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

#21

Post by chii » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 2:31 PM UTC

LitFan wrote: post #17

grecy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the question we have to ask is do we want to live in a society where this treatment is legal? Obviously Amazon make a lot of profit... if we forced them to treat their workers better surely they'd still make a lot of profit... just slightly less.

As a society we've decided that we do, because we are. The shoddy treatment of Amazon's employees has been publicized repeatedly for years. The issue is that while the average person is lead to believe the notion that they can work hard and make enough to have a comfortable living, they can only afford it at the expense of others. The wealthy will not let that be at their expense - they want it to be at the expense o…

> most lower to middle class people would drop substantially - while the upper class would be unaffected.

which is why taxation needs to be progressive. The rich who have their wealth created by using other people needs to pay a larger proportion of the tax burden to make society more comfortable for everybody. The idea is that with added infrastructure and education and healthcare paid for by the higher taxes, the poor will eventually not be forced into the position of having to slave away.

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

#22

Post by ElBarto » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 2:32 PM UTC

"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.

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

#23

Post by grecy » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 2:33 PM UTC

LitFan wrote: post #17

grecy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the question we have to ask is do we want to live in a society where this treatment is legal? Obviously Amazon make a lot of profit... if we forced them to treat their workers better surely they'd still make a lot of profit... just slightly less.

As a society we've decided that we do, because we are. The shoddy treatment of Amazon's employees has been publicized repeatedly for years. The issue is that while the average person is lead to believe the notion that they can work hard and make enough to have a comfortable living, they can only afford it at the expense of others. The wealthy will not let that be at their expense - they want it to be at the expense o…

> If all of those subsidies were to vanish, the standard of living for most lower to middle class people would drop substantially

I see so many discussions in US politics that go around and around and bend over backwards to never, ever propose the extremely simple and obvious solution....

(...drum roll...)

Companies simply lower profits.

Conditions for the workers go up with better conditions & higher pay. The prices of products and services need not change, so consumers are not worse off.

It appears that what I'm saying is tantamount to blasphemy in the US, nobody is even willing to suggest lowering corporate profits as one possible option with associated pros and cons.

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

#24

Post by prolikewh0a » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 2:37 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #10

Rotdhizon wrote: post #6

A company as big as Amazon doesn't make as much as it does by treating workers fairly. They are the modern day version of old industrial factories. They take down and out people who they know they can exploit and push them to their limits. I've seen a few places in the poorer section of states where most of the locals are forced to work in a small number of factories/plants. Even in these cases though, they are at le…

So the question we have to ask is do we want to live in a society where this treatment is legal? Obviously Amazon make a lot of profit... if we forced them to treat their workers better surely they'd still make a lot of profit... just slightly less.

>So the question we have to ask is do we want to live in a society where this treatment is legal?

Because we live in this fantasy land of the [dead] 'American Dream', where if you work hard, absolutely bust your ass and kill yourself for 70 years, you'll get to be Jeff Bezos too. If you're complaining about your job, just get a new one, or pull your boot straps up and accept it, it's that easy. We're constantly told to suck it up and accept it. We're constantly told that these businesses are job creators and should be praised for it and when we criticize them, it's not their fault, it's the workers. We don't criticize because we can lose our job and it's extremely easy to get into homelessness now, or default on the enormous amounts of credit everyone has. The propaganda and indoctrination start from birth and is built into society. The atmosphere changed from workers having control, to businesses having full control. Businesses can't exist without workers, so workers should have control. Anyone who says workers shouldn't have control is a shareholder or business owner.

To change things will take a lot of work, and possibly a major fast economic decline. People have ignored the economic decline of the working class since the late 60's, early 70's. Mainstream media and newspapers work to suppress any workers movements and tell you how great everything is (Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent goes over how this works).

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

#25

Post by dlgeek » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 2:37 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…

One thing to consider - it could mean Amazon uses more part-time/seasonal workers than those other companies, since I believe SNAP benefits are based on annual income, rather than hourly pay.

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

#26

Post by EpicEng » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 2:39 PM UTC

devit wrote: post #11

The problem is caused by society/government, due to the lack of universal basic income, or alternatively a ban on having children if the parents can't provide an equivalent payment. If everyone had access to the basic necessities of life without having to work, then nobody would accept jobs like those, and Amazon would be forced to either automate everything or substantially improve working conditions (much less hour…

>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.

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

#27

Post by coding123 » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 2:42 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #23

LitFan wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a society we've decided that we do, because we are. The shoddy treatment of Amazon's employees has been publicized repeatedly for years. The issue is that while the average person is lead to believe the notion that they can work hard and make enough to have a comfortable living, they can only afford it at the expense of others. The wealthy will not let that be at their expense - they want it to be at the expense o…

> If all of those subsidies were to vanish, the standard of living for most lower to middle class people would drop substantially I see so many discussions in US politics that go around and around and bend over backwards to never, ever propose the extremely simple and obvious solution.... (...drum roll...) Companies simply lower profits. Conditions for the workers go up with better conditions & higher pay. The prices…

[flagged]

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

#28

Post by llamataboot » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 2:45 PM UTC

You get the society that your systems incentivize. There may very well be a perfect version of capitalism and a free market that allows for free movement of employees between firms and a virtuous circle. Instead, we see a vicious spiral of incentivizing externalities (including treating workers like a never-ending powerless resource you can run into the ground and break and then find new ones) and a person with more money than most of his laborers put together.

Until we can talk frankly about how capitalism actually works instead of having arguments about how it "should" work, until we can admit what it does really well (allowing a dynamism and technology growth that raises the global standard of living) while also talking about what it does poorly, especially when combined with our current models of corporations and governance, I don't think we'll solve this.

(Basic income could be and end run around many of these things if people could opt-out of the labor force and still be able to live)

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

#29

Post by LitFan » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 2:46 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #23

LitFan wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a society we've decided that we do, because we are. The shoddy treatment of Amazon's employees has been publicized repeatedly for years. The issue is that while the average person is lead to believe the notion that they can work hard and make enough to have a comfortable living, they can only afford it at the expense of others. The wealthy will not let that be at their expense - they want it to be at the expense o…

> If all of those subsidies were to vanish, the standard of living for most lower to middle class people would drop substantially I see so many discussions in US politics that go around and around and bend over backwards to never, ever propose the extremely simple and obvious solution.... (...drum roll...) Companies simply lower profits. Conditions for the workers go up with better conditions & higher pay. The prices…

Lowering profits means reduced shareholder value and a lower market capitalization. Every company is interested in providing as much value to shareholders as possible.

I don't know all the ins and outs, but I believe public trading and shareholders are to blame here.

And again - the middle to upper middle class people who rely on returns from their investments in companies to support their standard of living think the company-shareholder relationship is entirely healthy.

A shareholder provides no value to the good or service being delivered, they exist only to make profit off a transaction they have no stake in.

My views here could be totally off. I welcome discussion on the topic.

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

#30

Post by ardy42 » Mon, Sep 17, 2018, 2:47 PM UTC

LitFan wrote: post #17

grecy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the question we have to ask is do we want to live in a society where this treatment is legal? Obviously Amazon make a lot of profit... if we forced them to treat their workers better surely they'd still make a lot of profit... just slightly less.

As a society we've decided that we do, because we are. The shoddy treatment of Amazon's employees has been publicized repeatedly for years. The issue is that while the average person is lead to believe the notion that they can work hard and make enough to have a comfortable living, they can only afford it at the expense of others. The wealthy will not let that be at their expense - they want it to be at the expense o…

>> So the question we have to ask is do we want to live in a society where this treatment is legal?

> As a society we've decided that we do, because we are. The shoddy treatment of Amazon's employees has been publicized repeatedly for years.

There was no society-level decision made to endorse this kind of treatment.