61–70 of 113 posts
"Jeff Bezos is obscenely rich, and in any moral society, he would not have that much money." There's the rub. Buried near the bottom. The guy thinks people should not be allowed to be too rich.
This article indicts Amazon of the following cruelties: - Expects workers to work compensated overtime during a busy period - Tracks worker performance - Expects people to take only their scheduled breaks, and writes them up if they're MIA for 30+ minutes - Requires workers to show up and work during their scheduled work hours The humanity! And this poor guy, working a non-specialized manager position attainable with…
Don't forget that this time of year is now ruined for this manager. But not enough to stop them from shopping on Amazon during Black Friday and contributing to those human costs. "I boycott Prime Day, but I do shop on Amazon during Black Friday. I feel bad about it, but at the same time, I don’t think me not shopping will get Amazon to change its practices."
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How could you possibly come to that conclusion? > The military is known for being a bastion of sexism, but I had a worse experience at Amazon. > . . . the managers do not get any sort of break or lunch. Most of us just never ate. Everyone is on their feet for 12 hours a day. > Associates got a 30-minute lunch break, two 15-minute breaks, and an additional 15 minutes of “time off tasks.” Working 12 hours per day with…
Will you be more specific on the moral aspect here? Because from the article, it seems like the individuals working in the warehouse are compensated at a rate they agreed to (not being cheated of wages), are safe (no unsafe work practices are revealed here), and are given clear guidelines about their work tasks and standards (not being fired for discriminatory reasons). I don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouth, so…
>> The former Amazon employee, a US Air Force veteran, requested anonymity for fear of professional repercussions....I was an area manager, inside a new facility that had about 1,000 associates. I oversaw the packers, managing about 55 associates. My salary was $80,000...I said I wouldn’t accept anything less, since I had a master’s. Oh yeah, anonymous. People want their packages the next day or before Christmas. Ama…
There isn't a market solution for every problem. Labor rights abuses are rampant in apparel manufacturing. Are those problems "not serious" enough because people continue to pursue employment there?
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Here's the crappy thing. We should pay you more to teach middle school math if you're a remarkably better teacher than the rest. In high school some of my favourite teachers were there mostly as a semi-retirement job. My favourite was a retired Intel architect who taught grade 10 electrical engineering. I would have been spoiled rotten if we were able to consistently attract those kinds of teachers.
It's pretty well agreed on HN that you get what you pay for, and anyone who complains about being unable to hire good developers simply just isn't compensating well enough. Why on earth would you not want to pay a better qualified teacher more? You must think that teaching is easy because the math is not complicated, yet most of the people who say this would loathe the idea of teaching for a living.
Teaching something to somebody requires very specalized skills. And frankly most teachers in k-12 seem to lack this -- at least when. I went to school.
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Can you point to many examples of non-capitalist societies where conditions are better for most people than in the United States? From my perspective, capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other economic system in history. By what metric has it “failed” ? Because the bottom few percent live in shitty conditions? Before capitalism, the bottom 90% of people were illiterate subsistence farmers.
The problem lies in the definition of "capitalist". Certainly there are numerous countries that by a variety of metrics have a better quality of life than the US (longer life expectancy, fewer percentage impoverished, smaller degree of economic inequality, and so on). The Scandinavian countries are the classic example, but most of Western Europe, Australia, Japan, are as well. Capitalism vs socialism is a continuum,…
We could use more public spending on safety nets in the US. That has nothing to do with whether “capitalism has failed”.
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You're assuming some data hasn't been delicately fudged in order to anonymize the source. Maybe he worked there between August 2016 and September 2017. Maybe is a Navy, not AF veteran. Maybe he isn't a he at all. Who knows?
Isn't that worse than just not revealing personal information at all? Fudging dates could be quite bad in particular if it were to become apparent that policy changes were made after the supposed time period. I don't find that the military information was valuable, it could've easily been left out, and the veteran question the author posed could have still been asked if it were rephrased.
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Capitalism has failed.
Can you point to many examples of non-capitalist societies where conditions are better for most people than in the United States? From my perspective, capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other economic system in history. By what metric has it “failed” ? Because the bottom few percent live in shitty conditions? Before capitalism, the bottom 90% of people were illiterate subsistence farmers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How could you possibly come to that conclusion? > The military is known for being a bastion of sexism, but I had a worse experience at Amazon. > . . . the managers do not get any sort of break or lunch. Most of us just never ate. Everyone is on their feet for 12 hours a day. > Associates got a 30-minute lunch break, two 15-minute breaks, and an additional 15 minutes of “time off tasks.” Working 12 hours per day with…
Will you be more specific on the moral aspect here? Because from the article, it seems like the individuals working in the warehouse are compensated at a rate they agreed to (not being cheated of wages), are safe (no unsafe work practices are revealed here), and are given clear guidelines about their work tasks and standards (not being fired for discriminatory reasons). I don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouth, so…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you point to many examples of non-capitalist societies where conditions are better for most people than in the United States? From my perspective, capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other economic system in history. By what metric has it “failed” ? Because the bottom few percent live in shitty conditions? Before capitalism, the bottom 90% of people were illiterate subsistence farmers.
Cuba vs Haiti