The most salient and lasting reason to not support Amazon is that it weakens your community.

The virtue of commerce is that it brings you in contact with your fellow citizens. The rewarding nature of these exchanges cannot be felt by proxy. On the day Bari Weiss’ book “How to Fight Anti-Semitism” was published, her mom and two of her sisters came into Classic Lines bookstore and bought dozens of copies. They took pictures of the sign we had in the window with evident pride. It was a moment that could not have happened online; it required the power and presence of people.

Being embedded in a community is the single most reliable indicator of personal happiness. The profound aloneness of one-click shopping is the antithesis of this ideal.

As voluntary associations have been diminishing and reported levels of loneliness are the highest they’ve ever been, small businesses play a critical role in our communities. Shopping is the primary form of social interaction for many of us, and “the sum of such casual, public contact at a local level — most of it fortuitous, most of it associated with errands,” author Jane Jacobs wrote, “is a web of public respect and trust, and a resource in time of personal or neighborhood need.”

Amazon has no local loyalties as such. Its model — commerce decoupled from human interaction and place — should be resisted not least because it requires us to be constantly looking at, and coming back to, our screens, directing us away from one another.

“Amazon isn’t happening to the book business. The future is happening to the book business,” CEO and founder Jeff Bezos said, failing to mention how his company gained its position by using its size and clout and public subsidies and tax abatements to weaken competitors and shake down publishers.

Hundreds of thousands of retail jobs across the country have disappeared as Amazon has crushed smaller rivals, including young companies which are the primary source of job creation in the economy. The number of startups launched annually has fallen by nearly half since the 1970s, while small and medium-sized businesses give way to larger enterprises.

This trend of corporate consolidation and bigness coincides with stagnant wages and record levels of income inequality. And what’s going to happen to Amazon’s jobs — 40% of its warehouse workers are temporary already — as the company creates robots to work in its fulfillment centers and develops driverless cars and unmanned drones to deliver its packages?

Let’s not forget the fecundity of our money. By supporting local businesses we become stakeholders in their success and our dollars stay here. Bezos overlooked one variable in his equation: people who want to determine the future and character of their communities.

In the past decade, the number of independent bookstores in the U.S. has grown by more than 50%. This resurgence is powered by local feeling and sentiment, by people who want to put the human back in the commercial exchange.

“All true living is face to face,” the great Albert Schweitzer wrote. These are the demands of community. Richer possibilities exist in spaces with other people. Trust develops from this daily exchange. The question is not what we gain by the speed and convenience of Amazon, it’s what we lose — chance encounters, running into friends, serendipity. These experiences remind us that what we are seeking — community and connection — is already here.

Timothy Lydon is a writer and bookseller at Classic Lines Bookstore in Squirrel Hill.

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