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Amazon Is Creating Company Towns Across the United States

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251–260 of 271 posts

Re: Amazon Is Creating Company Towns Across the United States

#251
There are two ways to approach the problem of deepening inequality:

1) With the perspective that this feature of how society operates can and should be changed; 2) With the perspective that this is simply how society works and you can adapt or die.

Either can be viewed as more tractable than the other (probably quite correctly depending on one's circumstances).

To adopt the former approach may mean that you are faced with the dilemma of whether or not to override the rights of detractors and those who disagree.

Even if you adopt the second approach, you may encounter a similar dilemma, e.g. you will decide to order your shoes from a company with operations in a third world nation paying lower local wages, or buy via Amazon despite reservations about their practices.

Whatever approach is adopted, awareness of what choices exist and what consequences they bring will be required.

To develop the tools that will enable this awareness and measurement is a massive problem on its own because of the complexity of interrelated systems, events, consequences and disparate interests. It may not even be possible.

But when there is no objective or even widely accepted 'true north' for decision making, the trend to deepening inequality is likely to continue.

Re: Amazon Is Creating Company Towns Across the United States

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question, how do you injure yourself in an Amazon warehouse? I thought there wasn't any heavy machinery or other dangerous machines. Is it just from too much walking?

Amazon calls their warehouse staff “industrial athletes” in internal docs. https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/2/22465357/amazon-industrial... > Amazon tells its warehouse employees to think of themselves not as overworked cogs in an enormous, soul-crushing machine, but as “industrial athletes,” and to prepare their bodies for that experience like someone training for a sporting event, according to a pamphlet obtained by…

Okay, that actually sounds like it might be healthier than my desk job. And Amazon providing health advice isn't a bad thing, cringey corporate speak notwithstanding. The 2x injury rate and lack of bathroom breaks are the troubling parts.

Re: Amazon Is Creating Company Towns Across the United States

#253

In defense of the company town: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/in...

> “In essence, these company towns were doing what Google does today, competing for workers with amenities.”

This. These companies bring a greater level of prosperity to the locals as well. In my experience, far more exploitation occurs in cities.

Re: Amazon Is Creating Company Towns Across the United States

#254
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A relative worked at Amazon’s warehouse, he described it as slightly above average pay for the area with above average benefits. However, the job really sucks, injuries are common, and turnover is high at least in VA. There is a huge range of warehouse jobs including many with a lot of paid downtime, the easier the job the less they can pay.

Serious question, how do you injure yourself in an Amazon warehouse? I thought there wasn't any heavy machinery or other dangerous machines. Is it just from too much walking?

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/07/24/business/insult-injur...

Lifting heavy objects, or having heavy objects fall on you is apparently common.

Re: Amazon Is Creating Company Towns Across the United States

#255
post #179
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend of mine working at an Amazon center injured himself because he walks 5+ miles per shift. He also weighs like 350 pounds. He’s lost like 50 pounds already so hopefully he’ll get to a weight where he’s not injuring himself before he ends up having to quit. Amazon isn’t obligated to provide my morbidly obese friend with a job, and he knows that, and he’s doing his best to keep on without destroying his body.

It actually sounds like a great way to lose weight if you can handle it. We need to walk more. I’ve thought about moving to NYC just to walk more.

Exercise is not a great way to lose weight. The phrase is: "You can't outrun the fork."

Deuterated water studies back this up. Humans burn roughly the same amount of calories active or passive. The body only shunts the available calories around.

Now, exercise has lots of documented benefits. Weight loss just isn't one of them.

Re: Amazon Is Creating Company Towns Across the United States

#256
post #179
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend of mine working at an Amazon center injured himself because he walks 5+ miles per shift. He also weighs like 350 pounds. He’s lost like 50 pounds already so hopefully he’ll get to a weight where he’s not injuring himself before he ends up having to quit. Amazon isn’t obligated to provide my morbidly obese friend with a job, and he knows that, and he’s doing his best to keep on without destroying his body.

It actually sounds like a great way to lose weight if you can handle it. We need to walk more. I’ve thought about moving to NYC just to walk more.

When I moved to Manhattan I started walking about 4 miles a day on average, but I still gained 25 pounds because I could afford all the pizza and fried chicken my heart desires. Biking felt like better exercise, but much more hazardous to your life expectancy.

Re: Amazon Is Creating Company Towns Across the United States

#257
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens if you want to switch jobs? Tying basic necessities like housing to your employer is a disaster that traps people in jobs. It's part of the reason healthcare in the US is so screwed up.

The housing could be normal rentals not conditional on keeping the job. I would guess that most Amazon facilities are located in urban areas. It would not be isolated mining town like in 1900s

If it's normal rentals, then there's no incentive for companies to build said housing in the first place -- unless they want to separately diversify into real estate.

Re: Amazon Is Creating Company Towns Across the United States

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Last I recall, creating unions is an attempt at monopolizing labor to extort the employer. When this tactic is applied to any other factor of production it is called a “cartel” and engaged in “market manipulation.” This seems like an argument in bad faith but I'll bite. You are ignoring the pre-existing power imbalance between employer and employee, where the employer holds authoritarian control of production and t…

I’m not ignoring this. You are making the moral assumption that just because someone has a better negotiating position in a situation there is a moral obligation to intervene in some centralized way to “correct the imbalance.” I am denying your assumption and presenting a different point of view which has no less of a claim to morality or truth than yours.

I never made a moral assumption in my response. I was just stating that the unions and cartels are not very similar for a reason that you admitted exisists in you response

in your original comment you said:

> When this tactic is applied to any other factor of production it is called a “cartel” and engaged in “market manipulation.”

My comment was simply explaining the reason why this is the case

Re: Amazon Is Creating Company Towns Across the United States

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term remains easy to understand. Whether you agree/disagree with it is a separate matter. > What's the non-alienated version of an amazon worker? An Amazon worker that can exclusively determine who gets to be on the board of directors. >> From this flows a lot of consequences for social conflict, politics, mental health, etc. > Whether or not this was ever true, it was at least a legible statement 200 years ago.…

It's my "contention" that alienation is a term, very abstract, not a discrete thing that can have consequences. I contend that in the early 19th century, the term made for good rhetoric. IE, you could use it to describe the world and convey ideas. If it hadn't been coined then, but someone coined it now, it would be weak rhetoric. An uncompelling abstraction that doesn't describe anything, convince anyone or explain…

Has the term ‘wooden language’ fallen out of use these days?

Re: Amazon Is Creating Company Towns Across the United States

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s socialist intelligentsia lingo. For whatever reason, that field writes in a style that favors high-specificity jargon.

I know what kind of lingo it is, just remarking on how much of it there is in every sentence. IDK if I'd call the jargon high-specificity though. I'd say that it tends to be broad and abstract. "Suburban and exurban socialization" isn't highly specific. As I mentioned though, it's not very different from the tech world jargon that's more common on HN. IE, when we talk about "disruptive," "democratizing," "platform" o…

I think you're saying "alienation" means a specific historical technological transition about moving from hand-looms to industrial looms. I googled for it but I don't see that definition supported. In the sources I found it seems to be a broader concept than that. It seems still applicable today afaict, not hard to understand in modern context.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/alienation/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation

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