Amazon Warns Philly Over Proposed Cashless Store Ban

Well, it didn’t work in NYC, let’s see if Philly lets Bezos can get away with this horrid plan. This guy is nothing but a human cash register trolling the planet looking for ways to prey on communities desperate for jobs.

Amazon Warns Philly Over Proposed Cashless Store Ban

Philadelphia officials say Amazon has warned that a proposed ban on cashless stores would impact plans to open a brick-and-mortar location in the city.

The City Council approved a bill Thursday that would prohibit most stores from refusing to take cash as payment. Proponents argue that cashless stores discriminate against low-income residents who don't have credit or debit cards.

Councilman Allan Domb says Amazon told the city that if the bill passed, it would not consider locating an Amazon Go cashier-less convenience store in Philadelphia. City spokesman Mike Dunn confirmed Amazon told the city the legislation would "impede" plans for a Go store.

According to Philadelphia Commerce Department spokeswoman Lauren Cox, Amazon expressed concerns about the bill to the department. Councilman William Greenlee tried to sway the company by adding certain exclusions to the bill, but Amazon and its legal counsel felt that the language would not be applicable to their business model, Cox said.

https://apple.news/A-jG1Y4dyR0qTSoAc4iAbWw

Doesn’t want to pay for checkers (or taxes, or any other ‘cost of doing business) so it his way or the oft mentioned highway.

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Raggedy Ann's picture

by all means, pass it. I refuse to use Amazon and enrich that bastard any further. Block Amazon from everything. They are a menace to society.

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

Deja's picture

As far back as I can remember, I thought it was illegal not to accept cash. The cash says it's legal tender. Federal "legal tender". I remember my parents talking about it when I was a kid.

Were they wrong? I'll go see what I can find. Maybe the law changed, was a state law instead of federal, or my parents were wrong.

Edit add: Poop! I stand corrected! Private businesses not required to accept cash.

Section 31 U.S.C. 5103, entitled "Legal tender," states: "United States coins and currency [including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks] are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues."

This statute means that all United States money as identified above is a valid and legal offer of payment for debts when tendered to a creditor. There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person, or an organization must accept currency or coins as payment for goods or services. Private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether to accept cash unless there is a state law which says otherwise.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12772.htm

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it before:
Break Them Up.

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Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .

Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .

If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march

dance you monster's picture

. . . Amazon wants to place a cashier-less convenience store in Philly. Somewhere in that proposal, I'm sure, is a promise of all the non-cashier jobs it will bring to a job-hungry city. A city with a high percentage below the poverty level, who won't have bank cards or Visa or MC or American Express Platinum.

Amazon, whose business model is to drive out of business all those mom-and-pop stores that have stockers and cashiers, and take cash.

It's disturbing the city leadership entertained the thought of letting Amazon in in any guise, but in this one, sheesh. Good on City Council for getting in the way.

Philly's a funny town (I live here). It's a famously friendly town, and also the town where Santa Claus gets booed. Maybe Jeff Bezos shouldn't have portrayed his company as Santa Claus.

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Deja's picture

@dance you monster
Even my MAGA stepdad understood that only approx 50 permanent positions would be created by piping the Canadian oil to southeast Tx. All the other jobs were temporary construction jobs.

Same with the bot stores. Construction (temp), and stockers/custodial (part time perm) and a full time manager. I wonder if the permanent stockers/custodians are allowed to tell customers who will undoubtedly ask them questions, to go ask the checkers.

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Granma's picture

Small businesses pay quite a hefty fee to the banks when customers pay with bank or credit cards. Large businesses may get a smaller fee from banks. I don't know. I do know they make prices higher to cover the cost of the banks' fees, and we all pay those higher prices, at grocery stores, gas stations, etc.

Having learned how much it costs small businesses, I make a point of paying in cash if I possibly can. It just means planning ahead so that I have cash with me.

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arendt's picture

@Granma

About the only thing I use credit cards for is gasoline and catalog shopping for out-of-town gifts. Everything else is cash.

I laugh at the ads that get served to me on the internet. They don't have a clue about my "preferences".

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Granma's picture

@arendt a precious commodity these days.

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snoopydawg's picture

The banks would love to see everyone have to use credit cards, Apple Pay and Google pay so they can ding people with their petty user fees. The IRS is in favor of it too because they want to be able to tax every penny people have. This is happening in some countries in Europe already, but people don't understand how bad of an idea it is.

I've noticed that when the PTB want something to happen they aren't looking to doing it to the current generation, but the one coming up. We know that being spied upon is against our rights, but do millennials know that? Do they even know that the country wasn't at war every day of their lives before 9/11? Do they study the history of the 60's and the Vietnam war and anti war movement?

The PTB have been very patient in destroying our liberties and our country with its asset stripping. Very patient.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

arendt's picture

@snoopydawg

do millennials know that? Do they even know that the country wasn't at war every day of their lives before 9/11? Do they study the history of the 60's and the Vietnam war and anti war movement?

Part of being middle class is being educated and having non-work time to make oneself an informed citizen. Since college has become a credentialling mill (unless you go to an elite school, where the degree opens doors) which leaves you with massive debt, education has been made both unaffordable and, in some sense, undesirable. Then, they have used the "free" internet model to destroy journalism.

So, no info, and no education to process info. Presto. Instant proletariat. Bring the bread (pizza) and the circuses (Kardashians, Trump, IdPol).

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Centaurea's picture

I'm starting to think Bezos's end goal is to turn the entire planet into one gigantic company town. Amazon will be the sole employer, the sole landlord, the sole provider of healthcare and education and of whatever other services we might need.

We will be guarded and watched over by Amazon's security force, which will consist of former CIA and MI5 agents and a whole lot of robotic-AI devices.

And of course, all tangible goods, such as food and clothing, can only be purchased at the Amazon company store.

The exclusive legal tender in AmazonWorld will be Bezos Bucks, which will be digital, of course, not actual physical money.

A system of social credit will be in place to determine who gets what in AmazonWorld. A sort of dystopic "Amazon Prime", shall we say.

(I really wish I were being sarcastic here, but I'm not sure I am. What other end result is logical?)

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"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi

"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone

arendt's picture

@Centaurea

To think of Amazon as a retailer, though, is to profoundly misjudge the scope of what its founder and chief executive, Jeff Bezos, has set out to do. It’s not simply that Amazon does so much more than sell stuff—that it also produces hit television shows and movies; publishes books; designs digital devices; underwrites loans; delivers restaurant orders; sells a growing share of the Web’s advertising; manages the data of US intelligence agencies; operates the world’s largest streaming video-game platform; manufactures a growing array of products, from blouses to batteries; and is even venturing into health care.

Instead, it’s that Bezos has designed his company for a far more radical goal than merely dominating markets; he’s built Amazon to replace them. His vision is for Amazon to become the underlying infrastructure that commerce runs on. Already, Amazon’s website is the dominant platform for online retail sales, attracting half of all online US shopping traffic and hosting thousands of third-party sellers. Its Amazon Web Services division provides 34 percent of the world’s cloud-computing capacity, handling the data of a long list of entities, from Netflix to Nordstrom, Comcast to Condé Nast to the CIA. Now, in a challenge to UPS and FedEx, Amazon is building out a vast shipping and delivery operation with the aim of handling both its own packages and those of other companies.

By controlling these essential pieces of infrastructure, Amazon can privilege its own products and services as they move through these pipelines, siphoning off the most lucrative currents of consumer demand for itself. And it can set the terms by which other companies have access to these pipelines, while also levying, through the fees it charges, a tax on their trade. In other words, it’s moving us away from a democratic political economy, in which commerce takes place in open markets governed by public rules, and toward a future in which the exchange of goods occurs in a private arena governed by Amazon. It’s a setup that inevitably transfers wealth to the few—and with it, the power over such crucial questions as which books and ideas get published and promoted, who may ply a trade and on what terms, and whether given communities will succeed or fail.

Amazon is “something radically new in the history of American business,” New Yorker writer George Packer has observed. But it’s not without antecedents. In the 19th century, men like Cornelius Vanderbilt and John D. Rockefeller harnessed a disruptive new technology—the railroad—and used the control that it gave them over market access to weaken their industrial competitors and extort money from farmers and small businesses. Their actions sparked a broad movement against monopolies, which led, over the following decades, to the passage of a robust body of antitrust laws. The central purpose of these laws was to protect liberty and democracy from concentrated economic power, or what Franklin Roosevelt called “industrial dictatorship.”

Amazon Doesn’t Just Want to Dominate the Market—It Wants to Become the Market

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people who pay with credit spend 30% more than people who pay with cash. And BTW, my old taxi company used to pay 1 1/2% in processing fees but tried to charge 10% to their drivers until the city forced then to only charge 5% (this charge was eventually outlawed completely)
In honesty there was no increase in business except for a dramatic reduction in tips.

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On to Biden since 1973