Amazon: Remember when the word brought to mind a South American river?
Image from Live Science
Now it’s part of a bigger, worldwide jungle, inhabited by predatory international brand names and worldwide monopolies. Describing this era of surveillance capitalism, Cory Doctorow presents a well-reasoned and evidence-based argument that “we are living through the Enshittocene period…a time when services that matter to us, that we all rely on, are being turned into giant piles of shit.” (Enshittifaction: why everything suddenly got worse and what to do about it, New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2025)
Democracy is at stake here. Democratic governments and consumers, says Doctorow, need to wrest back some control from the enshittifiers. While “it may be true that the law can’t force corporate sociopaths to conceive of you as a human being entitled to dignity and fair treatment, and not just an ambulatory wallet, a supply of gut bacteria for the immoral colony organism that is a limited liability corporation,” [Regulation] can make the exec fear you enough to treat you fairly and afford you dignity, even if he doesn’t think you deserve it.”
Amazon is part of what Doctorow calls the Natural History of “the Great Enshittening.” The company is a classic example of corporate greedsters hijacking “the once-glorious internet.”
These days, it’s obvious that anyone selling anything pretty well has to put it on Amazon. What is less well-known is that between the percentage charge on sales and the “junk fees” charged by Amazon, those selling there are “being screwed out of 45 to 51 cents on every dollar” they earn on the platform…So merchants must jack up prices, which they do…If Amazon is taxing merchants 45 to 51 percent on every dollar they make, and if merchants are hiking their prices everywhere their goods are sold, then if follows that you’re paying the Amazon tax no matter where you shop.”
On top of that, Amazon makes $38 billion a year charging merchants for search placement. When you search, you get top results “that pay Amazon to be at the top of the list.”
In short, Doctorow opines, “the platform has turned into a pile of shit, and we’re at the bottom of it.” Hard to disagree. Fortunately Doctorow’s book goes on to explain how Big Tech can be disassembled. I won’t go into that here, but I do recommend reading the book.
Meanwhile, the magnificent Amazon river still runs. The Amazon jungle remains, too though humanity has altered it through exploitation. It’s part of the madness of this moment in history that the natural association of these great and wonderful features of the earth has been trumped (temporarily, I have no doubt) by a brand name.