"On June 16, 2017, it was announced that the online retail giant Amazon planned to purchase the Whole Foods supermarket chain. Shocking the financial markets and challenging popular conceptions concerning the range and ambitions of the digital economy, Amazon’s buyout showed that the digital economy is not only helping shutter many traditional “brick and mortar” stores, but it also appears to be intent on recreating what remains of the traditional economy in its own image. Analysts were quick to point out that Amazon’s entry into the supermarket industry would likely benefit consumers by reducing prices while harming workers through lowering wages and eliminating jobs. While such cost-benefit calculations are structurally inadequate insofar as newly unemployed workers are also consumers, it is equally true—although less scrutinized—that consumers, regardless of their status as wage earners, also perform work. Notwithstanding paeans to Amazon’s innovative application of labor-saving (in fact, wage-labor saving) technologies, the digital economy’s reduction of consumer prices has been offset not only by a reduction in wages, but also by the systematic incorporation of customers into the production process...."
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