To the Editor:
Re “Amazon to Buy Whole Foods for $13 Billion” (front page, June 17):
As I read the article, I had memories of my parents going to the local grocer down the street to buy the food we would be eating that night. My mother or father would talk to the grocer about his family, and the grocer would ask about our family. He would wrap our meat in brown paper, and other items were placed in a sack. The vegetables were seasonal and from a local farm.
Now I am not saying that I want to go back to the local grocer days, because I really enjoy the exotic fruits and vegetables that I get from the big grocery stores. But there is something that doesn’t seem right about ordering groceries online. Have Americans become so unsocial and disconnected?
I like it when the person at the checkout counter remembers that I like potato chips and tells me about the special on my favorite ones. Sometimes the other customers would give me a good recipe. Connecting with people and connecting with your computer are not the same.
ANTONIA I. DELUCA, BOLIVIA, N.C.
To the Editor:
The chief executive of Whole Foods, John Mackey, has built an empire on giving shelf space to products that have transformed American food culture for the better, increasing the variety and quality of organic and plant-based options in particular. At the same time, Amazon’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos, has changed the retail landscape in ways that make shopping easier for consumers and thereby improve our lives.
Continue reading the main storyThese two innovators will merge the ideals of conscious capitalism and wicked efficiency, which should be a boon for healthy, humane and sustainable food companies.
BRUCE FRIEDRICH, WASHINGTON
The writer is executive director of the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit that promotes alternatives to industrial animal agriculture.
To the Editor:
Re “Amazon’s Move Signals the End of the Line for Cashiers” (Business Day, June 19):
Like it or not, history tells us that change in all aspects of life, occasioned by technology, is inevitable. Exactly what changes will be wrought by Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods is hard to say, but one thing is inevitable about this and almost all technology-inspired change: Jobs will be lost. As automation of service, and even professional, jobs occurs with increasing rapidity, none of us are exempt.
Rather than bemoaning this result or attempting to thwart it, we need to figure out how to provide jobs and income for the ever-increasing number of people whose jobs succumb to automation. The failure to do so will have catastrophic consequences — either in further increases in income and wealth disparities, or in the creation of a permanently oppressed underclass, or in revolution, or all three.
ALAN MEISEL, PITTSBURGH
To the Editor:
Re “Amazon’s Growing Monopoly Bite,” by Lina M. Khan (Op-Ed, June 21):
As an independent sales rep, I’m all too aware of the havoc caused by Amazon’s low prices. The destruction of competition, however, is by no means solely Amazon’s doing; it’s the manufacturers and distributors who always award larger dealers better pricing at the expense of smaller brick-and-mortar stores.
Better sales management and implementation of minimum advertised pricing (known as MAP) is a simple, effective and perfectly legal way to protect and diversify competition instead of enabling the “race to the bottom” of product pricing and low profitability.
When retailers can compete by offering better service and not simply better pricing, everyone wins, Amazon customers included.
ERIC KLEIN, MONTCLAIR, N.J.
Continue reading the main story