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Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#351

Post by anigbrowl »

rayiner wrote: post #288
anigbrowl wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Focusing at the bottom end, a 20% wealth hit is a really big problem for poor people. And just because they're well-off compared to other countries or previous periods in history is meaningless if they have solvency issues in the present. Being flat broke in our advanced technological society is a serious hardship and can not be measured in simplistic absolutes.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#352

Post by scarejunba »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #248
influx wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is paying above minimum wage already. What do you suggest they should be paid?

This is reminding me of a discussion about Facebook's content enforcement, where I still don't understand the argument: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20222594 . Pressuring people to miss bathroom breaks is wrong, I'd agree - I'm all for that being legally punishable if it isn't already. But the argument gets to a point where people are simply saying that the job inherently sucks anyway, and the people who are…

I hate saying this, but it comes from a place of privilege. If you've never not had a job, you think just banning bad jobs will mean everyone has a good job. If you've been unemployed, you know you'd rather have a job and have it reformed through continuous work than be unemployed.

The problem, though, is that there are people who have never not had jobs who nonetheless have opinions on what the baseline job should be. Since they've never had to choose between food and a shitty job, they assume that they can solve the problem by just mandating jobs not be shitty.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#353

Post by scarejunba »

sneak wrote: post #199
darkpuma wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in your system, if I pay an employee to climb an unsafe ladder, OSHA has no right to slap me for that because the employee consented? That sounds awful. There would be many preventable deaths and injuries under a system that neuters OSHA; what you're proposing is deeply immoral.

The employee, and no one else, gets to decide what they want for their body. The fact is, OSHA has no moral basis to override or overrule that human being’s own decisions for their own body. What is deeply immoral is third parties using sticks and firearms to overrule that person’s choices. Their body, their choice.

This is true but in the absence of a method to internalize externalities it is worse to subsidize those who can maximally externalize their costs. I don't think that the inadequate legal system that allows people to externalize their costs to me is a sufficient deterrent to violations of the no harm principle.

Any system that does not internalize costs explicitly subsidizes those actions that greatest externalize. I'm not good with that. It's not a free market. You don't get to sell my property rights just because the law isn't good enough to recognize that which is inherently mine.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#354

Post by dingo_bat »

mikeash wrote: post #255
fuzz4lyfe wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you eat out you can probably afford to tip better, why don't you? Do you hate restaurant workers?

I try to tip well. If you think I should tip better, make your case. If I disagree, I’ll make my case. I can guarantee you that if that happens, my argument won’t be that I’m tipping the market rate.

I'm sure you make more than $100k a year. Why don't you use it all to tip your waiters?

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#355

Post by cyphar »

vsl wrote: post #341
chasontherobot wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a citation for this? Tokyo has a high minimum wage (and low enough unemployment that most employers have to pay more than minimum wage), but I've yet to see an automated kiosk here. Though in support of your point, when I went to Korea last year there was a large number of automated kiosks, and I know the minimum wage there is fairly high as well. So, Japan's lack of those kiosks may have to do with a pre…

Isn’t Japan famous for manning a lot of jobs, culturally? Around here (Central Europe, Austria, Germany, Italy too IIRC) I don’t see non-kiosk McDonalds anymore, as they went through the kiosk upgrade in the past few years. Noticeably fewer employees.

It takes a long time to develop and plan a rollout of those kinds of automated kiosks for large companies. They've clearly been planning such a rollout for many years. The fact it's coincided with a lot of discussion of minimum wage increases is either a complete coincidence or an example of correlation not implying causation -- mass layoffs usually result in discussions about labour laws.

I would argue that the job losses to automation would've happened anyway without any discussion of wage increases -- kiosks are cheaper than even below-living-wage workers.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#356

Post by alexgmcm »

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…

Is the North of Mexico that much poorer though?

I mean Mexico is quite wealthy compared to the rest of Latin America and the North of Mexico includes many of the wealthier areas.

It's not the same building a warehouse in Nuevo Leon as in Chiapas.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#358

Post by alexgmcm »

15engineer wrote: post #317

Reading through these comments I find myself rather dazed at all of the complaints regarding $15 an hour salaries, I'm a software engineer with 6 years of experience in a first world country and I make less than that before taxes.

It depends on the cost of living though.

I earn around that in Western Europe but it's still a pretty good job for Spain and I have no doubt I live in better conditions than the Americans working for $15 an hour, which is really what matters.

Re: Amazon workers launch protests on Prime Day

#360

Post by 15engineer »

alexgmcm wrote: post #358
15engineer wrote: post #317

Reading through these comments I find myself rather dazed at all of the complaints regarding $15 an hour salaries, I'm a software engineer with 6 years of experience in a first world country and I make less than that before taxes.

It depends on the cost of living though. I earn around that in Western Europe but it's still a pretty good job for Spain and I have no doubt I live in better conditions than the Americans working for $15 an hour, which is really what matters.

You're right it does depend on cost of living, but I live in a city/country (Hong Kong) with one of the highest costs of living in the world[1].

[1] https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/country/ranking

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