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Bye, Amazon

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Re: Bye, Amazon

#981

Post by licebmi__at__ »

mrslave wrote: post #911
brodouevencode wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMHO firing whistle blowers is the kind of action that should be called out as very negative and not something to be apologetic about. Agree 100%. Daylight is the best disinfectant, especially in publicly traded companies. Every CEO, CMO, etc loves white-knighting ("We care about the environment/our employees!") until the shareholders start calling. Then they're the first to start covering up problems. That's not t…

> Daylight is the best disinfectant Shame about all the deplatforming then

Yes, I agree that deplatforming is a bad tactic. That's how you get a bunch of crybullies playing the victim card and complaining about censorship even in unrelated topics.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#982

Post by freshhawk »

licebmi__at__ wrote: post #981
mrslave wrote: post #911

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Daylight is the best disinfectant Shame about all the deplatforming then

Yes, I agree that deplatforming is a bad tactic. That's how you get a bunch of crybullies playing the victim card and complaining about censorship even in unrelated topics.

You are saying this in a very heavily moderated online forum. So HN would be better without this censorship/deplatforming/moderation?

Re: Bye, Amazon

#983

Post by freshhawk »

vkaku wrote: post #968
aguyfromnb wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a wake up call, or at least an attempt at that, for the likes of Amazon that if they are looking to have reputable people, like Tim Bray, associate themselves and their name with you, there are certain standards that have to be met. Prominent VCs are calling for people to get back to work every day on Twitter. The rest of the world is waking up to these people, but we have a long way to go before Silicon Valle…

It is surprising that the rest of the world is already woke, but the software engineers in these companies have not risen to the reality yet. And that has led to their successful manipulation of neglecting anything but money.

"It is impossible to get someone to believe something when their salary depends on them not believing it" and all that.

It's exactly what you should expect.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#984

Post by QuinnyPig »

darksaints wrote: post #781
amai wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An article about this guy collected some interesting comments on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21818233

Wow, I have never seen this article. I wouldn't be surprised if he was the one who pushed for this article to be written.

Not super relevant to this thread, but you came up in conversation today: https://twitter.com/shortjared/status/1257863398433468416?s=...

Re: Bye, Amazon

#985

Post by jjeaff »

unethical_ban wrote: post #690
jjeaff wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that they "shouldn't exist" doesn't make much sense to me. As long as you treat your employees with respect and pay legal wages, who are we to say that the wages are "poverty wages". Many of these low wage, entry level positions are/were meant to be filled by young people, still living with parents, or part time workers who may have a spouse that is the primary earner. The problem is that due to lack of othe…

Your second sentence asserts that poverty is some nebulous concept, and that if wages are "legal" then they must be "moral".

It is nebulous from the point of view of a single employer. If someone only wants to work 10 hours a week and you pay them $12 an hour and their spouse works full time and makes $100k a year, is the $12 an hour employee living in poverty?

Re: Bye, Amazon

#986

Post by jjeaff »

taurath wrote: post #743
jjeaff wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that they "shouldn't exist" doesn't make much sense to me. As long as you treat your employees with respect and pay legal wages, who are we to say that the wages are "poverty wages". Many of these low wage, entry level positions are/were meant to be filled by young people, still living with parents, or part time workers who may have a spouse that is the primary earner. The problem is that due to lack of othe…

> As long as you treat your employees with respect and pay legal wages, who are we to say that the wages are "poverty wages". When working those wages leave you in poverty its poverty wages. > Many of these low wage, entry level positions are/were meant to be filled by young people, still living with parents, or part time workers who may have a spouse that is the primary earner. This is not the case, and has never be…

Then I'd say you don't know much about poverty.

I grew up in one of the poorest counties in America.

I now live in one of the wealthiest. And while the occasional affluent family has a teenager or two that works at the grocery store, in poor areas, lots more teenagers have jobs to supplement not only their own income, but that of their parents.

That's not to say that there are more teenagers working these low wage jobs, it's just to point out that "privlege" in this case is merely a straw man and sidesteps the main thrust of my point, which was, what is better, "poverty wages" or no wages at all?

Re: Bye, Amazon

#987

Post by weswpg »

QuinnyPig wrote: post #984
darksaints wrote: post #781

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I have never seen this article. I wouldn't be surprised if he was the one who pushed for this article to be written.

Not super relevant to this thread, but you came up in conversation today: https://twitter.com/shortjared/status/1257863398433468416?s=...

Found my way here from that thread too.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#988

Post by darksaints »

QuinnyPig wrote: post #984
darksaints wrote: post #781

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I have never seen this article. I wouldn't be surprised if he was the one who pushed for this article to be written.

Not super relevant to this thread, but you came up in conversation today: https://twitter.com/shortjared/status/1257863398433468416?s=...

That's extremely embarrassing. I would like to apologize, but I do not have a twitter account.

FWIW (not much, there isn't an excuse), I was going through an extremely rough time in my life. I had recently been disowned by my family for leaving their religion, and I had just begun to work for the guy I was talking about in this thread. I was generally a miserable prick back then, and while I can't say that I have eliminated that tendency entirely, it is something I have been consciously working on with the help of a therapist for about 4 years now.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#989

Post by luckylion »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #980
luckylion wrote: post #813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And being a small business. Things run very differently when there are ten people and you know everyone vs when there are ten thousand people and you only vaguely know what 1/10th of the departments actually do.

If it means that more employer-employee relationships are as strong as the one described, I'm more than happy to give small businesses a leg up over major corporations.

In my experience, it very much does. It's usually not as profitable though, and even laws & taxes are often set up to reward large corporations.

Re: Bye, Amazon

#990

Post by dandare »

azernik wrote: post #346
dandare wrote: post #242

> Only that’s not just Amazon, it’s how 21st-century capitalism is done. I am really tired of all these off-hand attacks on capitalism. Capitalism is an economic system. It is characterized by private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. If you prefer a centralized or shared economy, that is fine, although I was born in a communist country and I bet you have no idea what you wish for.…

"21st-century capitalism" is a system - it is characterized by low worker negotiating leverage, a fragile social safety net, and low or nonexistent effective taxes on businesses. He may have been better served by qualifying it as "21st-century American capitalism", but in context that is quite clear. There were specific kinds of corruption and abuses that the Soviet system encouraged and abetted; there are specific k…

Yes, you have described the 21-century American political-economic system. What do you gain by adding the word "capitalism"? How are these negatives caused by defining characteristics of capitalism? How do you explain that other developed nations do not suffer from these problems despite also running on capitalism? Use Occam's razor. By adding unnecessary qualifiers to your statement you are decreasing the relevance of your statement, not increasing it.
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