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haydenmack 's review for:
Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America
by Alec MacGillis, Stefan Alexander MacGillis
Near the end of the book, there’s a poignant scene of row houses in Baltimore being demolished, a neighborhood on the downward swing of its trajectory. Their bricks are salvaged, cleaned up, and make their way into new faux-historic condo units near the new Amazon 2 headquarters in Northern Virginia, hitting the market for $700,000. These communities are not that far away from each other, but they’re going in opposite directions, and this book does a pretty good job of explaining why.
I’m glad I made it through the plodding first couple of chapters - some the stories of people are overly detailed and indulgent. But the many tentacles of Amazon pop up through the story, both changing America and showing how America has changed over the past 15 years. It’s incredible how fast this change has been right before our eyes. Workers moving from well-paid industrial union jobs to low-paid high-turnover work in Amazon distribution centers. A small family-run office supply business in El Paso begins to lose school district contracts as Amazon takes over and they’re forced to sell their wares through the Amazon marketplace. Data centers pop up in farmland, with sweetheart deals with the power utilities and local governments. The Amazon 2 “search” for a second headquarters ends up boosting a metro area already far ahead of others.
I’m sure I’ll continue using Amazon in many ways - the convenience is hard to ignore when looking for something that could take hours of searching in local stores. And the ripple effects of Amazon are not all bad. But I’ll be looking for ways to reduce my reliance on Amazon where I can.
I’m glad I made it through the plodding first couple of chapters - some the stories of people are overly detailed and indulgent. But the many tentacles of Amazon pop up through the story, both changing America and showing how America has changed over the past 15 years. It’s incredible how fast this change has been right before our eyes. Workers moving from well-paid industrial union jobs to low-paid high-turnover work in Amazon distribution centers. A small family-run office supply business in El Paso begins to lose school district contracts as Amazon takes over and they’re forced to sell their wares through the Amazon marketplace. Data centers pop up in farmland, with sweetheart deals with the power utilities and local governments. The Amazon 2 “search” for a second headquarters ends up boosting a metro area already far ahead of others.
I’m sure I’ll continue using Amazon in many ways - the convenience is hard to ignore when looking for something that could take hours of searching in local stores. And the ripple effects of Amazon are not all bad. But I’ll be looking for ways to reduce my reliance on Amazon where I can.