San Francisco             There were a number of interesting things I learned moving from one meeting to another from Santa Rosa to San Francisco yesterday.  People made some interesting points and observations.  There was one on this blue island of progressive opinion pocked with wealth and privilege that surprised me, even as it made sense in a perverse way.

We were talking about tariffs, pricing, and shipping for radio equipment on some stations we are seeking to support and potentially build in a northwestern corner of Uganda, hard by the borders of the Congo and South Sudan.  As we bemoaned the degree of difficulty and expense, we stumbled onto the dominance of Amazon, domestically.  My colleague expressed his reticence and distaste for ordering through Amazon, particularly these days, given the oppressive horrors of Jeff Bezos and his obsequious caviling to Trump.

I mentioned how difficult it was to not use Amazon, citing a replacement of a battered piece of luggage that had weathered hundreds of thousands of miles, but now had an unreliable handle that was clearly on its way to being frozen in the bag.  I loved this bag, my best ever, and was trying to replace it with an identical twin.  Going on the company’s site, they seemed to have the bag, and it might be available.  Checking the price and bag on Amazon, shockingly, it was almost half the price!  What a conundrum!  I turned to my friend and said, how do you not use Amazon in cases like this?  Then I added that in the part of the country where we lived it was impossible not to shop Walmart as well, or you would have to either starve or be rich.  He immediately rejoined, “We have to shop Walmart!  It’s the only real competitor to Amazon.  Without Walmart, there would be no competition.”

I was startled.  Having spent years of my life organizing to stop the expansion of Walmart here and abroad, their exploitation of workers, and more, this was like being in church and turning to someone in the next pew and hearing that we should give Satan the benefit of the doubt.  But, to give the devil, it’s due, my friend had a point.  Largely, as predatory as Walmart has been in communities, to other businesses, and to its workers, and through its wealth to public education and more, Amazon, and particularly Jeff Bezos, are arguably a significant degree worse.  Not just in terms of the standard abuses of late-stage capitalism typical of the whole billionaire class, but in threats to free speech and opinion, independent journalism, and the operation of our democracy.  Walmart excelled at business in the pursuit of sales and wealth.  Bezos has gone past that in the way Amazon changed the very way business worked and consumers shopped, to the pursuit of space and communications, television and entertainment, newspapers, and power itself.  Walmart may throw its weight around Arkansas, but Bezos and Amazon seem to want to join Musk and others in redirecting this country and perhaps others to their will.

I’m not saying, run down to Walmart to do your part, but my colleague had a point.  If you think this is bad and getting worse, how much more terrible might it be, if Amazon stood completely alone without any serious competition?  The whole notion is uncomfortable for me to consider, but I have to honestly say, it makes me think.