[dcchambers]

It also doesn't really make any sense to buy a cheap pantry staple or cereal grain like oats online and have it shipped to you. The base product is so cheap but it's heavy so traditional consumer shipping is expensive (and wasteful/bad for the environment).

There's a very good chance much of that price increase is due to increase cost of shipping. Even if Amazon gives you "free" shipping - they're building that price into the price of the product... They're not eating the shipping cost on a low margin item like a cereal grain.

I can buy organic locally grown oats at my expensive local health food co-op for less than $2/lb...unchanged from years ago.

[conjecTech]

Deliveries of any reasonable size reduce vehicle miles travelled for goods. If a delivery driver can do 50 deliveries in a 10 mile route, that is much, much better than each one of those people driving to the store and back. I live in Brooklyn and Amazon has a grocery logistics hub less 5 miles from me. My carbon footprint is just fine.