I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them • Hacker News Board

Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#111

Post by gowld » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:29 PM UTC

ameister14 wrote: post #82

sokoloff wrote: post #36

IMO, it is never proper for the legislature to target an individual or individual company. It's perfectly fine for enforcement agencies (OSHA, FDA, IRS, FAA, FTC, SEC, etc) to enforce policy/law on individuals/companies who have been found in violation, but to originally target individuals with the force of government lawmaking is a dramatic overreach of power, IMO. If Senator Sanders et al want to target all compani…

>it is never proper for the legislature to target an individual or individual company. It's perfectly fine for enforcement agencies (OSHA, FDA, IRS, FAA, FTC, SEC, etc) to enforce policy/law on individuals/companies who have been found in violation, but to originally target individuals with the force of government lawmaking is a dramatic overreach of power, IMO. I don't agree. It's been done before, many times, and t…

What wsa done to these entities, with individually-targeted laws?

Antitrust law applies to the entire economy (except Major League Baseball and a few other bad cases).

Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#112

Post by toss1 » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:35 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #36

IMO, it is never proper for the legislature to target an individual or individual company. It's perfectly fine for enforcement agencies (OSHA, FDA, IRS, FAA, FTC, SEC, etc) to enforce policy/law on individuals/companies who have been found in violation, but to originally target individuals with the force of government lawmaking is a dramatic overreach of power, IMO. If Senator Sanders et al want to target all compani…

Generally good in concept that companies should pay enough that a full time job puts people above the poverty line and above eligibility for govt benefits -- anything less means that the companies themselves are effectively freeloading on govt welfare (externalizing their costs to the govt, which makes it tolerable to work at these companies)

Much easier solution is to simply increase minimum wage as required, and probably set it at the locale level (more in the urban/high-cost areas and less in the rural/low-cost areas).

Such specific targeting simply invites companies to game the system.

Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#113

Post by PostPost » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:38 PM UTC

swarnie_ wrote: post #75

maxxxxx wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people don't have other options so they take whatever they can get in order to survive. Why don't victims of domestic abuse leave immediately but stay for years?

> Why don't victims of domestic abuse leave immediately but stay for years? Yeah never understood that one either if i'm honest.

When Kanye West publicly wondered if slaves in the United States made a "choice" to stay in slavery for hundreds of years, he was rightly mocked for being a moron.

It's pretty depressing to see the same lack of empathy and critical thinking on hn.

Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#114

Post by jklinger410 » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:40 PM UTC

andrewla wrote: post #14

There are two main points of information here that make Amazon the target. One is its abuse of workers: limiting breaks, to the point of penalizing bathroom breaks, and setting unreasonably high performance demands. The latter, I think, being attributed as the source of the former. Setting a wage floor here does not seem to be intuitively helpful, as Amazon will still fire employees who fail to meet their performance…

I always feel like a stick in the mud with these convos but you are hitting on exactly the points that I first think of.

1 - Let's target warehouses across the country for this, and raise the average cost of American production. You're right, Bernie. When we take down Amazon warehouses, as the big bogeyman, a litany of other businesses will also get dinged for this. Walmart, Target, FedEx, UPS, so-on. Shitty warehouse conditions and employee abuse is only a shock to you, and you only see Amazon as a big target for this, if you have never worked at or known someone who has worked at any low-wage factory work.

2 - Your point about food stamps is dead on. I have asked everyone I know how they feel about Amazon paying someone more just because they have 5 kids. Regardless of what work they perform or, their experience, usefulness, or quality that they do their job with. Accepting food stamps has very little do with your employer, and more to do with your job and financial obligations.

I can't see Bernie's perspective any more. The pie in the sky legislation that he proposes make me believe that he actually doesn't intend to win the presidency. He's just here to make loud noises.

Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#115

Post by EpicEng » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:40 PM UTC

fatalVoltage wrote: post #37

EpicEng wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>or alternatively a ban on having children if the parents can't provide an equivalent payment. Yours is the stuff dystopian literature is made of. You want to severely limit freedom for the greater good, a tactic which never works.

How is this dystopian though? If you can't provide for your children why have them in the first place?

How is limiting basic human freedoms dystopian? It's textbook tyranny.

Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#116

Post by LitFan » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:41 PM UTC

ElBarto wrote: post #22

"Sanders has introduced a bill designed to force companies such as Amazon to pay their workers higher wages." Instead of picking on Amazon perhaps politicians should look at the actual root cause here. If there are minimum wages laws (and there are) and people paid minimum wage still need food stamps then perhaps the problem lies with minimum wages and those who set them... Politicians.

Companies will not pay a wage that supports a reasonable standard of living for unskilled work. It would be less expensive to automate those jobs away than to pay those people 17 dollars per hour (based on half of the median household income in canada for 2015 https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/170913/dq170...).

I have a different perspective on this:

Countries want people to have children - it's good for the country. However, people expect companies to support people's lifestyles (in exchange for work). With local companies, it makes sense for the company to want to support the people working there - they at least have a stake. Large companies are often global entities. As a result, they may have no stake in the people in certain countries - or even any countries.

Shouldn't be the country's people (through paid taxes) and government (through support programs) support the lifestyles of the people?

Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#117

Post by adjkant » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:43 PM UTC

xamuel wrote: post #101

ElBarto wrote: post #22

"Sanders has introduced a bill designed to force companies such as Amazon to pay their workers higher wages." Instead of picking on Amazon perhaps politicians should look at the actual root cause here. If there are minimum wages laws (and there are) and people paid minimum wage still need food stamps then perhaps the problem lies with minimum wages and those who set them... Politicians.

Unpopular alternative interpretation: the market is distorted by food stamps. Imagine if the government announced it will pay for lightbulbs for workers whose workplaces don't provide lightbulbs. Inevitably, certain workplaces would stop providing lightbulbs. Would you really blame them? This will sound unintuitive, but what if one of the requirements for welfare was that the recipient NOT work? Suddenly, companies w…

> Suddenly, companies would be forced to make jobs more desirable than food stamps.

Revised:

Suddenly, companies would be forced to make jobs more desirable than food stamps without housing.

In order for the not working stipulation to work, the social safety net would actually have to be expanded to cover housing as well, since I would much rather have a job where I can have housing and ramen every single meal than slightly better food but homeless.

Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#118

Post by wool_gather » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:44 PM UTC

crawfordcomeaux wrote: post #104

jdpedrie wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"To the benefit of the people" and "does violence to the rule of law" are not mutually exclusive, at least in the short term.

Enforcing any law inherently does violence to people. Do you wish to pedestal law above people? And if not, do you want them on equal footing? I personally would like to work toward a culture that doesn't require law and, barring that, law that peacefully respects a person's decision to revoke consent to be governed at any moment's notice. Blanket consent for government isn't realistic or sustainable. And even if it…

"Government" of any variety, stripped of all its pomp and circumstance, is just a set of rules for people to agree to follow so they can live next to each other without regular resort to personal violence. "Revoking your consent" to government means that you no longer want to follow those rules. It's not clear why the other people around you should accept your presence without that agreement.

Even anarchy is itself a rule about how people interact; even an anarchist group will have expected processes -- maybe they're ad-hoc, but rules nonetheless.

And I expect you think you should still be privileged to the benefits of the governed society although you refuse the agreement: easy access to goods/services, and a market for your own. Again, why should the other people make that allowance for you when you reject the group?

Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#119

Post by dv_dt » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:45 PM UTC

ElBarto wrote: post #22

"Sanders has introduced a bill designed to force companies such as Amazon to pay their workers higher wages." Instead of picking on Amazon perhaps politicians should look at the actual root cause here. If there are minimum wages laws (and there are) and people paid minimum wage still need food stamps then perhaps the problem lies with minimum wages and those who set them... Politicians.

Isn't this law just another way to specify a minimum wage?

Re: I worked in an Amazon warehouse. Bernie Sanders is right to target them

#120

Post by LyndsySimon » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 4:46 PM UTC

archagon wrote: post #90

gagege wrote: post #70

Why does everyone ignore the fact that employment at Amazon is voluntary? When the employee was hired, they made an agreement that the payment was a fair trade for the work to be done. If it turns out that the pay was not fair after all, which it sounds like it isn't, then the employee should simply stop working there, because Amazon isn't holding up their end of the bargain. The reason this continues to be an issue…

"Why does everyone ignore the fact that is voluntary?" Some business arrangements are exploitative by their incentives, even if they are "fair".

I'll take that bait.

What exactly is immoral about selling one's kidneys? Do individuals not own themselves? Are they capable of using or disposing of their own property as they see fit?

If your argument is that people who are forced into such decisions by economic necessity are not capable of making rational decisions, then what criteria do you use to determine if someone is able to make such decisions for themselves? If they fail to meet that bar... who makes those decisions for them?