What are you talking about? Customers aren’t “forcing” Amazon to do anything. Sales of Confederate merchandise were up because a bunch of their customers decided to choose this particular moment to rally around a symbol of “Southern Pride” (and overt racism) that was adopted by a bigot who just committed a mass murder. Amazon decided on their own accord that they wanted no part in that.
I don’t see any principled defenders of free speech protesting the fact that you can’t buy Nazi armbands at the local K-mart. This policy is no different.
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At what point does a retailer become so successful that they have a moral obligation to sell racist propaganda?
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I seem to remember there was some controversy about that here in Europe, before eBay introduced that ban. But that was about a foreign company selling things that were actually illegal to sell inside the country.
“We’re not gonna sell that shit because we find it offensive” is a protected form of free expression.
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I’m not saying that they should be forced. I’m just saying that I don’t like their decision.
Keep in mind that eBay and Etsy don’t sell anything; Amazon only accounts for around 60% of its own sales. They’re marketplaces more than retailers, and these rules are largely about what other people can sell on their sites. They’re still private entities and can make whatever rules they like, but collectively those three sites are the cyber-commons upon which millions of small businesses depend. If you think about it from the perspective of a third-party seller, you want these sites making as few rules as possible about what you can and can’t sell — especially as a rule intended to ban racism may prevent you from selling something more innocuous (like that General Lee matchbox car).
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Think of it this way: if you’re a small business that deals in Confederate crap you don’t need to compete with Amazon any more. Billy-Bob’s Southern Pride Emporium and Gun Shop is probably popping champagne corks right now. Hooray for the free flippin’ market.
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But it’s not one that supports free expression, especially insofar as these rules are more about what other people can sell on those sites, rather than the site operators themselves.
We may like the fact that these companies are taking a stand against the Confederate flag as a racism emblem, but how much did we like it when PayPal and the credit card companies told us that we couldn’t send money to Wikileaks? I prefer that companies not express themselves by limiting the expression of their users in this kind of way.
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Public opinion seems to be turning in favor of banning the confederate flag. The few people who actually buy the stuff are less financially significant for Amazon than all the other customers whose opinion of Amazon is influenced by Amazon’s decisions.
At exactly the point when they become morally obligated to sell everything. Note that this is a retailer with infinite floor space. And eBay allows everyone to start an auction, eBay doesn’t need to do any extra work to insure that a particular product is sold.
Would it be OK for an old-fashioned Christian bus driver to ban gay people from his bus? Do Christian buses only transport Christians, while Atheist buses only transport atheists and maybe the occasional agnostic?
I think the moral thing for marketplaces, common carriers, etc. is to STAY OUT OF POLITICS.
Looking at it from another side again:
It is inevitable that various people will try to limit what gets sold to me.
- Everyone except the Neo-Nazis in Austria wants to keep Nazi propaganda from me
- Many Muslims want to keep Charlie Hebdo from me
- Whenever I visit the US, the FCC wants to protect me from having to hear the word “fuck” during daytime (is that still true?)
- Lots of people want to keep porn from me
- Lots of people want to keep non-Nazi racist propaganda from me
- In America at least, some people want to keep information about the theory of evolution from me.
I don’t need racist propaganda, but I do want my anti-religious propaganda, and I won’t make a public statement on whether I want any porn. That is besides the point, though.
Some of these things are valuable, others aren’t. The question is, who do I trust to make the distinction for me? I don’t want
- Apple deciding which Apps contain too much porn - the average AppStore reviewer is way too American and will therefore be much too strict for my taste (should they be “forced” to allow me to install the software I like on my cell phone? Actually, yes.)
- Paypal, Mastercard & Visa deciding whether I should be donating to Wikileaks (should they be “forced” to transfer money to people their management don’t agree with? HELL YES!)
If I don’t get to decide for myself, I want the decision to be made in a secret vote.
Well that’s because there still is a mail-order market outside of Amazon. Do “small businesses” have a legitimate chance of selling an e-Book to a Kindle owner if Amazon doesn’t cooperate? Do I have a reasonably cheap way to pay a sum of about 10 Euro to an Australian company unless MasterCard and Visa cooperate?
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Although I totally agree with your major point, I find the General Lee Matchbox car abhorrent and offensive to my value system. So therefore obviously I should vehemently disagree with you and call you a dupe of the Man and insist that you are not allowed to have your own opinion. But I’m too tired so I’m going to post a girly pic and go drink beer and lay on the couch instead. Good night!
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I bet they are, but what about people who make an occasional sale? I’m thinking about antiques pickers who come across some cool Civil War artifact, but can’t sell it because it has a Confederate battle flag on it.
And if I needed to buy a Confederate battle flag because I was staging a play or something, I wouldn’t want to have my options limited to Billy-Bob’s Southern Pride Emporium.
And as I’ve already said, if I’m putting on a play set in 1930s Europe I might be slightly inconvenienced by the lack of major retailers willing to sell fascist armbands. Boo hoo—if that ever happens I’ll make them myself or go to a competitor’s web site or visit one of the many small businesses who sell that stuff. That’s my problem, not Amazon’s.
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One major difference, especially with Amazon, Wal Mart at least has territorial hegemony in some of its markets, is that their actions don’t stop other actors from offering the merchandise(and, indeed, since Amazon is scary good at selling things highly efficiently on slim margins, hearing that Amazon is leaving the market will be great news for anyone looking to sell ‘the flag that liberals don’t want you to own!’ and actually make money doing it).
Market power can be, and sometimes is, a problem that puts a given private actor in a position to effectively censor things, in addition to the usual rent seeking behavior. The US isn’t nearly as up on that as I’d like; but it’s a known issue. In this case, though, Amazon has very, very, limited market power(they certainly have enough market power to make a ‘we won’t carry any flags from companies that also manufacture confederate flags’ statement highly concerning; but they don’t have enough to shut a market down just by leaving it, especially one with low barriers to entry, like printing flags). Wal Mart has somewhat more than Amazon, because location counts; but, again, short of a ‘if you do business in confederate flags we will crush you’ threat, merely leaving the market will dent the supply of merchandise for days to weeks, at best.
Arguably, the one closest to being concerning is Ebay, because that’s a venue where people looking to buy or sell actual civil war militaria are likely to congregate, and the value of an auction is markedly affected by how many items are available to buy and how many buyers are available. Ebay has a large number of sellers who basically just use it as a storefront (much of the new condition ‘buy it now’ stuff); but it is pretty seriously dominant as a place to auction things online. The effect on the supply of random flag-schlock will be limited; but the transactions in actual historical items might well be substantially crimped.
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The Nazi stuff is actually a good example. If you need authentic Nazi artifacts for some reason, you kind of have to go to a guy who specializes in it…and is that really who you want to give your dollar to? I’d much rather order from a generalist antique dealer on eBay, but that’s hardly an option.
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I’m pretty sure you’ll be able to still buy them in gun shops, fer instance. >.<
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I can’t think of any reason why anyone would “need” authentic Nazi artifacts unless they were putting together a museum exhibition on fascist Germany. I admit I’ve never worked in the field of museum acquisitions, but I don’t think they are wholly dependent on eBay and Amazon Marketplace.
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A user on the Amazon seller forums just reported that he had a listing cancelled for a book that defends the Confederate flag. It’s not clear if this was because of the content, or because of the cover image, but it seems that “Confederate merchandise” is being pretty broadly defined.
Interestingly, Amazon appears to also not sell Nazi flags, but they do sell Soviet flags and the battle flag of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Interesting double standard at work there.
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There a lot of people killing others under the flag of the rising sun these days?
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I’m not trying to dogpile, but companies that cajole their employees to support political causes (and I am Sooo not making that up) should be apolitical?
BTW, former PayPal/eBay employee here. I was literally incented, monetarily, to keep the reputation of the business out of the news. That is why there are prohibitions on items, not ideology. It is more profitable to refuse to sell a divisive item than to take a libertarian view of your market.
So confederate flags? 0.00001% of revenue, but ten percent of PRs and marketing’s time.
Southern man
Better keep your head
Don’t forget
What your good book said
Southern change
Gonna come at last
How long?
How long?
How long indeed.
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