Every tech step, every robot, every amazonized walmartization of life destroys.
Giant Retailer invasion not only destroys innovative small, local enterprise,
free enterprise itself. But it also destroys a human essential—COMMUNITY, neighbor-to-neighbor neighborliness.
In the 1950s, and likely earlier, my parents and grandparents, many families
called up the local small grocer, ordered essentials, and a “grocery boy,”
delivered them promptly.
In this tradition, young people had a before or after-school job. They learned
life skills such as independency in earning, responsibility, saving. Small
businesses retained their incomes, families and traditions. And families broadened
their sense of community from family to neighbors to include local merchants,
often the families of merchants.
|
T
|
his is not nostalgia talking. But in those days neighbors did not fear
each other. No one felt the need to buy safety, or the illusion of safety, with
technological gadgets connected to their homes (itself an invasion) and “keep-out” signs on their doors
or lawns, all linked to some distant stranger (or subcontractor of a
subcontractor of a subcontractor) seated at a distant computer.
Today’s marketing and consuming convenience
without community is not progress. It is regress. It robs humanity of its humanity;
it supplants an essential human need.
As human beings, our absolute essential is—real time familiarity (i.e., “Yes, I remember you”, “I recognize you”), face-to-face, eye-contacting, touchable, hands-on, time-taking —human community.
When community is missing and to the degree that it is missing, we become alien to and alienated from one another, fearful of and antagonistic toward one another, without recognition, in denial of our shared humanity.
|
C
|
apitalism’s use, abuse, overuse and inappropriate reach of technology
for its own sake, its narrow-mindedness and narrow ends, its creep into all
sectors of life destroys essentials of community and proper regard for all society
and nature.
We must reconsider; carefully rethink the creep of technology and monopoly.
And make the conscious choice of community’s inconvenience over capital’s purported
convenience.
In the News
September 2018 The Netherlands Home Delivery
Smartphone app users make online grocery orders from a multinational corporation.
Consumers pay upfront the night before for next-day “delivery in a 20-minute window.”
September 2018 Amazon
Bezos billionaire’s Amazon.com Inc. is reportedly planning an attack on
“convenience chains like 7-Eleven Inc., quick-service sandwich shops like
Subway and Panera Bread, and mom-and-pop pizzerias and taco trucks” with a
launch of “3,000 AmazonGo cashierless stores” by 2021.
September 2018 Walmart
Multinational conglomerate with estimated total revenue of $500 billion, U.S.-headquartered
Walton- family owned Walmart's Vancouver Canada operation, as a Netherlands operation,
is offering online consumers a Walmart app pay-by-credit card grocery delivery scheme within
a given time frame.
|
E
|
nough is never enough
Walmart is the world’s largest company by revenue. In 2016 it was
listed as the largest U.S. grocery retailer—with 62.3 percent of its $478.614
billion sales coming from U.S. operations.
Walmart was recorded in January 2018 as having “11,718 stores and clubs
in 28 countries, operating under 59 different names.”
For example: Walmart in the United States and Canada” is “Walmart de México y Centroamérica in Mexico and Central America”; “Asda in the United Kingdom”; “Seiyu Group in Japan”; “Best Price in India.” The conglomerate has “wholly owned operations in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Canada.”
Through their holding company, Walton Enterprises, and through individual
holdings, the heirs of Walmart founder Sam Walton own more than “50 percent” of
Walmart’s billions.
|
N
|
ovember 2017 Customer acquiescence to breaking and entering marketed as
safety
Online retail conglomerate Amazon has fashioned “a smart door lock and
camera system” that permits its drivers to enter consumers’ residences and leave
packages inside. The company is reported to have claimed that “the new service
will negate the need to have a family member or neighbor stay at home to
receive (customers’) delivery, and can be used by house cleaners and dog
walkers to access your home.”
Amazon’s “smart” breaking and entering technology is said to be fitted to the customer’s door lock for entry by an Amazon delivery stranger whose movements are recorded by an Amazon camera.
|
E
|
nough is never enough
The Seattle, Washington (USA)-based Amazon.com, Inc., DBA Amazon,
is the second publicly traded company in the United States whose value listing
(as of September 2018) is $1 trillion.
The electronic commerce and cloud computing company whose
founder and board chairman is Jeffrey Preston Bezos (formerly Jeffrey Preston
Jorgensen) is “the largest Internet retailer in the world as measured by
revenue and market capitalization, and second largest after Alibaba Group in
terms of total sales.”
Amazon offers international shipping of some of its products
to certain countries; and has “separate separate retail websites for the United
States, the United Kingdom and Ireland, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain,
Netherlands, Australia, Brazil, Japan, China, India, Mexico, Singapore, and
Turkey.
Its cache of online retail stuff includes
books, video downloads/streaming, MP3 downloads/streaming, audio-book downloads/streaming, software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and jewelry; consumer electronics such as Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets, Fire TV, and Echo; cloud infrastructure services (IaaS and PaaS); and other products under its in-house brand AmazonBasics. In perishables, Amazon reportedly challenges grocery retail conglomerate Walmart “by market capitalization”—which alone has virtually destroyed free enterprise not to mention environmental necessities—in the United States.
Because you can doesn't mean you should!And with its 2017 $13.4 billion acquisition of Whole Foods Market, Amazon not only surpasses Walmart but “vastly” increases its “presence as a brick-and-mortar retailer.”
|
W
|
hen COMMUNITY is gone—when “together” is replaced by mindless,
manipulative online distraction, strangers sneaking in to deliver food to doped
out masses—the heirs of billionaire conglomerates hunker down in their bunkers.
And the masses feed on themselves.
Sources
Reuters Technology News “Startup Picnic runs grocery delivery bus in
Dutch online shopping boom,” Toby Sterling, September 19, 2018 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-netherlands-grocery-internet/startup-picnic-runs-grocery-delivery-bus-in-dutch-online-shopping-boom-idUSKCN1LZ244
Fresh Plaza “Amazon: Opening up to 3,000 cashierless stores by 2021
considered ● Walmart Canada: sustainable grocery delivery launched”● US:
Seasons kosher supermarket files for bankruptcy” Rogier Peterse, September 21, 2018 http://www.freshplaza.com/article/9021195/walmart-canada-sustainable-grocery-delivery-launched
Wikipedia
Walmart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart
Amazon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_(company)
Inside Europe September 20, 2018 program segment “The Dutch
revolutionize grocery home deliveries” https://www.dw.com/en/inside-europe-20092018/av-45587911
Deutsche Welle Business “Amazon delivery drivers now let themselves
into your home” November 8, 2017 https://www.dw.com/en/amazon-delivery-drivers-now-let-themselves-into-your-home/a-41306324
Insight Beyond Today’s News, CLB - © All Rights
Reserved
No comments:
Post a Comment