431–440 of 721 posts
Is this worth it? Is this worth having the ability to pick between 10,000 different toasters via internet and have them delivered to your doorstep in 2 days? Sometimes I look at society as a complete organ, with a hypothetical ability to make cohesive decisions for itself. And I think, it is making extremely self-destructive choices. All for the sake of satisfying the urge to buy more, at lower prices, with more conv…
Are Amazon's margins razor thin? I'm trying to understand what compels them to be so toxic in their work environment. Especially compared to the people I know who work at Costco, I struggle to understand why Costco treats employees so well, and Amazon treats their employees so poorly. It's really sad, regardless.
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> Blaming any problem of this magnitude on individuals is not reasonable. This is just anecdotal, but I see this a LOT. The stubborn insistence that blame is paramount in any discussion and that the world should be made fair before action can be taken to improve one's life is a pretty substantial barrier to said improvement. Sometimes the deck is stacked, and working on unstacking the deck can happen in parallel with…
I think my actual position here is a little more nuanced than it came across before, and I pretty much agree with you. I find it silly to blame individuals (if only they would do better!). The law of large numbers applied to these cases guarantees that there is a systemic issue, not an individual one — however — I think this sort of "you all should do better!" campaign can be a perfectly viable solution to a systemic…
> Blame is a ridiculous concept when talking about large-scale social dynamics, and effectively shuts down the search for any systemic adjustment that would constitute a fix.
I agree with you. Frankly, I rarely find the concept of blame to be all that useful for improving matters. For an example from the other side of the politically-coded spectrum, terms like "victim-blaming" are most often used as thought-terminating clichés, selectively applied to avoid having to justify one's point. For example, telling women not to dress provocatively when going out and telling tourists to keep their passport close to them and watch their bags are both just as "victim-blaming" as the other, but only one of these is given that label. (FWIW, the reason I disagree with the former and agree with the latter is that being able to dress as one pleases is a lot more core to my conception of fsirly fundamental rights than being able to avoid paying attention to one's belongings).
Is this worth it? Is this worth having the ability to pick between 10,000 different toasters via internet and have them delivered to your doorstep in 2 days? Sometimes I look at society as a complete organ, with a hypothetical ability to make cohesive decisions for itself. And I think, it is making extremely self-destructive choices. All for the sake of satisfying the urge to buy more, at lower prices, with more conv…
We can have both. Amazon isn't going to implode if they pay some extra pennies for reasonable working conditions.
Distribution is all about margins, if you can't keep costs low then you are toast, they are always utterly miserable places to work.
That means they set really high targets for middle-managers and then let them get creative with the rules.
> ...and set its performance targets based on previous worker performance.
That means they cherry pick their best performing employees and set global standards based on the top n%.
> The company said it provided coaching to help people improve...
That means they write people up when they can't meet performance standards or quotas.
> ...and used "proper discretion" when it came to sick leave and absences from work.
And that means they write people up when they don't show up.
> The company also said it provided on-site occupational health and physiotherapy support...
They do that because real doctors and PCP's are way more costly to the insurance plan.
> as well as legal,...
That's when HR puts together a meeting with a lawyer who tells you quitting is stupid because of the NDA.
> ...financial,...
That's when an employee asks for a raise and HR sends them to a meeting with a financial consultant who tells them "You don't really need a raise, you need a budget!"
> ...and workplace guidance.
That's where they teach you not to drink water so you can meet your quotas.
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As global average quality of life trends upward, the American lower and middle class are dying quietly in the streets. https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/o... https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/12/21/5720803...
So you're thinking that people in the future will wonder why we weren't more parochial in our sphere of concerns? More precisely, they'll be morally shocked at the notion that we were too close to treating all humans as of equal moral worth, instead of prioritizing those that are located closer to us geographically? Don't get me wrong, I'm very aware that most moral systems have somewhat-principled reasons to priorit…
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Out of curiosity, what is your model for the dramatic examples of India and China, which were faced with relative stagnation and incredibly dire, largely-intractable poverty for decades after WWII; followed by liberalizing (incrementally) their markets and explosive growth+massive declines in extreme poverty thereafter? I don't know a ton about the economic history of these two countries, but prima facie this seems t…
Energy wasn't sufficient, but it likely was necessary. That said, the energy was lying around all through history, so something exogenous got people to use it. And to develop the technology to do so.
It's almost tautological to say that energy is behind growth, but it's also independent of economic structure, which effectively boils down to "the manner in which we convert energy to utility".
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> Blaming any problem of this magnitude on individuals is not reasonable. This is just anecdotal, but I see this a LOT. The stubborn insistence that blame is paramount in any discussion and that the world should be made fair before action can be taken to improve one's life is a pretty substantial barrier to said improvement. Sometimes the deck is stacked, and working on unstacking the deck can happen in parallel with…
The people who whine about systemic causes will never admit that there's elements of personal responsibility in these choices.
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White collar jobs are somewhat different than. We have choice, we have power. The best bet for amazon warehouse employees, and delivery drivers, would be to unionise. This would lead to either 1) More investment in robotics, taking away menial jobs 2) Better conditions for shelf-stackers. Both are good -- as a society we should not be making people work when the work could be done by robots.
More automation -> less jobs -> more pressure to keep working at the awful, but paying job you have. I think best solution is universal basic income, but that of course is far from being accepted in USA. But it gives power to people, it make them not being so afraid to lose a job, so employers have to act accordingly.
Of course while people vote against their best interests (the false belief that hard work guarantees success) I'm sure that those with the power will continue to exploit those without.
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>had marx seen the soviet union at its prime he would have probably revised his own theory. Actually I don't think so. Even Marx saw that socialism was a stage of history which followed from capitalism. In the same way that feudalism's aristocracy provides the conditions which create a merchant class that eventually overthrows the aristocracy, Marx sees capitalism and capitalists as providing the conditions which cre…
You don't think stagnation in wages can be attributed to the massive increase in women in the workforce? Supply and demand, after all.