{"id":712,"date":"2020-04-07T07:33:26","date_gmt":"2020-04-07T07:33:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/?p=712"},"modified":"2020-04-07T07:33:26","modified_gmt":"2020-04-07T07:33:26","slug":"the-us-of-amazon-how-the-coronavirus-has-created-a-governance-vacuum-the-tech-giant-is-quickly-filling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/?p=712","title":{"rendered":"‘The US of Amazon’: how the coronavirus has created a governance vacuum the tech giant is quickly filling"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Julia Carrie Wong, TheGuardian.com<\/a>
\nIf we let Amazon\u2019s strength dominate our entire economy, we may just find out how weak we are<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\"amazon_fulfilment_center.jpg\"<\/p>\n

It is calling up 100,000 troops, extending grants to small businesses, prioritizing essential goods, and cracking down on profiteers.<\/p>\n

No, that\u2019s not the United States federal government\u2019s response to the coronavirus pandemic: it\u2019s Amazon\u2019s. The e-commerce behemoth is poised to become one of the major winners of the coronavirus crisis. As smaller businesses (even those that are not in any sense of the word small) falter and fail, Amazon<\/a> is expanding its dominance over American commerce and society.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s less and less far-fetched to imagine \u201cthe everything store\u201d becoming the only store. And with so much rancor and incompetence on display in Washington DC, Amazon\u2019s efficiency and competence has become a source of comfort and security, at least for those of us who can afford a Prime membership.<\/p>\n

Many of Amazon\u2019s moves over the past few weeks have had the distinct flavor of government.<\/p>\n

The hiring of 100,000<\/a> staff and a $2-an-hour pay raise is akin to a 21st-century Works Progress Administration<\/a> (WPA), only private. Amazon\u2019s hometown noblesse oblige \u2013 extending its beneficence to small businesses<\/a> around its Seattle offices so that they might live to serve Amazonians another day \u2013 is akin to a government stimulus package. Amazon\u2019s decision to stop accepting non-essential products<\/a> from third-party sellers who use its warehouses is essentially Amazon regulating the marketplace.<\/p>\n

If all you care about is making sure that you have enough toilet paper, groceries and streaming entertainment to make it through the crisis, the United States of Amazon is not all that bad. I imagine that large swaths of the professional and upper middle classes will be quite content and well cared for under that regime. But as my sister recently said to me, in a paraphrase of Louis Brandeis<\/a>, \u201cWe can have democracy or we can have Amazon Prime, but we can\u2019t have both.\u201d<\/p>\n

The WPA put millions of Americans to work building roads and bridges and creating arts and culture that enriched America. Amazon\u2019s goal is to enrich its shareholders. Do you trust Jeff Bezos to use his de facto regulatory power to benefit the greater good? And if you don\u2019t, what is your recourse?<\/p>\n

As unemployment mounts, Amazon\u2019s coercive power over its workforce will only increase. Last weekend, I spoke to several Amazon warehouse workers who were grappling with fear and uncertainty around coronavirus and their risk of infection in the workplace.<\/p>\n

Matthew Fyall, a 26-year-old stower at Amazon\u2019s warehouse on Staten Island, New York, said he was frightened of \u201cbeing contaminated\u201d at work \u2013 he has a young daughter at home \u2013 but also concerned that any infection might shut down the worksite.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt this point, we\u2019re sort of being forced to go to work because we still have to live,\u201d he told me. \u201cI do have to get my Metro card, I do have to get food. The job can stop, but the bills are going to come, your stomach is still going to growl, life is still going to go on.\u201d<\/p>\n

William Stolz, a 25-year-old picker at an Amazon warehouse in Shakopee, Minnesota, said that one of his employer\u2019s adjustments to the pandemic was to suspend meetings of the worker safety committee, a group that has been at the center of significant<\/a> workplace organizing<\/a> at the warehouse. \u201cI partially understand the reason,\u201d Stolz said, since public health officials advise against large gatherings of people. \u201cBut I also don\u2019t think management is going to miss having it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the threat that Amazon\u2019s already outsized size and power will only expand has real costs for creativity and innovation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you want to have a diverse, competitive economy, where people invent new things, write new books, and come up with new ideas, you need to have diverse pathways to market,\u201d said Stacy Mitchell, the co-director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. \u201cWe could see the distribution of consumer goods collapse into a single pipeline named Amazon. It\u2019s incredibly risky.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a fragility that comes from relying on a single pipeline. If we let Amazon\u2019s strength over dominate our entire economy, we may just find out how weak we are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Julia Carrie Wong, TheGuardian.com If we let Amazon\u2019s strength dominate our entire economy, we may just find out how weak we are It is calling up 100,000 troops, extending grants to small businesses, prioritizing essential goods, and cracking down on profiteers. No, that\u2019s not the United States federal government\u2019s response to the coronavirus pandemic: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=712"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":713,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712\/revisions\/713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbmv.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}