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What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

theatlantic.com

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Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#101

Post by titanomachy »

ars wrote: post #89
AlexandrB wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not [1]. But shouldn't we reach for something better? Really, I'm just upset about my own disillusionment. As a little kid I thought Silicon Valley was going to usher in a new era of technology and plenty. Something like Star Trek's utopian ideal of a society where scarcity is a thing of the past. What I see instead is the same old corporate bullshit of maximum exploitation for maximum profit. [1] http://www…

It did. Sort of. Even someone poor has a magic device in his pocket that can show almost any video ever, can talk to anyone, and give directions. People today have never been better off. A poor person today lives better than a king of old. Except that people always compare to each other. And that's never going to change.

> A poor person today lives better than a king of old.

This is dangerous bullshit. A poor person who spends their life working long hours on menial work where they have no agency is not better off than medieval nobility just because they have cheap entertainment available.

A lot of "poor people" stress about providing enough food for their families or losing their homes. Not something that nobility ever had to worry about.

A lot of people today live better than medieval kings; you and I probably do. But our society does a shitty job of distributing the bounties of technological miracles, except in superficial ways.

Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#102

Post by titanomachy »

wand3r wrote: post #57
mhneu wrote: post #14

These Amazon jobs are most useful to think about by comparison. Four decades ago, analogous jobs (manual labor, no college degree) were in the car industry: at Ford and GM. Those jobs were good middle-class jobs with good salaries. On those jobs, one could raise a family with a 40 hour work week, and do very well working 50-60 hours a week. Today, the similar jobs are in Amazon warehouses. What is different? A big on…

> Jeff Bezos is a multi-billionaire and his workers are living in near-poverty. I think a living wage is important and ideally Amazon could pay a decent wage plus benefits. That said, I absolutely hate the argument you made and it makes me cringe every time I hear it. It's apples and oranges. There is a world of difference between building an entire company that is one of the largest in the entire world and sorting b…

No one is saying that Amazon warehouse workers should become fabulously wealthy for their tiny contribution to the company's rise. Just that Amazon is fabulously successful and could afford to not treat their workers so badly.

Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#103

Post by notyourday »

matchagaucho wrote: post #69
garybro wrote: post #23

A common theme I see with these articles is how "grueling" the work is. People need some perspective on what grueling work is. I worked at a UPS hub during college, where I'd load, unload, and sort the contents of trailers. What they do seems pretty easy compared to what I did at UPS. Picking and packing orders is a lot less grueling than unloading trailers full of 60 pound paper boxes, or loading hundreds of package…

Grueling is one issue. Financial security is another. Not knowing if your manager will give you 4 or 40 hours is stressful. Amazon measures everything. Their incentive compensation plans should be rewarding employees that exceed quota with daily bonuses. One-year of tenure should not be required to qualify for basic benefits. In short, these employees need to unionize and collectively bargain.

> Amazon measures everything. Their incentive compensation plans should be rewarding employees that exceed quota with daily bonuses.

I'm guessing you have never worked under the quota system. Guess what happens when one meets a quota? He or she gets a quota increased. Guess what happens when he or she no longer meets a new quota? He or she gets fired. In a quota based system the goal of every employee is to hit the quota on a nose

Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#104

Post by titanomachy »

saosebastiao wrote: post #9

It would be convenient to think that the Amazon ops executives have this all figured out and that the numbers support their labor strategy, but after having been one of the people whose job it was to put data in front of those executives, I wouldn't trust their judgment with data at all. Their ideologies and their incompetence trap them to inferior analysis. They think their pay is good because it is higher than othe…

Interesting perspective, thanks! I had assumed that this was a deliberate strategy, but maybe it's simple incompetence. With just a touch of malice/avarice to round things out.

Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#105

Post by clebio »

mrgreenfur wrote: post #2

Most folks I know seem blissfully unaware or uninterested in these realities behind their next day delivery. Even supremely liberal folks in boston and new york seem to think that complaining that their prime delivery being a day late or poorly packed is reasonable to gripe about, totally ignoring the human cost behind such offerings.

I posted this article, and I purchase from Amazon often. I'm not blissful, nor unaware. But it's sort of all-or-none, right? Like the workers in these towns who either work for Amazon (or its contractors), or don't work at all, I can't order anything from Amazon at all without aiding this system.

What I mean is, there isn't some sort of ethical slow-lane when I go to checkout on amazon.com, right? There _is_ slow, free (non-prime) shipping, but anecdotally, that's not serviced via a separate pipeline anymore. I don't _mind_ waiting 5-8 days, I don't _complain_ about the shipping delays. But choosing free shipping also isn't any sort of boon to social justice.

I could certainly just stop shopping from amazon.com, and buy locally (though still from big box stores, often, since that's locally the only options left). But I don't harbor illusions that my conscientious abstention will register on Bezos' balance sheets.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure there's a fix. Certainly not an obvious one, nor easy. As the article discusses, cities _need_ the business, at least for the initial few years. And people _need_ jobs. Structurally, though, what are we as simultaneously consumers, citizens (voters), and people in the workforce going to do? The article discusses attempts to unionize. It discusses cities' attempts to lure Amazon business. It discusses what hard-working people with families do, and think, about the situation on the ground. It even gives responses from Amazon PR. The solutions are subtle, hard to enact, and slow to take effect.

Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#106

Post by matchagaucho »

notyourday wrote: post #103
matchagaucho wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grueling is one issue. Financial security is another. Not knowing if your manager will give you 4 or 40 hours is stressful. Amazon measures everything. Their incentive compensation plans should be rewarding employees that exceed quota with daily bonuses. One-year of tenure should not be required to qualify for basic benefits. In short, these employees need to unionize and collectively bargain.

> Amazon measures everything. Their incentive compensation plans should be rewarding employees that exceed quota with daily bonuses. I'm guessing you have never worked under the quota system. Guess what happens when one meets a quota? He or she gets a quota increased. Guess what happens when he or she no longer meets a new quota? He or she gets fired. In a quota based system the goal of every employee is to hit the q…

I've developed quota systems. It's not that dire. Under performers receive coaching.

"Regression to the mean" occurs when there are no incentives for over-performers.

Lazy management will simply raise quota without assessing downside risk (higher turnover, more injury, more sick days).

Good management will constantly adjust a balanced quota using a gaussian distribution.

Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#107

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

Clubber wrote: post #99
ars wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It did. Sort of. Even someone poor has a magic device in his pocket that can show almost any video ever, can talk to anyone, and give directions. People today have never been better off. A poor person today lives better than a king of old. Except that people always compare to each other. And that's never going to change.

>A poor person today lives better than a king of old. That is an illusion to help people with their conscience. It does sound nice, but ... The poor maybe eat better and maybe have better shelter, and certainly access to cleaner water, but they have significantly less control over their destiny. Also, kings didn't have to work and they were (usually) extremely wealthy, had servants, and could do whatever they wanted…

> Kings also didn't die from an easily treatable but ultimately unaffordable medical condition.

They certainly did die from what we would today call easily treatable conditions. Antibiotics? Vaccines? Appendicitis?

Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#108

Post by dragonwriter »

Clubber wrote: post #99
ars wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It did. Sort of. Even someone poor has a magic device in his pocket that can show almost any video ever, can talk to anyone, and give directions. People today have never been better off. A poor person today lives better than a king of old. Except that people always compare to each other. And that's never going to change.

>A poor person today lives better than a king of old. That is an illusion to help people with their conscience. It does sound nice, but ... The poor maybe eat better and maybe have better shelter, and certainly access to cleaner water, but they have significantly less control over their destiny. Also, kings didn't have to work and they were (usually) extremely wealthy, had servants, and could do whatever they wanted…

> Kings also didn't die from an easily treatable but ultimately unaffordable medical condition.

Worse, they died from medical conditions which could be survived with no treatment, because treatments with negative utility based on lore with no scientific basis were applied which the common folk would not have access to.

Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#109

Post by [deleted] »

dragonwriter wrote: post #108
Clubber wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A poor person today lives better than a king of old. That is an illusion to help people with their conscience. It does sound nice, but ... The poor maybe eat better and maybe have better shelter, and certainly access to cleaner water, but they have significantly less control over their destiny. Also, kings didn't have to work and they were (usually) extremely wealthy, had servants, and could do whatever they wanted…

> Kings also didn't die from an easily treatable but ultimately unaffordable medical condition. Worse, they died from medical conditions which could be survived with no treatment, because treatments with negative utility based on lore with no scientific basis were applied which the common folk would not have access to.

[deleted]

Re: What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

#110

Post by Clubber »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #107
Clubber wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A poor person today lives better than a king of old. That is an illusion to help people with their conscience. It does sound nice, but ... The poor maybe eat better and maybe have better shelter, and certainly access to cleaner water, but they have significantly less control over their destiny. Also, kings didn't have to work and they were (usually) extremely wealthy, had servants, and could do whatever they wanted…

> Kings also didn't die from an easily treatable but ultimately unaffordable medical condition. They certainly did die from what we would today call easily treatable conditions. Antibiotics? Vaccines? Appendicitis?

I like how you retorted to only half of the sentence.

>Kings also didn't die from an easily treatable but ultimately unaffordable medical condition.

Kings died too, man!

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