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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

#41

Post by holoduke »

hackerlight wrote: post #26
mrweasel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The slavery and working conditions in China no longer really surprises me, what I do struggle to understand is that Western companies apparently DO NOT CARE. I can sort of accept, reluctantly, that the Chinese have a different way to thinking than I do and that I can't necessarily apply my moral code to China. What I cannot accept or understand is that the owners and managers of Western companies, who supposedly shar…

> continues to do business with China ... It's absolutely disgusting. I want to inject some nuance here. Competition in the labor market, which drives business to low- or middle-income countries like China, is really really good for the typical low-middle income person in China. If wealthy countries pulled out entirely, then China's GDP per capita will probably drop from $12,000 back to sub-$5,000 and you will be cau…

No fuck that argument people use to whitewash bad/harsch working conditions. "A low income is better than no income". "Better be employed as a slave than unemployed" is basically what they say. Inless its not a close relative or your own kids working there. You would immediately change your opinion if thats the case. That fucked western hypocritical way of thinking needs to stop. Its really bad. Better everyone being a poor rice farmer than working in shit factory.

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

#42

Post by throwawaysleep »

jackdaniel wrote: post #27
throwawaysleep wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not surprising that it will go badly. Most of us have some secrets to hide, so the individuals that make up society have an incentive to exclude such people from their lives. I couldn’t trust a whistleblower. While grateful for a lot of the work they do, I never want to be their target and would never risk getting close to them.

While I disagree with your opinion, I appreciate a lot that you've stated it. That's a very honest thing to say.

Is it that you morally disagree (I agree that it is a poor reward for doing me a service) or you have a disagreement about why society punishes whistleblowers?

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

#43

Post by Buttons840 »

throwawaysleep wrote: post #24
PaulKeeble wrote: post #16

My experience of whistleblowing even here in the west is that usually it goes very very badly. The only real thing open to you is to refuse to do anything unethical, quit and walk away. Many people can't afford to do that. Things ought to be different but we live in corrupt societies where the law is different for the rich and powerful than for everyone else.

Not surprising that it will go badly. Most of us have some secrets to hide, so the individuals that make up society have an incentive to exclude such people from their lives. I couldn’t trust a whistleblower. While grateful for a lot of the work they do, I never want to be their target and would never risk getting close to them.

> Most of us have some secrets to hide

It's a bit reductionist to consider the things that get whistleblown about as just "everyone has their secrets". Alice is illegally spying on all of society, well, everyone has their secrets. Billy has a porno magazine hidden in his closet, well, everyone has their secrets. Charlie is stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers, well, everyone has their secrets. Daryl is running a child trafficking ring, well, everyone has their secrets. Not all secrets are the same.

> I couldn’t trust a whistleblower. While grateful for a lot of the work they do, I never want to be their target and would never risk getting close to them.

So, you make it a little more likely that whistleblowers will have a hard time, and a little more likely that whistleblowers will be discouraged from ever whistleblowing in the first place. The end result is that you are a little more likely to be affected by the corruption that might have been stopped by whistleblowers.

Everyone has their definition about what a "good person" is. Let me offer my definition. A "good person" is someone who is more likely to benefit than to be harmed by widespread wistleblowing. Good people should want whistleblowers to be protected and commonplace.

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

#44

Post by dieselgate »

mrweasel wrote: post #10
sgjohnson wrote: post #6

Slavery is de-facto legal in China and their justice system is rotten to the core. Is this really news to anyone? I would be surprised if this had ended differently.

The slavery and working conditions in China no longer really surprises me, what I do struggle to understand is that Western companies apparently DO NOT CARE. I can sort of accept, reluctantly, that the Chinese have a different way to thinking than I do and that I can't necessarily apply my moral code to China. What I cannot accept or understand is that the owners and managers of Western companies, who supposedly shar…

> Western companies apparently DO NOT CARE.

Western Consumers don't care either

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

#45

Post by octacat »

mrweasel wrote: post #10
sgjohnson wrote: post #6

Slavery is de-facto legal in China and their justice system is rotten to the core. Is this really news to anyone? I would be surprised if this had ended differently.

The slavery and working conditions in China no longer really surprises me, what I do struggle to understand is that Western companies apparently DO NOT CARE. I can sort of accept, reluctantly, that the Chinese have a different way to thinking than I do and that I can't necessarily apply my moral code to China. What I cannot accept or understand is that the owners and managers of Western companies, who supposedly shar…

The people would be like: "If our company does not benefit from chinese slaves, someone else will and steal our profits!". Which is kinda sadly true, because Amazon does not care were the stock items come from. You can produce in countries with strong work laws, but it is just too expensive.

(same with countries where we get energy resources from - they don't have ideal reputation for human rights, but they are cheap).

It is kinda simple: you can buy a tshirt from Italy produced in Italy and having price tag 3 times more. Or you can buy from China... Now think you are a company with thin margins and have to do the same... And your items are after getting sold on Amazon, which algorithms would force you to sell as cheap as possible, otherwise your item would not be seen in the search results.

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

#46

Post by octacat »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #25
mrweasel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The slavery and working conditions in China no longer really surprises me, what I do struggle to understand is that Western companies apparently DO NOT CARE. I can sort of accept, reluctantly, that the Chinese have a different way to thinking than I do and that I can't necessarily apply my moral code to China. What I cannot accept or understand is that the owners and managers of Western companies, who supposedly shar…

> What I cannot accept or understand is that the owners and managers of Western companies, who supposedly share my moral ideals Are you really sure that these people share your own moral ideals? ;-)

Western companies which cared, went a bit bankrupt sadly. We have negative selection here.

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

#47

Post by tiew9Vii »

RCitronsBroker wrote: post #8
highwaylights wrote: post #5

One of these days I'm going to make the Internet prove to ME that IT's not a robot and see how it likes it

cloudflare captchas really are a grade a pest at the moment, i already switched my DNS once because i always got stuck, now it happens again

It’s stuck an an infinite loop for me.

Click the pictures, get the green tick, click the button, a brand new captcha

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

#48

Post by peyton »

holoduke wrote: post #41
hackerlight wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> continues to do business with China ... It's absolutely disgusting. I want to inject some nuance here. Competition in the labor market, which drives business to low- or middle-income countries like China, is really really good for the typical low-middle income person in China. If wealthy countries pulled out entirely, then China's GDP per capita will probably drop from $12,000 back to sub-$5,000 and you will be cau…

No fuck that argument people use to whitewash bad/harsch working conditions. "A low income is better than no income". "Better be employed as a slave than unemployed" is basically what they say. Inless its not a close relative or your own kids working there. You would immediately change your opinion if thats the case. That fucked western hypocritical way of thinking needs to stop. Its really bad. Better everyone being…

FYI China needs to import food. The alternative is famine for hundreds of millions of people, not bucolic rice farming.

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

#49

Post by xkcd1963 »

ejb999 wrote: post #32
mrweasel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The slavery and working conditions in China no longer really surprises me, what I do struggle to understand is that Western companies apparently DO NOT CARE. I can sort of accept, reluctantly, that the Chinese have a different way to thinking than I do and that I can't necessarily apply my moral code to China. What I cannot accept or understand is that the owners and managers of Western companies, who supposedly shar…

talk about mental gymnastics - you just said "I can sort of accept, reluctantly, that the Chinese have a different way to thinking than I do and that I can't necessarily apply my moral code to China." so, give them a pass with what they are doing and then criticize others that are giving them the same pass, and also choose to profit from it. What about people who buy stuff made in China? do they get a pass too? So th…

[flagged]

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

#50

Post by rsynnott »

throwawaysleep wrote: post #42
jackdaniel wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I disagree with your opinion, I appreciate a lot that you've stated it. That's a very honest thing to say.

Is it that you morally disagree (I agree that it is a poor reward for doing me a service) or you have a disagreement about why society punishes whistleblowers?

Possibly a fundamentally different outlook? I would trust a whistleblower, but I would have difficulty trusting a person who would cover up serious crimes for an employer. Most employers, by the way, actually do not want it covered up when one of their departments is Doing Crime.

(In particular if you're in, say, finance, or a safety-critical industry, you are not going to want to hire someone who has a known track record of failing to report crimes. I mean, unless you're, like, FTX or someone.)

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