Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Gulag

Amazon is building a warehouse in my town. It’s the biggest building in the county’s history. Four million square feet of concrete and steel looming ominously over the neighborhood like a massive nuclear facility from a cyberpunk hellscape.

The “fulfillment center,” as they call it, is situated in a peaceful suburban area. The property is the former site of a golf course and country club. My friend lives up the road on a quiet cul-de-sac with his wife and kids. Now a few blocks away there’s a monstrosity bigger than The Pentagon, soon to be filled with 1,000 obedient workers, with sixty tractor trailers an hour going in and out, day and night.

Buildings are designed to communicate things to us. The quaint and inviting coziness of a country inn. The hallowed halls of a stately courthouse. Amazon warehouses are tyrannical, King Kong-sized monsters, sprawling cathedrals of corporate authoritarianism. When I drive by it I feel like an insect. It fills me with terror and dread. Then I’m overcome with the sudden urge to order a toaster and a set of headphones. 

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and CEO, started the company in 1994, and its spectacular growth has made him the world’s richest man. He wears custom tailored clothes and dines on octopus and roasted iguana. But his cupidity knows no limits, and he won’t rest until we’re all in chains. In front of his building should be a giant statue of the bald pervert with his cock dangling out, because he’s screwing us all six ways to Sunday with his tax avoidance, corporate welfare, and smorgasbord of soul-sucking, low-wage jobs.

I heard a press release on the radio mentioning Amazon’s “competitive” pay, starting at $15 an hour. In New York state, minimum wage for fast food workers goes up to $14.50 at the end of 2020, and $15 in the summer of 2021.  That puts Amazon on par with Taco Bell and McDonald’s. I’m not knocking those jobs, but I wouldn’t call those wages competitive. And Amazon’s warehouses feature the draconian work environment you’d expect. Employees are surveilled by robots and written up for the slightest infractions. Repetitive strain injuries are rampant, and cafeteria vending machines dispense free, generic Tylenol like Tic Tacs.

Meanwhile, brick and mortar stores are rapidly becoming graveyards — the cemeteries of the future. The roof’s falling off the old mall a few miles away. Huge trash bins setup inside catch water when it rains, and tumbleweeds blow through the cratered and crumbled parking lots. Only a handful of stores remain open, and people walk their dogs in the empty aisles now, not bothering to pick up after them.

The Coronavirus pandemic has only filled the enormous pockets of Bezos at an alarming rate and turbocharged the pace of Amazon’s elimination of more than just local bookstores. Since the pandemic, Bezos has pocketed a billion a week while 10 percent of his workers collect food stamps. How did we let this happen? Are we a nation of whipped dogs?

There’s been support recently for an Amazon boycott. Some people suggested taking it even further, sending Bezos a message in the form of a guillotine outside his Washington, D.C. mansion. But for all my tough talk, maybe I’m just a hypocrite. When a friend was in jail on a drug charge, I sent her some books about ayahuasca via Amazon. But I won’t make that mistake again. The evil fuckers have you by the balls. It’s like dealing with Putin or the North Koreans. Necessary at times, perhaps, but best to keep contact to a minimum. 

But when you complain about Amazon shafting workers and impoverishing communities, there is no shortage of people defending them. I don’t understand it. Workers siding with management over fellow workers is crazy to me, but many Americans have been brainwashed into thinking this way despite the disservice to their self interests. You see this in professional sports. For decades, sports fans have taken the side of billionaire owners over athletes during labor disputes. But if their own bosses instituted a salary cap to limit their earning potential, they’d probably form a union and go on strike. Has corporate cock been rammed down our throats for so long that we’re starting to like it?

Stockholm Syndrome is a condition where captives bond with their captors. An elderly man in Syracuse kidnapped several girls over a fifteen year period and imprisoned them in a concrete dungeon beneath his home in the suburbs. He raped them daily.  But he took them on regular outings to bowling alleys and karaoke bars, until one finally ran off and called 911. 
 
Jeff Bezos is the world’s dungeon master now, and we’re all locked up in the bastard’s hell pit. If Amazon wasn’t fucking us all so hard, maybe there wouldn’t be an opioid epidemic. Maybe we wouldn’t have an epidemic of mass shootings and suicides in America. And maybe there wouldn’t be militias prepping in the woods for a new civil war. 

Amazon represents the dark side of The American Dream. It’s predatory capitalism gone wild — the apotheosis of the plantation economy.

Workers of the world unite. Rise up and tell Bezos to suck it. Demand a living wage and benefits, for the good of yourselves, America, and the world. It’s not too much to ask.