The pandemic has acted as an accelerant to trends that were already taking place. The pandemic led to everyone shopping from home and Amazon was the biggest beneficiary of the growth in online shopping. With the rise of Amazon and Jeff Bezos, there has been a rash of new books about the company and its founder. This is one of those books, written by journalist Alex MacGillis.
This book has an unusual organizational scheme, using nine main chapters, each with a theme and featuring a city or small group of cities, illustrating the author’s chosen theme. They are:
1-The hyper-prosperous city (Seattle)
2-Downward mobility in Middle America (Dayton, OH)
3-The wealth of the nation’s capital (Washington DC)
4- The transformation of work (Baltimore)
5-The fight for local business (El Paso, TX)
6-Under the cloud (Washington DC)
7-Taxing and giving (Seattle)
8-The crisis of small-town America (Nelsonville, OH, York, PA, and Columbus, OH)
9-The great forty-mile divide (Baltimore, Washington, DC)
In each chapter, the author tells the story his selected theme through the lives of a few people. The research seems thorough and there is a ton of detail. I judge the accuracy on the two chapters that feature Seattle. But there is too damn much detail! The result is the story moves a bit too slow for my tastes. And much of the detail is extraneous to the point the author is making.
Some of the themes are familiar ones: The decline of rural America while urban populations soar. The concentration of business in a few large companies. The hollowing out of the Middle Class. Amazon isn’t responsible for these trends but has certainly contributed.
The author’s approach is mostly negative towards Amazon. I was aware of their aggressiveness in seeking tax breaks from municipalities and their ruthlessness in dealing with vendors and even their use of data to force businesses on the Amazon Marketplace out of business.
I was not aware of Amazon’s dreadful safety record and policy of covering up workplace accidents. They don’t even notify the next of kin when there is a workplace death. Most of the workplace accidents are handled by the local fire departments since Amazon doesn’t have their own safety crews. The irony is that, because of tax breaks they have typically been given, they don’t pay for the local fire departments. The cost is paid by the local homeowners.
For us locals, the two Seattle chapters are particularly interesting. The second of the two chapters is about Amazon’s record of aggressive pursuit of tax breaks and their paltry charitable giving. There is extensive coverage of the political fight over Seattle’s proposed headcount tax.
The chapter about the hyper-prosperous city is the most interesting for locals. Washington State has been the recipient of more investment by Amazon than any other. And there has been, as we all know, enormous job creation, especially in the greater Seattle area. Unlike much of Amazon’s expansion, a lot of the Seattle area jobs are high-paying jobs, rather than the low-paying fulfillment center-type jobs.
The author, despite his negative tilt towards Amazon in general, sees Seattle as the big winner in all of this. This caused me to think about how Seattle has changed with Amazon’s impact. I’m a rare Seattle-born native and I’ve seen a lot of change during my lifetime. And while Amazon’s growth has been a boon for the city, and has benefited a couple of clients, on balance the main impacts on the city, from my perspective, have been negative. The main things I have seen are sky-high housing prices and terrible traffic. Don’t get me wrong, I love being able to order stuff on Amazon, but that would be true anywhere. The quality-of-life issues though have been very negative. I’d be happier to be able to order stuff from Amazon but have them located somewhere else.
This is a pretty good book and enlightening in many ways. But the slow-moving story and the excess of extraneous detail make it difficult to recommend.
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