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Amazon Is Creating Company Towns Across the United States

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Re: Amazon Is Creating Company Towns Across the United States

#181

Post by dukeyukey »

redisman wrote: post #157
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a long-time friend who tried to get an Amazon Warehouse job after relocating to a new city for his SO’s career. Given all of the negative press he assumed they’d be desperate for employees and he could walk right into the job. It turns out those jobs are highly competitive in the area because they paid relatively well and had good benefits. The hourly rate alone doesn’t tell the full story. Many more typical w…

Software engineers (including me) tend to forget what the labor market is like outside our own bubbles. Most people can’t do things we take for granted like hop to a better paying job when they get bored/unhappy.

A close friend and I were talking about this the other day. We both have well-paid tech jobs and recruiters coming out the wazoo, but our partners are both minimum wage service workers. It's making us both gradually move leftwards in our politics.

Re: Amazon Is Creating Company Towns Across the United States

#182

Post by rcstank »

wildrhythms wrote: post #134
gruez wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This smells more of medieval style feudalism. In what way? Are people obligated to work for amazon?

When Amazon is the only viable place of employment in your town, yes. Look to Walmart- America's largest supermarket chain, and America's second largest employer (second only to the U.S. government). Rural America is a sea of "Walmart towns", where the best employment is the only employment.

Common sense says otherwise. If this were true, Walmart would eventually siphon all of the money out of that town. Have we seen this happen widespread? Many people commute to larger towns/cities for work which may only be a 15-20 minute drive.

Re: Amazon Is Creating Company Towns Across the United States

#183

Post by aww_dang »

ilaksh wrote: post #105

The article ends with an idea like, "workers band together and fight Amazon". I'm all for workers getting a better deal and more humane conditions while these jobs last, but they won't. Th most common jobs in these places are being intensely researched by roboticists. As soon as it's feasible and economical to replace the people with robots they will. For some of the jobs, that could come in a matter of months, or on…

"Is Guaranteed Basic Income the Solution to Robots Taking Our Jobs?"

https://mises.org/wire/guaranteed-basic-income-solution-robo...

>The UBI advocates are correct that some jobs are replaced when capital goods do the work that was done by labor. Robots are a capital good. If the same amount of output can be produced by a mix of more robots and fewer people, an industry will not offer as much employment as before. Does it follow that when one industry uses fewer workers there is no need for their services anywhere else? How would the advocates of this view explain the enormous growth in the labor force since the Industrial Revolution two centuries ago—a period characterized by increasing capital intensity?

Re: Amazon Is Creating Company Towns Across the United States

#184

Post by Aunche »

tmpz22 wrote: post #162
friedman23 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Class ambivalence? Who is upper class here? Jeff Bezos? He was born to single mother out of wedlock in highschool. Or is class something you can buy your way into now?

And yet his parents were able to slide him a cool quarter million to start Amazon without breaking a sweat.

Before he started Amazon, Bezos had already been already an SVP at DE Shaw, so it's not like he would have any trouble finding another quarter million from investors.

Re: Amazon Is Creating Company Towns Across the United States

#185

Post by 0x262d »

friedman23 wrote: post #165
0x262d wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bezos' profits on the basis of how much work his employees do, minus how much he pays them. that's what class is. it's pretty hard to deny it exists.

That's being rich not upper class. There is a difference.

no, class (in the marxist sense, everything else is meaningless cultural signifiers) is not about "upper" or "lower", it's about either getting paid for wage labor, ie being working class, or getting paid for other people's use of property you own, ie being capitalist class. this is extremely basic and is the fundamental divide under capitalism.

Re: Amazon Is Creating Company Towns Across the United States

#186

Post by nscalf »

GoodJokes wrote: post #123
JCM9 wrote: post #48

Like a lot of these stories there’s lots of ways to spin reality. Headline could read “Company turns up providing much needed high paying jobs to region left devastated by failed industries (steel, manufacturing, …”. Or you could say “Evil company moved in and sets up company town.” Honestly agnostic to this whole thing but it’s interesting to watch efforts to spin things one way or another.

Companies don’t provide jobs. People provide labor and companies exploit said labor for profit.

Then quit, don’t get another job, and stop complaining about it. But most people can’t, because they aren’t just blindly exploited, they’re compensated for their work and that gives them more freedom and future options. If you want to say they’re not fairly compensated, go work to get a bill passed. Or run for office. Or make your own company. Just do SOMETHING, making flippant remarks online and whining isn’t productive and doesn’t help anyone.

Re: Amazon Is Creating Company Towns Across the United States

#187

Post by ghufran_syed »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #151
strombofulous wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question, how do you injure yourself in an Amazon warehouse? I thought there wasn't any heavy machinery or other dangerous machines. Is it just from too much walking?

Amazon calls their warehouse staff “industrial athletes” in internal docs. https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/2/22465357/amazon-industrial... > Amazon tells its warehouse employees to think of themselves not as overworked cogs in an enormous, soul-crushing machine, but as “industrial athletes,” and to prepare their bodies for that experience like someone training for a sporting event, according to a pamphlet obtained by…

"Double the amount of serious injuries" - using a metric based on whether you got time off or a change in duties. So if your company is better about making you see a doctor when you get an injury, and better about honoring the doctor's recommendation regarding light duty or time off, your company's number on this metric would get worse.

I see a lot of illegal workers in the ER who get injured at work but refuse to fill out the workman's comp forms - you can guarantee that their employers have a zero rate for serious injuries using that metric

[Edit - If you're looking to really improve conditions, maybe focus on the workers who don't show up in the official numbers? Reminds me of the old story about the drunk guy looking for his lost keys by the lamppost, not where he dropped them "because the light is better here"]

Re: Amazon Is Creating Company Towns Across the United States

#188

Post by rcstank »

beckman466 wrote: post #143
sergefaguet wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I must have missed the point when unions became about voicing concerns. Last I recall, creating unions is an attempt at monopolizing labor to extort the employer. When this tactic is applied to any other factor of production it is called a “cartel” and engaged in “market manipulation.” How surprising that employers who pay above-market wages do not wish to be extorted further. All the modern propaganda s…

> creating unions is an attempt at monopolizing labor to extort the employer. When this tactic is applied to any other factor of production it is called a “cartel” and engaged in “market manipulation.” Wow, I’m not even gonna comment on this first paragraph. I only have one question: do you live in the US? > How surprising that employers who pay above-market wages do not wish to be extorted further. Employers in our…

> Wow, I’m not even gonna comment on this first paragraph. I only have one question: do you live in the US?

You neither proved your point nor disproved their point.

Re: Amazon Is Creating Company Towns Across the United States

#189

Post by gruez »

wildrhythms wrote: post #134
gruez wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This smells more of medieval style feudalism. In what way? Are people obligated to work for amazon?

When Amazon is the only viable place of employment in your town, yes. Look to Walmart- America's largest supermarket chain, and America's second largest employer (second only to the U.S. government). Rural America is a sea of "Walmart towns", where the best employment is the only employment.

> When Amazon is the only viable place of employment in your town, yes.

>Rural America is a sea of "Walmart towns", where the best employment is the only employment.

Are you being hyperbolic by saying that amazon/walmart is the "only" or "only viable" place of employment? Are there literally no other places to work? If you're being hyperbolic, at what point does it count as "medieval style feudalism"? I searched around on wikipedia for what "feudalism" is, and despite my best efforts I can't pin down on a good definition. However, it definitely doesn't seem to be "one entity provides most of the employment in an area".

Re: Amazon Is Creating Company Towns Across the United States

#190

Post by rcstank »

oblio wrote: post #108
sergefaguet wrote: post #28

An extremely efficient and competent corporation doing everything it can to deliver goods cheaper and faster to hundreds of millions of people while creating value for tens of millions of shareholders? And now it has more and more impact running social services too? How dare they do this travesty without democratic oversight. Clearly the best way forward is to regulate them so that they are on a level playing field w…

What happens when the largest employer in the company town shuts the warehouse or whatever town? I guess the town shuts down, right?

Why is that a bad thing? People are smart. They’ll figure something out just like humans have done for centuries.
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