way or the other.
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