Find what you want on Amazon, look at reviews, and then go to the actual website of the producer and buy it directly from them. It’s not hard, it just takes an extra step.

You’ll probably buy less junk, too.

No.

Amazon is what it is because it creates an easier path for America to buy cheap, as Walmart and McDonald’s has done before to great microscopic economic success, due to the failures of our economic paradigm that shrinks wages and pushes manufacturing offshore for corporate profit.

We need higher wages, which create higher prices, which corrects for the misdeeds of our economic exploitation of foreign economies.

We have offloaded our economic burden onto other poorer nations, and that needs to stop. Pay a living wage and accept the higher cost at lower profits. Doing otherwise is an economic ouroboros that only swallows the easy part at the sake of the whole in the name of kicking an inflationary can down the road so that yachts can grow larger as the foundation of this country in undermined for icarian profits.

Fuck your CEO, pay us so they can pay us something and they can have less than everything, so they can keep from having nothing less than more than we can achieve through reluctant violence.

Amazon is one issue, but I think the larger enshittification is the proliferation of “marketplace” websites that allow any random imported junk to appeat right alongside quality products with actual manufacturer support.

I’m more than willing to buy products elsewhere, but it’s so easy to default to Amazon.

One of the practices that the FTC sued Amazon over was their requirement that sellers list their lowest prices on Amazon and outsource fulfillment (and give up a huge cut) to Amazon in order to qualify for Prime and good search results.

The result is that even though most sellers can afford to sell on their own store and keep a larger percentage of the sales revenue, they’re not allowed to actually undercut Amazon’s prices. And so Amazon has shielded itself from price competition, despite engaging in pretty expensive practices (free 2 day shipping for most items and places, free 1-day or even same day shipping for some items in some places). And they did it with contracts instead of actually competing.

I don’t live in the US but here Amazon is like a last resort if we can’t find what we’re looking for.

We need a new Amazon rain forest.

This is always the problem: Monopolies are popular with consumers because their centralization makes everything easy. The trappings of convenience.

Buy stuff directly from stores. Every time I’ve looked, the price elsewhere often exactly matches what Amazon charges because their pricing algorithms are constantly price matching anyhow.

You’re on a federated website, but think what we need is more centralized marketplaces?

If you don’t mind waiting a while for whatever it is you’re buying, ali-express isn’t too bad. If you’re near a city and it’s not too specialized of a thing you need you can probably find it at a a brick and mortar store.

When I want a cheap plastic thingy, or cheap hardware and electronics to play around with, I get it off aliexpress. It’s virtually the same stuff as amazon just for the patient. Most of that stuff is made in China already even if I get it from an online or local brick and mortar retailer, so it seems more direct to me, avoiding needless retransportation, warehousing and waste.

When I want a quality thing I buy it from a local shop, especially when I need to see it or compare before buying. I can often find a Canadian online retailer too with just a bit of sleuthing.

There are people who sell products who are not affiliated with Amazon

Shocking I know

I tend to buy straight from vendors. like I ordered some underwear straight from Hanes the other day.

One thing I’ve realized about Amazon, at least lately, is that they don’t always have the lowest prices. For many items, I can go directly to the manufacturer’s site and get the same product for a lower or equal price with free shipping. If I have to wait a couple extra days, so be it. At least I’m not lining Bezos’ pockets.

It isn’t really a good alternative, but Walmart.com has nearly as wide of a selection and the same delivery times.

Not that Walmart is a better company.

Honestly after moving into our current home, we were able to avoid Amazon almost completely. We don’t buy cookware, as carbon steel, cast iron, and stainless steel cookware lasts at least decades if not forever; we have way too many mugs from market and thrift store; and all of our clothes are thrifted with some from Costco.

we get groceries from farmers market, local ethnic stores, or super market. We get shelf stable products like toilet paper or drinks from Costco in bulk. We barely replace our electronic, because I would fix them with spare parts from ifixit and eBay; when it do need to get replaced, I get them from bestbuy or manufacture. We get most of the cleaning products from refil store or supermarket; we would buy soap from farmers market or local supplier.

We would only buy very obscure product from Amazon, like replacement knob for pot lid etc, but they are very very rare. One particular product we unfortunately relied on Amazon is the bamboo electric toothbrush brush head, we are trying to find some local salers that carry that, but cannot find any.