If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Selling on Amazon is a tough business. Sure, you can reach a lot of customers, but this comes at a very high price: the junk fees that Amazon extracts from its sellers amount to 50-60% of the price you pay.
That's a hell of a lot of money to hand over to a middleman, but it's not like vendors have much choice. The vast majority of America's affluent households are Prime subscribers (depending on how you define "affluent household" it's north of 90%). Prime households prepay for a year's worth of shipping, so it's only natural that they start their shopping on Amazon, where they've already paid the delivery costs. And because Amazon reliably meets or beats the prices you'd pay elsewhere, Prime subscribers who find a product on Amazon overwhelmingly stop their shopping at Amazon, too.
At this point you might be thinking a couple things:
I. Why not try to sell the non-affluent households, who are far less likely to subscribe to Prime? and
II. If Amazon has the lowest prices, what's the problem if everyone shops there?
The answers to these two questions are intimately related, as it happens.
Let's start with selling to non-affluent households â basically, the bottom 90% of American earners. The problem here is that everyone who isn't in that top 10% is pretty goddamned broke. It's not just decades of wage stagnation and hyperinflation in health, housing and education costs. It's also that every economic crisis of this century has resulted in a "K-shaped" recovery, in which "economic recovery" means that rich people are doing fine, while everyone else is worse off than they were before the crisis.
For decades, America papered over the K-shaped hole in its economy with debt. First it was credit cards. Then it was gimmicky mortgages â home equity lines of credit, second mortgages and reverse mortgages. Then it was payday lenders. Then it was "buy-now/pay-later" services that let you buy lunch at Chipotle on an installment plan that is nominally interest-free, but is designed to trap the unwary and unlucky with massive penalties if you miss a single payment.
This produced a median American who isn't just cash-poor â they are cash-negative, drowning in debt. And â with the exception of a brief Biden intercession â every presidential administration of the 21st century has enacted policies that favor creditors over debtors. Bankruptcy is harder to declare, and creditors can hit you with effectively unlimited penalties and confiscation of your property and wages once your cash is gone. Trump has erased all the small mercies of the Biden years â for example, he just forced 8,000,000 student borrowers back into repayment:
There's plenty to worry about in a K-shaped economy â big things like "political instability" and "cultural chaos" (the fact that most people are broke has a lot to do with the surging fortunes of gambling platforms). But from a seller's perspective, the most important impact of the K-shaped economy is that only rich people buy stuff. Selling to the bottom 90% is a losing proposition because they're increasingly too broke to buy anything:
Combine the fact that the richest 10% of Americans all start their shopping on Amazon with the fact that no one else can afford to buy anything, and it's easy to see why merchants would stay on Amazon, even when junk fees hit 60%.
Which brings us to the second question: if Amazon has the best prices, what's the problem with everyone shopping there?
The answer is to be found in the California Attorney General's price-fixing lawsuit against Amazon:
The suit's been running for a long time, but the AG's office just celebrated a milestone â they've finished analyzing the internal memos they forced Amazon to disgorge through civil law's "discovery" process. These internal docs verify an open â and very dirty â secret about Amazon: the company uses its power to push up prices across the entire economy.
Here's how that works: sellers have to sell on Amazon, and that means they're losing $0.50-$0.60 on every dollar. The obvious way to handle this is by raising prices. But Amazon knows that its power comes from offering buyers prices that are as low or lower than the prices at all its competitors.
Amazon could ban its sellers from raising prices, but if they did that, they'd have to accept a smaller share of every sale (otherwise most of their sellers would go broke from selling at a loss on Amazon). So instead, Amazon imposes a business practice called "most favored nation" (MFN) pricing on its sellers.
Under an MFN arrangement, sellers are allowed to raise their prices on Amazon, but when they do, they must raise their prices everywhere else, too: at Walmart, at Target, at mom and pop indie stores, and at their own factory outlet store. Remember: Amazon doesn't have to have low prices to win, it just needs to have the same prices as everyone else. So long as prices rise throughout the economy, Amazon is fine, and it can continue to hike its junk fees on sellers, knowing that they will pay those fees by raising prices on Amazon and everywhere else their products are sold.
Like I say, this isn't really a secret. MFN terms were the basis of DC Attorney General Ken Racine's case against Amazon, five years ago:
Amazon's not the only company that does this. Under the Biden administration, the FTC brought a lawsuit against Pepsi because Pepsi and Walmart had rigged the market so that when Walmart raised its prices, Pepsi would force everyone else who carried Pepsi products to raise their prices even more. Walmart still had the lowest prices, but everything everywhere got more expensive, both at Walmart and everywhere else:
Trump's FTC dropped the Pepsi/Walmart case, and Amazon wriggled out of the DC case, but the California AG's office has a lot more resources than DC can muster. This is a timely reminder that America's antitrust laws can be enforced at the state level as well as by the federal authorities. Trump might be happy to let Amazon steal from Americans so long as Jeff Bezos neuters the Washington Post, writes a check for $1m to sit on the inaugural dais, and makes a garbage movie about Melania; but that doesn't stop California AG Rob Bonta from going after Amazon for ripping off Californians (and, in so doing, develop the evidentiary record and precedent that will allow every other state AG to go after Amazon).
The fact that Amazon's monopoly lets it control prices across the economy highlights the futility of trying to fix the Amazon problem by shopping elsewhere. A "boycott" isn't you shopping really hard, it's an organized movement with articulated demands, a theory of change, and a backbone of solidarity. "Conscious consumption" is a dead-end:
Obviously, Californians have more to worry about than getting ripped off by Amazon (like getting murdered or kidnapped by ICE agents who want to send us all to a slave labor camp in El Salvador), but the billions that Amazon steals from American buyers and sellers are the source of the millions that Bezos uses to support Trump's fascist takeover of America. Without billionaires who would happily support concentration camps in their back yards if it means saving a dollar on their taxes, fascism would still be a fringe movement.
That's why, when we hold new Nuremberg trials for Trump and his collaborators, we should also unwind every merger that was approved under Trump:
The material support for Trump's ideology of hate, violence and terror comes from Trump's program of unregulated corporate banditry. A promise to claw back every stolen dime might cool the ardor of Trump's corporate supporters, and even if it doesn't, zeroing out their bank-balances after Trump is gone will be an important lesson for future would-be billionaire collaborators.
Haha silly puppet horror game, surely doesnât tackle very real world issues and has a message about how being bombarded 24/7 by terrible news is detrimental to society and that while itâs okay to stay informed and acknowledge that thereâs bad in the world, itâs vitally important to let the light in as well so you donât succumb to the doom.
i really miss your mfn art i remember your au! But its Just neighbors.... but why Ricky as au too?
MFN huhâŚ. *takes a long drag of a cigarette* Havenât heard that name in a long⌠LONG timeâŚ.
Iâm assuming that ur talking about my old opposite au lol
THIS was my Opp! Ricky design lol
Aaaa going down memory lane!
I made these in 2023 i believe! Goodness that feels like such a long time agoâŚ
Basically this Ricky sort of like Flowey (personality wise) He REALLY wanted to take over the world and kinda ruled over the studio with an iron fist⌠er⌠sock?
i feel as if there's some sort of irony in regards to My Friendly Neighborhood's popularity (specifically its lack thereof) that links towards its core messages and ideals.
this game is most definitely a cut above all the other mascot horror games/franchises -- because instead of having the overused "childrens' souls stuffed into mascot bodies", the puppets are just naturally sentient. not only that, but the MFN TV show within the game teaches you how to be a friendly neighbor, and the game focuses on humanity itself and how people/humans would unfortunately rather ignore their issues, forget about kindness and friendliness, and stop watching those fun and lively and educational shows (and even prevent their kids from watching it) because it "makes them uncomfy" and reminds them of "how messed up they [really] are", reminds them of how hard they find it to stay positive in such dark times. they'd rather shy away towards darker and "less friendly" TV programmes just to distract themselves from how bleak and miserable the world is.
sounds an awful lot like society now tbh.
no wonder FNAF and whatnot are so popular. i guess people saw how MFN touches on the subject of war and finding humanity through kindness and were like "....nnnnnno ima stick with the overly extensive lore of scary animatronics with experimented kids' souls stuffed inside of them." lol.
you see where im going with this, right?
the point is, MFN is so overlooked. what many people don't even realise (and it annoys me that this particular detail is so ignored) is that the puppets in MFN have been alone and abandoned for 10 years, trapped in the studio with nothing but their own thoughts and each other, causing their slightly insane spiral. but they don't wanna hurt you. they want a hug ffs. and despite all this, the player as gordon can help them and restart their show, and give them a better life again, out of the kindness of his/their heart. as a result, gordon himself finds a "light", a guiding goodness, all because he helped the puppets revive their show about friendliness, a show that didn't deserve to be cancelled, a show that ended because people wanted darker programmes, and didn't want to be shown the light.
to me MFN is so important and its messages are more relevant now more than ever:
we have to remember to be kind and friendly towards one another, and to step out of our dark living rooms away from the TV (or our phone screens, in this era's case) so we can find some kind of light with the people we care about. we're so caught up with stress, with negativity, with numbers and money, to the point where many of us may take it out on others, to the point where we become trapped in that dark place. might sound emo, but it's true. yes, the world has gone to shit. yes there's wars and death and all the things that make you want to stay at home and sit on the couch and distract yourself.
but there is light, i promise. you have to keep in mind the good things in your life - your friends, family, loved ones. even if it's a material thing, like your hobbies & interests. or the kind words someone once said to you a while ago. you just have to allow yourself to open up to that light, allow yourself to open up to others. even you helping others in need of support will allow that light in.
Sorry, I was away for a while due to life events, a road trip, and playing a certain game that IGN said was "too cheesy". To politely say this in a safe work environment, FORGET what IGN is saying, this game is a solid 8.5/10 for me! The cheesy jokes are the best parts of the game, WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU GUYS SAYING IT'S "TOO CHEESY" WHEN IT'S A GAME ABOUT CARTOON MICE!!! If anyone here loves My Friendly Neighborhood, you'll love Mouse: P.I. For Hire. The same goes for Mouse: P.I. For Hire fans, you'll also love My Friendly Neighborhood. Enjoy this meme in the meantime, while I do a crossover comic of Gordon O'Brian and Jack Pepper. Stay Tuned!
