I don’t have an Amazon subscription, because there normally isn’t that much i like to order online, but lately I’ve discovered the wonders of Walmart 2-day free shipping with a $35 purchase. It’s kind of nice to be able order things — products like blue jeans 👖 or pancake mix 🍳 — without having to worry about them not having your size and knowing the exact price before you check out.
Consumerism 📍
📽️ Videos
The Dollar Store Backlash Has Begun
The U.S. has added 10,000 of these budget retail outlets since 2001. But some towns and cities are trying to push back.
Prevent ‘Lifestyle Creep’ from Eating Your Wealth – Barron’s
As college students, many of us become experts at living the frugal life. We cook dinner for friends using the one knife and two pots we bought from TJ Maxx or “borrowed” from Mom’s kitchen. We take the bus, tape broken items back together, and celebrate the luxury of our first apartment without roommates, even if it’s a 600-square-foot studio.
Then our income increases, and certain behaviors become outside our comfort zone. We get used to buying everything brand new and wonder how we ever survived without a $300 blender. We might have fond memories of staying in hostels while backpacking around Europe or Asia, or seeing a mind-blowing Broadway show on a $30 standing room ticket, but we wouldn’t do that now.
Cashing in a tragedy
There is so much money to be made cashing in on tragedy and sad people. 💵 So many cars 🚙 and laundry soap to be sold.
Where Amazon Returns Go to Be Resold by Hustlers
Every box is a core sample drilled through the digital crust of platform capitalism. On Amazon’s website, sophisticated sorting algorithms relentlessly rank and organize these products before they go out into the world, but once the goods return to the warehouse, they shake free of the database and become random objects thrown together into a box by fate. Most likely, never will this precise box of shit ever exist again in the world. On liquidation.com, each pallet’s manifest comes with suggested prices for each product in a pristine state. If you add them up, the “value” of the box might be $4,000, while the auction price might only come to $200.
While Amazon doesn’t publicly talk about how it chooses which returned products go back up for sale and which go to the liquidators, it does sell some products through Amazon Warehouse at a discount. If it sounds crazy to sell products at massive discounts, consider that goods sitting in a warehouse are a cost. So is the labor necessary to repackage something for resale. If Amazon and other retailers let another company pay them something, they avoid those costs and add some revenue.