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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

#181

Post by austhrow743 »

pydry wrote: post #29
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.

It's interesting that when this topic rears its head a common attitude comes out (although is never outright stated): * Governments are frequently corrupt and when they are they should be reformed. * Businesses are frequently corrupt and when they are they should be reformed. * Unions are frequently corrupt. They should therefore not exist. Realistically corruption is a feature of all human institutions. Unions are s…

You can't realistically abolish your government. Or at the least stop being governed by one. Other internal organisations will take its place or a foreign government will gobble you up.

You can't realistically abolish businesses. An economy of just individual tradesmen all working independently cant come close to the efficiency gains a large business has and just straight up lack the capacity for large scale projects and R&D. It's going to lead to the same outcome as your government being abolished and then businesses being reinstated.

Listed alongside the other two, the special thing about unions is they don't have this "you just straight up cant get rid of them and keep them gone" factor. So I think its completely reasonable for a person very concerned with corruption to take reform, reform, get rid of them stances respectively. Remove the institutions you can and fight corruption in the ones you cant.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#182

Post by Sharlin »

tremon wrote: post #144
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…

What a weird question. I could similarly ask, why do people treat employing workers as something different from animal husbandry? If there was a law that limited your ability to ship, cage or breed your workers like you do cattle, you would rightfully object -- it's not a government's business to get involved in your voluntary business transactions. Why treat a company that employs workers differently from a company…

To be fair, livestock do not consent to being livestock.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#183

Post by padthai »

whitepaint wrote: post #165
MikeUt wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How quickly we forget. This is not the first time workers have faced inhumane working conditions. Unions worked as a solution before - why wouldn't they work again?

Can't they already organize and associate with unions but choose not to?

Some of them do not want to know anything about unions, this is a common opinion among the American public.

Other would like, or even try. But Amazon management, an enormous American corporations, are determined to not allow to do so. Amazon warehouse workers are, generally, not a particularly wealthy or powerful segment of the society.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#184

Post by golergka »

tremon wrote: post #144
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…

What a weird question. I could similarly ask, why do people treat employing workers as something different from animal husbandry? If there was a law that limited your ability to ship, cage or breed your workers like you do cattle, you would rightfully object -- it's not a government's business to get involved in your voluntary business transactions. Why treat a company that employs workers differently from a company…

Because humans deserve the right to freedom to accept or deny any voluntary contract. Which legislation that we're talking about is directly infringing on. Just as people should be able to not accept having being treated like cattle, they should be able to accept any form of employment contract if they so choose: it is exactly the same issue.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#185

Post by Yoric »

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…

I'm not familiar enough with the situation in the US to comment for what's happening on your side of the ocean.

In my country, there are laws to protect both sides. Unless an agreement is negotiated, the employee cannot leave without giving a ~2 months notice, the employer cannot fire/layoff withing giving a ~2 months notice.

In many cases, though, there is a strong power imbalance. If, for some reason, you decide to sue your (former) employer, or if your (former) employer decides to sue you, you most likely cannot afford the same budget for lawyering up as they can. Also, your main power against your employer (besides possibly unions) is, as you mention, the ability to change job, but that only works when changing job is possible. Both for highly skilled positions and unskilled positions, getting a new job is hard and may require you to move to a new place - something that you may not be able to do if you have children or a working spouse.

As anecdotal examples, I know former C*Os of influential companies who have been working make up jobs for several years because they cannot find anything matching their skills, even at much reduced salaries. I know burnt out teachers who do not leave their jobs because nothing matches their skills. I have several friends in IT, or in admin positions, or with lawyer degrees who just cannot find anything or could not find anything for years because they happen to live in the wrong place and cannot leave because that would cost their spouse a job or they would abandon elders, etc.

Having myself changed (HN-style) jobs a few times, I can confirm that it's long and certainly not easy, in particular when you also need, at the same time, to care for a young child, or a sick family member, or when you're burnt out, or depressed by a personal crisis, or by the rejections you encounter from potential employers, or by the institutional bullying on unemployed people. I imagine it's even harder as you get older - I'm not looking forward to be labelled too-old-for-HN-style-jobs.

All of that is in a G7 country whose unemployment rate is decreasing. Testimonies from friends in neighbouring countries make me feel that it's even worse in many places. Testimonies from friends in the US make me feel it's not as rosy as you describe, at least not in all fields/regions.

So... yeah, I believe that there is a power imbalance. You may be in a field and/or location in which you do not witness it, and if this is your case, I'm happy for you. But for many people, it exists.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#186

Post by whitepaint »

TFYS wrote: post #178
whitepaint wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Would Bill Gates try so hard with Microsoft if his biggest possible reward would have been what citizens decide to collectively reward him with?

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#188

Post by roenxi »

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…

That may be the implication, but the actual problem is that humans will still be involved, still making the decisions and using AI to pretend they didn't.

I actually feel quite comfortable with the idea of AI making the hiring decisions, it seems like it would be as good as a human. But make no mistake, firing people is a miserable thing to do for both sides of the conversation. If managers can palm the responsibility off as "well, gee, the AI told me to so ... y'know, my hands are tied" then they will. Even if the AI algorithm is as blatant as "print out the name the manager entered in to the system".

There is some reasonableness to the argument that when an important decision is made that some human must be empowered as the decision maker. If nobody is responsible, suspicious things can happen.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#189

Post by Yoric »

futureshock wrote: post #111
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…

First of all, have an upvote, which is both the agree and disagree button, as long as a person contributes to the conversation. Next, I think you are contributing, because companies really, truly operate as if people were flesh robots and your perspective, rather than being trolling, is actually dominant in corporations. Thirdly, that you could potentially have accepted the narrative that we are fleshbots, ready for…

> First of all, have an upvote, which is both the agree and disagree button, as long as a person contributes to the conversation.

It's a shame that HN makes no difference between "what you're writing has no place here" and "I disagree with you" I remember discussing with people who were experimenting with this kind of mechanism for comments on newspaper websites, but I believe that this hasn't had much success.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#190

Post by whitepaint »

padthai wrote: post #183
whitepaint wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't they already organize and associate with unions but choose not to?

Some of them do not want to know anything about unions, this is a common opinion among the American public. Other would like, or even try. But Amazon management, an enormous American corporations, are determined to not allow to do so. Amazon warehouse workers are, generally, not a particularly wealthy or powerful segment of the society.

What is the solution? Make unions mandatory?
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