Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

thewire.in

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 277 posts

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#201

Post by piker »

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?

Maybe zero corporate tax and ordinary income tax on dividends and capital gains. That would put mom and pop [on][near] the same footing as shareholders of public companies.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#202

Post by tchalla »

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 be sure people complained about a formula being objective, it doesn’t mean any objective formula should we accepted.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#203

Post by saalweachter »

hmhhcycbtsc557 wrote: post #191
55555 wrote: post #170

> Workers are voting with their feet. Turnover is high at both Teleperformance, the largest call centre employer (around 80% annually) and Amazon, 150%. This is... a mistake. What did they mean by this?

I take it to mean that if you employ an average of 10 workers, each year 15 instances will have happened of a worker quitting and being replaced.

Or phrased another way, employees stay for an average of 8 months at Amazon, 15 months at Teleperformance.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#204

Post by TFYS »

whitepaint wrote: post #186
TFYS wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Why not? He would have another idea and try to get another reward for that. If it's the biggest possible reward that you can get, and you have an idea, why wouldn't you try to implement it? The rewards for a successful business 50 years ago were much smaller than they are today, yet people still created businesses, because it was the best reward you could get. They didn't have an idea and abandon it because the biggest possible reward was 1 million instead of 100. Biggest possible rewards 50 years from now could be much bigger, so why do people innovate now?

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#206

Post by refurb »

adamcharnock wrote: post #125
WalterBright wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> For starters, those camps would shoot anyone who tried to leave. Not the same thing at all. It is an exaggeration, but with the health & social care systems that the US has it isn't a million miles away either.

No, it’s still a pretty stupid comparison. Like so stupid it’s borderline offensive.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#207

Post by refurb »

Tistron wrote: post #4

Reading articles like this makes me appreciate living in the EU. It's not always great, but clearly it could be worse. Article 1 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights states "Human dignity is inviolable. It must be respected and protected." I feel like that would be broken were we to allow this behaviour towards workers.

Article 1 seems like a feel good statement that isn’t objectively measurable thus can mean whatever you want it to mean. Which is clear when you look at the living conditions of refugees in some EU countries.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#208

Post by venkat223 »

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…

For not working and being their own self they are not hired.The lower level workers were not adopting the e-commerce discipline of promptness.We require JBezos like monitoring and action.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#209

Post by solveit »

whitepaint wrote: post #135
ganzuul wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seriously, what should we do about it? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative Perhaps one can replace the legal contracts involved in this with algorithms to achieve the necessary scale.

So, make it a law that if you hire a person they'd have a stake in a company automatically? No one is stopping anyone to create worker cooperatives.

Indeed. Worker cooperatives don't often take off because they're a bad idea. A company going under can be devastating for your career. If you have a significant stake in your company, you'll be broke as well as unemployed. People should diversify whenever they can and forcing people to hold a stake in their companies is a terrible idea.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#210

Post by 5fnheluzdj »

whitepaint wrote: post #110

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 growth-based system did quite well on average and it might be only the effects we have to address. One way to see it is that there is a mismatch between human capabilities and the systems requirements. We're already working on enhancing humans and creating better human replacements. Humans should be able to work on robots instead of working as robots. Until we made the transition, the system needs careful adjustment via i.e regulations and massive educational investments to minimize the pains for humans.
Post reply on HN