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Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

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Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#101

Post by nightcracker »

johnchristopher wrote: post #58
dave_sullivan wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are certainly scales, it's not all uniform. But the EU is a big place and people are free to pick which country they live in. It's disingenuous to suggest it's all the same thing. The larger point of EU workers having more rights is, on average, very true. The US (and China and Russia) treats their workers very poorly by comparison.

> But the EU is a big place and people are free to pick which country they live in. There are limits though. You have a 3 months period where you can stay in another UE country then the national authorities can ask for your leaving. There are statuses that allows you to stay longer (work, studies, retirement, etc.) but those statuses have requirements and obligations. You can't take your tent, set it up somewhere in…

> You can't take your tent, set it up somewhere in another country and declare you live there without some fiscal authorities coming for you at some point.

The only 'requirement' is that the government (may) want to see you can provide for yourself in the form of capital, a job, a retirement pension, etc. This is because most countries in the EU have a social safety net, and some have a very strong one. Without this rule the countries with the most generous social security would see mass immigration from rent seekers with no recourse.

The USA doesn't need this rule because it lacks the strong social security.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#102

Post by southerntofu »

ahthat wrote: post #69
southerntofu wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything could be worse, but let's not be blind to the problems we face here in the EU. First of which, if your rights are being infringed, then you have to wait for years and years to be able to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, only after all of your national appeals have been depleted. Which, when you know how national governments can destroy you trough legal proceedings (eg. Aaron Swartz, physical/p…

That is the whole point of the state: that it is permitted to conduct violence for its preservation. In republics/representative democracies, the people endow the state with this power via elections. It's not a utopia, but at the end of the day the ownership of the state remains with the people, that is, a collective of individually thinking voting persons. This is in utter contrast to the monarchies and despotisms t…

> the ownership of the state remains with the people (...) in utter contrast to the monarchies and despotisms

Let me strongly disagree here. Modern republics like France/USA were explicitly built against democratic ideals which were seen as dangerous "rule of the mob". Also, the executive branch has so much power that it is in fact a monarchic republic where the people at the top are entirely unaccountable both to the people and to the rest of the State apparatus (neither Sarkozy nor Bush spent a single day in prison despite their many well-known crimes against the people).

Finally, since they exist these "democratic republic" have strongly fought off any popular movement. These same republic were endorsing slavery and fought off slaves rebelling, just like they were endorsing women being properties of men and fought off women rebelling, etc... When you dare to protest established power structures, you're faced with an army of robocop psychopaths (recruited for their fascist tendencies) who are grinning about hurting people like us.

A proper democracy requires a few properties: no political parties or elections because every body gets to decide on EVERYTHING (delegating power to a parliament is the INVERSE of democracy), the lower scale can always override decisions from the top because higher-up structures are only there to coordinate not to impose, and people are not bound to a single nation-wide identity (a principle imposed by the nazis in France, which the proto-fascist government of De Gaulle was happy to retain), or to quote from 1981:

`If we look back at the history of the past 40 years, police has hunted in the name of Republican or National order freemasons, communists, jews, resistant fighters, collaborators, Indochine's independance partisans, Algeria's independance partisans, members of the OAS, leftists, terrorists. Just imagine: if that police had done their job right every time, what would be left today in France? Democracy mandates this irreducible minimum that one can forge fake identity papers.`

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#103

Post by re-actor »

WalterBright wrote: post #77
fxtentacle wrote: post #50

Reading this, I'm so glad that in all of the EU it is illegal to fire someone purely based on a software decision. There's a minimum level of humanity that we should extend to everyone. Letting a known faulty AI decide if someone will have money for food tomorrow is way across the line. I'm not surprised that treating humans like cattle on their way to slaughter is hugely profitable. But I'm not sure we want to opera…

People have historically complained a lot about firings not being based on an objective formula. Now the complaint is an objective formula is being used. > WW2 prisoner camps For starters, those camps would shoot anyone who tried to leave. Not the same thing at all.

Just because there's an algorithm involved doesn't make it objective in any way.

There is no objective answer to "How productive is this employee", it's not something you can measure empirically.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#104

Post by acatton »

johnchristopher wrote: post #58
dave_sullivan wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are certainly scales, it's not all uniform. But the EU is a big place and people are free to pick which country they live in. It's disingenuous to suggest it's all the same thing. The larger point of EU workers having more rights is, on average, very true. The US (and China and Russia) treats their workers very poorly by comparison.

> But the EU is a big place and people are free to pick which country they live in. There are limits though. You have a 3 months period where you can stay in another UE country then the national authorities can ask for your leaving. There are statuses that allows you to stay longer (work, studies, retirement, etc.) but those statuses have requirements and obligations. You can't take your tent, set it up somewhere in…

> You have a 3 months period where you can stay in another UE country then the national authorities can ask for your leaving.

Maybe on paper. I wonder how much this is used.

The only time I remember this being used in practice, is when Sarkozy ordered the deportation of ~100 Romanian Romanies back to Romania, as part of his attempt to siphon far right votes.[1]

Apart from these few political stunts, I doubt this is often used.

[1] https://www.swissinfo.ch/fre/toute-l-actu-en-bref/la-france-...

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#105

Post by southerntofu »

kortilla wrote: post #87
southerntofu wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you don't like what Hitler is doing, just ignore he's murdering millions of people". No thanks, i'd rather organize to have this guy killed to restore just a tiny little bit of justice on earth. You obviously have a very privileged position where you don't NEED TO work for Amazon. Lots of people are in a different position and i hope you appreciate that. Also, you obviously have no idea about the rich history of…

No true Scotsman

If you read the ideologies of those "communist" countries, they'll tell you communism is a stateless/classless society based on freedom as it was envisioned by Marx. I'm not using a personal definition to say they're not communist, i'm using their own.

According to their vocabulary, such states are dictatorships of the proletariat, which is supposedly a step towards communism, but is NOT communism.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#106

Post by dtech »

golergka wrote: post #54
fxtentacle wrote: post #50

Reading this, I'm so glad that in all of the EU it is illegal to fire someone purely based on a software decision. There's a minimum level of humanity that we should extend to everyone. Letting a known faulty AI decide if someone will have money for food tomorrow is way across the line. I'm not surprised that treating humans like cattle on their way to slaughter is hugely profitable. But I'm not sure we want to opera…

> Reading this, I'm so glad that in all of the EU it is illegal to fire someone purely based on a software decision. Why do people treat working for a company as something different from selling any other services or goods? If there was a law that limited your ability to cancel a gym membership or going to a different supermarket, you would rightfully object — it's not a government's business to get involved in your…

A gym deciding to cancel someones membership is a minor nuisance for them, a company deciding to fire someone has potentially life-changing consequences.

Remember that for you as - I am assuming - an IT professional getting a new job is easy, for lots of professions not so much.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#107

Post by jhoechtl »

golergka wrote: post #54
fxtentacle wrote: post #50

Reading this, I'm so glad that in all of the EU it is illegal to fire someone purely based on a software decision. There's a minimum level of humanity that we should extend to everyone. Letting a known faulty AI decide if someone will have money for food tomorrow is way across the line. I'm not surprised that treating humans like cattle on their way to slaughter is hugely profitable. But I'm not sure we want to opera…

> Reading this, I'm so glad that in all of the EU it is illegal to fire someone purely based on a software decision. Why do people treat working for a company as something different from selling any other services or goods? If there was a law that limited your ability to cancel a gym membership or going to a different supermarket, you would rightfully object — it's not a government's business to get involved in your…

In many EU jurisdictions being employed means you owe the employer the willingness to accomplish a result not the actual result.

Germany is known that once you are in an active work relationship its difficult to get fired.

So yes, there is a difference as it is generally frowned upon these days to call people a resource which implies an interchangeable unit of work force.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#108

Post by sneak »

kleiba wrote: post #63
golergka wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reading this, I'm so glad that in all of the EU it is illegal to fire someone purely based on a software decision. Why do people treat working for a company as something different from selling any other services or goods? If there was a law that limited your ability to cancel a gym membership or going to a different supermarket, you would rightfully object — it's not a government's business to get involved in your…

The way it is commonly seen is that workers deserve special protection through the law to make up for the inherent power imbalance between those who employ and those who are employed.

This is often repeated, but I don't understand it. What power imbalance? The ability to offer a job is only a power over a worker if the worker has no other options for jobs, which is only the case in a company town or something like that. Then the company gets to decide if the worker starves or not.

The labor market in the US is highly liquid, even for unskilled workers. This described power imbalance simply does not exist.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#109

Post by jseban »

lapinot wrote: post #33
krige wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking from practice in a country where unions are a traditional thing, strong unions can and will screw over a workplace. It's usually about a show of power and abusing veto ability to stay in power until the place stagnates, loses competitive status and disintegrates.

Bad unions are bad and the sky is blue. It should be pretty self-explanatory that nobody is gonna defend unions which "screw over the workplace", it's a straw-man. But some people still defend unions.. so, a more honest question would be: what do they think is a good union then? What should a union strive to do? What are the critics they agree with?

The people who are happy with the union will be people who are underperforming and/or belong to the mainstream majority of the people in the workplace. Just like always, the majority will benefit at the expense of the minority, so it will never be good for everyone, and push for conformity and restricting people's freedom, and in the end will probably be mostly arbitrary depending on what the majority in that workplace happens to be (mostly younger, singles, or older with kids etc).

And even such general things such as negotiating pay will only be good for the lower performers, anyone who is a high performer will be better off negotiating their own salary.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#110

Post by whitepaint »

I've read similar articles so many times but they all lack one thing - solutions. Seriously, what should we do about it?

Yeah, I agree that workers shouldn't be working so hard that they can't even go to the bathroom.

Would we have a better world if Amazon didn't exist? I personally doubt it. So, it's not Amazon per se, it is the system, isn't?

So, what are the solutions? How do we make it better? How do we minimize the suffering of these people? Or is it actually working pretty well and we should accept that some people will struggle badly no matter what the system is?

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