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I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine

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Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine

#61

Post by Retric »

ericd wrote: post #44
scarmig wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because it's hard to monetize and profit from concepts like the health and well-being of employees doesn't mean that we as a society should put that value at zero. The "competitiveness of a company on the global market" isn't the be-all, end-all. The phrase itself belies your point: if we as a society wanted to, we could place tariffs equivalent to the cost of providing a humane workplace for packaging workers,…

Competitiveness is extremely important, and you highlight a way to sort of obtain that, but you can only control competitiveness in the domestic market with tariffs unless you basically oppress third worlders (how it will be viewed, anyway) by strong-arming nations to pass similar tariff laws. The value of domestic manual labor simply isn't that high anymore except in hard-to-outsource cases, and unless we change our…

The US economy has no need to export anything into third world countries their economy's are simply to tiny accept much in the way of imports. In-fact we have long flooded most of them with cheap food which we lost money to create so balance of trade is even less valuable than you might think. http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/

Canada, is another story we really need to keep them happy: http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c1220.html

We export half as much stuff to China: http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html

And Ethiopia is next to nothing: http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c7740.html

Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine

#62

Post by neilk »

SurfScore wrote: post #12

It always comes down to price. The vast majority of people in the world aren't so self-righteous that they'll pay $10 more for something that was produced "the right way." This has always been the nature of these kinds of businesses, and until robots and technology take those jobs away completely (which opens up a whole other can of worms), it will just keep happening

You're right that most consumers don't really act like it's a priority for them, even when labeling regimes exist and they have said that ethical products are important. The best you can get is a 10% premium from a segment of relatively wealthy and socially conscious people.[1]

However, for those that do, I'm not sure "self-righteous" is the right term. I think the word you were looking for was "non-hypocritical".

Anyway, I think this just shows that the checkout counter isn't the right place for us to exert our ethical standards. When no one's really watching, and the pain is significant, we're weak, atomized individuals. We even know that our individual purchasing decisions mean zero to giant economic forces. So it's rational to just go for the lower price. All progress with labor standards have come about in other ways - journalism, legislation, and unionization.

[1] http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~hiscox/Depelsmacker.pdf

Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine

#63

Post by yummyfajitas »

mgkimsal wrote: post #33
krschultz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a big fan of unions in general (especially with regards to years = seniority in pay & firing), but on ergonomics I'm with them. It doesn't cost much to implement the warehouse in an ergonomic way, but clearly this company and many like it aren't doing that at all. That has a really important effect on the difficulty of the job.

well... it costs them something more than it cost to have it the way it is now, and since they don't have to pay for the effect on the workers working in the non-ergonomic warehouse, what's the point? If they had to pay for the health/welfare of their workers directly, they'd have an incentive to ergonimicize the place.

If they had to pay for the health/welfare of their workers directly...

You mean if they had to pay some sort of compensation for work related injuries? Too bad only 50 US states have workers comp laws.

Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine

#64

Post by batista »

ekianjo wrote: post #38
batista wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But under non-capitalist systems such as in the USSR you were machine gunned or bayoneted for refusing to work (starting with the Kronstadt Rebellion and ending with Solidarity), and had no option to quit or leave the country. Actually no. In anything, the socialist states were infamous for people not-working-that-much. The Kronstadt Rebellion and Solidarity had nothing to do with "refusing to work", and all to do wi…

> the reason US has a slightly more advanced economy than, say, Sweden, is not due to harsh working conditions. It's has more to do with human capital, a large unified market PLUS tons of military might abused to ensure cheap oil and resources. Russia: huge human capital. Check. Large unified market. Check. Tons of Military Might abused to ensure cheap access to ressources. Check. Oh wait, I can do the same thing for…

Russia: huge human capital. Check. Large unified market. Check. Tons of Military Might abused to ensure cheap access to ressources. Check.

Russia is only about 100-110 million people. One third of the US. So the "large unified market" is much smaller, as is the "human capital" pool, by which I don't mean people, but scientists, inventors, etc. And the military might that Russia has and uses to gain cheap access to resources is so smaller compared to the US it's not even funny. Plus, Russia is recovering from both the USSR state bureaucrat dictatorship AND the US/IMF BS doctrines imposed on the during the Yeltsin era.

Oh wait, I can do the same thing for China, too.

Well, unlike Russia, China DOES have all that. And China is doing rather well. It's on the up and up, and already poised to a larger economy that the US. So, if anything, this supports my argument.

Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine

#65

Post by lukifer »

ekianjo wrote: post #38
batista wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But under non-capitalist systems such as in the USSR you were machine gunned or bayoneted for refusing to work (starting with the Kronstadt Rebellion and ending with Solidarity), and had no option to quit or leave the country. Actually no. In anything, the socialist states were infamous for people not-working-that-much. The Kronstadt Rebellion and Solidarity had nothing to do with "refusing to work", and all to do wi…

> the reason US has a slightly more advanced economy than, say, Sweden, is not due to harsh working conditions. It's has more to do with human capital, a large unified market PLUS tons of military might abused to ensure cheap oil and resources. Russia: huge human capital. Check. Large unified market. Check. Tons of Military Might abused to ensure cheap access to ressources. Check. Oh wait, I can do the same thing for…

> The economic system is the only KEY differenciator to build an economy

Are you kidding? Socio-cultural values, religious beliefs, natural resources, foreign policy, domestic policy, monetary systems, infrastructure, none of these things matter at all?

Your inferences from history might have value if we had a reliable World Simulator, where we could change and control variables at will and observe the results. But we don't; extrapolating any kind of simple narrative from history pretty much guarantees you're at least partially wrong. Reality is complex, and is under no obligation to work in ways that make intuitive sense to us talking monkeys.

Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine

#66

Post by rw »

This reminds me of the novella "Manna":

> He looked at me for a long time, "A computer is telling you what to do on the job? What does the manager do?"

> "The computer is the manager. Manna, manager, get it?"

> "You mean that a computer is telling you what to do all day?", he asked.

> "Yeah."

http://bit.ly/xP6sLk

Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine

#68

Post by ekianjo »

batista wrote: post #64
ekianjo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the reason US has a slightly more advanced economy than, say, Sweden, is not due to harsh working conditions. It's has more to do with human capital, a large unified market PLUS tons of military might abused to ensure cheap oil and resources. Russia: huge human capital. Check. Large unified market. Check. Tons of Military Might abused to ensure cheap access to ressources. Check. Oh wait, I can do the same thing for…

Russia: huge human capital. Check. Large unified market. Check. Tons of Military Might abused to ensure cheap access to ressources. Check. Russia is only about 100-110 million people. One third of the US. So the "large unified market" is much smaller, as is the "human capital" pool, by which I don't mean people, but scientists, inventors, etc. And the military might that Russia has and uses to gain cheap access to re…

Oh yeah, China is doing rather well NOW. How about China, like 20 or even 30 years ago ? It was a poor country, underdeveloped. And you know what changed ? Their economic system. Just that. It was so sudden in China you can easily trace the roots of their economic boom. It supports my argument, rather than yours.

Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine

#69

Post by ekianjo »

lukifer wrote: post #65
ekianjo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the reason US has a slightly more advanced economy than, say, Sweden, is not due to harsh working conditions. It's has more to do with human capital, a large unified market PLUS tons of military might abused to ensure cheap oil and resources. Russia: huge human capital. Check. Large unified market. Check. Tons of Military Might abused to ensure cheap access to ressources. Check. Oh wait, I can do the same thing for…

> The economic system is the only KEY differenciator to build an economy Are you kidding? Socio-cultural values, religious beliefs, natural resources, foreign policy, domestic policy, monetary systems, infrastructure, none of these things matter at all ? Your inferences from history might have value if we had a reliable World Simulator, where we could change and control variables at will and observe the results. But…

Socio-cultural values. Japan has totally different values from the US. China, same.Apparently that does not prevent them from all being prettu successful economically speaking.

Religious beliefs. Huh ? Japan, China, same as previous point. Totally different from Europe or US. But otherwise pretty successful countries. Where's the correlation between economy and religion?

Natural resources. Japan has no access to natural resources on their land. Singapore has no resources. Luxemburg has no resources. Switzerland has no resources. Holland has no resources. Funny how all those countries have rather healthy economies.

Foreign policy Agree on that one. But policies which do not support free exchange of goods tend to do rather badly. Cuba, anyone?

Domestic policy Domestic policy in China and in the US are totally different - you will find very few common points there. That does not seem to impact significantly their economic success, at least on the short term.

Monetary systems You have a point there, but since all countries have abandoned the Gold standard for long, basically we are all on fiat currency currently, no matter in which part of the world you live in. Money is now paper everywhere, it's hardly a differentiator.

Infrastructure Infrastructure usually derived from an economic system. It's when you have a growing economy and growing needs that you worry about infrastructures. Building roads and airports when people are starving is useless.

So, not many of the things you mentioned matter at all, I'm afraid. But feel free to prove me wrong.

Re: I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave: Inside the online-shopping shipping machine

#70

Post by kijin »

Permit wrote: post #21
nostromo wrote: post #7

It strikes me that these sort of manual warehouse picking jobs will be completely gone in a few years as robots automate the picking process (as seen here with Diapers.com: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zXOW6v0c8s )

Wow, that's truly incredible. I didn't realize anyone had reached this point. I'm excited to see this stuff progress, but I can't help but wonder what sort of social problems this might create as the unskilled jobs of an economy are slowly chipped away at. This sort of work surely creates more jobs in tech sectors and in maintenance, but skills learned in boxing are not transferable to any of the jobs that might be c…

Machines have been replacing jobs for over 200 years now, but I don't think there's been a huge increase in unemployment over that period. We've always managed to invent more meaningless and repetitious tasks for ourselves to do. One might say that most office jobs nowadays are like that, too. Factories replaced farms, cubicles replaced factories. But usually this happened over generations, so people had a chance to adapt.

If, at some point in the future, so many tasks get automated so quickly that there aren't enough jobs for the majority of this planet's featherless bipeds, we might finally get a chance to rethink the age-old rule that a person must work in order to survive. Work might become something that you only do because you like it, or because you want a higher income than whatever the default is. I only hope that outdated ideologies won't get in the way of such a paradigm shift.

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