Amazon Prime is a remarkable success but also dystopian. It has made convenience and speed the norm, habituating consumers to buy more products. Prime’s flywheel effect - where more customers lead to more data and scale which attracts more customers - has fueled Amazon’s dominance. Prime subscribers spend twice as much and Amazon’s value has multiplied 97 times since 2005. While canceling Prime may not hurt Amazon, it can benefit local businesses by gaining a new customer. However, Prime has rewired how people think about what is possible to obtain and how fast, making a Prime-free life unimaginable for many.
And buy from where? Retailers these days, insofar as they exist at all, have ridiculously limited inventory. If I want something that’s even slightly uncommon, the only place I can find it is online, and since there’s no telling whether any given website will steal from me, welp, Amazon it is.