Speaker 1: Hey, I'm Baritone Day Thurston and this is how to
Speaker 1: Citizen with Baritone Day in season two. We're talking about
Speaker 1: the money, because, to be real, it's hard to citizen
Speaker 1: when we can barely pay the bills. Yo, I have
Speaker 1: a confession. I'm addicted to Amazon. Yep, it's true. Me
Speaker 1: Mr Barraitune Day, Mr shop Local, Mr Man with the
Speaker 1: show called How to Citizen with Baritone Day. I can't
Speaker 1: stop shopping at the behemoth that is Amazon. But I
Speaker 1: also kind of love it. I mean I love the
Speaker 1: next day delivery, the next hour delivery. Sometimes Amazon anticipates
Speaker 1: what I want. They're just like, you know you want it.
Speaker 1: We know you want it, literally, we know because we
Speaker 1: have all the data about you. So just click the button.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, I don't want to click the button.
Speaker 1: It's convenient, but I'm also trying to quit, that's right.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to slow down the habit. I take deep
Speaker 1: breaths before these purchases. I'm even in a text group
Speaker 1: with some friends who are also self admitted Amazon addicts,
Speaker 1: and we're trying not to be. We're working together to
Speaker 1: slow the spread of the Bezos throughout our wallets and
Speaker 1: bank accounts and attention spans, and we're finding other ways
Speaker 1: to spend our money, other places to get soaked, or
Speaker 1: computer monitors or gardening gloves or well anything, because they
Speaker 1: sell everything. And it's been nice to not feel so alone,
Speaker 1: and I think you can relate. So I split from
Speaker 1: Amazon July. But it was difficult because now if you're
Speaker 1: part of a working family, you know you're going to
Speaker 1: be susceptible to the convenience of a platform like Amazon.
Speaker 1: But Amazon is just such a morally terrible company. So
Speaker 1: it's something that I really want to get off of.
Speaker 1: It's just so enticing with their prime shipping and their prices,
Speaker 1: and especially during COVID, one of the few places I
Speaker 1: am able to defeat my Amazon habit is with books
Speaker 1: now for those ten dollar shoelaces that you don't tie.
Speaker 1: And I'm still using Amazon, especially if you're looking for
Speaker 1: something that's unique and different. I go to Amazon seriously
Speaker 1: in the minute it takes me to complete my Amazon purchase,
Speaker 1: reluctant as I may be, they've already sold over a
Speaker 1: thousand products to other people. This company is so much
Speaker 1: bigger than our individual resistance movements in Amazon. Killed it,
Speaker 1: killed it financially, revenues up thirty eight percent to a
Speaker 1: record three hundred eighties six billion dollars and founder Bezos
Speaker 1: founder Jeff Bezos, richest person in the world. He is
Speaker 1: now worth Wait I looked this up. All the money? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just I carried the one and it comes out
Speaker 1: to all the money. Now, in the past few episodes,
Speaker 1: we've been talking about exclusion and how leaving people of
Speaker 1: color out of the economic system has contributed to massive wealth, inequality,
Speaker 1: and our division. How ownership, whether in business or in
Speaker 1: real estate, can help solve this problem. But that alone
Speaker 1: is not gonna cut it. If you just bring more
Speaker 1: people into an unfair system, that doesn't necessarily make the
Speaker 1: system more fair. So we're gonna talk about this concentration
Speaker 1: of power that contributes to our wealth and equality and
Speaker 1: to our division, and we're going to talk about what
Speaker 1: we can do about it. But first I need to
Speaker 1: understand what we're dealing with. How does the company like
Speaker 1: Amazon get so big in the first place, Why does
Speaker 1: their size even matter? And how can we as citizens
Speaker 1: stop it? So I needed some help. I needed to
Speaker 1: talk to somebody about this. That I tried my therapist
Speaker 1: and they were like, I can't help you with this.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I could work with a lot, but your
Speaker 1: issues with concentrations of corporate powered that's a bit beyond
Speaker 1: my license. So I reached out to somebody else, someone
Speaker 1: taking on Amazon head on, someone who saw Amazon's hospital
Speaker 1: takeover coming before most of us did. More and more
Speaker 1: of our commerce is moving to this online arena that
Speaker 1: is not at all a market. It is a private
Speaker 1: arena controlled by Amazon. It gets to regulate in essence
Speaker 1: commerce and that's coming up after the break. Heyst Ea,
Speaker 1: see how are you. I'm well, it's so nice to
Speaker 1: see you. Nice to see you too. So so, Stacy,
Speaker 1: I'd love to start if you could introduce yourself. I'm
Speaker 1: Stacy Mitchell. I'm the co director of the Institute for
Speaker 1: Local Self Reliance, where a research at advocacy organization that
Speaker 1: builds local power to fight corporate control. So we do
Speaker 1: a lot of in depth research looking at how the
Speaker 1: economy works and doesn't work, and what are the ways
Speaker 1: that we could make it more democratic, more sustainable, more
Speaker 1: locally rooted. So what's the story of your relationship with Amazon.
Speaker 1: I began to notice Amazon maybe more than fifteen years ago. Now,
Speaker 1: as a company that was kind of quietly taking over
Speaker 1: more and more of our commerce. And really the first
Speaker 1: thing I noticed about Amazon was that they didn't have
Speaker 1: to collect sales tax. You know, I happened to live
Speaker 1: in a neighborhood and in a community where there are
Speaker 1: lots of local businesses within walking distance. With neighborhood, with community,
Speaker 1: we're talking abot. I live in Portland, Maine. UM, So
Speaker 1: I guess I first started noticing Amazon and sort of
Speaker 1: hearing from those local business owners when I was out
Speaker 1: running errands picking up books or whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: And you know, in many cases they were beginning to
Speaker 1: sell online and to have like another way for people
Speaker 1: to shop with them, but they were having to add
Speaker 1: this sales tax on top of it and finding that customers,
Speaker 1: you know, to save that five ten percent were migrating
Speaker 1: to Amazon. And so that was I guess, really the
Speaker 1: first time I paid much attention to the company. Um.
Speaker 1: And it seemed outrageous to me that government would telt
Speaker 1: the playing field, that it would sort of put its
Speaker 1: thumb on the scales in favor of this distant company
Speaker 1: that didn't even have a presence in the community over
Speaker 1: the businesses that we're working really hard to keep their
Speaker 1: communities employed and vibrant and happening. Why would we do that?
Speaker 1: That didn't make any sense. Most of us did not
Speaker 1: feel a sense of outrage or alarm, but you did.
Speaker 1: So why did you care so early? What was it
Speaker 1: about this situation that so animated you. I don't entirely
Speaker 1: really know where it comes from, And honestly, if somewhat
Speaker 1: wondered that my myself, and this partly maybe comes from
Speaker 1: growing up in Maine, because at the time that I
Speaker 1: grew up, it was really devastated economically. You know, there
Speaker 1: had been particularly these like timber companies, big fishing operations
Speaker 1: that had come through and like devastated a lot of
Speaker 1: the state's economy. The city Portland, where I grew up,
Speaker 1: by the time I was a teenager, you know, downtown
Speaker 1: was half vacant. It was a place that was hard
Speaker 1: for people to make a living, that had no life
Speaker 1: to it, and was at the losing end of a
Speaker 1: lot of decisions that were made very far away and
Speaker 1: with no consideration for the impacts that they were having here,
Speaker 1: and certainly not being made by the people who felt
Speaker 1: those impacts. So as a teenager, I think I felt
Speaker 1: that injustice very much and was a punk rock kid
Speaker 1: who you know, spent a lot of time downtown in
Speaker 1: these sort of vacant places, wanting to reanimate them, you know.
Speaker 1: And this, of course, there was an era when most
Speaker 1: of the other kids were at the Mall, which had
Speaker 1: was one of the things that had done a lot
Speaker 1: of devastation to the to the downtown. I'm having this
Speaker 1: picture in my mind. I want you to help me
Speaker 1: fill it in punk rock, Stacy Mitchell, tell me, tell
Speaker 1: me about teenage punk rocks. Daisy, What are you wearing?
Speaker 1: How what are you Where are you hanging out? And
Speaker 1: how are you interacting with this half vacant downtown port
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. Yeah, I mean, you know, all the stuff,
Speaker 1: the ripped up nylons and the dyed hair and filt
Speaker 1: leather jackets or jean jackets with safety pins, all that
Speaker 1: good stuff. And we took over empty spaces for music
Speaker 1: and for you know, sort of gatherings of that sort.
Speaker 1: You know, it was self invented because we weren't in
Speaker 1: New York or any place that mattered, So it was
Speaker 1: kind of a sort of bottom up local version of
Speaker 1: of punk rock. Your punk rock was local and self reliant.
Speaker 1: It's okay, it wasn't New York. That's fine. It was
Speaker 1: yours and you invented it for yourself. What's the leap
Speaker 1: from this punk rock social justice teenager too working more
Speaker 1: formally against the influences of big businesses? I am. I
Speaker 1: moved out to St. Paul, Minnesota and went to college,
Speaker 1: and UM, I decided to study history, and I think
Speaker 1: particularly because I was interested in how things change. If
Speaker 1: you don't like the way things are, how do they
Speaker 1: shift and what are the forces that make them shift.
Speaker 1: But then after college, I am, you know, I was
Speaker 1: looking for someplace to work, and I was sort of
Speaker 1: torn between on the one hand to be an activist
Speaker 1: and on the other hand wanting to do like research,
Speaker 1: like maybe be an academic. And I ran across an
Speaker 1: ad for this organization, the Institute for Local Self Reliance UM,
Speaker 1: looking for a research assistant. And it was a good
Speaker 1: marrying of those two things. And so I've now been
Speaker 1: at elis R for about twenty years. Yeah. So you
Speaker 1: get to the Institute for Local Self Reliance, when do
Speaker 1: you decide to take on Amazon? We fought on the
Speaker 1: sales tax fight for a while. UM, and ultimately it
Speaker 1: took many years and was way too late in some
Speaker 1: sense to even matter, but we ultimately one um and
Speaker 1: along the way I just kept being struck by where
Speaker 1: this company was going. I remember thinking around. I mean,
Speaker 1: it felt like when you're on the tarmac, when you're
Speaker 1: on a plane that's about to take off, and you're
Speaker 1: and you're moving down the runway at this huge speed
Speaker 1: and you're about to get airborne, and at that point
Speaker 1: money you take off completely. And it felt like we
Speaker 1: were at that moment and that the implications of this
Speaker 1: were really far reaching. And so in we set out
Speaker 1: to try to do an in depth look at the
Speaker 1: nature of Amazon's power and the scope of this company
Speaker 1: and what its implications were, and I, together with a
Speaker 1: researcher here um Olivia Lavekia, we wrote this big report
Speaker 1: called Amazon Stranglehold that looked at Amazon's monopoly power, sort
Speaker 1: of analyze the nature of what exactly what is Amazon.
Speaker 1: It's not a retailer, it's something different, you know, so
Speaker 1: analyzing what that was, how it gained that sort of power,
Speaker 1: and then what were the impacts for independent businesses, for
Speaker 1: producers and creators and authors, for working people and ultimately communities,
Speaker 1: And then we used that report to go around and
Speaker 1: talk to journalists, talk to policymakers, talk to other advocates,
Speaker 1: and say, this is something you really need to be
Speaker 1: paying attention to. And that helped to be in a
Speaker 1: conversation that I think brought much more attention to the
Speaker 1: implications of Amazon. You say, Amazon is not a retailer,
Speaker 1: it's something else, and I hear dramatic music in the background.
Speaker 1: What is it? So? What? What is? What is Amazon?
Speaker 1: You know what makes Amazon more dangerous than other monopolistic
Speaker 1: firms like Walmart is that Amazon doesn't simply want to
Speaker 1: dominate markets. You know, Walmart dominates the food industry, and
Speaker 1: that's a serious problem with lots of implications. But Amazon
Speaker 1: isn't about dominating markets. It's about being the market. It's
Speaker 1: about being the underlying infrastructure that other companies need in
Speaker 1: order to reach customers. So their online platform, their website,
Speaker 1: captures about two thirds of online shopping traffic. When people
Speaker 1: are looking to buy something online in the US, two
Speaker 1: thirds of them start at Amazon, which means that if
Speaker 1: you're not selling on Amazon's platform, you're giving up two
Speaker 1: thirds of the market right out of the gate. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like the Google search result. You know, people
Speaker 1: start their Internet searches through Google primarily. Amazon is like
Speaker 1: that for online retail exactly, and it didn't used to
Speaker 1: be this way. You can go back six seven years ago.
Speaker 1: You're looking for a pair of running shoes. You would
Speaker 1: type it into a search engine, maybe Google, which is
Speaker 1: its own problem, but you would get a bunch of results.
Speaker 1: It would include Amazon, but it would include maybe your
Speaker 1: local independent running shoe store or a manufacturer. Now people
Speaker 1: just started Amazon, you know, there's the online shopping platform.
Speaker 1: But then to that, Jeff Bezos has added these other
Speaker 1: sort of core pieces of infrastructure. One is cloud computing.
Speaker 1: Amazon controls about of the world's cloud computing capacity. What
Speaker 1: that means is that more and more companies of all kinds,
Speaker 1: governments of all kinds are moving their data into a cloud.
Speaker 1: A huge amount of that globally is now running on
Speaker 1: Amazon's infrastructure. Netflix, big publishing houses like Condemnast, the CIA.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a long list of entities that rely
Speaker 1: on Amazon's infrastructure. And then there are these other big pieces.
Speaker 1: Amazon has lately become an enormous logistics and package delivery operation.
Speaker 1: They now are delivering so many packages, not only their
Speaker 1: their own, but those of other companies that they're rivaling
Speaker 1: ups and the postal service in terms of size. And
Speaker 1: they have built Alexa, this voice interface that powers are
Speaker 1: smart homes, and are smart offices and a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of like smart industrial processes. It is the interface that
Speaker 1: other companies have to use if they want to have
Speaker 1: their devices and their applications be voice enabled. If you
Speaker 1: want to sell something and reach customers online, you have
Speaker 1: to do it on Amazon. If you want to ship
Speaker 1: something and have it reach customers the next day, you
Speaker 1: have to do it through Amazon's logistics. If you want
Speaker 1: to have your data in the cloud, Amazon again is
Speaker 1: the dominant provider there. And because of that, Amazon has
Speaker 1: this godlike view of a huge amount of the activity
Speaker 1: that's occurring across the economy, and it can pick off
Speaker 1: using all of that intelligence that it has, it can
Speaker 1: pick off these lucrative streams of revenue and preference its
Speaker 1: own products and services on that infrastructure, and for the
Speaker 1: stuff that it doesn't want to do itself, it can
Speaker 1: just levy a huge tax on the activities of other
Speaker 1: companies that rely on that infrastructure. So either way it wins,
Speaker 1: and this begins to explain how it is that Jeff
Speaker 1: Bezos has become so incredibly wealthy to be the richest
Speaker 1: man in the world with almost two hundred billion dollars
Speaker 1: to his name. Wow, So what form does that tax take?
Speaker 1: Because it seems a bit ironic given the company's origins
Speaker 1: in evading sales taxes to be able to levy taxes
Speaker 1: on businesses that are on its platform. That's right, I
Speaker 1: think how we part of how we need to begin
Speaker 1: to understand these monopolistic companies like Amazon is as a
Speaker 1: form of private government. That's the nature of their power.
Speaker 1: And it's also begins to help us see how what
Speaker 1: they're doing is a direct threat to democracy. You know,
Speaker 1: in a in a democratic society, a market should be
Speaker 1: an open place governed by rules that are set through
Speaker 1: a public process, where everyone who participates in that market
Speaker 1: is on equal footing more or less, but more and
Speaker 1: more of our commerce because of Amazon, is moving to
Speaker 1: this online arena that is not at all a marketplace.
Speaker 1: Amazon calls it a marketplace. It is a private arena
Speaker 1: controlled by Amazon. It gets to decide who's at the
Speaker 1: top of the search results, which products do you encounter
Speaker 1: when you enter certain words, it gets to regulate in
Speaker 1: essence commerce and it also gets to levy attacks, and
Speaker 1: lots of manufact surers and retailers small and large really
Speaker 1: feel that they have no choice but to try to
Speaker 1: sell there. Most of them are failing as they do it,
Speaker 1: in part because the cost of selling on Amazon is
Speaker 1: so steep. Five years ago, Amazon was taking an average
Speaker 1: of nineteen percent of every dollar a seller made on
Speaker 1: on its platform. Now it's up to thirty on average,
Speaker 1: and many sellers are paying even more. What I hear
Speaker 1: from these businesses is that they're giving more to Amazon
Speaker 1: than their entire payroll and profit, Meaning Amazon, for hosting
Speaker 1: a website is taking more from that business than all
Speaker 1: the people who work there and make it happen. It
Speaker 1: is a form of tax that's inescapable because of Amazon's
Speaker 1: market power, and it's part of how the company is
Speaker 1: so incredibly wealthy, and it's part of what powers Amazon's
Speaker 1: ability to move into one market after another with this
Speaker 1: built in advantage. There's something beautifully heinous ly ironic about
Speaker 1: Amazon initiating its advantage on a five avoidance of sales
Speaker 1: tax and then levying through its sales commission. That's a
Speaker 1: neat trick. I wish I could do that. That sounds
Speaker 1: like a good way to make a lot of money.
Speaker 1: So so I think you've made a case for from
Speaker 1: from my understanding, Amazon is not simply a retailer. It's
Speaker 1: not just a store. It's infrastructure, and it's infrastructure that
Speaker 1: other stores, manufacturers, retailers depend on to reach customers. Because
Speaker 1: it has such dominance of online purchasing and of cloud computing,
Speaker 1: and of increasingly logistics and physical delivery of goods. So
Speaker 1: they've left the virtual world and are severely affecting the
Speaker 1: physical world too. So if you were a business, you
Speaker 1: kind of need Amazon. Um, how does Amazon squash competition?
Speaker 1: Amazon squashes competition by positioning itself as a gatekeeper. If
Speaker 1: you control the roadway that the vast majority of traffic
Speaker 1: is traveling down, then you control what that traffic sees.
Speaker 1: And so from that position, Amazon can pick winners and losers,
Speaker 1: and in particular, can favor its own products. You know,
Speaker 1: a small company has a best selling product, really inventive
Speaker 1: kind of product. Amazon sees that on its site and
Speaker 1: then it then it actually copies that product, creates an
Speaker 1: Amazon brand version of it. And gives itself top billing
Speaker 1: in the search for results, and overnight that company that
Speaker 1: invented that sees its sales fall just absolutely drop off.
Speaker 1: A cliff we Um profiled in one of our reports
Speaker 1: last year a business called the Top Shelf that sells
Speaker 1: hair and barbershop kinds of supplies. And they did a
Speaker 1: decent business selling on Amazon and elsewhere. Um. But over time,
Speaker 1: as they became successful, it was almost like, as the
Speaker 1: owner said to me, it's almost like Amazon noticed that
Speaker 1: a lot of that revenue was coming to us, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, we've got new fees, we've got
Speaker 1: new you know, some of our inventories missing, and we're
Speaker 1: spending a lot of time working that out. The fees
Speaker 1: keep going up year after year, and suddenly our margin
Speaker 1: is gone. You know, he had built up a business
Speaker 1: selling online with about fifty employees, a warehouse he was
Speaker 1: up in Michigan. He was really excited about kind of
Speaker 1: bringing jobs to his community. And then you know, in
Speaker 1: a matter of months, he's starting to lose money. He's
Speaker 1: heading into the red, he's having to lay people off,
Speaker 1: and then there's a dispute. Amazon says that one of
Speaker 1: his items that he's selling his counterfeit, which he says
Speaker 1: is not the case, but they immediately suspend his account,
Speaker 1: no sales. He goes to zero overnight, and they seize
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of dollars of his inventory. And as
Speaker 1: it turns out, when you sign on to become an
Speaker 1: Amazon seller, the terms of service, just the standard thing
Speaker 1: that everyone has to agree to, includes this little provision
Speaker 1: in there that says you can't go to court if
Speaker 1: you have a dispute. You have to go through an
Speaker 1: arbitration process that Amazon sets up. So now he's waiting
Speaker 1: for this arbitration process and he's lost all his inventory,
Speaker 1: he's been shut off from selling, and you know, he
Speaker 1: can't even get anyone from Amazon on the phone. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back. M We hear about this term monopoly,
Speaker 1: in this term anti trust, not necessarily knowing what they mean. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: what monopoly ultimately means as a company that has enough
Speaker 1: power to basically bully and tell people what to do
Speaker 1: because it's so dominant in that market. And it's a
Speaker 1: level of power that can be achieved with something less
Speaker 1: than a d percent of the market, considerably less than
Speaker 1: a percent of the market. So that's what a monopoly is,
Speaker 1: and so anti monopoly has been part of our country's
Speaker 1: policy really since the beginning. I mean the Boston Tea
Speaker 1: Party when colonists through all that tea into Boston Harbor,
Speaker 1: was partly a protest against the power of Parliament, but
Speaker 1: it was very much a protest against the East India Company,
Speaker 1: this global corporation of its day that dominated the tea
Speaker 1: trade and in fact had gotten a special deal with
Speaker 1: the British Parliament where it didn't have to pay taxes.
Speaker 1: It was given all of these advantages in the colonies,
Speaker 1: and the colonists mad at the government and mad at
Speaker 1: this dominant company and the effects that had on local
Speaker 1: tea merchants through a bunch of its tea into Boston Harbor.
Speaker 1: So so from the beginning there was this understanding you
Speaker 1: had to deal with private power if you wanted to
Speaker 1: have a democracy. So we began to pass laws. Uh
Speaker 1: those laws where the state level and still are, but
Speaker 1: they began to be this time in the late nineteenth
Speaker 1: century where powerful corporations began to span multiple states, and
Speaker 1: they often evaded those state laws to control their power
Speaker 1: by forming what we're known at the time as trusts.
Speaker 1: This sort of other level of decision making above the corporation,
Speaker 1: where they were sort of knitted together in a trust.
Speaker 1: And that's how they sort of side stept those state laws.
Speaker 1: And so that gave rise to the need for federal
Speaker 1: laws to control their power. And they're known as antitrust laws,
Speaker 1: so against the power of those of those trusts. So
Speaker 1: a trust was like a legal entity that these companies
Speaker 1: created to avoid accountability at the state level. And then
Speaker 1: the Feds come in and say, hold up, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: and when what do they do? And so it's really
Speaker 1: not until the nineteen thirties, and particularly with Franklin Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: that we get sort of the full implementation of our
Speaker 1: antitrust laws on the point a new basis of security
Speaker 1: and prosperity. And he looks across the country at all
Speaker 1: of these problems, you know, farmers not being able to
Speaker 1: make a living, people being out of work, the collapse
Speaker 1: of the banking system, and so on, and he recognizes
Speaker 1: that a lot of them have to do with a
Speaker 1: concentration of private power and of monopoly, freedom from unfair competition,
Speaker 1: and dominating my monopoli abroad. And so, particularly in his
Speaker 1: second term, begins this really strong anti monopoly campaign, and
Speaker 1: we have a number of decades where that New Deal
Speaker 1: thinking really really guides things. It's really important to pause
Speaker 1: here and sort of step back from this to just say, obviously,
Speaker 1: for much of our history, we had a very narrow
Speaker 1: idea of who counted as a citizen right, and so
Speaker 1: black Americans, women, gay Americans, others were locked out of
Speaker 1: these economic rights for much of that story. And so
Speaker 1: we begin to see in the middle of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: with those New Deal policies in place, the civil rights movement,
Speaker 1: the women's rights movement, and so I'm beginning to gain ground.
Speaker 1: After World War Two, there's this period of broadening prosperity
Speaker 1: where you have a rising middle class, you have an
Speaker 1: incredible vibrancy of small businesses in the fifties and sixties
Speaker 1: across lots of different sectors of the economy. You know,
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies we had more black owned small
Speaker 1: businesses than we than we do today. And so the
Speaker 1: combination of those two things, this control of private power,
Speaker 1: which was done through anti monopoly and pro union policies
Speaker 1: and pro small business policies, and the rising ground up
Speaker 1: push to include everybody and who counted as a citizen.
Speaker 1: Those two things together brought us our greatest period of
Speaker 1: of expanding prosperity. And then in the nineteen v and
Speaker 1: DS we took a different turn when it came to
Speaker 1: corporate power and have been on this downwards traj dilectory
Speaker 1: ever since. So it sounds like something happened in the
Speaker 1: rule system what started to happen in the ninet seventies
Speaker 1: that led us to a world where Amazon could dominate
Speaker 1: as much as it does. You know, in some ways,
Speaker 1: our anti monopoly policies had been working so well that
Speaker 1: people kind of lost sight of the need for them,
Speaker 1: and they just sort of disappeared a bit from public view.
Speaker 1: And in that environment, there were a group of law
Speaker 1: and economics scholars associated with the University of Chicago who
Speaker 1: came along with a set of ideas, and the ideas
Speaker 1: essentially were that all of the stuff about power doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: The only thing that matters is maximizing efficiency, and you know,
Speaker 1: we should build bigger and bigger industries that are ever
Speaker 1: more efficient and can put out more off for less money.
Speaker 1: That was their thinking. Bigger is better and efficiency is
Speaker 1: the only thing that matters. What happened is this University
Speaker 1: of Chicago thinking becomes codified during Reagan's term. So the
Speaker 1: laws are still there, but the antitrust agencies radically change
Speaker 1: how they interpret the laws so that they're no longer
Speaker 1: about dispersing power. They're no longer about our rights as
Speaker 1: workers and as producers of value. There's solely about this
Speaker 1: measure of efficiency. And the courts also began to follow along.
Speaker 1: You've described this shift in our prioritization in America toward efficiency,
Speaker 1: bigness scale in the parlance of our Silicon Valley friends,
Speaker 1: and I bar a tuned a the consumer and maybe
Speaker 1: the citizen, but certainly the consumer. I kind of like it.
Speaker 1: It's very seductive, you know, the stuff shows up before
Speaker 1: I even order it, it feels like and it seems
Speaker 1: like a very easy case to make that, whether we're
Speaker 1: talking about Amazon specifically or a big, efficient business with
Speaker 1: great customer service and low prices generally is good for
Speaker 1: most of us. You don't think that, though, well, I
Speaker 1: would say, you know, the solution to this doesn't mean
Speaker 1: giving up online commerce. It doesn't mean giving up having
Speaker 1: the package arrive at your front door. I mean to
Speaker 1: just go back into history one more time. You know,
Speaker 1: we encountered this with the railroads. You know, when the
Speaker 1: railroads came along, you know, there's this fabulous new technology
Speaker 1: that changed everything and suddenly stuff could get around the
Speaker 1: country and it was amazing. But there were a handful
Speaker 1: of industrialists who gained control of those rails. We came
Speaker 1: along and the answer wasn't like, oh, let's get rid
Speaker 1: of the railroads. We should go back to horse and buggy.
Speaker 1: It was like, no, we need to have regulation. We
Speaker 1: need to write some rules around this. And that's the
Speaker 1: same thing with Amazon. I think we need to break
Speaker 1: up the company into a few different pieces, and then
Speaker 1: I think we need to regulate it. And I think
Speaker 1: where that leads us then is an economy which we
Speaker 1: all have more of an ability to make a good living,
Speaker 1: and we get the conveniences of online shopping and more
Speaker 1: choice that we see other platforms, other businesses being able
Speaker 1: to come along and succeed, and indeed, businesses that might
Speaker 1: come along with a brand new idea, you know, the
Speaker 1: same way that Jeff Bezos came along with a new idea. Right.
Speaker 1: I feel a sense of maybe relief hearing you say that,
Speaker 1: so should I quit Amazon. Right, That's that's the question
Speaker 1: that's on my mind. It's on so many minds. What
Speaker 1: do you think about someone asking that question of themselves,
Speaker 1: should we be quitting Amazon? Should you stop shopping on Amazon? Well,
Speaker 1: I would say, you know, look around. There are probably
Speaker 1: a lot of businesses in your community, some of them
Speaker 1: selling online directly themselves, and great small and midsized businesses
Speaker 1: across the country that are wonderful places to support and
Speaker 1: that needs your dollars. And so there's a fun invitation
Speaker 1: there to think of out of other places that you
Speaker 1: could you could go. Um, but should you feel guilty
Speaker 1: about those times when you order an Amazon No, not
Speaker 1: at all. You should not at all feel like this
Speaker 1: is on you as a consumer to solve that. This
Speaker 1: is on us, you know, to like change our purchasing
Speaker 1: decisions and try to get enough of us to do
Speaker 1: the same thing to fix this problem. We've been sort
Speaker 1: of trained to think of ourselves are economic agency, our
Speaker 1: our ability to act in the economy entirely as consumers
Speaker 1: and forgetting that as citizens, that's where our real power lies.
Speaker 1: That's where our real muscle is, and that's the muscle
Speaker 1: that we need to turn to to deal with the
Speaker 1: Amazon problem. You know, I can't um overstate how exciting
Speaker 1: what is happening in Congress is right now. There is
Speaker 1: a growing movement of foot in Congress um and across
Speaker 1: the country to reinvigorate our anti monopoly policies and in
Speaker 1: particular to restructure Amazon and is that would be more democratic.
Speaker 1: In the House of Representatives, there's the the Antitrust Subcommittee
Speaker 1: run by a lawmaker named David Cecilini out of Rhode Island.
Speaker 1: The purpose of today's hearing is to examine the dominance
Speaker 1: of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. He ran a year
Speaker 1: and a half long investigation of big tech and Amazon
Speaker 1: last fall came out with a big report outlining a
Speaker 1: set of recommendations. Their ability to dictate terms, call the shots,
Speaker 1: up end entire sectors, and inspire fear, represent the powers
Speaker 1: of a private government. We are having a real conversation
Speaker 1: at the highest level of government about monopoly power, about
Speaker 1: resurrecting our anti trust laws. We're having hearings all last
Speaker 1: year and this year about how we took a wrong
Speaker 1: turn in the nineteen seventies and eighties and where we
Speaker 1: lost our way and how we get it back. Our
Speaker 1: Founders would not bow before king, nor should we bow
Speaker 1: before the emperors of the Alan economy. And so we're
Speaker 1: gonna have a real fight on our hands as citizens
Speaker 1: about whether we live in a country that we control,
Speaker 1: that we set their rules for, or a country where
Speaker 1: Amazon decides how our economy works. And I really want
Speaker 1: to win that fight. And so we're gonna need a
Speaker 1: lot of voices, making calls, getting engaged on this issue.
Speaker 1: And so we just invite people to come to our
Speaker 1: website and get involved. Be real with me, Stacy, do
Speaker 1: you still do any shopping at Amazon? I am an
Speaker 1: Amazon Prime member in part because I like that television streaming.
Speaker 1: I can't not have all the shows. But I do
Speaker 1: actually find there's relatively rare for me to shop on Amazon.
Speaker 1: But again, I know that a lot of people are
Speaker 1: in different circumstances, and so you know, not everyone has
Speaker 1: that option. As someone who um who's seeing Portland's Maine
Speaker 1: go through ups and down, some devastation and some rebuilding,
Speaker 1: what do you think we lose in our communities when
Speaker 1: we lose small businesses. We lose a lot of what
Speaker 1: makes the places we live interesting. When you are able
Speaker 1: to go out and run your errands, in local businesses,
Speaker 1: in your neighborhood, in your downtown, you and very believe
Speaker 1: bump into neighbors. You know, it's a lot of acquaintances.
Speaker 1: But those interactions have a lot to do with our
Speaker 1: own well being, but more importantly, they have a lot
Speaker 1: to do with the well being of the place that
Speaker 1: we live. We know from sociological research that when people
Speaker 1: you know have has happenstance interactions with their neighbors, that
Speaker 1: there is more of a sense of connection, There is
Speaker 1: more empathy, there's a more more of a sense that
Speaker 1: we are in this together. And therefore, one of the
Speaker 1: things that sociologists find is that people who live in
Speaker 1: communities that have lots of local businesses, lots of those
Speaker 1: kinds of interactions, are more likely to participate in city
Speaker 1: council meetings, to engage in community organizations, and to vote.
Speaker 1: Stacy Mitchell, thank you so much for this time. This
Speaker 1: has been a great conversation. Thank you so much. There's
Speaker 1: a lot to take away from my conversation with Stacy,
Speaker 1: but a couple of things are really sticking with me.
Speaker 1: The first is that it's not on us to be
Speaker 1: better consumers. It's on us to be better citizens. The
Speaker 1: other is that, uh, efficiency isn't everything. I think we
Speaker 1: don't talk about this piece of the puzzle a lot.
Speaker 1: We have this obsession with growth and speed in the
Speaker 1: US and how we think about our economy, more money,
Speaker 1: as fast as possible, and nothing else seems to matter.
Speaker 1: But that's not true. And a lot of parts of
Speaker 1: our lives where we value something, it's not just more
Speaker 1: and faster. Doesn't work that way. For slow walk on
Speaker 1: the beach doesn't or shouldn't work that way. In our
Speaker 1: romantic relationships, doesn't work that way. Just enjoying something, we
Speaker 1: want it to last, and we want the relationships that
Speaker 1: our economy powers to last. We want those small businesses
Speaker 1: to last because they create character in our neighborhood that
Speaker 1: a big pile of money can't replace. It's very easy
Speaker 1: for us to talk about the economy as these numbers,
Speaker 1: these economic indicators, GDP, stock market prices. But underneath of
Speaker 1: all that jargon and those numbers are people, and people
Speaker 1: are more than efficiency engines. The large part of our
Speaker 1: business and my day to day was literally okay, I
Speaker 1: have to batch cocktails, put them in containers. How do
Speaker 1: I put a label on sanitizer and is this legal? Okay,
Speaker 1: we're we're just going to do it because no one
Speaker 1: has sanitizer right now, and we can make it next week.
Speaker 1: Small business owner or re estrada shows us what's at
Speaker 1: stake and what's possible, because we see the word citizen
Speaker 1: as a verb that involves doing things. So here's our producer,
Speaker 1: Stephanie with some things you can do. Think about why
Speaker 1: you shop at Amazon. Is that the convenience the prices
Speaker 1: is because of the pandemic, or because you don't have
Speaker 1: many other options. Consider alternatives if you have the means,
Speaker 1: Challenge yourself to find one item that you usually purchase
Speaker 1: on Amazon, now commit to buying it locally. Next, do
Speaker 1: some reading. In fall, the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial
Speaker 1: and Administrative Law at least an investigation into monopolies like Amazon, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and Google. The report is fifty pages long, but lucky
Speaker 1: for us, the Institute for Local Self Reliance did all
Speaker 1: the reading for us and put together a summary of
Speaker 1: the report titled The People Versus Amazon. We'll be sure
Speaker 1: to link to it in the show notes. If you
Speaker 1: do read the whole thing, then pat yourself on the
Speaker 1: back and finally join the fight against monopoly power. Check
Speaker 1: out I L s R dot org slash Fighting Dash
Speaker 1: Monopoly dash Power to learn ways you can join the
Speaker 1: fight locally and nationally. If you're a small business owner
Speaker 1: or entrepreneur, consider joining Small Business Rising, a coalition of
Speaker 1: independent businesses that are banning together to urge policymakers to
Speaker 1: take on Amazon. If you take any of these actions,
Speaker 1: please brag about yourself online using the hashtag how to
Speaker 1: Citizen and send us general feedback or ideas for the
Speaker 1: show two comments at how to citizen dot com. Visit
Speaker 1: how to citizen dot com to sign up for our newsletter,
Speaker 1: will learn about upcoming events, and if you like the show,
Speaker 1: spread the word. How does Citizen with barretton Day is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio Podcasts and Dust Like Productions.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Me barretton Day, Thurston, Elizabeth Stewart,
Speaker 1: and Misha Yusuf. Our producers are Stephanie Cone and Ali Kilts.
Speaker 1: Kelly Prime is our editor, Valentino Rivera is our engineer,
Speaker 1: and Sam Paulson is our apprentice. Original music by Andrew Eapen.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced and sound designed by Stephanie Cone.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Joel Smith from my Heart Radio. Big
Speaker 1: thank you to our community voices from Elizabeth Silver, Kim Swan,
Speaker 1: Mike Freya, I hope I'm saying it right, Mike and
Speaker 1: Michael Cartwright. We appreciate your voices literally yea y