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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

#211

Post by solveit »

jseban wrote: post #192
whitepaint wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So make it illegal to work for more than 6 hours? What if I actually want to work more and agree with a company to do so and get paid for it?

Whatever rules exist at the moment, just decrease the time by 25%. Not sure exactly how to make such a change though, probably hard, just suggesting a solution like was asked for

> Not sure exactly how to make such a change though, probably hard, just suggesting a solution like was asked for

Might I gently point out that the difficulty of the problem is all political. The easiest "solution" is of course to take all the wealth that exists in the world and fairly distribute it while keeping everyone working as effectively as they are now.

Now obviously that idea isn't anywhere near being a solution. Neither is your idea.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#212

Post by refurb »

dave_sullivan wrote: post #35
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.

There are certainly scales, it's not all uniform. But the EU is a big place and people are free to pick which country they live in. It's disingenuous to suggest it's all the same thing. The larger point of EU workers having more rights is, on average, very true. The US (and China and Russia) treats their workers very poorly by comparison.

As someone who has worked in the US and other countries with more worker rights (EU), no the US doesn’t treat it’s worker very poorly by comparison.

And the US is a big country. You can work in CA which has unemployment insurance, cheap healthcare coverage, plenty of worker protections, etc.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#213

Post by epakai »

eric4smith wrote: post #175

Wow… a guy that directly employed almost 2 million people and indirectly improved the lives of tens of millions of dependents in the Amazon ecosystem is a dystopian person. Bezos is far from perfect, but do we really think that that was his primary consideration of building and growing Amazon? Pretty much every organization that gets large enough tends to rot from the inside and get dystopian, despite the efforts of…

Bezos was well aware and a part of this growth. He was there personally when the company I worked for was acquired. He offered a silly anecdote about a breakfast octopus to the then CEO.

In some ways the company has lived on past the CEOs desires to maintain it, but it's also not the same place. It's effectively turned into a way to push overstocked amazon wares. What was a big push to bring temporary employees on full-time 2 years prior has probably been disassembled for Amazon style hiring. After I left a enclosed cage and turnstile was added to the warehouse employee entrance (probably loss prevention, not totally unneeded, but who wants to feel like a prisoner at their job).

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#214

Post by solveit »

MattGaiser wrote: post #51
astrange wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect their logistics competitors are even worse.

I am curious about this. Are Amazon's practices uniquely brutal or is it just brutal at scale while nobody can name Joe's Logistics and thus if they pee in bottles, nobody knows?

If people are still working at Amazon, the problem isn't Amazon, the problem is everyone else who isn't offering anything better. Seriously. The workers are working at Amazon because that was the best option they had. And the bright idea is to set Amazon on fire?

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#215

Post by pc86 »

howaboutnope wrote: post #93
yanderekko wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Letting a known faulty AI decide if someone will have money for food tomorrow is way across the line. So is the implication here that humans are less faulty, or that there's something intrinsically wrong about an AI making this decision rather than a human? If the former, then this is an issue that the technology will probably eventually solve. If the latter, well... that doesn't seem very justifiable, to say the le…

> So is the implication here that humans are less faulty AI is just humans hiding behind a machine. And everything else being the same, those who have to hide their reasons or themselves are always intrinsically weaker and worth less than those who don't. That needs no explanation for people who own their shit, and no explanation will suffice for those who do. > that will likely be unfortunate for consumers. Consumer…

> AI is just humans hiding behind a machine.

Just because people work on AI algorithms doesn't mean that this is true.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#216

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

whitepaint wrote: post #169
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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."

Are you suggesting that the problem lies in people losing faith in a god and in a church? Were people happier when they were more religious and when a church told them what's good and bad? And now we don't have that? And we should seek to replace it and the problems will lessen?

I don't feel qualified to answer that. All I know is that something will fill the god-shaped hole. Pray it won't be communism or Critical Race Theory.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#217

Post by whitepaint »

TFYS wrote: post #204
whitepaint wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would Bill Gates try so hard with Microsoft if his biggest possible reward would have been what citizens decide to collectively reward him with?

Why not? He would have another idea and try to get another reward for that. If it's the biggest possible reward that you can get, and you have an idea, why wouldn't you try to implement it? The rewards for a successful business 50 years ago were much smaller than they are today, yet people still created businesses, because it was the best reward you could get. They didn't have an idea and abandon it because the bigge…

> If it's the biggest possible reward that you can get, and you have an idea, why wouldn't you try to implement it?

Because it takes lots of work, risk, and sacrifice. If rewards are small (which, obviously, they would be in your scenario where people pool their money together to reward someone), then why take on such difficult task? I know I wouldn't be trying to do any business in your system. Many wouldn't.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#218

Post by refurb »

dale_glass wrote: post #129
mlindner wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To each to their own. I'm glad I don't live in the EU as I know I would get too stressed out by the restrictions placed upon individuals living there.

Which are those? I'm not really noticing here.

Not going to lie but the 90 day UK notice period when you quit is a massive hassle. Yeah I get that it’s tit for tat - your company can’t fire you tomorrow.

But man, compared to the US where I can give notice, take my left over vacation and start at a new company all in 2 weeks, it does a lot for worker mobility.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#219

Post by nexus_dave »

Mordisquitos wrote: post #85
nexus_dave wrote: post #56

[flagged]

And what's wrong with "If you don't like Amazon or what they are doing to their workers, write an article about it" ?

I don't know if the person who wrote the article has ever shopped on Amazon. But in case they have/do they should stop shopping on amazon first and stop being a hypocrite.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#220

Post by LeonidasXIV »

navaati wrote: post #98
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…

What the hell ! I moved from France to Ireland and there was no question asked at any point, I just booked a ferry and rented a flat, no paperwork at all and I could live there as long as I wanted to. I'm not so much saying you're wrong as afraid you're right, do you have sources ?

> I'm not so much saying you're wrong as afraid you're right, do you have sources ?

Yes, in addition to alibarber reporting their experiences in Finland, the same is true for EU citizens in Denmark: https://www.nyidanmark.dk/en-GB/You-want-to-apply/Residence-...

Where you see that you can stay in Denmark provided you're a worker at a Danish company, a student, a self-employed person, have sufficient funds or are from another Nordic country.

So this is very much up to the EU country and Denmark really doesn't want to have people moving there (and the rules for non-EU citizens are even more restrictive).

So in general the EU freedom of movement is "freedom of movement of workers", not just anyone.

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