As an early customer of Amazon.com, I have saved a great deal of money - maybe thousands of dollars - by purchasing online. And it's starting to bother me. Here's my problem: I love doing business with Amazon, but hate what Amazon and the Internet more generally have done to the brick-and-mortars in the city of 80,000 where I live. My Amazon purchases keep money in my pocket, but rob my local community of taxes, revenue and jobs. Our neighborhood high school kids have a harder time finding their first job, the Best Buy is a shadow of its former self, Radio Shack sucks even more than it used to. The independent bookstore downtown died two years ago. The mall lost an anchor store, replaced last year by a less-than-luxe Macy's of the kind that goes into really secondary markets. Last week, I decided to check out the Nook tablets at our Barnes & Noble, which I feel fortunate my community still has. Offhandedly, I was looking to make a gift of a book tied to the Tintin movie. The book cost $18.99 at B&N. I immediately pulled out my trusty iPhone and took a picture of the book, which Amazon used to drive a search. That was probably a rude thing to do standing almost in the middle of the store........
January 31, 2012
Buying From Amazon Makes Me Feel Guilty
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