Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 511 posts

Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

#371

Post by CodeMage »

mft_ wrote: post #112
CodeMage wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, and with good reasons. Before you wrote your comment, did you stop to think why people work inside Amazon's warehouses if the working conditions are so oppressive? It's because the alternatives are still worse. And now they'll lose those jobs and have to face those alternatives. Of course those of us who perceive this as an injustice will complain. The complaint is not directed at Amazon only, it's at the…

Can I just clarify: you're saying that Amazon, despite offering jobs which are (apparently) less bad than other alternatives, are participating in systemic oppression of the working class? In your view, what should Amazon do to not systemically oppress the working class?

Yes, I am saying precisely that. The key word here is "systemic". It doesn't mean that "Amazon is systemically oppressing the working class", as you put it in your second question. It means that Amazon participates in a larger system that oppresses the working class. It follows that Amazon cannot, on its own, completely eliminate that oppression. That, however, does not mean that there's nothing Amazon can do to make things better.

Others in this thread have already given a few examples and explanations of what is wrong with those jobs, as they are now. Much has also been written and reported about it. All in all, there's not much I feel the need to add to that.

Instead, I would like to point out that systemic oppression that is tightly entangled with economy is not a new thing that Amazon invented and that humanity is facing all of a sudden. A few examples would be child labor, sex tourism and drug cultivation. We all want to get rid of those, but history has shown that trying to do so in the most direct way possible only makes things worse. Nobody's arguing that we should stop trying, just that the solution is not as straightforward as most people imagine.

Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

#373

Post by wlesieutre »

wlesieutre wrote: post #123
Ajedi32 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And from there?

Launched in to space for Bezos's Scrooge McDuck gold pool on his moon colony. But don't worry, nobody needs to get paid for this. The rockets will be built by robots, and the robots will be built by more robots.

This may come across as a total joke, so I should clarify.

Do I really think Bezos will do this? No.

Would I be surprised if he did? Also no.

Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

#374

Post by gridlockd »

ryandrake wrote: post #227
driverdan wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI supporters always seem to forget that the money has to come from somewhere.

Oh woe! Where in the world will we find all this money? There is such a shortage of money in the country! San Francisco was recently reported to have 1 billionaire for every 11,600 residents [1]. Maybe we should start looking there. 1: https://m.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/billionaires-San-Franci...

Yeah, you should look up how many billionaires there are and how much money they have, not just in the US, but in the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billionaire

The answer? 2,754 people with a combined $9.2 trillion to their name.

In other words, half of US GDP, or one and a half years of UBI as proposed here. That assumes of course all the billionaires in the world can be "convinced" to give up all of their wealth for UBI in the US.

Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

#375

Post by CodeMage »

ekianjo wrote: post #186
CodeMage wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> twice the speed = twice less developers in a blunt way Except that's not how that works. Increasing the productivity of a job does not eliminate it. A job is eliminated when it's no longer necessary. Unless you live in a parallel dimension, we're both in the world where there's more and more software development being done every day. Twice the speed results in twice the output, not half the developers.

> Increasing the productivity of a job does not eliminate it. Of course it does. Not on an individual level, but if suddenly one employee can do three times more work, there is no need to recruit 2 more full time jobs to address the increasing needs. So on the whole, productivity will destroy jobs, but the good news is that the additional returns will create other jobs in other areas.

That's just a disingenuous distortion of semantics. You're deliberately ignoring the key difference between skill-based, white-collar jobs and unskilled, blue-collar jobs. The former are not "destroyed" by productivity, as you put it. They change what the workers have to do, but the workers are, for the most part, able to adapt.

None of the advances in software development have eliminated software development. Hell, there are still job openings for COBOL developers. CI hasn't resulted in a whole swaths of people suddenly out of work because they were running tests by hand and now there's nothing else they can do.

Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

#376

Post by pathseeker »

nerdponx wrote: post #327
o_p wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>machines bring lower prices Do you have any source about this? If the costumer is already willing to pay a price there would be no point in lowering the price just because you automated the process. Or better said, theres no point in investing in machines if your profit margin is not going to get wider.

It's worth expanding on this. Because I think it gets lost in the rhetoric, whether deliberately or by accident. A profit-maximizing firm sets prices that maximize its expected profit. This seems tautological, but it's important and I think it's implications aren't appreciated. If your prices are already beating the competition, and you already have a solid reputation for low prices, there is no incentive to continue…

Right, but amazon isn't known for low prices nor is it a monopoly. This will allow them to lower prices and become known for the lowest prices while still preserving their margin (if that's the market they want to target).

Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

#377

Post by abakker »

tomc1985 wrote: post #365
abakker wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth inequality is because capitalism. We collectively permit a very large share of wealth to return to owners of capital. Frequently, this is concentrated because of a variety of financial realities (e.g. large amounts of liquid collateral make it easier to gain leverage, which can increase returns, etc.). OTOH, this return to capital has made the retirement funds and investments of many people's pensions possible…

I'll agree that individual pension-holders and retirement-account holders create something of a perverse incentive, since decisionmaking about capital markets generally improves them less than they think and incentivizes their demise, but how many private-sector jobs nowadays even offer a pension? I imagine the pensioners' argument will hold less and less weight going forward as these populations retire and die off.…

Agree that there are fewer pensions, however, I think the incentives for rent seeking in 401Ks are still quite strong, and the 401K is quite common for professional jobs.

Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

#378

Post by gcmeplz »

nitrogen wrote: post #361
andrewmutz wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason that this tends to lower prices for consumers is that these innovations rarely stay confined to the companies that invent them. If this lowers costs for amazon to fulfill orders, then these techniques tend to get adopted by their competitors. And once adopted by competitors, when everyone's margins have increased, these companies do compete on price. This process doesn't happen immediately but it does happ…

Who are Amazon's most likely competitors?

Walmart, alibaba, jet.com, Target, and ebay all spring to mind

Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

#379

Post by pkaye »

gdy wrote: post #369
dzmien wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for Amazon in what was then a brand new warehouse for a few months in 2015. I worked 10 hour shifts, from 20:00 to 07:00 (the extra hour was for lunch and breaks). My job was picking orders. It seemed easy at first (and it was, but mentally, not so much). All I had to do was stand in one place while robots brought me pod after endless pod of products. There was nothing to it, and that was the problem. The po…

"And for $13.75 an hour, it definitely isn't worth it." A billion of people around the world would be happy to work with that hourly rate.

Not at the US cost of living. Nor would those billions of people be paid a that rate if their cost of living is lower than the US.

Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs

#380

Post by nerdponx »

pathseeker wrote: post #376
nerdponx wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth expanding on this. Because I think it gets lost in the rhetoric, whether deliberately or by accident. A profit-maximizing firm sets prices that maximize its expected profit. This seems tautological, but it's important and I think it's implications aren't appreciated. If your prices are already beating the competition, and you already have a solid reputation for low prices, there is no incentive to continue…

Right, but amazon isn't known for low prices nor is it a monopoly. This will allow them to lower prices and become known for the lowest prices while still preserving their margin (if that's the market they want to target).

They aren't known for low prices? They are known for having the same prices as everyone else, with free or cheaper shipping, meaning that effectively the price is lower.

And no, I'm not implying that they are a monopoly.

Post reply on HN