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Amazon investors nuke ethics overhaul and say yes to $212M CEO pay

theregister.com

51–60 of 259 posts

Re: Amazon investors nuke ethics overhaul and say yes to $212M CEO pay

#51
post #12

[flagged]

its not a "job" it is leadership.. an appropriate analogy is closer to Roman General than school bus driver

within their own circles, competition is fierce.. part of the stature of a modern leader is in the dollar value, much less of the ornamentation and ceremonial weaponry of old.. bankers like it better now

Re: Amazon investors nuke ethics overhaul and say yes to $212M CEO pay

#52
post #25

Most of the stuff in the "ethics overhaul" is pie in the sky nonsense. Take this bullet point: "Whether AWS does due diligence to know if cloud customers are using its services in a way that contributes to human rights violations" What does that even mean? How could that possibly be accomplished? Who decides what constitutes a "human rights violation" in the first place?

> Who decides what constitutes a "human rights violation" in the first place?

There are plenty of organisations trying to do just that. UN Human Rights Council, Amnesty International, etc. There's a Universal Declaration of Human Rights that could quite easily be applied as a baseline.

Re: Amazon investors nuke ethics overhaul and say yes to $212M CEO pay

#53
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is most certainly targeted towards AWS being used by ICE. And not just in a generic way of them hosting ICE servers, but with ICE using Amazon Rekognition to identify undocumented immigrants (and allegedly AWS had meetings with ICE to convince them to use the service). The human rights violations come up when you talk about kids being separated from their families and then straight up lost, and the various other…

ICE is the problem, all the heinous shit US defense and intelligence does, whom Amazon is also in bed with, a-ok

I agree. And I would argue that the CIA should also get the boot. Probably about half of AWS's GovCloud should. But all the other heinous stuff that the US government agencies do abroad someone (that's not me) could argue is in the furtherance of national security. ICE is absolutely, clearly, not. There is no justifiable defense of the things ICE does, which is why it's the one most targeted.

Re: Amazon investors nuke ethics overhaul and say yes to $212M CEO pay

#54
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is most certainly targeted towards AWS being used by ICE. And not just in a generic way of them hosting ICE servers, but with ICE using Amazon Rekognition to identify undocumented immigrants (and allegedly AWS had meetings with ICE to convince them to use the service). The human rights violations come up when you talk about kids being separated from their families and then straight up lost, and the various other…

ICE is the problem, all the heinous shit US defense and intelligence does, whom Amazon is also in bed with, a-ok

> all the heinous shit US defense and intelligence does, whom Amazon is also in bed with, a-ok

I seriously doubt people think this.

Re: Amazon investors nuke ethics overhaul and say yes to $212M CEO pay

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of a company isn't to employ people. It's to take raw inputs, including employee labor, and turn that into outputs that people want. Employee relief comes in the form of voting with their feet or if they're critical inputs into what the black box produces

Amusing. The purpose of a company was originally exactly that: to employ people and provide services and value to the community they existed in. I mean, this is still the exact reason politicians cite when providing incentives to companies - bringing jobs to their cities/states. I'm pretty sure I don't like this new definition; it feels like it's based on greed, not value.

That's not historically accurate. Historically, the purpose of a company was to be a vehicle that a passive partner could invest capital into an enterprise providing a return on investment, such that an active partner (who did not) could manage it [1].

I do not see historical support for your claim that the purpose of a company was "to employ people and provide services and value to the community they existed in" even if that would be an ideal social outcome (and one which I'd personally prefer to see everywhere).

[1] https://news.law.fordham.edu/jcfl/2018/11/18/a-brief-history...

Re: Amazon investors nuke ethics overhaul and say yes to $212M CEO pay

#56
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need hard limits on executive pay because if you adjust every other employees salary at a truly fair rate, Jassy should be lucky to make 10 million a year. Fair, by definition, is when the market reaches equilibrium. The shareholders think this is a fair salary. Why is your opinion more valid than theirs? Sure, the salary is high, but it seems commensurate with the value that Amazon generates. Literally 30% of t…

Comparing wild outliers seems seems like expectation grooming. How about lowest pay at company compared to highest? It can cope with variations in industries and even among companies.

The often-cited notion that a warehouse worker has even remotely the same responsibility as a company CEO is just straight-up fiction. Ergo, their jobs are incomparable.

Re: Amazon investors nuke ethics overhaul and say yes to $212M CEO pay

#59
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ICE is the problem, all the heinous shit US defense and intelligence does, whom Amazon is also in bed with, a-ok

I agree. And I would argue that the CIA should also get the boot. Probably about half of AWS's GovCloud should. But all the other heinous stuff that the US government agencies do abroad someone (that's not me) could argue is in the furtherance of national security. ICE is absolutely, clearly, not. There is no justifiable defense of the things ICE does, which is why it's the one most targeted.

Does this strategy of shaming the corporation who wants a nice big government contract instead of, you know, petitioning your federally elected representatives, actually work?

Re: Amazon investors nuke ethics overhaul and say yes to $212M CEO pay

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of a company isn't to employ people. It's to take raw inputs, including employee labor, and turn that into outputs that people want. Employee relief comes in the form of voting with their feet or if they're critical inputs into what the black box produces

Amusing. The purpose of a company was originally exactly that: to employ people and provide services and value to the community they existed in. I mean, this is still the exact reason politicians cite when providing incentives to companies - bringing jobs to their cities/states. I'm pretty sure I don't like this new definition; it feels like it's based on greed, not value.

> purpose of a company was originally exactly that: to employ people and provide services and value to the community they existed in

This describes charities, trusts and local governments. Maybe artisans. The East India companies weren’t trying to “provide services and value” to anyone but their owners. Even going back to Roman times, civic duty and commercial interests were distinct parts of peoples’ work. You were expected to do both. But the unification of the two pursuits appears to be more modern.

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