It's easy to compromise your convictions when you're poor so I buy from Amazon. I hate Walmart, worked there far too long and know pretty well the shit they put their employees through. But I shop there unless I feel like avoiding large crowds or people who shop at Walmart.

Amazon is just scary. They're not really any better to their employees than Walmart. You just don't see what they do to them. And they have way too much power in the publishing industry. They abuse it too. They're bad for the industry no matter what bringing down the gatekeepers self-publishing libertarian free market democratization bullshit you want to throw at me. When the biggest ebook publishing success is 50 Shades of Grey it should raise some red flags about the quality of literature that could be produced without professional editors and publishers to screen the shit out of the stream. And the Kindle, no matter how good it gets, is approaching, if not, a monopoly. And that gives Amazon further power. It's fucking insane that Apple was forced to pay for ebook price fixing when their market dominance is like nil and their interest in it is about the same.

Free market democratization optimism is great for software over the internet that one guy can write because he wants his computer to do something. But when it expands to a store that sells everything at a loss, in part, to punish vendors or competitors, well then, wait and see why capitalism needs oversight by some damn body. If Jeff Bezos could grind up workers in an industrial sausage maker and make money somehow I doubt he'd think about anything other than the investors' willingness to buy his fucking stock as a result.

I obviously have passing interest in the general topic of Amazon.