Declining to be Dominated.

I read yesterday that the American regulator is taking Amazon to task over their nefarious business practices, most notably their habit of luring the unwary into the trap of having a Prime account and making it the Devil’s own job to extricate themselves. It happened to me once, and getting myself out of it was indeed a torturous labyrinth of tricks and traps and attempts to dissuade. I managed it, and felt like a rare example of a house fly which has managed to release itself from a spider’s web. That was the day on which I swore I would never shop with Amazon again. I never have, I never will, and maybe herein lies the solution:

Consumerism.

It’s a popular term these days and is usually defined as the process whereby the desire to spend money is elevated to a primary driving force, a process in which acquisition becomes supremely important and the main basis for establishing social status. I gather economists consider it a good thing because it drives economic growth. Well, maybe it does in the kind of economy we’ve developed in the west, but it also has some pretty serious drawbacks, such as the elevation of stress levels, the degradation of the environment, and the power of the corporate world to order our lives and lifestyles. (Not to mention its connection with big capitalism which produces the wondrous spectacle of having a very tiny number of people possessing ludicrous amounts of wealth while the rest tire themselves out trying to keep up, or sleep in dumpsters because there’s nowhere else to go.)

The original definition of ‘consumerism’ was quite different. Back in its seminal years it referred to the power the buyer can have over the seller if only they choose to exercise it. It means that if there’s something you want but don’t actually need, and if there’s something you find objectionable about the seller, you simply refuse to buy and do without it. That’s the position I took with Amazon, and if everybody did the same it would soon bring the corporate spider to heel.

‘Ah, but,’ the economist might say, ‘if you do that the economy will collapse.’ Well, with all due respect to their expertise, I would make two suggestions here:

1. Not necessarily. Manufacturers could still make things and retailers could still sell them. Such has been the case for thousands of years. But it would force them to be more judicious in their methodology and more considerate of the wider implications.

2. Even if the economy did collapse, a new system would eventually arise to take its place. The human animal is ever resourceful in solving problems, and no doubt it would rise from the ashes one way or another. Maybe it would be the fulfilment of Marx’s prophecy that capitalism will eventually destroy itself through its own greed. And the way things have been moving over the past 50-100 years, I feel it will have to happen one day. The corporate world needs a shock because life is getting too close to being intolerable for too many people.

So should we start a popular movement designed to take the power away from the huge multinational retailers and the corporate world in general. I think that would be a good idea, but I doubt it will happen because too many people are too brainwashed to follow the bandwagon. (And on a point of semantics, should we call it an anti-consumerism movement or a pro-consumerism one? OK, now I’m being pedantic. I’m also shutting up.)

And now for something completely different.

As the gloaming gathered this evening, a gentle rain began to fall. It didn’t last long, and when the clouds moved away and the darkness beckoned, the new moon kept Venus company in the western sky. Such evenings go some way to calming the troubled breast.