A few months back I wrote a letter to the editor decrying the lack of businesses in two prime South Eugene locations, 25th and Willamette, and the new Amazon corner on Hilyard and 32nd. Well, guess what? The spaces are still vacant. Is there a more terrible word than “vacant?”

I’ve spent too much time thinking about this, but I finally came up with something: We are shopping against our own interests. We’ve heard of voting against our own interests. We know how easy it is to be emotionally swayed by an issue or to compartmentalize issues and come up with a vote, but have we stopped to think about what we’re doing with our shopping? 

As a fulltime knee-jerk liberal’s liberal, even I shop Amazon, and it’s the “Prime”  culprit (get it?) but not the only. Ultimately we’re to blame. It’s capitalism; if we didn’t shop Amazon, it would die.

Why do we buy almost all of our clothes, shoes and stuff online? Why are we letting a stranger pick our food for us from online stores?  

The answer is why those businesses are vacant, and will remain vacant. Extrapolate out to the future. 

Yikes.

Archie Hering

Eugene