Listeners to A Brief History of Power will have heard Dr Koontz and Pastor Fisk speak of the rise and fall of the fortunes of cities, industrial booms and the ghosting of towns. A recent interview with author Alec MacGillis examines how the incredible growth of Amazon has "made cities richer but also more dystopian." The piece discusses growing regional disparities, driven by huge corporations, using Amazon as the case study. In cities where the company's well-paid engineers reside, traffic and housing affordability become an issue. While in "warehouse towns," the blue-collar cohort of Amazon's workforce have low salaries, tenuous job security and no real career path up through the ranks.
"This imbalance is not good for anyone. In the one set of places, you have stagnation and blight and abandonment and resentment and sadness. And then, in the other set, in winner-take-all cities, you have what we're seeing in San Francisco and Seattle, which are the opposite problems... You have too much of a good thing... I call it 'hyper prosperity.'”
The article also highlights the situation in Baltimore, where Amazon's warehouses formerly housed a steelworks and another was a GM plant. "To have these warehouses going into literally the exact same sites of Baltimore's former industrial life, with people making less than half of what they would have been making at those plants, it's very resonant."
MacGillis also relays a few of the situations where Amazon has used its clout to reshape tax law and aspects of the political landscape. (The threat of losing Amazon's patronage was likely a factor in South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem's backpedalling on a transgender bill in her state.) MacGillis says seeing local officials "praising Amazon for reliable delivery of their deodorant and skin cream" while bringing low-paying jobs to their town, is "really painful to watch."
Like Rev. Fisk often asks, how bad does it have to get? How bad does it get before leaders stand up to tech bullies? How long do people need to be away from blue light before they consider there may be more to life than an Amazon Prime subscription? Of course, this is a little hyperbolic. But, perhaps there is a role here, tailor-made for Mad Christians— supporting your leaders so they have the courage of their convictions but also showing what it means to have life to the full, baptized into Christ, not fulfilled by Amazon.
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