[bognition]

The general sentiment is that small businesses are owned and operated by our neighbors. Part of a healthy society is having a group of people with diverse backgrounds, interests, and jobs all living together.

Amazon's march towards a global monopoly is partially responsible for homogenizing our society.

[olivermarks]

The essential economic problem is that currently running small retail businesses isn't viable unless you sell through Amazon's distribution (also less centralized ebay). This means far fewer retail jobs, empty storefronts and malls, taxes levied on businesses, gasoline/petrol etc The centralizing of everything through Amazon is classic monopoly practice. I have a ladder being delivered by them today I ordered on Friday evening. No one can compete on price or efficiencies both on their side and from my perspective. I don't want to drive my truck to buy a ladder. Nothing is stopping this trend form rapidly increasing across the western world

[threwawasy1228]

It is interesting, because a extremely large percentage of these small businesses that are failing are immigrant minority owned.[1] So in many ways keeping small businesses around does make things 'diverse' but it also leads to a much bigger problem. This massive amount of immigration that was meant to help keep the economy running is now failing to keep their businesses going, and falling into high rates of unemployment or underemployment. Does it really serve our economy to have a bunch of immigrants whose main mode of economic activity is starting small businesses that are not very viable, and hiring all their relatives?

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/opinion/sunday/immigrants...