Amazon is a processing company. Last year, it collected a hundred and twenty-two billion dollars from online retail sales, and another forty-two billion by helping other firms sell and ship their own goods. The company collected twenty-six billion dollars from its Web-services division, which has little to do with selling things to consumers, and fourteen billion more from people who sign up for such subscription services as Amazon Prime or Kindle Unlimited. Amazon is estimated to have taken in hundreds of millions of dollars from selling the Echo. Seventeen billion came from sales at such brick-and-mortar stores as Whole Foods. And then there’s ten billion from ad sales and other activities too numerous to list in financial filings. No other tech company does as many unrelated things, on such a scale, as Amazon.
It also allows you to contribute to your favorite charity easily. Mine is the UN Human Refugee Fund, that gets 10 percent of my purchases.
All my packages get sent to an address in Miami that is a warehouse for Aeropost, a company that flys them to Costa Rica, runs them through customs, and delivers them to Cartago, a half-hour bus ride from where I live. This is not cheap.
Now the bad stuff. Amazon does not pay taxes. It abuses the workers in its warehouses. And it has few women in its upper executives.
It is a money-making machine, the best in the business. And demonstrates for all to see, the shortcomings of Capitalism.
This article will be an important part of the move toward a different kind of Economy. It is not an easy read.
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