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Bye, Amazon

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Re: Bye, Amazon

#891

Post by aeroevan »

komali2 wrote: post #838
mmaunder wrote: post #822

Very difficult to put emotion aside when thinking about these things. I expect to be crucified for even asking this question because the audience here has a bias towards supporting activism. But oh well here goes: If Amazon condone and even enable employee activism, what bad things could that enable? I don’t mean unions. I mean a group of say 20 employees trying to bring about a change they truly believe in. Amazon h…

I understand where you're going for, but imo that's never been a valid argument against self-determination. I think your argument can be made simpler: why should we trust people to be allowed to decide for themselves? Won't they decide to do stupid and harmful things? Won't they decide to hurt eachother? Won't they decide to steal from eachother, and murder eachother? No, is the answer, because laws were created some…

> I think it's very unlikely that employees will decide they want to have guns at work instead of, say, a security system, or maybe offices in places with low crime, etc. I think it's very unlikely that employees will decide, I dunno, that they want the right to shit on eachother's desk, or whatever other fairly-objectively-negative thing you can think up.

I think his point is that carrying guns to work is not a fairly-objectively-negative thing for the 1/3 of America that owns guns.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#892

Post by jmcqk6 »

smoe wrote: post #863
xenocyon wrote: post #688

My personal snapping point as a consumer occurred several years ago, over something that's definitely not anecdotal: When Amazon employees are frisked at the end of their shift (which is a practice that applies to at least some warehouses), they are not paid for the time they spend waiting in line to be frisked. This is not an anecdote; indeed Amazon fought and won a court case insisting that it has the right to not…

I always think it is a bit odd when a company wins a case like this, but then people blame the company, not the court or the law. Not saying, that you don't disagree with the courts decisions, but I keep getting this feeling especially from the US. Why do people realistically expect a company to not stretch things as far as legally possible? I get why libertarians would see it this way, but everyone else?

>Why do people realistically expect a company to not stretch things as far as legally possible?

Because doing the right thing is different from doing the legal thing.

If you're only interested in maximizing your profits under the umbrella of law, you are, by definition, not interested in acting morally. Which means you're probably doing many things that many people would consider immoral.

It's a mismatch of motivations.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#894

Post by uoaei »

toasterlovin wrote: post #654
uselesstech wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that were the case, you would think that Amazon would address the issues raised my employees instead of firing them. By firing them, they discourage others from coming forward so it’s not really possible to get a good picture of the situation.

Perhaps there's more to the story and we on the outside are in a really poor position to actually know what's going on?

We don't have all the context but it's safe to say we have about 80% of it.

End this solipsistic tripe. Or else drive down to your nearest fulfillment center and start interviewing folks.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#895

Post by smoe »

chc wrote: post #877
smoe wrote: post #863

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always think it is a bit odd when a company wins a case like this, but then people blame the company, not the court or the law. Not saying, that you don't disagree with the courts decisions, but I keep getting this feeling especially from the US. Why do people realistically expect a company to not stretch things as far as legally possible? I get why libertarians would see it this way, but everyone else?

You seem to be conflating blameworthiness and predictability. True story: I know a guy who's a real scumbag, just constantly taking advantage of people who don't know better and abusing those who do know better. I fully expect this person to do a lot of contemptible things. My ability to anticipate his behavior doesn't make me like him any more for it. And the fact that the law doesn't punish a particular misbehavior…

If you are in a position of power, why should you care whether people hate your guts? And only people that don't depend on you or that don't benefit from a good relationship with you will treat you like a monster.

There is quite the discrepancy for example in European history between royals acting like monsters and people treating them as such. Sure, eventually you'll have the people grab the pitchforks and roll out the guillotine, but you might not want to wait that long.

How much true accountability is there for those people making the choices under the banner of the corporations?

In my opinion, big part of what law should be, whoever is in charge of enforcing it, is a set of rules based on societies ethical compass. If someone can get away taking advantage and abusing others, this begs the question if those acts are in fact unethical, or if the the law needs updating.

It is not about shifting blame for behavior onto the law, but how you decide what behavior is blameworthy and should be punished. And I much prefer having a at least a somewhat transparent formalized system for this over Mob justice.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#896

Post by carti »

odysseus wrote: post #565
bluntfang wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The way you treat your personnel will affect whether they behave like that. Anecdotally, I have family members that run a business that require low skilled workers. They don't really need full time workers, so they hire part-time and don't pay a living wage to them, even though it is viable to their business to do so. So what do they get? They get unreliable people. People who steal from them. People who don't clock…

On living wages in particular: "A 2003 Cato Institute study cites data showing job losses in places where living wage laws have been imposed. This should not be the least bit surprising. Making anything more expensive almost invariably leads to fewer purchases. That includes labor." Also: "People in minimum wage jobs do not stay at the minimum wage permanently. Their pay increases as they accumulate experience and de…

The Cato Institute, founded as the Charles Koch Foundation, is pro-capital, pro-deregulation, and anti-worker.

Being a noted economist doesn't mean that you aren't full of shit.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#897

Post by pvg »

tempestn wrote: post #862
dang wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment was edited without saying so, which explains why some of the replies don't make sense. If you're going to make an edit that changes the meaning of what other people have already replied to, please say that you're doing that. The best way is to make the edit append-only.

How feasible would it be to actually enforce that in the code? Would be great if edits were append-only after some period of time. So you could correct a typo immediately after posting still, but after a few minutes you'd just be able to append. (Replying to your own comment doesn't serve the same function, since it could be lost under other replies.)

There is a 2 hour edit window, after which you can't edit the comment. Editing a comment to change the meaning is usually noticed so I think social convention takes care of this (relatively uncommon) problem as it is.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#898

Post by worik »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #871
specialp wrote: post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes for me too. The fact that Amazon is so cheap that they want employees to sit around for 20-30 minutes after their shift unpaid to get searched to make sure they aren't stealing blew me away. It is one thing if Amazon wants to do this and pay their employees, but to not pay is wrong. And they felt so strongly about this they appealed a case all the way to the Supreme Court... That was the snapping point for me too…

> The fact that Amazon is so cheap you mean the company that pays high wages?

Yes. That one

Re: Bye, Amazon

#899

Post by smoe »

ncallaway wrote: post #884
smoe wrote: post #863

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always think it is a bit odd when a company wins a case like this, but then people blame the company, not the court or the law. Not saying, that you don't disagree with the courts decisions, but I keep getting this feeling especially from the US. Why do people realistically expect a company to not stretch things as far as legally possible? I get why libertarians would see it this way, but everyone else?

> Why do people realistically expect a company to not stretch things as far as legally possible? What I expect people to do, what the standards I hold people to are often different. I expect Amazon to push things as far as they are able. I strongly dislike them because of it. My standards of acceptable conduct are above "barely legal" conduct. My expectations are below legal conduct. I also can blame two entities for…

I think, putting acceptable conduct above barely legal conduct for corporations is how they get away with pretty much everything.

A bunch of people on internet being mad at them has in my opinion not proven very effective at changing their behavior and making the people in charge accountable for their acts.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#900

Post by carti »

uoaei wrote: post #886
freshhawk wrote: post #860

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a wake up call? You can clearly see from the comments that many people here are still very much on the "but they're employees ... why would they have any rights? if they complain just crush them into paste to oil the machines" camp. The occasional high profile person quitting one of the big tech companies because of their constant illegal employee/whistleblower abuse happens regularly at this point. Is Tim Bray…

I think the next big revolution in political thinking will be the debate over the question of whether money is amoral. If I spend a dollar by giving it to someone, what does that enable them to do? What behaviors does that encourage and reinforce? I think a lot of people would say that at some level money is moral (don't pay terrorist organizations or render services for them) but that distinction blurs as we get clo…

"There's no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism" comes to mind. Even if some folks are in a position to spend all of their money in ways that align with their values (which seems impossible given the extent of global supply chains), it's out of reach for the vast majority until systemic change is realized.
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