Coffee and Amazon

As I was sitting outside my local coffee shop, it occurred to me the world has turned upside down. When I was young, people made coffee at home on Saturday mornings before heading out to do the weekly shopping. Now the weekly shopping shows up at your door in boxes with the Amazon label and you head out to have some coffee.

So what is the significance of this… in some respects not much. But for those that prefer shopping the globe from their desktop at home instead of marching off to the local mall to kill half a day going store hopping, it is pretty profound. Think about it we get the “same stuff” or even “better stuff” for less money and it takes less time. And so with time on hands, we have the luxury of consuming (wasting) time drinking a crafted latte at our local coffee shop while talking with friends or strangers about whatever crosses our minds.

In a sense, for those of us that prefer shopping at our desktop, our quality of life has improved without us really noticing. We have time that our parents never had. The money we consumed on gas and paying more for goods at our local retail outlet is now available to “consume” in the form of hand crafted espresso drinks.

In the pursuit of profit, the marketplace has made it easier for us to buy their stuff and have money left over to buy stuff we couldn’t afford or had time to consume in the past. Not everything is better these days, but some things are.

Capitalism is alive and well and working to make our lives easier in order to attract our money. I wonder what would happen if no one had the incentive to make our lives easier, would it happen anyway… would people still invent things, produce them, or provide convenient services.

Would it all happen at the same rate as it is happening today… most of us work in a field which helps make people’s lives easier, but would we do the same thing if we were not paid to do it? Things to ponder next time I go out for a cup of Java.