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He blew the whistle on Amazon. He's still paying the price

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Re: He blew the whistle on Amazon. He's still paying the price

#301

Post by xkcd1963 »

sgjohnson wrote: post #249
xkcd1963 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies are to blame because they are the ultimate decision makers. This is how responsibility works. If you kill someone, you'll be blamed for the murder, you won't be able to use "the circumstances lead me to it, I'm poor I needed the money" or "my brain/hands decided to do so" as a defense.

Yes, but murder is illegal, but outsourcing manufacturing to a Chinese company is perfectly legal. If Foxconn kills someone, a US company that hired Foxconn shouldn’t be responsible. It’s not even Amazon exploiting these employees. It’s Foxconn. If it was Amazon doing the exploitation, I’d absolutely agree with you.

You are expressing yourself as if legality is some sort of law of nature. We collectively decide which actions might bear consequences.

Re: He blew the whistle on Amazon. He's still paying the price

#302

Post by blitzar »

shiroiuma wrote: post #295
blitzar wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess that Bezos read this letter, shruged and said something along the lines of "sucks to be him" while ordering a solid gold toilet for his yacht, because the platinum one was "too flashy"

This is unlikely. Solid gold is extremely dense, and would cause weight and balance problems on a yacht, even a large one. I have a family member who used to work at a luxury yacht-building company; they avoided even putting granite countertops and other surfaces on those craft because of the weight, even though the owners could certainly afford it. Instead, they had faux stonework painted by artists.

In addition to removing the bling factor of solid platium there is also a weight saving with the solid gold toilet being 11% lighter than the platinum equivalent.

Nevertheless, weight and balance can be an issue this is why you need to have a yacht extension to increase length (and occasionally girth - you have to use the swedish pumps for that one). In addition you need to buy multiple solid gold toilets for all the bathrooms, plus a couple extra to use as balast to get the correct balance.

Re: He blew the whistle on Amazon. He's still paying the price

#303

Post by DanielHB »

jabroni_salad wrote: post #248
thfuran wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The IRS doesn't want to catch the small fries, to some extent tax evasion is desired for smaller companies. What?

That does come across weirdly but the IRS is a perennial favorite defund target so they don't have the resources to go after everyone, they should only choose juicier cases in that respect. There are some good points in this article (the optimal amount of fraud is non-zero) that can be extrapolated to other parts of the financial world. The highest level point is that sometimes, a little slippage is needed for busine…

You got to the root of what I was saying, making sure mom and pop store at the corner street is paying all due taxes it not worth chasing and might in fact be net-negative to the economy

Re: He blew the whistle on Amazon. He's still paying the price

#304

Post by financltravsty »

ryloric wrote: post #294
financltravsty wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I visited Reddit yesterday for the first time in a long time. I saw an interesting meme and wanted to write a long form piece of content in the comments. After I was done: I received two low-effort replies that revealed to me I have less-than-great communication skills or the readers put zero focus in active reading skills; and one reply with an axe to grind that focused on attacking me and making all sorts of assump…

What are you on about? What relevance does any of this have? I like the parent comment because it made me laugh, so I was expressing my wish that it would be nice to able to appreciate them for it in some way. I used reddit's gilding feature as a shortcut to convey that wish because most people know of it and it's an easy to understand shortcut. Because reddit is a cesspit, any feature that was associated with reddit…

Clearly, I am horrible at communication or Redditors are horrible at reading something at face value.

I shared a recent anecdote about Reddit, because I was reminded of it from your comment. There was no point, I was just sharing what I felt the same way you did when you wrote about wishing HN to have a gild feature.

But if we want to go down the combative discourse route: you're hyperbolizing. Reddit became the mess it was due to a mixture of many things. One of those was its site design/UI; notably public display of post and comment scores that leads to a "dog-pile" effect, rather than natural voting patterns. Being able to gild just intensifies the effects, and leads to posts being interacted with not because the content of their message is informative or interesting, but because it has countless flashing symbols violating your focus, screaming "look at me! look at me!"

Re: He blew the whistle on Amazon. He's still paying the price

#305

Post by michaelcampbell »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #156
sgjohnson wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US constitution actually allows slavery/involuntary servitude as a punishment for a crime, as per the 13th amendment: > Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. So it makes little sense to compare prison labour programs to "any other workplace".

> makes little sense to compare prison labour programs to "any other workplace" Either it's force labour, or it's not. You can't get away with things just by slapping a different label on them. > The US constitution actually allows slavery If a Chinese person posted here "actually all the human rights abuses in China are perfectly legal and in accordance with Chinese law" you would not be impressed. We wouldn't be li…

> You can't get away with things just by slapping a different label on them.

This is almost precisely what a legal system is, and does.

Re: He blew the whistle on Amazon. He's still paying the price

#306

Post by meiraleal »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #290
I_Am_Nous wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not whistleblowing[1]. Whistleblowing is a legal term, not a "slipped up and told my mate's secret" event. 1. https://www.dni.gov/ICIG-Whistleblower/what-is.html

I was trying to be satirical, but maybe out of place.

Out of place and a senseless insistence on being wrong.

Re: He blew the whistle on Amazon. He's still paying the price

#307

Post by throw4847285 »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #296
throw4847285 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hamas definitely started this particular fist-fight. Do you often punch more than 6000 children to death when you have a fist-fight? I'm being glib, but only in response to your glibness. You're using the classic argument: "It's complicated, and nobody is totally ethical, so I would suggest not taking any action. Ultimately, this benefits my side, but I'm trying to obscure the fact that I'm taking sides so I have t…

Do you have any ideas on how to end it? Neither party has been willing to make an agreement to move on in the last 80 years.

Nope! I think a lot more innocent people are going to die (both Israelis and Palestinians) and I can't see an end in sight. When the violence does flair up, however, America could use it's massive global influence to try and stop it rather than give more weapons to the Israel without the standard preconditions that weapons sales usually entail.

This time, in fact, it's clearer than ever that American citizens have the capacity to make a change. Biden started out as rah rah for Israel and has faced a revolt within his administration from people who have had enough, as well as sustained protests from the outside.

Re: He blew the whistle on Amazon. He's still paying the price

#308

Post by lots2learn »

bawolff wrote: post #293
lots2learn wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the "other number of events"? Please be specific. Regarding what happened in various Arab countries in the 40s and 50s (which by the way is after the nakba so the tit-for-tat theory doesn't hold up) what does this have to do with Palestinians being ethnically cleansed? Are you justifying one for the other? It's no different than saying because of the European Holocaust or European antisemitism, the Palestini…

> What are the "other number of events"? Please be specific. Why? Its not relavent to my argument and a full history of the conflict wouldn't fit in a hn comment. I'm sure wikipedia has a big timeline of events of this conflict. I'm claiming your narrative of events could fit either side. Your narrative only mentioned ethnic cleansing once so i only need a single event to make it fit. There are sadly a number of even…

> Why? Its not relavent to my argument

Your argument is that my statement framing the current conflict in Palestine as "A people were ethnically cleansed from the lands they lived on for centuries and those people continue to be oppressed and subjugated till this day, not only denied to return back to the lands they were expelled from, but continue until now to be forcibly expelled from the small amounts they remain on" applies to either side. I charge that you haven't provided any evidence that it applies to the Jews. You bring an example of Jewish expulsion from other parts of the world after 1948 (which does not fit the full description of the statement anyway) but then admit that it has nothing to do with the Palestinian plight or the current conflict.

Re: He blew the whistle on Amazon. He's still paying the price

#309

Post by lots2learn »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #297
lots2learn wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the "other number of events"? Please be specific. Regarding what happened in various Arab countries in the 40s and 50s (which by the way is after the nakba so the tit-for-tat theory doesn't hold up) what does this have to do with Palestinians being ethnically cleansed? Are you justifying one for the other? It's no different than saying because of the European Holocaust or European antisemitism, the Palestini…

the reality is that past injustices can not be fixed. nothing would undo them, from an ethical or practical perspective. people need to agree on a path to move forward, taking into account the reality of the situation, and if they can, they have to accept the alternative. Palestinians have some moral high ground with respect to the nekba, as it was a disproportionate escalation. Israel has the highground with respect…

If we can all agree that UN resolutions and international law should allowed to be implemented, that would be a path forward better than what's currently happening.

Re: He blew the whistle on Amazon. He's still paying the price

#310

Post by s1artibartfast »

throw4847285 wrote: post #307
s1artibartfast wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any ideas on how to end it? Neither party has been willing to make an agreement to move on in the last 80 years.

Nope! I think a lot more innocent people are going to die (both Israelis and Palestinians) and I can't see an end in sight. When the violence does flair up, however, America could use it's massive global influence to try and stop it rather than give more weapons to the Israel without the standard preconditions that weapons sales usually entail. This time, in fact, it's clearer than ever that American citizens have th…

yeah, Im pretty isolationist on the topic. There is no good guy so the best we can do is advocate for an unlikely peace and not get dragged down in the mud. I dont think Israel needs more money and weapons - they already have overwhelming superiority.
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