411–420 of 468 posts
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From the article: > We need to note that Amazon is an NPR funder. The original Motherboard article [0] is extensive. The NPR version is deliberately incoherent. [0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dp3yn/amazon-leaked-reports...
You actually believe that Amazon has editorial control over NPR and specifically exerted that leverage to make this article incoherent?
So it's not a stretch.
Why is this problematic? I find the idea of unions distasteful. Why should all employees be obligated to join a union? It would make more sense if it was voluntary and people collectively bargain as a subgroup whose size is smaller than all employees. But forcing a single union upon all employees is just creating a separate parallel management structure, one that often tends towards practices that ultimately deliver…
That sounds good in theory, but essentially gives the company the ability to play groups off each other. The entire point of unionization is to be able to negotiate on level terms. This viewpoint also seems to assume that merit is the most important thing, and that unions should optimize for it. For a union, tenure is super important to maintain its strength. Corporations are held together with contracts and money, s…
There are also other benefits (unrelated to compensation) from having competing unions. To get more concrete about this, consider that the National Education Association (largest union in the US, representing teachers) is very politically biased and recently started pushing the NYT's "1619 Project" on educators (https://neaedjustice.org/resource/the-1619-project/). I find this to be unacceptable because it is weaponizing public schooling to achieve political ends, which is indistinguishable from what we label as "propaganda" in other countries (except that it comes from a big monolithic union rather than a government). Not to mention the 1619 project is factually incorrect (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-proje...).
So if you're a student, parent, or educator who disagrees with the NEA's push with the 1619 project, what can you do? If you want to keep your job, you're obligated to pay the union dues, subsidize their institutional politics, and play along with union rules. Having several competing teacher unions, on the other hand, would allow for those who disagree with this politicization to separate themselves from the NEA while still having access to jobs and having the ability to collectively bargain as their own subset.
Put another way, unions as implemented in US law grant local labor monopolies to unions. Fundamentally, this is no different than when a big telecom player like Comcast has a local monopoly. We can see it's not healthy in that instance, so why is this any different?
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You actually believe that Amazon has editorial control over NPR and specifically exerted that leverage to make this article incoherent?
One of the common threads in media critiques like Manufacturing Consent and Hate, Inc. is that direct editorial control is not necessary in order to promote your agenda. Control of money and access, along with ideological indoctrination of journalists at elite universities, is all that's needed. See also my comment below about NPR listenership and trust in Amazon as an institution.
Pinkerton has a long history of criminal activity. It's unbelievable that Bezos gets away with this with such minimal media attention. (Yeah, it's on NPR, but I highly doubt I'll see it on CNN, at the most, maybe Fox will say something because they view Bezos as a political enemy) My great grandfather was a miner in southern WV during the time period where Pinkerton agents intimidated and harassed the families of uni…
I honestly don't know why you got downvoted.
I was downvoted rather aggressively in another thread for calling Trump "his orangeness" which my Trump voter friends and family chuckle at, but apparently is in bad decorum on HN. In their defense, they are just desperately trying to keep it all from devolving into Reddit territory.
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Yes, I do actually believe in their editorial independence. Here's an NPR opinion piece talking openly about the subject https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2012/03/16/1487788... Some excerpts that I liked (keep in mind, these are out of context, which is largely focused on why we should keep a very close eye out): > Companies are most interested in getting their name before NPR's audience. They are, in other w…
I mean this with all due respect, but highlighting NPR's own defense of their editorial practices is hardly convincing. NPR routinely runs editorial pieces that were pitched to them by corporate sponsors or their fronts like think tanks. They likewise have have discussion panels featuring these groups' talking heads. Listen to a few episodes of Marketplace if you want the most obvious corporate propaganda imaginable.…
It is produced by American Public Media, which is a branch of Minnesota Public Radio (and Southern California Public Radio).
Perhaps you meant "US public radio" in general, but said "NPR". They are not equivalent, however.
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People that cannot find a better alternative in their current personal situation. Sure they are not "forced" in a precise linguistic sense. But when it's this or nothing there is really just an illusion of choice.
Why is it Amazon’s problem that they have no alternative? If Amazon went away, would their situation be better or worse? I believe that as a society we must ensure that people have enough money to live, but why should the employers on the bottom of the skills spectrum be forced to bear the brunt of it? Every employer should be required by law to provide a safe workplace free of discrimination and harassment. But hiri…
> But hiring unskilled workers at a market wage doesn’t make you a bad actor.
No, but artificially preventing the market conditions (wage + others) from raising by blocking people's basic right of association will make you a bad actor.
In 1920 Appalachia, coal companies owned all the land, the homes and stores. They also paid workers with their own special money (that was useless everywhere else). The security companies they hired where armed and violent towards miners and their families. https://explorepartsunknown.com/west-virginia/coal-minings-d... Today, people can tour these old towns and learn the history of how the coal companies trapped and…
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/in...
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Can I just point out that I think the "horrible working conditions" things is a little played up. You want to know terrible working conditions dancing with a sign for 5 hours a day in the sun when it's 90+. I did that for 3 years and was happy to do the job, mind you this was only 10 years ago so it isn't forever. I made 7.50 an hour. I would've killed to get a job at amazon back then. People are getting payed $16 th…
> People are getting payed $16 that is incredible for an unskilled labor position. That's one view, but it's only informed by "the way things are". Another view is based on the way things should be, that no one should have to work for less than the wage it takes to live a reasonable life. https://livingwage.mit.edu/ offers values for this. I don't see why someone should work full time and still end up poor.
World average is 18K, that's adjusted for purchasing power parity. 32K is at least 2nd quintile, maybe top. Poland is a little less than 32K average, Japan is around 38K, OECD data from 2019. Somewhere between Japan and Poland is where the average worker starts to be poor. Interesting.
And that is at the present time, every generation going back to the invention of agriculture had it worse. Someone making 32K a year - PPP adjusted - is in what, the top few percent of all humans that have ever lived? Poor bastard. Learn to code.
In the same way that if everything is about politics, nothing is about politics, if everyone is poor, no one is poor. And if these people aren't making a living wage while making what the top few percent of humans have ever made, how did our ancestors manage to live and have children on a sub-living wage? Shouldn't they have died out?
I think in this case, "living wage" is just a propaganda term. "Poor" is too I guess. I guess maybe that propaganda term works on people, "living wage". It seems to be effective propaganda, seems to be working. I just cringe every time I read it. Adjusted for inflation, I made $7 an hour working in a factory. Decades later you're going to tell me that isn't a living wage, more than twice what I made back then wasn't a living wage? Was I lucky to survive?
That's bullshit by the technical definition of bullshit, and its propaganda.
Anyway, these arguments usually split people into two camps, people who worked warehouse or factory jobs before, and people who haven't.