NewEgg just wants to sell you stuff. Amazon wants to control you.

NewEgg.com ^ | 08-20-2020 | CharlesOconnell

[CharlesOConnell]

(Not an ad. I just got 50 masks for $14.) I'm a free shipping junkie, I might be able to get a better deal for with-shipping, but I'm not a sharpie.

Amazon is a monopoly. (What's wrong with that? "Economy of scale", but it just benefits the Behemoth, eventually prices rise.) Most people don't think of looking anywhere else. I only accidentally used NewEgg because they had something I wanted, a specific phone battery, that Amazon didn't have. The only little downside was, you have to search around for tracking, otherwise, it was free shipping, my stuff arrived reasonably quick, and I don't feel like they're trying to rip me off.

Amazon Ripoffs: They started me on Amazon Prime without telling me, they took a fee out of my bank account for 4 months. An author I know wrote a reasonably good selling book, never got a penny. (My brother-in-law's 1/2 brother, a book on the history of concrete.)

Jeff Bezos probably thinks that, because he started an innovation at the right place & time and is possibly the world's richest man, that means he should be able to control millions of people.

That's the way it is with monopolies. What makes them monopolies? You'd think the tag doesn't apply if they have competitors--so they must not be a monopoly--but a cartel can still be "federated", that is, not centrally controlled, multiple ostensibly "competitive" cartel members can collude together to raise prices in the long run and victimize consumers.

Sorry to use a visual analogy, but the hidden fact is that what is really at work with monopolies is a kind of tendency, like a number of globules of mercury on a flat surface eventually combining into a single pool, a tendency for large masses of money to throw off multiple owners and form larger & larger masses. This means that Croesus is the god of this world, until he wakes up one day to discover that he has turned into Midas, and you can't eat the stuff.

In the "freedom vs. equality" head-room, when you're a victim, you're equal with all the other victims. What is wrong with monopolies is that they make us trade convenience and a false sense of security for freedom, self-reliance and autonomy.

(I got into Thomas Paine's 1776 "Common Sense" from listening to champion teacher John Taylor Gatto, on many, many fine YouTube talks, speak about how when monopolies were forcing our conversion into an industrial-financial economy about 1880, they attacked Yankee small farmers, inventors and entrepreneurs who were competing too much with the Big Money Boys. So at the dawn of public schooling, Andrew Carnegie "generously" offered pensions to teachers, but only if they would use the deliberately dumbed-down curriculum of universal compulsory public schooling. Big Money was too smart, however, as when John D. Rockefeller Jr. funded John Dewey's experimental Lincoln School, 4 of Rockefeller's 5 sons who attended there, contracted dyslexia from the "whole-word" vs phonics reading. And of course, everyone knows what a disaster Common Core math is, vs. Singapore Math.)

The effect of monopolies on all of us is encapsulated by the writer of the Fr. Brown Mysteries, G.K. Chesterton, with the, typically enigmatic, Chestertonism, "Peoples selling themselves into slavery and marching back out again....", from The Everlasting Man (a book which uses N-word-isms).

I just ordered a book on Monopolies from ***AMAZON***, because I got the best price from a slave-retailer. I'm a victim of my own cheapness.

[CharlesOConnell]

A You-Tube interview of an author, queues to about 25 minutes in the YouTube, https://youtu.be/lEI1zDXYbw0?t=1506

Interview about a book on monopolies,

I didn't like that he didn't talk about the monstrous German chemical cartel I.G. Farben (Bayer aspirin & BASF audio, among others): "The Devil's Chemists", started WW2 as a profit-making operation, the S.S. was their corporate militia, ran Auschwitz as a gasoline from coal factory, invented making gunpowder from air.

But he knows enough about hidden American biz monsters, ducks the host's conventional socialist self-brainwashing, this guy knows his stuff. He's believable to me. I ordered the book.

[4yearlurker]

I've bought a lot of books on-line through the years. By far I had more trouble (mostly shipping) with Amazon than Ebay.

[Fiddlstix]

Bookmark

[Macoozie]

“(Not an ad. I just got 50 masks for $14.)”

Why?
They don’t do anything.

[CharlesOConnell]

Oh BTW, after I read Carroll Quigley’s “Tragedy & Hope” & Jules Archer’s “The Plot to Seize the White House”, I coined a phrase, this author is the 1st to recognized that Monopolies use Fascism.

The phrase I coined from Quigley & Archer:

* Fascism is the political manifestation of the period of economic history known as Monopoly Capitalism.

(From Carroll Quigley’s “Tragedy & Hope”: Mercantile Capitalism of the Royal Charter companies like East India, and Financial Capitalism like Roth Schild and Morgan, preceded the Monopoly Capitalism of Standard Oil’s Chase Manhattan Bank.)

Jules Archer’s “The Plot to Seize the White House”: (The Business Plot, after FDR took the country off the gold standard, Irenee DuPont’s assets were cut in half overnight, as a courtesy to Du Pont, J.P. Morgan tried to use the American Legion to “suggest” to FDR that he was “too sick to govern”, encourage the VP to resign, and place a military governor in the Presidency, they chose the wrong boy, Old Gimlet Eye, Marine Gen. Smedley Darlington Butler, “War is a Racket”, cleaned up a Spanish Flu Army camp in Belgium & cleaned up Philly police-mob corruption.)

[wastedyears]

Newegg does have a huge selection of stuff, but Microcenter has parts on display, and if you need to return something, you don’t need to ship it.

But I’m biased because I love Microcenter.

[CharlesOConnell]

Why Masks? I have kids. You’ll get your head beaten in if you go anywhere without one. Of course they don’t work, permanent ones stink.

[CharlesOConnell]

Microcenter. TERRIFIC. Thx.

[Oatka]

I've bought a lot of books on-line through the years. By far I had more trouble (mostly shipping) with Amazon than Ebay.

Try Thriftboos - free shipping over $15.

[zeebee]

Before this virus. I bought a box of 50 earloop face masks for $1.40. I use them when sanding wood. They’re good for that.

[No.6]

The Egg is very good. They’ve fought and defeated patent trolls too. https://www.newegg.com/insider/newegg-vs-patent-trolls-when-we-win-you-win

[amorphous]

Thanks for posting! We need an Amazonian’s Anonymous!

[Pollard]

but I'm not a sharpie.

They started me on Amazon Prime without telling me

You sir are correct. You are not a sharpie. You didn't notice the pre-checked box during checkout that signed you up to Prime. Had you simply paid attention, you would have checked the other box and not been signed up.

[yuleeyahoo]

Amazon is my shopping starting point. My “price to beat” if you will. It is rarely my ending point. Depending on the item, even Walmart frequently beats Amazon.

[ADemocratNoMore]

>I love Microcenter.

Me too !

They also have salesmen who know their product.

[amorphous]

[metmom]

My husband and son order stuff from New Egg all the time.

Mr. mm has found that he likes ordering from eBay as many smaller businesses use it and he can get good deals and support them.

He’s been using it a lot more than amazon.

We need to cancel prime. We don’t use it that much.

[MichaelRDanger]

Sorry but NO!!!

I’m in IT and over the last 20 years my brother and myself have spent over $80,000 with NewEgg. A couple years ago they were bought by a Chinese company and I have seen a noticeable drop-off in their service. I’ve received bad parts and items that were obviously items that were returned and they stiffed me over a $15.00 cable that did not work.

At least Amazon is an American company and will stand behind their products. NewEgg can no longer be trusted...

[krny9]

In case you don’t know about it, you can use camelcamelcamel.com to track long term price variation on Amazon. Even for simple items Amazon plays games to fleece the people in a rush and who use prime. For example, here is the price for a pack of diapers ... the price varies from 18$ to 36$ depending on which day you shop. I use Amazon to find an item but end up ordering most things elsewhere.

https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B00FMWX4JK?context=search

[GailA]

I’VE USED THE SAME MASK I MADE, JUST HAND WASH IT.