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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

#371

Post by LgWoodenBadger »

shadowgovt wrote: post #302
drorco wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

To be clear, from Amazon's point of view, all of their human employees are tamping for future robots right now. They're always pushing for automation as fast as they possibly can.

I don’t disagree with you, but robots don’t spend money.

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

#372

Post by rejectedandsad »

sathackr wrote: post #333
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.

It still does mean 2 day for most things that aren’t huge items - my bed took a week, but most of my items show up next day or day after tomorrow.

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

#373

Post by kevinmchugh »

tptacek wrote: post #184
kevinmchugh wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that bookstorez are dying, in the US. Amazon killed Borders, sure, and Barnes and Noble isn't as focused on books anymore. But independent bookstores have been doing okay afaict, though having to make changes. Here's data from the American Booksellers Association: https://www.statista.com/statistics/282808/number-of-indepen... It's possible that the bookstores are increasingly in big cities or something,…

Books have kind of also never been more available than they are today? We've come a long, long way from the heyday of Waldenbooks. I feel like I might rather be an author today than pre-Amazon.

My sense is that authors mostly make less money than they did 25 years ago, but only because there's so many more of them. And authors mostly didn't make much money to begin with.

As I was writing my first comment I kept thinking about how Walden and Borders are gone, but Half-Price Books seems to be doing well. I think a used book store is probably net better for an area than a Borders

ETA: one relevant market Amazon definitely created is ebook romance/erotica. Somehow the second page of results of any Amazon search contains $3 romance ebooks, whatever you were searching for. Those authors have never had it so good.

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

#374

Post by p_j_w »

BrissyCoder wrote: post #217
hombre_fatal wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I bought then for $35. They will arrive tomorrow. Shouldn't you wait to see what kind of cheapo $35 shoe arrives tomorrow, one you never got to try on, before you celebrate?

Sounds like he did due-diligence on reviews.

I've had far too many experiences buying well reviewed stuff on Amazon that turned out to not be as good as it should have been for this to be a convincing point.

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

#375

Post by mchem »

unchocked wrote: post #180
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 pretty sure that commodity retail has always, for my living memory at least, been a pretty stressful, insecure, and low-wage position. Amazon's scale brings welcome visibility to the problem, and offers employees the chance to unionize, but I'm puzzled by upper-class culture's seemingly new discovery that commodity retail is a shitty job.

Exactly this. Having worked such jobs in my youth; you don’t do it for the prospects…

As you say, it’s a matter of scale. Shitty jobs have always existed, they will continue to do so. Is a job in home removals - a gruelling, backbreaking task - truly better than that of an Amazon courier, engineer, or warehouse employee? If we want to be particularly extreme, we can swap removals for mining, farm work, or heavy manufacturing.

In the long run, damaged joints n’all, I expect that the average ‘shitty job’ of today - in developed nations - is still an improvement on what came before.

Yes, a lot of this comes down to outsourcing risk and danger (e.g. from manufacturing). I’m interested in hearing opinions on this - it’s a working idea.

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

#376

Post by kortilla »

shakezula wrote: post #90
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 ? 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…

> 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.

This is all bullshit. Walmart is still the cheaper price for groceries and most general goods (at least in my experience living somewhere rural). Amazon is purely convenience at an OK price.

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

#377

Post by jvanderbot »

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…

That store should have let you try on stock at your leisure, let you pick colors, styles, etc, then facilitated delivery overnight to your home with an in store return option with 1 year discounted upgrade / trade in. No more out of stock BS.

It's a comedy of uncreative errors that leads us to zero in store competition with Amazon. Target isn't bad!

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

#378

Post by kortilla »

heavyset_go wrote: post #362
drorco wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> One solution can be for a union, government, Amazon etc, is to put aside money for a fund that will invest in training these employees so they could one day not depend on these kind of low-leverage jobs. Unions have negotiated with companies that outsource or automate its members' jobs to secure compensation for the workers who were affected. However, I think this is a problem that requires a larger solution. There…

> We're heading towards a world where most work is done by machines, and only a handful of people will own, control and profit from them

People keep saying that but we are no closer than we were 50 years ago. A lot of jobs have been replaced but new jobs have been created and society has absorbed the increased productivity (cheaper goods, foods, and much more complex high end goods (iPhone, airplanes, etc).

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

#379

Post by kortilla »

XorNot wrote: post #353
taurath wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a fully automated amazon without a large local workforce and therefor a large local TAXBASE is going to be a huge target for regulatory enforcement.

How? If the workforce isn't local, then there's no citizens involved which US law applies too.

Those warehouses have to go somewhere and politicians are much more likely to initiate a shakedown when non of their constituents benefit.

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

#380

Post by hasmanean »

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…

Both of them pay low wages but retail stores have to pay rent for their facilities. Amazon doesn’t.
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