Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#281

Post by WengerPen » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 1:21 AM UTC

xtracto wrote: post #70

Between this and the Mechanical Turk article I read earlier today, I am left thinking about these type of jobs. There is this "chasm" of things that machines still cannot but that are repetitive and boring for humans, for which the value to human-effort ratio is small. I foresee that in the following 10 years, we will be seeing more and more of these types of works. Now, the interesting thing about some of these jobs…

Well, in theory a company like these can create robots that are operated from anywhere in the world. In that case, the operator job may be outsourced as it may be cheaper and less of a hassle than to have a person in X country getting paid more, complaining and going on strike.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#282

Post by mikeash » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 1:23 AM UTC

harryh wrote: post #277

mikeash wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet some retailers make tons of profit. If it were so easy to swoop in and defeat the top dog with lower prices, how is Amazon still dominating?

As I said before: "This competition has pushed profit margins into the single digits" This is not tons of profit. Your assertion is incorrect.

It’s more than enough to pay their warehouse workers substantially better without making any changes to their prices.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#283

Post by blackoil » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 1:26 AM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #266

fuzz4lyfe wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Amazon does not have to automate away jobs instead of giving workers fairer conditions and wages. I'm Amazons competitor, I automate away the jobs and pay the lowest wages possible. Now my goods are cheaper than Amazons and you buy from me instead.

Why don’t you do that now? Amazon takes in billions in profit, meaning that their prices are substantially higher than they could be. Why aren’t you (or some other competitor) taking advantage of this? It’s funny how this sort of argument never comes up in the context of taking profits.

Amazon profit from non AWS biz is in small billions and less, while it may be large in absolute, it is not high as percentage of revenue or by employee. Only way to beat Amazon in profit is have ridiculously high efficiency which is very difficult, or have a different business model which is normally a niche and will not be amazon scale.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#284

Post by jerf » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 1:26 AM UTC

khawkins wrote: post #215

jerf wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jeff's net worth isn't in cash. It's going to be affected much more strangely than your analysis suggests. If Amazon has to raise its labor costs that much, Wall Street will react in a way that is difficult to predict the magnitude, but easy to predict the direction. Normally I'd suggest analyzing that 13.2B in terms of the profits of the company, which for instance last Jan 2019 was ~$3 billion, which if projected o…

Totally fair analysis and I don't disagree at all. I will add, however, that there are a few points that detract from this take. First of all, when a company aggressively invests in hard capital, innovation, or advertising, they're building eventual value for the company and stock which improves the wealth of shareholders in the long run but rarely helps the entry-level employees in either the short run or long run.…

A lot of this is why I didn't say it wouldn't affect Jeff at all, or try to predict the particular impact, but just that it would be... strange. Even if you could objectively analyze the full business picture, nobody could fully analyze exactly how Wall Street would react; the ability to do that would imply the ability to get very rich on Wall Street very quickly.

I forget where it was, but I also recently read an article musing on the idea that in the modern era we seem to have a new threat emerging where companies establish very, very firm footholds in some particular industry, and then use that to leverage their way into other industries because they can literally out-resource the entire competitor base of that industry. In some sense, in theory this has been possible for a long time, and we've had things like Samsung which are massive conglomerates, so it's not a new problem in quality, but the quantity of money that can be brought to bear this way in the 21st century may still make this a new sort of problem for trust busters to keep their eyes on.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#285

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 1:27 AM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #282

harryh wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said before: "This competition has pushed profit margins into the single digits" This is not tons of profit. Your assertion is incorrect.

It’s more than enough to pay their warehouse workers substantially better without making any changes to their prices.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#286

Post by harryh » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 1:29 AM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #282

harryh wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said before: "This competition has pushed profit margins into the single digits" This is not tons of profit. Your assertion is incorrect.

It’s more than enough to pay their warehouse workers substantially better without making any changes to their prices.

I do not believe that this is true.

Again, profit margins for this sort of work are tiny. Adding significant wage costs would almost certainly consume a huge percentage of profits at which point the suppliers of capital will invest their money elsewhere.

If you are going to make such a strong claim, you probably need to back it up with data.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#287

Post by mikeash » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 1:32 AM UTC

harryh wrote: post #286

mikeash wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s more than enough to pay their warehouse workers substantially better without making any changes to their prices.

I do not believe that this is true. Again, profit margins for this sort of work are tiny. Adding significant wage costs would almost certainly consume a huge percentage of profits at which point the suppliers of capital will invest their money elsewhere. If you are going to make such a strong claim, you probably need to back it up with data.

Google Amazon profit ($11 billion and change last year), workforce size (650,000ish) and divide. That gives you a lower bound for the worst case where all Amazon employees are warehouse workers.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#288

Post by rayiner » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 1:33 AM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #272

rayiner wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That bothers you...think about that. India went through a socialist phase where for decades people “emphasize[d] with the poor” and implemented public policy. And where did that lead? Decades of economic malaise. In 1991, the World Bank and IMF required economic liberalization as part of a bail out, and starting in 2000 growth accelerated dramatically, lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. As someo…

Oh dear no. Capitalism is a miracle for people who are on the winning side, of the equation, it's awful for people who are not and are mostly trapped on the wrong side of that divide. As environmental degradation encroaches, that latter group will gradually swallow more and more people. It's not a matter of empathy vs rationality as you suggest, but of under what conditions empathic strategies are efficient and self-…

Capitalism has been a miracle for everyone, not just a few. It’s true that inequality has increased over the last 30 years: https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/bangladesh/income-distribut.... The income share of the top 10% has grown from 22% to 28%. And the share of the bottom 20% has dropped from 10% to 8%. But 8% of a number that’s 6x bigger is way better than 10% of a number that’s 1/6 the size.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#289

Post by jodrellblank » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 1:36 AM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #175

wutbrodo wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think a mobile app developer would be too difficult to explain to someone from the 80s: they already understood the concept of computer programmers and software, and "everyone has a pocket computer" existed for decades in science fiction by that time. A better analogy would be explaining something like social media consultants (or for that matter, social media influencers). Hell, _I_ still don't understand th…

True, but even a keyboardless PC in your pocket would have been hard to comprehend, as you would have to explain everything from touch LCD screens to the internet. Also talk about online-only businesses or even drop shipping. In 1989 you didn't even have the internet, much less anyone purchasing things online. There are catalog analogies, but the concepts are so foreign it makes it difficult to visualize 30 years fro…

even a keyboardless PC in your pocket would have been hard to comprehend

Given there were two pocket sized PCs released in 1989 - the Poqet PC and Atari Portfolio, that seems unlikely, except in a "the future is here but not evenly distributed" sense. "How would you use one without a keyboard?" "You'd touch the screen directly" "oh, ok".

But even then, LCD pocket calculators were common by 1989. Wearable computing had been around since 1981 (Steve Mann) for anyone following tech developments. Seiko had released a wearable computer watch in 1984.

In 1989 you didn't even have the internet, much less anyone purchasing things online

But you had telephone ordering. And you could have had fax ordering. Back to the Future 2 came out in 1989 and they were predicting a future world of 2015, which included a kind of tablet computer, head mounted displays, flat-screens, implicit voice recognition[3]. OK it's not PCs, smartphones or the internet but it's enough that a blockbuster Hollywood movie expected people to understand "pay by putting your thumb on this portable device", and not find it "hard to comprehend".

(Terminator was from 1984 and that was a mobile, keyboardless computer, in a sense).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poqet_PC [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Portfolio [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future_Part_II#Dep...

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#290

Post by harryh » Tue, Jul 16, 2019, 1:37 AM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #287

harryh wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not believe that this is true. Again, profit margins for this sort of work are tiny. Adding significant wage costs would almost certainly consume a huge percentage of profits at which point the suppliers of capital will invest their money elsewhere. If you are going to make such a strong claim, you probably need to back it up with data.

Google Amazon profit ($11 billion and change last year), workforce size (650,000ish) and divide. That gives you a lower bound for the worst case where all Amazon employees are warehouse workers.

Amazon earns a lot of money from quite a few things that have nothing to do with warehouse workers. In particular I have read that half their profits come from AWS. I don't think that is enough data to support your claim.

A better set of numbers to look at might be Walmarts (more of a pure retail company). They make maybe 10B in profit per year (it varies a little) with 2M workers. That's $5,000 per worker which isn't much wiggle room.