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1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

businessinsider.com

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Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#331

Post by 8note »

allturtles wrote: post #161
underseacables wrote: post #72

I’m torn badly with Amazon. After read The Everything Store, and what has been written all over the place, Jeff Bezos is a massive turd. Employees are horribly treated, wages suppressed, and all sorts of terrible and abusive practices. Then it comes time for me to buy something. I needed a new pair of size 14 sneakers. I drove to Adidas, Footlocker, dicks, and a few other stores but I just couldn’t justify $100 sneak…

I'm increasingly put out by Amazon and am trying to stop the habit of shopping there. I like books, and Amazon was founded on books, but the way they ship books now (typically loose in a soft envelope or mostly empty box) means that >50% of the books I've ordered recently have arrived damaged and had to be returned. They used to shrinkwrap books to a cardboard plate inside the box. There are other problems: 1) Search…

You couldn't read these books? Or you couldn't show off that you owned them?

How do you lose a page from inside of a box/envelope?

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#332

Post by hellotomyrars »

godot wrote: post #201
underseacables wrote: post #72

I’m torn badly with Amazon. After read The Everything Store, and what has been written all over the place, Jeff Bezos is a massive turd. Employees are horribly treated, wages suppressed, and all sorts of terrible and abusive practices. Then it comes time for me to buy something. I needed a new pair of size 14 sneakers. I drove to Adidas, Footlocker, dicks, and a few other stores but I just couldn’t justify $100 sneak…

This is only tangentially related to your post at all, but as a budget-conscious shopper, I've come to realize that in America, there is usually a retail shop or two locally that consistently has the best deal for a category of things. Don't get me wrong, I still have to buy from Amazon for a lot of really miscellaneous things, but I think I manage to find good local deals (better than Amazon in most cases) for most…

It always pays to shop around, and I've actually shifted more of my business to ebay for items that are quite clearly the same cheap chinese product with X name stuck on it. Amazon doesn't reliably hit its two-day shipping mandate for me, and USPS can often beat them for smaller items.

One thing I have noticed and don't really understand: Sellers who's products are more expensive on their own site than on their Amazon page. I could understand parity, but I don't understand it being more expensive to purchase from them directly.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#333

Post by sathackr »

underseacables wrote: post #72

I’m torn badly with Amazon. After read The Everything Store, and what has been written all over the place, Jeff Bezos is a massive turd. Employees are horribly treated, wages suppressed, and all sorts of terrible and abusive practices. Then it comes time for me to buy something. I needed a new pair of size 14 sneakers. I drove to Adidas, Footlocker, dicks, and a few other stores but I just couldn’t justify $100 sneak…

Not sure why it's so hard for some people.

When Amazon Prime was real 2-day shipping and they'd send something via overnight air just to get it to you in time, it was nice. And would have been hard to give up.

Now that it just means free shipping, and you might get it tomorrow and you might get it in a week, it's much easier just to buy somewhere else. Walmart. Target. BH Photo. Adorama. Best Buy. Tons of options.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#334

Post by throwaway0a5e »

zizee wrote: post #321
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're probably using highly restrictive zoning/permitting to keep it out. Local businesses that are charging tourist prices don't want big box stores (who can't get away with a very big local markup) to compete with and local consumer facing businesses hold basically all the influence in that kind of economy.

There is no need to look for conspiracies. There is only 185k people living on the "big island". I'm not sure why people would expect something other than a rural America level of services, when it is really just a small city of people effectively in the middle of no where. Note that smaller cities in rural America service a much larger population than just the city itself. The island does not have a surrounding popu…

I wasn't talking about rural cities. I think those are generally pretty good and pretty well run. I was talking about how it works in the tourist dumps. Protecting your "authentic" branded Chinese trinket importers from the big boxes is SOP in a tourist economy.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#335

Post by 8note »

taurath wrote: post #272
underseacables wrote: post #72

I’m torn badly with Amazon. After read The Everything Store, and what has been written all over the place, Jeff Bezos is a massive turd. Employees are horribly treated, wages suppressed, and all sorts of terrible and abusive practices. Then it comes time for me to buy something. I needed a new pair of size 14 sneakers. I drove to Adidas, Footlocker, dicks, and a few other stores but I just couldn’t justify $100 sneak…

> So aside from “just stop buying from Amazon” what can we do ? Lobby your congressperson to break up Amazon and all the other big tech companies. Prevent them from bundling, vertically integrating, and using loss leading products to make all competitors not competitive. Make their delivery network its own company who takes orders from other suppliers. Make their storefront and warehouses its own entity. Make their m…

I think that is to say that Safeway is not allowed to own warehouses, and neither is Walmart?

Also, apple isn't allowed to both make phones and software for phones?

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#336

Post by tomrod »

drorco wrote: post #203
shakezula wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So aside from “just stop buying from Amazon” what can we do ? The "just stop buying amazon" arguments never made sense to me in the first place, because most people who use it are the ones budget-stretched in the first place. A lot of rural communities have no other viable options for some items as well. It will take massive government action and that's it. There's no other way we can fix this problem. Wages are su…

There's also the other option similar to what happened after the New York Elevator Operator Strike in 1945 -- the total elimination of a profession. https://www.inc.com/thomas-koulopoulos/100-years-ago-we-fear... "It wasn't until the middle of the twentieth century that the tipping point came along for the driverless elevator as the result of a strike by the elevator operators' union in New York City in 1945. The str…

Amazon should be federally fined for every RIF sufficiently to pay for a retraining/education. As should all dominant employers receiving sweetheart deals on local taxes.

It should be done today and held in escrow for when it happens.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#337

Post by 8note »

monksy wrote: post #199
underseacables wrote: post #72

I’m torn badly with Amazon. After read The Everything Store, and what has been written all over the place, Jeff Bezos is a massive turd. Employees are horribly treated, wages suppressed, and all sorts of terrible and abusive practices. Then it comes time for me to buy something. I needed a new pair of size 14 sneakers. I drove to Adidas, Footlocker, dicks, and a few other stores but I just couldn’t justify $100 sneak…

This is the same reason why we still have terrible economy experiences on airplanes. All of the airlines are focused on trying to maximimize revenue by forcing you to upgrade (if you want anything remotely non-terrible), and they all do it because they're all desperate to complete for the bottom. (Well except for the MEA Carriers)

There's basically no profit from economy seats. The first/second class seats subsidize the economy ones.

They're terrible because they're only there to fill a public good

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#338

Post by wyre »

nunez wrote: post #270
orangegreen wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use eBay if you don't want to use Amazon. Plus, you can even sell your stuff on eBay when you're done using it. I've never been an Amazon customer and don't plan on ever being one. I buy most things used too, saving lots of money along the way.

LOL. eBay is even worse! Zeroth, lots of eBay resellers drop-ship from or resell directly from Amazon. There are plenty of bots looking for arbitrage opportunities between Amazon, brick-and-mortar, and OEM. First, there's absolutely zero guarantee that you'll get what you bought. The chances of you getting a box of rocks is significantly greater on eBay than on Amazon (unless you use Amazon Marketplace, in which the…

Lol.

Have you used eBay significantly or so you avoid it because of the reasons you just posted?

I’ve replaced Amazon completely with eBay and have been using eBay for the past 4 years. I have never received a product I didn’t order using eBay. I wish I could say the same for Amazon.

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#339

Post by 8note »

cs702 wrote: post #121
hansvm wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just a few, Amazon has more workers than any of the 10 smallest states and more revenue than the GDP of the smallest 30 (individually, not summed).

I meant entire states, not just state employees. Some states have fewer residents than Walmart and Amazon have employees.

I think that says more about the state's being defined badly than about the companies.

There's a lot of people nowadays, and the government representation and power should be updated to match

Re: 1 out of every 153 American workers is an Amazon employee

#340

Post by bravura »

foobiekr wrote: post #241
kungito wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Management isn't analysis of data, it is making a decision based on that analysis. A completely different and more complex problem. One could argue that the border between the two is unclear but we have for sure been automatizing the analysis and we are nowhere near removing the managers. Maybe we could say we have removed layers of management though

I'm with the bet-the-house guy. I've worked for huge organizations since 1990 and I really think that even a mid-grade student project could make decisions as well as the management I've known, which includes multiple Fortune 50 CEOs. When I say "known" I mean "known" and not "been ten layers under." What I think will happen is CEOs will be glorified actors that are tasked with delivering the decisions some ML system…

There are strong reasons to believe that tasks that are new to humans and are considered difficult, will be easy to AI. Like programming, finance, strategy, etc

Whereas things humans have developed over millions of years and think are easy, like vision, dexterity, etc might be quite hard and the last things to be automated.

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