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Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

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Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#151

Post by gouda-gouda »

yossarian1408 wrote: post #96
shmageggy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're in no danger of running out of people to employ. Social safety nets are too weak and economic conditions for the poor are too precarious that there are plenty of people willing to endure abusive conditions for a paycheck. The high turnover rate only ensures that they end up employing the most desperate and vulnerable.

It helps that a minimum wage and absurd regulation conspire to eliminate a good size of firms that would otherwise be competing in a fair labour market. And let's not get started on the taxes that small and medium sized businesses have to pay, and that Amazon is exempt from. Raising social safety nets would only lead to inflation, and so now you need to put a price ceiling on essential goods&services, which leads to…

Do you actually think small and medium sized businesses can really compete with Amazon at this point? Their advantage at this point, technologically and operationally, is far more than simply lower tax burden.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#152

Post by syshum »

zopa wrote: post #117
WalterBright wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have historically complained a lot about firings not being based on an objective formula. Now the complaint is an objective formula is being used. > WW2 prisoner camps For starters, those camps would shoot anyone who tried to leave. Not the same thing at all.

> People have historically complained a lot about firings not being based on an objective formula. Now the complaint is an objective formula is being used. Cute line, but obviously people have always wanted criteria to be objective and fair . If the rule was "take the ordinal value of each letter in employee's name, sum mod 365, and if the result matches the day of the year, they're fired!" -- that's completely objec…

>> objective and fair.

You do understand that the is a logical impossibility, as "fairness" is a subjective standard...

What is "fair" to me, likely will not be what you believe is "fair" thus something can not be objective and "fair"

> "take the ordinal value of each letter in employee's name, sum mod 365, and if the result matches the day of the year, they're fired!"

My Objection to this standard would not be "it is unfair" but rather it makes no logical sense to have employment choices made by that system and would likely cause many objectively valuable employees to be separated from the company.

Objective rules need to make sense in the context for which they are apply, "fairness" would not come into play here

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#153

Post by whitepaint »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #146
whitepaint wrote: post #110

I've read similar articles so many times but they all lack one thing - solutions. Seriously, what should we do about it? Yeah, I agree that workers shouldn't be working so hard that they can't even go to the bathroom. Would we have a better world if Amazon didn't exist? I personally doubt it. So, it's not Amazon per se, it is the system, isn't? So, what are the solutions? How do we make it better? How do we minimize…

Honestly, I think the only solution is, to make it easier to start a small business, and help and encourage people to start them, and then fix the tax policy, so companies as amazon would pay the same effective tax rates as a mom-and-pop bakery. Amazon needs workers, workers need jobs. If you increase the number of jobs and decrease the number of unemployed, people can say "no" to shitty jobs. This is currently happe…

I like your reply. I have a question though, how do we fix the tax policy and how do we make it easier to start a small business?

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#154

Post by Zardoz84 »

whitepaint wrote: post #110

I've read similar articles so many times but they all lack one thing - solutions. Seriously, what should we do about it? Yeah, I agree that workers shouldn't be working so hard that they can't even go to the bathroom. Would we have a better world if Amazon didn't exist? I personally doubt it. So, it's not Amazon per se, it is the system, isn't? So, what are the solutions? How do we make it better? How do we minimize…

simply, make the workers the owners of the company

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#155

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

TFYS wrote: post #133
whitepaint wrote: post #110

I've read similar articles so many times but they all lack one thing - solutions. Seriously, what should we do about it? Yeah, I agree that workers shouldn't be working so hard that they can't even go to the bathroom. Would we have a better world if Amazon didn't exist? I personally doubt it. So, it's not Amazon per se, it is the system, isn't? So, what are the solutions? How do we make it better? How do we minimize…

The solution is to go beyond a competition based society. No matter how good the people running these companies are or want to be, competition will force their hand to create things like this. If it's not them, it'll be someone else. I'm sure we could find a way to encourage innovation without this competitive system.

> The solution is to go beyond a competition based society.

I'd frame the problem as follows:

"Capitalism is a powerful tool, but fails as the sole guiding principles of a society's values. Christianity, a former enabler of pro-social norms on a massive scale, is dead.

Wat do."

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#156

Post by namenotrequired »

TFYS wrote: post #133
whitepaint wrote: post #110

I've read similar articles so many times but they all lack one thing - solutions. Seriously, what should we do about it? Yeah, I agree that workers shouldn't be working so hard that they can't even go to the bathroom. Would we have a better world if Amazon didn't exist? I personally doubt it. So, it's not Amazon per se, it is the system, isn't? So, what are the solutions? How do we make it better? How do we minimize…

The solution is to go beyond a competition based society. No matter how good the people running these companies are or want to be, competition will force their hand to create things like this. If it's not them, it'll be someone else. I'm sure we could find a way to encourage innovation without this competitive system.

Do you have any examples of societies that have successfully abolishing competition (and continued being somewhat functional)?

It seems impossible to me but I would love to be surprised.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#157

Post by johnchristopher »

acatton wrote: post #104
johnchristopher wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the EU is a big place and people are free to pick which country they live in. There are limits though. You have a 3 months period where you can stay in another UE country then the national authorities can ask for your leaving. There are statuses that allows you to stay longer (work, studies, retirement, etc.) but those statuses have requirements and obligations. You can't take your tent, set it up somewhere in…

> You have a 3 months period where you can stay in another UE country then the national authorities can ask for your leaving. Maybe on paper. I wonder how much this is used. The only time I remember this being used in practice, is when Sarkozy ordered the deportation of ~100 Romanian Romanies back to Romania, as part of his attempt to siphon far right votes.[1] Apart from these few political stunts, I doubt this is o…

> Maybe on paper. I wonder how much this is used.

I think as general rule of thumb for all intents and purposes it becomes a problem when you don't have money (or do criminal stuff).

> You may live in the other EU country as long as you continue to meet the conditions for residence. If you no longer do so, the national authorities may require you to leave.

> In exceptional cases, your host country can deport you on grounds of public policy or public security - but only if it can prove you represent a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat affecting one of the fundamental interests of society.

> The deportation decision or the request to leave must be given to you in writing. It must state all the reasons for your deportation and specify how you can appeal and by when.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#158

Post by whitepaint »

Zardoz84 wrote: post #154
whitepaint wrote: post #110

I've read similar articles so many times but they all lack one thing - solutions. Seriously, what should we do about it? Yeah, I agree that workers shouldn't be working so hard that they can't even go to the bathroom. Would we have a better world if Amazon didn't exist? I personally doubt it. So, it's not Amazon per se, it is the system, isn't? So, what are the solutions? How do we make it better? How do we minimize…

simply, make the workers the owners of the company

If I have a company that hires software developers, we should abolish the signed contracts, and all of them should get an equal stake in the company? And we should make it a law so that happens for all companies?

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#159

Post by cookieswumchorr »

nabla9 wrote: post #92
cyrksoft wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Particularly countries like Poland and Hungary, they are very respectful of Article 1. Or Germany making so much business with China and Russia. Don't kid yourself thinking that the EU is a special place that is somewhat exempt of any of this.

Poland and Hungary are in violation of many articles of EU. The grievance is that the US lacks many of those articles. Principles of EU > Principles of US >>>> Principles of China.

the Poland/Hungary point relates to the recent issues with abortions and gay rights respectively. The rules in these cases may be more progressive at least in parts of the US. But if you take labor rights, these are a lot more humane in the EU

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#160

Post by syshum »

apexalpha wrote: post #97
WalterBright wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have historically complained a lot about firings not being based on an objective formula. Now the complaint is an objective formula is being used. > WW2 prisoner camps For starters, those camps would shoot anyone who tried to leave. Not the same thing at all.

I think the point is that to the AI, an employee is just a number. Interchangeable at any moment, with no consideration for the human person and how it affects them.

So if you have 2 Programmers, One is Single has FIRE plan to early retirement, and expense to income ratio of 25%..

Another programmer has 4 kids, lives pay check to paycheck, and has a wife with a medical condition...

The dept has to be downsized by 1 programmer, both programmers have the same income, the single programmer is slightly more productive..

Should the single programmer should be fired over the other because of there personal life situation?

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