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I feel like im talking to the borg

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Re: I feel like im talking to the borg

#351

Post by manigandham »

laughinghan wrote: post #348
manigandham wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't seem that way, it is that way. If you have to muddy the definition to make it fit then it's not very practical. I sense your particular context being a class of people who have power through ownership of means. My point is that ownership is available to anyone, either by buying shares (fine if you say that's difficult) OR by starting their own business (literally minutes away on the internet). If anyone ca…

> If you have to muddy the definition to make it fit They're not muddying the definition. You're ignoring part of the definition. Everyone has been consistent about what the definition is, and you have consistently pretended that part of the definition isn't there.

Can you please put that part that I'm ignoring in a single sentence? Is it "primary activity is using capital to gain income, versus working for pay"?

Re: I feel like im talking to the borg

#352

Post by mindslight »

dragonwriter wrote: post #290
username90 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The cynic in me thinks, if unions were such a bad thing, why wouldn't the owners let them form, burn the employees, and decertify? Because unions gets more powerful than any company and can leverage said power against both workers and employers. Lets take SAG-AFTRA as an example, a union many here at HN says the software industry should mimic. Their contracts with their workers states that the workers are not allow…

> Why would workers not just stop being in the union, since it costs $3k to join and 2% of your salary to stay? Because the entire workforce at a union shop has to quit at once, at the same time the shop has to decide that they are not a union shop any longer. Or a majority has to elect new leadership in the union who will replace the problematic rules. Or a majority (either of the whole membership or of workers in a…

You could write the exact same comment about USG, and yet here we are...

"The Market" (or however you want to think about it) is not perfectly efficient - if it were, there would never have been any motivation to form unions because every employee's requirements would already be perfectly reflected in the companies they chose to work for. Rather, sluggish network effects and other non-invisible-hand structures dominate immediate results.

All power tends to concentrate. When it gets large enough, it attracts those who seek and hold power for their own ends rather than any benevolently stated goals. Your scenarios are straightforwardly mitigated by union leadership directly appeasing the leaders of such movements, the same way monopolist companies buy out possible competitors to keep a stranglehold - the creation rate of competition is itself limited.

I don't know too many specifics about SAG-AFTRA itself, but its hold over the entire industry is a good indicator that it is indeed too large. Its size implies politicking on the order of at least a city government. Conversely, that size may also be the minimum necessary to engage in collective bargaining across different production companies, and so any general top-down reform is a bit hazy. My only direct experience with this is seeing casual SAG actors having to do a bunch of extra paperwork to participate in a strictly non-profit hobby short film production. It seemed quite ridiculous and onerous, until I thought about the neighboring gradient of low-budget for-profit film production.

Re: I feel like im talking to the borg

#353

Post by laughinghan »

decoyworker wrote: post #162
leftyted wrote: post #44

I doubt these are bots. One of them says: > I don't get compensated per tweet. I get paid $15/hr whether I am answering tweets or out on the floor stowing. I do this 2 days a week and 2 days a week I stow. While I think it's weird that Amazon is doing this, I also doubt that the warehouse jobs are bad jobs. I've done manual labor for less than $15/hr and I'd much rather have a job like that than, say, a job in a rest…

I'm going to keep asking the same question and resort to ad hominem attacks until I get the answer that I am looking for!

"really like? cause your workers are liars?" is not an ad hominem attack, it's contradicting you by pointing to evidence. Eyewitness testimony, by your workers contradicting you, is evidence.

Re: I feel like im talking to the borg

#354

Post by whalabi »

duxup wrote: post #125

I feel like this is twitter in a nutshell, and that goes for everyone involved. The very first response is "eally like? cause your workers are liars?" There we go, now the entire conversation is everything or nothing, you're either with them or against them. Then it's off into personal attacks and arguments about followers and etc. Nobody is talking to each other in any of that. They're just posting for everyone else…

I don't think I agree with you.

The tweet from Amazon she was replying to said "come see what our warehouses are really like" - strongly implying that the workers who complained are dishonest - not misinformed, they work there. So, dishonest.

So her response was perfectly reasonable imo.

Re: I feel like im talking to the borg

#355

Post by tveita »

citilife wrote: post #199

Frankly, I find it appalling that this person is being aggressive towards the people she is supposidly trying to "help". This isn't a "let's fight the man" kind of mentality, but a "You're not getting what you deserve, and I'll tell you what you need" kind of mentality - quite pretentious". Having worked for a far lower minimum wage at 10 hours a day, I can understand Amazon employees plight. I also know two people w…

It looks to me like a wall of talking points designed to shut down criticism, weirdly speaking in unison across multiple accounts. And even assuming, against appearances, that these are real workers, they are certainly not free to say what they want. This is Amazon's corporate voice, it can't possibly represent "the people she is supposidly trying to "help", and it's weird to me that people are conflating them.

> I think really only the employees should have a voice here.

Then let's give them a soap box free from the threat of repercussion and hear what they have to say. Maybe from an union representative?

Re: I feel like im talking to the borg

#356

Post by PHL4_Austin »

justusthane wrote: post #278
runn1ng wrote: post #115

The “ambassadors” are so bad it’s embarrassing. Which leads me to think they are not actually PR professionals (they would actually not talk in such a robotic way), but really low level employees that are paid extra to talk good on social media, and are repeating from some officially sanctioned book of “what you should and shouldn’t say” they don’t sound like Borg, they sound like McDonald’s cashiers, just doing thei…

I do believe they are actual fulfillment center employees like they say. What's astonishing to me is that Amazon thought this was actually a good idea.

I think this program was a great idea because it gives Amazon a chance to defend itself by letting the people who have been accused of slave labor, speak for themselves about it. It lets the general public see the opinions of actual employees who work in fulfillment centers for Amazon.

Re: I feel like im talking to the borg

#357

Post by ChainOfFools »

hos234 wrote: post #169
duxup wrote: post #125

I feel like this is twitter in a nutshell, and that goes for everyone involved. The very first response is "eally like? cause your workers are liars?" There we go, now the entire conversation is everything or nothing, you're either with them or against them. Then it's off into personal attacks and arguments about followers and etc. Nobody is talking to each other in any of that. They're just posting for everyone else…

It is Pavlov's dog experiment, where instead of the bell, you have a like/retweet Count conditioning and reinforcing behavior. Natural human interaction has never had a number placed next to every thought and utterance. The numbers have fucked up the way people think and behave.

"The numbers have fucked up the way people think and behave"

les measurables

Re: I feel like im talking to the borg

#358

Post by peu4000 »

This is just cheap twitter advertising -- the only thing different about this(from Wendy's twitter advertising) is that Amazon is harnessing Twitter's outrage lust to get more eyeballs on their ambassador's nice words and it looks like it works.

Don't interact with advertisements, folks.

Re: I feel like im talking to the borg

#359

Post by settsu »

What I find most unfortunate in these situations is the number of people with a response to the effect of:

> "I worked at [physically-demanding job] for $n/hr [where n≤other person's/current minimum wage] and I didn't [complain/think it was that bad/die], so what is the problem?"

The problem with this is:

1) In the absence of any addl. context, it's a poor means of objectively determining employee well-being.

All else being equal, shouldn't "we" (humans, as a species) be using an ever-increasing bar of basic well-being in context to historical norms and improvements as the measure?

Besides, there's any number of factors that influence what is "reasonable" (regional cost of living, changes to inflation/buying power, an individual's capacity to work, etc.)

2) People can simultaneously feel grateful AND discouraged in their current circumstances. To be glad you have a job and to feel stung by two generations of stalled economic mobility are not mutually exclusive emotions.

3) Both sides can experience entirely sincere feelings of "rightness". That does not prove, deny, or change any underlying facts.

4) Being (AKA feeling) "right" bears little or no benefit to anyone. It means a temporary rush of dopamine and adrenaline. No ones life has usually been materially improved by that event.

Re: I feel like im talking to the borg

#360

Post by pas »

peu4000 wrote: post #358

This is just cheap twitter advertising -- the only thing different about this(from Wendy's twitter advertising) is that Amazon is harnessing Twitter's outrage lust to get more eyeballs on their ambassador's nice words and it looks like it works. Don't interact with advertisements, folks.

It might work, but it's creepy as fuck.
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