I went without Prime for >1 year. I just online shopped directly from manufacturer if I can and paid shipping if free shipping not available. I minimized use of amazon only if I had $35 in my cart for the free shipping.

However, I know I am privileged enough to do so.

I honestly would encourage everyone not to have Prime though. Its like what $150+ now for a year? Save that money and wait until your cart is $35. If you cannot wait, you can pay for shipping (assuming $7) x20+ times before you make up price of that $150 for Prime.

I haven't used Amazon in over 5 years now. Unless you've got some truly critical equipment that is only available through their platform, then it's just a matter of buying from other sources, or in most cases, not at all.

I just think back to the 90s, where I wasn't able to get literally anything I wanted unless I went to a big city. Somehow I survived. I was ever happy sometimes, if you can believe it :p

One of the reasons I love my town is there is a great, thriving small business culture. It's relatively easy to shop local for a lot of things.

That said, it can be expensive, and there are certainly things it's not easy to find locally, so sometimes I do, unfortunately, turn to Amazon. But I try to minimize it.

I am on the outskirts of nowhere and disabled. All my options are big chains. I wish they weren’t – my small town is now all hair salons, Tai Quan Do studios, pubs, florists, and yard or antique shops. No local shops here carry life supplies (food, toiletries , drinks, medicine) except the gas station (in very small quantities).

Think of it as supporting your neighbors.

There is value in keeping money within your own community, instead of giving all the profit to Bezos.

So we did exactly this when we dropped our Prime membership a few years ago as part of working against Amazon building a massive warehouse in our fully residential borough (we won if anyone was wondering, they chose not to continue fighting it in court). We shop mostly in store at Target and other brick and mortar stores. We will also shop online still, but almost always directly from the manufacturer. This usually means paying shipping, but I figure our UPS driver and mail person need a paycheck too so we are fine with that. We will occasionally use Amazon for things that are just hard to find elsewhere but only order once our cart is in the free shipping price range. It turns out, Amazon is not only a shit company the uses dark patterns to push a mostly superfluous subscription, most things we buy are cheaper elsewhere. Combined with not buying nearly as much random crap, we have saved a butt load since quitting Amazon.