In my “stuff I’m looking forward to” last week I mentioned Rogers v. Rogers, a one-man (!!!) play at Crow’s Theatre based on the book by the same name. A number of people I know saw it before we did (I accidentally texted Jenny on two different days about it) and all of them came back with rave reviews, and still, I was like … a one-man play about … Rogers? The telecom company? Are you kidding me? That sounds boring as hell.
Reader: It was not boring. Even though there was a lot about the business monopolies in this stupid country, the way the government has never blocked a merger, the way Canadian Tire is basically a mini-Amazon, it was … hilarious, fun, interesting, galvanizing, good? I remain incredulous, but for different reasons now. How did they do that? I am sorry to say it has now closed, so you can’t go find out for yourself, but it did teach me to be less judgmental about what I think makes for an interesting subject (and ready to go to whatever else Michael Healey thinks up, or whatever Tom Rooney is in).
One thing that kept coming up in the script was the illusion of choice—the way conglomerates like Amazon and Canadian Tire make you think you’re choosing between a bunch of unrelated brands for the best item, but they own them all (or the Canadian telecom collusion, when all of the phone plans and all of the pricing are mysteriously the same).
Something similar came up in Mike Monteiro’s newsletter last week, How to fix a Kit Kat clock, where he needs to buy a couple of magnets, can’t find them locally, and ends up buying a hundred of those magnets on Amazon, which felt to him like the intended outcome all along:
I feel like I at least tried to buy these magnets at three local stores before letting frustration get the better of me. And what I’m maybe saying is that it’s sometimes hard to use the system differently than it’s been designed to work. Because at this point, the system is definitely designed to get me to go to Amazon first.
A few days ago I was sitting in the local dogpark when the ever-popular topic of San Francisco’s downtown came up. Apparently another big store had shuttered. And the Old Men of the Dogpark™ had much to say about “the state of things” including crime sprees and other make-believe bullshit that was keeping people from doing their shopping downtown. As they’re saying this I’m watching various Amazon trucks circle the park. Finally I asked one of them when he’d last bought something at Amazon.
“Last night.”
“Where would you have bought that before Amazon?”
“Downtown.”
Three things are happening here: our options are disappearing, we’re being sold a bullshit narrative about why our options are disappearing, and the evil alternative—which isn’t an alternative at all because it’s killing all its competition—feels incredibly easy. Because it is. You open your phone. Every item you could ever want is there. You push a button. It comes to you. Your city dies.
This shit sucks. We’re sold (no pun intended) (I think) an idea with this capitalist system: you have choices, which means you have freedom and agency. In this case, agency means the right to choose whether you want a Telus phone plan or a Rogers one, or a Pinzon or a Solimo spatula. That’s no choice at all. You are not better off.
(If this interests you, you might also want to read this.)
It is harder, and more annoying, and sometimes (as Mike Monteiro described) totally unsuccessful, but it is worth it to shop at those places in your neighbourhood that are not owned by any of these conglomerates. Their number is dwindling, because they can’t compete on rock-bottom prices or same-day shipping, and a lot of them don’t have online shopping at all, although more of them do than you might expect. Many of us may not have the means and the time to do this, but I think some of us may find that we do, when we reconsider the ways we’ve oriented our lives around instant fulfilment and a slightly lower price.
It doesn’t solve every problem. Lots of mom-and-pop stores take advantage of their employees or do things that suck in other ways—local isn’t automatically virtuous. But it feels worth it to me to still be able to go to the local hardware store for two magnets and not have to get them in huge quantities in an Amazon envelope. One day we might not even be able to do that.
Anyway.