Amazon: malignant monopoly or just plain evil ?

I acquired about five or six Chet Baker discs that are crucial to my collection thru a retailer called Jazzloft, they were a jazz music e-tailer based out of Seattle. They had a good selection of discs that Amazon.com did not have. They went out of business because Amazon put their distributors out of business. (Amazon.com now has the discs that the Jazzloft had for sale, but at very high prices!) ---------- I have noticed that while my purchases from Amazon.com previously took five business days to be shipped out, and consequently to bill me, now they get shipped to my door in four business days (with standard shipping). Also, take note of this: Amazon's stock was priced at just over $200 per share in the summer of 2012 but the price per share doubled by January of this year, a significant increase; but when the stock pulled back to $300 per share last month, that did not prevent the market analysts on CNBC from saying that Amazon was a stock that was "down in the dumps", despite having produced a significant gain for its investors. This reveals the cultural logic of capitalism and the irrepressible drive for speed of economic gain to stand as the ultimate signifier. Those unhappy workers that Michael's article referred to will be replaced by nameless others who will willingly assign their labor from morn till night in their attempt to satiate Amazon's ownership who simultaneously become richer and greedier. Now Amazon is looking to replace the Walgreen's chain (and other drugstores) by adopting a new sales strategy where consumers can have up to 50 pounds of items shipped to them for $5.95 cost of shipping (household items like razors, soap, toilet paper, etc.). Amazon has started a pilot program, too, where they make deliveries of supermarket consumables to major cities like San Francisco. Personally, I plan to use Amazon as soon as I get my SSDI money, as there are two Cowboy Junkies CDs I want available in the Amazon seller's marketplace for 1 cent each -- one penny plus $3.99 to Amazon.com ! ---------- It's not surprising that Amazon is exploiting their temporary workers, Rabbi, because of the law of capital which says that a company must capture the market share of its competitors by selling more cheaply, and must raise the productive power of labor as much as possible. As Marx says, "there is immanent in capital an inclination and constant tendency to heighten the productiveness of labor, in order to cheapen commodities, and by such cheapening to cheapen the laborer himself." Marx goes on to say that the capitalist corporation has the over-riding aim to "press a given quantity of labor out of a smaller, rather than a greater number of workers." In opposition to Amazon's ambition to create its own monopoly of buying and selling, from its mania for financial gain, we can only reflect on the words of Mahatma Gandhi, who said, "There is more to life than making it go faster." ---------- I just purchased 3 KISS CDs, 2 Butthole Surfers CDs and a copy of Maya Angelou's book "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" from Amazon.com for $53. Top that !