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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

#171

Post by oarsinsync »

social_quotient wrote: post #167
yanderekko wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Letting a known faulty AI decide if someone will have money for food tomorrow is way across the line. So is the implication here that humans are less faulty, or that there's something intrinsically wrong about an AI making this decision rather than a human? If the former, then this is an issue that the technology will probably eventually solve. If the latter, well... that doesn't seem very justifiable, to say the le…

I kinda agree. We also have the mounting pressure for getting unconscious bias out of the hiring process. It would seem if we think people are fired also for bias and unfair reasons that the ai would be the likely only way to save the situation. Seems here with amazon we are quick to suggest humans are the best way but in nearly all other inclusion/diversity posts we are fighting against the humans being faulty. Inte…

> if we think people are fired also for bias and unfair reasons that the ai would be the likely only way to save the situation.

This assumes that bias and unfair reasons aren't codified or part of the training set, which we've seen previously, simply isn't true.

There's an example of a company using AI to do a first pass on CVs for recruiting throw away female CVs. Another example of a company using AI to identify people in photos identify certain skin tones as being animals instead.

AI isn't a magic bullet, simply because it's still coded by humans who make mistakes, conscious or otherwise.

Or to put it another way, garbage in, garbage out.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#172

Post by tracedddd »

namenotrequired wrote: post #156
TFYS wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution is to go beyond a competition based society. No matter how good the people running these companies are or want to be, competition will force their hand to create things like this. If it's not them, it'll be someone else. I'm sure we could find a way to encourage innovation without this competitive system.

Do you have any examples of societies that have successfully abolishing competition (and continued being somewhat functional)? It seems impossible to me but I would love to be surprised.

Smaller communes can successfully operate non-competitively. It seems the key is limiting membership to people seriously invested in the concept. With open societies that have large membership, competitive and power seeking forces from members uninterested in the vision seem to eventually dominate.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#173

Post by _Algernon_ »

sneak wrote: post #108
kleiba wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 no…

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

Yes it does. See Amazon preventing workers from unionising.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#174

Post by ajsnigrutin »

whitepaint wrote: post #153
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I think the only solution is, to make it easier to start a small business, and help and encourage people to start them, and then fix the tax policy, so companies as amazon would pay the same effective tax rates as a mom-and-pop bakery. Amazon needs workers, workers need jobs. If you increase the number of jobs and decrease the number of unemployed, people can say "no" to shitty jobs. This is currently happe…

I like your reply. I have a question though, how do we fix the tax policy and how do we make it easier to start a small business?

Tax policy, i have no idea... there was a newsstory here about a globally minimum 15% income tax here, that would probably solve many things. I'm not a tax lawyer, but "there surely has to be a way" (hopefully) to collect tax where the money is earned, and not where it's "moved".

I'm not sure about US laws, but here in slovenia, there are a bunch of bureaucratic requirements, things that need to be paid, taxes that have to be paid, even if you just started a business and literally earned zero money. Taxes, pension and health insurance are theoretically defined as percentages of earned money, but have hard minimum set in, so if you earn very little money the first few months, they can be higher than the money earned. Just to start a business, you have to register it's location, and if you live in an apartment building, you need permission from all your neighbours (even if you're a programmer, or even a construction worker (= don't work at home)), and one grumpy neighbour means you need to rent out a place. Permits for regulated businesses are also expensive.

There is also no "soft-start" for going to unemployment to a business owner... if you're unemployed, you get some money (social benefits). Want to start a business.. let's say translation (just need a laptop), you immediately lose all benefits, and have to pay ~400eur per month minimum for health and pension insurance, even if you earned zero money that month. Fail, and want to close the business? You might not even get unemployment/social benefits, because you didn't get fired but closed it yourself. Want to do a one-time job (eg. unemployed and someone wants to pay you to paint their house)... impossible to do here.

I've been watching louis rossman a lot, and he has more us-specifc complaints: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oDjSoic9Zk

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#175

Post by eric4smith »

Wow… a guy that directly employed almost 2 million people and indirectly improved the lives of tens of millions of dependents in the Amazon ecosystem is a dystopian person.

Bezos is far from perfect, but do we really think that that was his primary consideration of building and growing Amazon?

Pretty much every organization that gets large enough tends to rot from the inside and get dystopian, despite the efforts of the founders.

Anyone remember “don’t be evil”? Right.

Maybe, just maybe, he resigned because he couldn’t deal with the dystopian aspects of how Amazon grew.

My point is that it’s not a good idea to put the fact that a huge organization becomes “dystopian” at the feet of its founder.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#176

Post by schwa_wedge »

These programs are weapons of literal war. They exist to deprive people of income while enriching people who don’t need the wealth and shouldn’t have it (because they turn it into power which they use for further ill).

It’s amazing to me how many software engineers claim to be taking a moral stand by refusing to work for defense contractors, yet are willing to write these surveillance and “optimization” (worker squeezing) programs that give more power to employers… which is just as bad if not worse. The US government at least does a mix of good and evil things, whereas profit-motivated employers are clearly out for one side.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#177

Post by golergka »

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.

I heard this reasoning a lot. I understand logic and intent behind it — certainly a noble one. But I think that it is incorrect because it ignores unintended consequences, like the story with award for catching cobras in India.

You're shifting the power balance in an artificial way that doesn't fully change it. You're only shifting it in one particular market; this power balance still exists in other countries. Which creates a potential for arbitrage: instead of hiring people in a country which enacts those measures, hire them elsewhere.

You're also not exactly making the employee "more powerful"; you're actually limiting his freedom on the market. You're making his services more expensive to a buyer, and he can do nothing about it. He might have wanted to offer his services at a discount to get an edge above competitors who have more experience, for example; now he's unable to.

Do you really think that limiting someone's freedom is empowering?

That's how you get 2x salaries for engineers in US as compared to Europe, which leads to many brilliant engineers leaving Europe for US (or working remotely), which, with higher commitment requirement, contributes to the difference in startup scene between Europe and US. Of course, engineers are not the type of workers whom do you think about in such a conversation, but this happens in many other industries as well.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#178

Post by TFYS »

whitepaint wrote: post #143
TFYS wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution is to go beyond a competition based society. No matter how good the people running these companies are or want to be, competition will force their hand to create things like this. If it's not them, it'll be someone else. I'm sure we could find a way to encourage innovation without this competitive system.

> I'm sure we could find a way to encourage innovation without this competitive system. It sounds perfect. But how would we achieve it? Rewrite laws that prohibits private property and free enterprise?

Is ownership the thing that motivates people to innovate? I don't think so. People don't innovate because they may get to own a company, they innovate because they get an idea and implementing that idea successfully may get them a big reward. I don't think ownership or competition is necessary for this process. There's plenty of innovation without competition or ownership inside companies already. Workers innovate to get a reward in the form of a promotion and/or raise, not because they're expecting to own something or because they're competing against someone.

One idea could be to collectively pool money to give as rewards to anyone who improves society in a way that people think is worth rewarding. To prevent corruption this process should be transparent and democratic (preferably direct democracy).

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#179

Post by [deleted] »

yanderekko wrote: post #71
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…

>Letting a known faulty AI decide if someone will have money for food tomorrow is way across the line. So is the implication here that humans are less faulty, or that there's something intrinsically wrong about an AI making this decision rather than a human? If the former, then this is an issue that the technology will probably eventually solve. If the latter, well... that doesn't seem very justifiable, to say the le…

[deleted]

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#180

Post by UK-Al05 »

tracedddd wrote: post #172
namenotrequired wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any examples of societies that have successfully abolishing competition (and continued being somewhat functional)? It seems impossible to me but I would love to be surprised.

Smaller communes can successfully operate non-competitively. It seems the key is limiting membership to people seriously invested in the concept. With open societies that have large membership, competitive and power seeking forces from members uninterested in the vision seem to eventually dominate.

Didn't a lot of 'hippy' communities built like this end up falling apart from various squabbles like some people not pitching in enough etc?
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