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Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?

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Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?

#211

Post by BookmarkSaver »

DSingularity wrote: post #135
untog wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Homelessness is not Amazon's problem. Not directly, no. But Amazon is based in a city that has a large homeless population. It is in the interest of their employees to see that population fall, therefore it also ought to be in Amazon's interest. > Automation is good. Do you want us to ride horses to work? Of course it is. But I see this reaction a lot - that anyone asking questions about our automated future is som…

If they refuse to answer the points we are raising by attacking us trying represent us as regressive idiots then attack them back. Make them feel like greedy pigs willing to let the world starve to make more money. Is there any doubt that if Amazon or any corporation would not hesitate to eliminate 90% of the jobs in this world if they had the means to do it cheaper with robotics/ai/cloud tech? They couldn't care les…

>Its beyond frustrating the amount of attacks you face for inquiring about the livelihoods and future of people whose jobs are replaced by AWS processes.

That is because jobs aren't a hand-out. Somehow, we still have basically full employment 200 years after society started automating away jobs. You face ridicule for bitching about jobs lost to AWS for the same reason people now ridicule Luddites from 150 years ago.

Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?

#212

Post by Terr_ »

dbingham wrote: post #159
matchbok wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homelessness is not Amazon's problem. Automation is good. Do you want us to ride horses to work? Agreed. Agreed.

Automation is only good if the benefits of said automation are shared broadly among the populace. For the time being, that is not the case. Instead the benefits are held closely by only a tiny percentage of the population, who use said automation to collect enormous power and force an increasingly large number of people to live in increasingly precarious circumstances. 80% of corporate stock is owned by a mere 1% of…

Exactly, the root of all this is the power-balance between groups of humans and how it is changing and who likes it that way and who doesn't.

Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?

#213

Post by afarrell »

randomdata wrote: post #187
lucas_membrane wrote: post #59

Large corporations often make deals with other large corporations, and they prosper. Workers used to do better when a larger percentage of them collectively bargained. But somehow, the possibility that citizens, who are represented by various local governments, would use those governments to cooperate with each other across the lines on the map sounds like science-fiction and is disparaged as far-fetched and unworkab…

> Workers used to do better when a larger percentage of them collectively bargained. What I find interesting is that the unionization rate in Canada today is more or less on-par with the peak unionization in the USA, and is one of the strongest unionized countries in the world. Yet, I constantly hear Canadian workers complain about how they are unfairly compensated compared to Americans, where unionization has practi…

Is this across industries? Or specific to software engineering?

Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?

#214

Post by bomb199 »

philwelch wrote: post #193
jknoepfler wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly don't want you riding a car into a crowded downtown. I personally walked to work in downtown Seattle (to Amazon, ironically). I'd vote for any local candidate who pushed for an aggressive pedestrian-only zone in the city with a strategy for expanding mass transit access and park and rides. The technology for affordable mass transit is almost a century old; I think incremental, sustainable progress on that…

Cars are pretty terrible, but horses are even worse, if you can imagine it. Think about all the traffic problems with cars, except the street is covered ankle-deep in manure. And you can't install catalytic converters in their butts to reduce pollution, either.

I'd like to think if our main form of transport was horses, we'd have solved this problem.

Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?

#215

Post by afarrell »

40acres wrote: post #103
s73ver_ wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Homelessness is not Amazon's problem." But it is the problem of the city. They absolutely need to keep this in mind while negotiating with Amazon, who has a reputation for driving housing prices sky high, thus exacerbating the homelessness problem. "Automation is good. Do you want us to ride horses to work?" Automation is neutral, as it does cost people jobs, not all of whom can be retrained for something else. It a…

Amazon also provides high wage workers who are taxed on their income, and who generate economic activity which can also be taxed and used by municipalities to try to solve homelessness. On net I wonder what the benefit / determent of Amazon moving to a city would have on homelessness.

Is the city does not also allow housing to be built, then all the tax money in the world won't stop the fact that all of Amazon's highly-paid workforce will out-bit existing residents for limited housing.

States need to look at the amount of office space being built and mandate that towns allow additional housing so that there are at least 3 beds per desk.

Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?

#216

Post by jogjayr »

philwelch wrote: post #193
jknoepfler wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly don't want you riding a car into a crowded downtown. I personally walked to work in downtown Seattle (to Amazon, ironically). I'd vote for any local candidate who pushed for an aggressive pedestrian-only zone in the city with a strategy for expanding mass transit access and park and rides. The technology for affordable mass transit is almost a century old; I think incremental, sustainable progress on that…

Cars are pretty terrible, but horses are even worse, if you can imagine it. Think about all the traffic problems with cars, except the street is covered ankle-deep in manure. And you can't install catalytic converters in their butts to reduce pollution, either.

No one's seriously suggesting going back to horses.

Many are advocating mass-transit or bike-friendliness.

Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?

#217

Post by bomb199 »

aeorgnoieang wrote: post #80
dumbfounder wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon workers are highly paid, thus bringing the average income up, and contributing to taxes, strengthening the housing market, and much more. That's interesting that you call it pollution. High paying tech jobs are pollution? That doesn't compute to me. Companies that compete for talent will be pissed, but for lots of others it's a huge win. The only way I see it as a "bad" thing is if you are in a small city that…

> strengthening the housing market Which is a unmitigated benefit only to some current real estate property owners and an almost-entirely unmitigated cost to everyone else.

Especially all the renters, which is almost the entire Millenial generation.

Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?

#218

Post by bomb199 »

refurb wrote: post #150
haikuginger wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stat you cite is actually 1979, but if you look at the income proportions[1] at that time relative to current by-quintile income proportions, the growth in taxation of the top quintile between 1979 and 2005 is slightly greater than linear with that income growth. [1] https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-p...

Thanks for the correction on the year. Income growth can definitely explain the increase in tax burden, but my point still stands, no? The tax burden is not shifting from the wealthy to the poor. And if you look at the bottom quintile, their tax burden has fallen, even though income continues to rise.

The wealthier are paying a lower percent of their wealth/income, it's just they make so much more than the masses it doesn't matter.

Should think of the marginal utility of their funds. If a $20,000 a year person pays $5,000 - it's much worse than a $10,000,000 paying $100,000.

Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?

#219

Post by news_to_me »

scythe wrote: post #202
news_to_me wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you understand — homelessness can be seen as an indirect effect of Amazon's presence, based on property values, not whether or not they employ the homeless. Should they be responsible for this indirect effect? Well, that's the issue at root of a lot of externalities companies produce, like environmental pollution. I'm certainly sympathetic to the idea that the government should step in and support the h…

Housing prices are rising in Seattle because it's growing. And while Amazon might be the proximal cause of Seattle's growth, the fact remains that some cities in the United States must grow in order for the economy to, you know, fulfill it's debt obligations. Seattle does not have worse homelessness than other cities which are growing at the same rate, although cities with a population decline tend to have a surplus…

I think we pretty much agree, and I don't think it's fair to blame Amazon more than any other company, proportional to their effect on the community. I'm just saying, there is an effect there, from Amazon and other business, and the market itself isn't equipped to naturally house the homeless in these circumstances. Without government intervention, the homeless population will grow without any support.

A cynic could argue that the market is operating well in this case because the homeless don't contribute much economically — but I try not to go to the same bars as those people.

Re: Why Don’t the 20 Cities on Amazon's HQ2 Shortlist Collectively Bargain?

#220

Post by jogjayr »

stretchwithme wrote: post #133
tinymollusk wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think automation has clearly been a net good over the past 200 years. I agree that it does have a cost, and perhaps the compound interest (environmentally) will come due very soon. But it's hard for me to see that it's neutral, given how much better our standard of living is compared to pre-industrial revolution. Perhaps you meant to say that automation also has negatives? In which case, I apologize if I sounded ha…

We would not even understand environmental pollution without automation. You can't send a human to space with binoculars to do a satellite's job, for example.

We also wouldn't have very much environmental pollution without automation. Humanity wouldn't have left much of a permanent mark on the Earth if we had gone extinct before industrialization.

Barring the desertification of the Fertile Crescent (arguably natural climate change had a hand too) and the extinction of the American and Australian megafauna, both of which are relatively insignificant in geological time, we simply didn't have the means to harm the environment very much.

Compared to that, industrialization has had side-effects that will endure for millions of years: the upending of the carbon and nitrogen cycles, and the addition of plastics and radiation. Aliens could come to the Earth 20 million years after we go extinct, and still be able to find traces of us.

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