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

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

#231

Post by reasonabl_human »

beeboop wrote: post #197
sushisource wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, it's a good point that you rarely hear much in the public discourse about how much NFL players make, where tech CEOs are a constant target of this sort of anger. Mind you, I agree with you on the general point, but turns out people don't act terribly rationally about who they get angry at for making too much money.

This is actually a very interesting point. I think what this points out is that society thinks an athlete who is good at throwing a ball earns their money more than a tech executive, and honestly I'm not sure I disagree. One gets to where they are with extreme practice, talent, dedication, and typically a generous portion of privilege while growing up. The other (tech execs) often get where they are by lying, cheatin…

I seriously cannot tell if this is satire

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

#232

Post by arinlen »

cbozeman wrote: post #187
arinlen wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Damn near everyone in America, at least, has access to YouTube or other streaming services. I learned how to program in R (...) Enough with this pseudo-moralistic perpetuation of abuse, specially the tone-deaf ones based on survivorship bias. Just because someone is not able to win the lottery that does not mean they have no right to earn a living wage that allows them a honest living. Aren't we supposed to live in…

> Just pay people a fair wage. Is it that hard? Yes. Because we have no idea how to define 'fair'. I hear 'fair wage' over and over but no one can ever explain to me what makes the wage 'fair' other than, "I have a job and I should be able to live on that single job!" Okay... why? Where is it written that you should be able to live on a single job? As soon as you can come up with an argument that's not emotive, and i…

> Yes. Because we have no idea how to define 'fair'.

Well, we do. I mean, we have a pretty solid idea of what represents the absolute bare minimum. For starters, minimum wage should be a living wage. It should be enough all on its own to meet living expenses, including paying for a modest apartment, without breaking any effort rate limit.

Is this too hard?

Are we supposed to pretend that some people simply do not have a right to have a decent life?

> . I hear 'fair wage' over and over but no one can ever explain to me what makes the wage 'fair' other than, "I have a job and I should be able to live on that single job!"

Why exactly do you have a hard time understanding this?

Look at yourself. Look at the living expenses you have, specially the basic necessities. You pay for the roof over your head, for the food on your plate, for the clothes on your back. Do you have a hard time quantifying that?

This is even simpler than that. Landlords and banks already use the concept of effort rate. They already know that if someone's effort rate goes beyond 40% then they are at a significant risk of financial distress. Is it too hard to start from there and determine what's a living wage in any region?

Or is there zero lack of interest, and a desire to pull the ladder out of your own feet to screw everyone less fortunate than you?

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

#233

Post by [deleted] »

cbozeman wrote: post #187
arinlen wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Damn near everyone in America, at least, has access to YouTube or other streaming services. I learned how to program in R (...) Enough with this pseudo-moralistic perpetuation of abuse, specially the tone-deaf ones based on survivorship bias. Just because someone is not able to win the lottery that does not mean they have no right to earn a living wage that allows them a honest living. Aren't we supposed to live in…

> Just pay people a fair wage. Is it that hard? Yes. Because we have no idea how to define 'fair'. I hear 'fair wage' over and over but no one can ever explain to me what makes the wage 'fair' other than, "I have a job and I should be able to live on that single job!" Okay... why? Where is it written that you should be able to live on a single job? As soon as you can come up with an argument that's not emotive, and i…

[deleted]

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

#234

Post by JumpCrisscross »

falcolas wrote: post #143
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Shareholders are not the only stakeholders who should be considered in a company. "The purpose of a corporation is to ... create value over the long-term, which requires consideration of the stakeholders ... (shareholders, employees , customers , suppliers, creditors and communities ) ..." https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2020/05/27/on-the-purpose-of...

> Shareholders are not the only stakeholders who should be considered in a company

Sure. (Though this is far from settled.) But saying this was the "original...purpose of a company" is inaccurate.

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

#235

Post by blindmute »

yunohn wrote: post #227
blindmute wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We" haven't gone anywhere. If you have to work now, you would have had to work just as much in the Renaissance. Those ideals were by and for independently wealthy aristocrats. The working class has always and will always work. If you're willing to have the quality of life that a Renaissance working class man had, 15/hr is plenty.

“We’ve always subjugated and mistreated the working class” is not the win that you think it is.

The working class has never had it better than they have it right now, except for a brief period of a few years in the mid 20th century. You wouldn't know it though, from all the complaining. Sure, society "should" keep improving, but in the meantime there's plenty of ways for someone to improve their situation, and none of those ways involve complaining about rich people.

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

#236

Post by yunohn »

blindmute wrote: post #235
yunohn wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“We’ve always subjugated and mistreated the working class” is not the win that you think it is.

The working class has never had it better than they have it right now, except for a brief period of a few years in the mid 20th century. You wouldn't know it though, from all the complaining. Sure, society "should" keep improving, but in the meantime there's plenty of ways for someone to improve their situation, and none of those ways involve complaining about rich people.

Do you mean they get to enjoy the fruits of modern life, and hence shouldn’t complain? Again, that’s not a valid argument.

Let’s use some data, for example wealth distribution (1) - the lower classes have stayed lower income, and the middle class is rapidly transferring wealth to the upper classes. How is this sustainable?

(1) https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-...

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

#237

Post by Krasnol »

lazide wrote: post #230
Krasnol wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like the folks here who cheer this madness, those folks who pay them believe in the hype for the same stupid reasons OP outlined above and to justify their own wages.

Those folks are elected by the shareholders though. So the people who are paying, are (indirectly) paying out of their own pockets. If someone can't pay out of their own pockets the amount they think someone is worth for them to work for them (or appoint someone to do it for them), then... what's the alternative?

By the biggest shareholders which are in turn the same kind of people.

And they surely not pay it out of THEIR OWN pockets...they pay it out of pockets of their customers and so on goes the responsibility train...

Also what's the "choice" there? Seriously, even calling that "choice" is ridiculous.

The alternative is to force those bloodsuckers to pay wages people can life from. They can keep the rest. Nobody would give a damn because at some point they'd have to rise prices to reflect even in the slightest ways the actual worth of the work of their weakest slaves which carry the whole construct. Maybe and only maybe then they'd cut the wages higher above where all those useless paper pushers sit with their fancy names or they'd lose money because people would stop buying their shit.

Quite easy eh? And everybody knows about that solution. It's just not happening because everybody who could enforce it, is just as greedy as the assholes on top and their "shareholders".

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

#238

Post by bumby »

RONROC wrote: post #178
OminousWeapons wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should definitely not be more than FIVE times what he makes. Because you're not 5x smarter, efficient, or important as FIVE (5) janitors. Period. Again, it doesn't matter if I'm smarter, more efficient, or "more important" than 5 janitors; what matters is how much money I can help the company make and how hard I am to replace. If I'm enabling the company to make 10X more money than the efforts of a janitor could yi…

Hahaha, of course you don't see that. You're talents are rarified and frozen in amber (you work in an opaque, cut throat, morally bankrupt industry that headhunts just for the sake of taking talent off the market). I 100% agree that's it's arbitrary, and my figure wasn't a source of categorical, universal truth, but guess what? The hardest questions in life resides squarely in a GREY area. I'd even argue that your in…

How are you defining the proletariat in this sense? It seems to me that both the janitor and the OP are trading labor for wages.

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

#239

Post by justapassenger »

Krasnol wrote: post #216
justapassenger wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I seriously doubt those skills which are supposed to define scarcity at this point. There is too much management to require a seriously special person on that chair. I'm sure you could have someone from mid-management on that chair and it still wouldn't run worse. It would probably even run better. Did you ever try to manage small org vs big org vs huge company? It's very naive to think that managing dozens of peop…

Of course I did. I'm Bill Gates. Did you? I worked for small and huge companies though and I could see that it requires far less work to manage a huge one than to manage a small one. I wouldn't even call it "work" if managing the small one is work. It's more like pointing your finger.

I’ve also stood next to the brain surgeon once and I could see that his work was easy.

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

#240

Post by gtvwill »

dopamean wrote: post #127
bluetidepro wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 21 million per year, which wouldn't even make him a top 10 paid NFL quarterback and people are complaining about his pay for running one of the biggest companies in the world. If anything he is underpaid compared to other large tech company CEOs. People really just want to be outraged. Or imagine this... they (athletes and CEOs) are ALL grossly overpaid. WOAH!! How out of touch with reality are you, if you think th…

I never understand the arguments against high pay for professional athletes. They are largely union organized labor. Their pays is directly tied to how much money their league is bringing in in revenue (mostly TV deals). If they don't get paid that money then that money goes to the already incredibly wealthy owners of the team. Does that make more sense?

Well it generally stems from the source of the arguments as to why you don't just print money and pay everyone a living wage.

Because money is artificially kept scarce.

Do you think Amazon could maintain its warehouses if it didn't have desperate workers trying to make enough to survive? Shit no it couldn't. So why do think the boss of that company who well let's be honest could probably be replaced quite easily compared to the warehouse workers (it's easy af to replace a workforce of one man but go try fill 10'000 positions at once) should get paid so much more than the workers literally making his company work? It'd take the AVG worker 3.5 lifetimes on 20 an hour to be compensated the same as one year of that CEO. Are you telling me that is acceptable? Your going to create individuals who have wealth that would take the AVG Joe 35 lifetimes to equal. Lol folks who simp for absurd pays to CEOs are legit bonkers. Your never going to earn that. Your kids and your kids kids are never going to earn that not for another 35 generations. So yeah how fair so you think that is? How equal is that? Creating a class of generational slaves and wealth imbalance that's set to last a few thousand years. Such sustainable business! Lol

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