1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee • Hacker News Board

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#481

Post by gambiting » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 10:40 AM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #471

jatins wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rest assured if Amazon could automate, Amazon would automate. > I don't see any way for the employees to win this beyond buying a bit more time. Why can't the government increase minimum wages? If those jobs are likely to get automated away then that's going to happen either way At least let them make decent wages _while_ they have a job.

And Amazon will over time or they'll get squeezed. I get my groceries from Ocado in the UK. Their warehouses are almost entirely automated, including increasingly picking and packing groceries that often include soft or easily breakable products into bags. They're moved from focusing on growing their own direct sales to increasingly licensing that platform globally.

You say that, but you know how many people that "fully automated" warehouse in the UK employs? Around 800 per shift. It was mentioned in the last incident report when one robot caught fire.

Yeah a big part of the work is automated. But these warehouses still need people.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#482

Post by wccrawford » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 10:45 AM UTC

iamthepieman wrote: post #341

ProAm wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walmart is known as a town killer, Amazon is an industry killer.

The "big town" (8000 residents) near my town (2500 residents) rejected Walmart on these grounds 25 years ago. The town that accepted Walmart has grown tremendously whereas my big town has 14 empty storefronts on the two main streets which is about 25 percent of the walkable storefronts. It's probably a confounding factor more related to my town's resistance to change and growth than the fact that Walmart isn't there…

Another anecdote: Walmart moved into our rural town around, IIRC, 1980. The population chart takes a large upturn around that year. It was about 1000 then, and it's over 3000 today. It certainly didn't kill that town. Walmart even moved locations closer to the highway into a bigger store, too.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#483

Post by wccrawford » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 10:50 AM UTC

queuebert wrote: post #381

katbyte wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no-BS return policy also no fee - the fact i can buy worry free knowing if its not as described/trash/broken i can just send it back at no cost is why i use them. don't know any other online store like that

Other than shipping damage, I don't regularly get misleading or broken items from other retailers, especially small ones. This only happens with third-party Amazon retailers, who mostly sell trash and hope you don't care enough to return it because it was so cheap.

It's rare, but I did, back when I regularly ordered from other places.

I also regularly didn't get things on time. And I don't mean a day late, I mean "hasn't even shipped yet by the time it should arrive" late, and without even a notice.

What really sold me on Amazon was game sales, though. I'd pre-order something at Walmart or Gamestop and show up on release day to find out they didn't get it. This happened enough that I finally just ordered it on Amazon instead and hoped it'd work out. It not only worked out, but it had great tracking so I always knew what was going on. I had maybe 2 games be late from Amazon in all the time I ordered from them, and at least one of those was weather that stopped the planes and would absolutely have affected GS and WM, too.

From there they introduced the 2-day shipping and the rest was history.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#484

Post by wccrawford » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 10:53 AM UTC

8note wrote: post #331

allturtles wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm increasingly put out by Amazon and am trying to stop the habit of shopping there. I like books, and Amazon was founded on books, but the way they ship books now (typically loose in a soft envelope or mostly empty box) means that >50% of the books I've ordered recently have arrived damaged and had to be returned. They used to shrinkwrap books to a cardboard plate inside the box. There are other problems: 1) Search…

You couldn't read these books? Or you couldn't show off that you owned them? How do you lose a page from inside of a box/envelope?

For people who buy physical books, there's a lot of pride of ownership and enjoying the look and feel of the thing, as much as actually reading it.

I'll never forget lending one of the few books I bothered to keep physically to my wife who immediately trying to crack the spine on it to have it open the way she was used to.

The majority of the books I read are digital, though, and have been since PDAs were invented.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#485

Post by anovikov » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 10:57 AM UTC

goodcanadian wrote: post #472

kortilla wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're heading towards a world where most work is done by machines, and only a handful of people will own, control and profit from them People keep saying that but we are no closer than we were 50 years ago. A lot of jobs have been replaced but new jobs have been created and society has absorbed the increased productivity (cheaper goods, foods, and much more complex high end goods (iPhone, airplanes, etc).

People keep saying that but we are no closer than we were 50 years ago. People have been saying it for far longer than 50 years: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite The trouble is, both sides of the argument are correct. When disruption occurs, many people are badly disadvantaged even if society as a whole moves forward. It would be best to find ways to reduce the impact on the affected people without holding up…

And luddites were right because pre-industrial level of worker compensation, in real terms, was only achieved by the early XX century.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#486

Post by HWR_14 » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 10:58 AM UTC

hosh wrote: post #126

underseacables wrote: post #72

I’m torn badly with Amazon. After read The Everything Store, and what has been written all over the place, Jeff Bezos is a massive turd. Employees are horribly treated, wages suppressed, and all sorts of terrible and abusive practices. Then it comes time for me to buy something. I needed a new pair of size 14 sneakers. I drove to Adidas, Footlocker, dicks, and a few other stores but I just couldn’t justify $100 sneak…

That is the heart of “Aggregation Theory” from the stratechary blog. That these companies amass their market power by making their product so easy to use, they aggregate demand and are able to squeeze suppliers. They hold monopolistic power, but it is hard to argue that they “harm consumers”. Unlike old school monopolies, consumers go to aggregators because they want to, not because they are forced to.

Those firms are actually designed around monopsony power, not monopoly power. That is, the are the vendor you have to sell to. Walmart is famous for this.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#487

Post by HWR_14 » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 11:01 AM UTC

jefftk wrote: post #120

shakezula wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, no a startup can't replace Amazon without themselves having all of those rents, and insurances, and reporting accountants and lawyers. Amazon has a logistics network that rivals the U.S. military's right now. You can't just "displace & disrupt" that with a trendy San Francisco office.

Why wouldn't you have said the same about Amazon and B&N in 1994?

Amazon's original pitch was not selling you the latest Stephen King novel. B&N was going to beat them there. But they were going to own the long tail of books you cannot stock a cache of every few miles in suburbia.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#488

Post by sokoloff » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 11:02 AM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #462

gruez wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is helping employees get government aid bad? Isn't that what government aid is supposed to be for?

Because if you tax Bob who makes 24 bucks an hour to feed Sam who is making 12 then Sam is in effect working for below market wages because in a functional market Sam would never work for less money than he required to eat. This arrangement is a transfer of wealth between the middle class and Walmart regardless of whether they opt to shop at Walmart.

In a world where Bob makes $24/hr and Sam doesn’t work (because he won’t take the $12/hr job), Bob’s probably not going to pay less taxes or be better off.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#489

Post by HWR_14 » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 11:03 AM UTC

krapp wrote: post #99

fridif wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"So aside from just stop buying from Amazon, what can we do?" Lower the barriers to entry for business. It is not easy to comply with regulations and reporting. A scrappy startup can replace Amazon if they can focus on things that are not burdensome and arbitrary, like rent + insurance + tax reporting + legal.

You expect a scrappy startup which has few or no regulations to comply with to treat their employees better than Amazon, which only treats their employees as well as they do because regulations force them to?

> which only treats their employees as well as they do because regulations force them to?

In fairness, the do pay more than the legal minimum wage in many places.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#490

Post by schrectacular » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 11:09 AM UTC

distances wrote: post #479

WalterBright wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add to that the cheap-as-dirt popcorn maker. My mom would make popcorn in a frying pan. The machine is sooo much easier. There are the mothers of kitchen automation: 1. refrigerator 2. garbage disposal 3. dishwasher 4. electric / gas stove and oven These are really marvelous inventions. It seems I spent half my childhood washing dishes by hand. Ugh.

Out of interest, what do you mean by automated garbage disposal? The urban infrastructure of someone taking away your garbage, or the mostly-US device installed in your sinks? The latter does not exist in Europe so I haven't ever thought it would be an important step in reducing chores. We have bio waste bins for food leftovers which seems pretty efficient already.

It's a grinder machine that people install just below their drain. Ostensibly so that you don't have to put a strainer in there.

In my opinion they provide basically zero value but lots of trouble. They encourage putting all kinds of nastiness down your pipes and in my experience tend to break and leak. But they are virtually ubiquitous here.