In spite of Amazon being a publicly traded company, Bezos owns 17% of it, a stake that accounts for 95% of his estimated fortune, and he is still CEO. They may pay YOU but they, and Jeff Bezos, are supported by people that pay for their services, which in turn pays to further his agenda and that of the Washington Post. Yes, it's a tricky map to navigate where the all funds ultimately go, as are most enterprises these days, but to say people buying Amazon Video are not supporting him and his other ventures is not being completely honest. To each their own I guess.
It's your perogative to spend money where and how you wish, that is one of our rights. But, as you allude to, these arguments about every-day consumerism having an implicit role in furthering political views/agendas always seem very flimsy to me.
If you follow every dollar in and out of any business, eventually you'll find a participant in a transaction that has different views than you do. Choosing to be a consumer of goods or services doesn't mean that you unequivocally support and agree with every view of every other participant in every other transaction made by said business.
My most recent Amazon purchase (and yes, I am a shareholder) was a headlamp.
It was 33% off normal retail, so I bought it from them. It was $35 after taxes. Of that (my accounting principles could be off, but this is directionally correct)-
- 0.5% ($0.75) went to TRCP via the 'smile' program.
- 6.4% ($2.26) went to state sales tax
- ~60% ($14) went to AMZN COGS for buying the item from Black Diamond, AMZN fulfillment handling, and freight to me
- ~20% ($7) went to SG&A for marketing, website, etc.
- Lets just ease up on this and say the rest ($3) was Net Income
Hypothetically, let's say 5 physical people were involved in my transaction (3 folks in the Amazon fulfillment center, at least a couple on the carrier side). They of course received some portion of my money as well. Should I add their views and opinions to the list of things I am now in tacit agreement with because I paid them? (I’ll ignore the countless manufacturers of paper, corrugate, etc that went into shipping me this headlamp).
If you keep tracing, Black Diamond probably got 40% of the dough. So I would need to look at every partner BD has that was involved in producing the headlamp, shipping it, meeting with the AMZN procurement team, etc. Also, since the manufacturer of the headlamp doesn’t make all those components from scratch, add in at least 4 other contract manufacturers (batteries, LED bulbs, plastic housings, miscellaneous circuitry).
Now, my $35 headlamp has had the hands of 7 organizations and probably 2-3X that number of physical people. I would say It’s pretty likely that I don’t agree with all of the viewpoints represented in that sample. It may even be likely that some of them are polar opposite of me on any number of issues.
I did get a sweet headlamp for 33% of what it typically retails for and I won’t think at all about the above when I turn it on in the elk woods. There is precisely 0% chance that I could make it myself or that it could be produced solely by people who's views I am in complete alignment with.
(P.S> Awesome looking dog in your avatar)
