Earlier quoted context omitted.
If today, the National Guard dropped a non nuclear bomb on a blue city, 40% of the US population would shrug if not outright cheer. https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/socprac/vol10/iss1/15/ Rebellions have been successful in underfunded countries with few resources. Can you actually come up with a scenario where a few yokels in the south running around the field playing militia could overthrow the US government? And th…
> https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/socprac/vol10/iss1/15/ Strange you linked to some random journal article describing the incident as "In 1985 police bombed the Philadelphia headquarters occupied by members of the black counterculture group MOVE.". The wikipedia article adds far needed context: >The 1985 MOVE bombing, locally known by its date, May 13, 1985,[2] was the aerial bombing of a house, and the destruction…
Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division
451–460 of 537 posts
Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division
#452Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So let’s say the mostly Black Million Man March had turned violent and decided to invade the Capitol - what do you think the reaction would have been? I don't really know, are they a Black Million Man March for a sitting president named Donald J. Trump? You're just throwing straw man arguments out there. > What Democratic candidate on the national stage is saying that the government should take over all private ind…
You’re still being hand wavy. Saying “we should have government run grocery stores where there are food deserts and wouldn’t be profitable for private corporations” is not “communism”. Do you know what Communism actually is? Give a specific example. What Democratic candidate is saying we should be a “communist country”? But your original arguments was that J6 was evidence that a few people with guns could have taken…
I don't think that's really what my argument was, and things are getting convoluted here. Happy to clarify to the best of my ability.
What was written that I responded to was:
> Can you actually come up with a scenario where a few yokels in the south running around the field playing militia could overthrow the US government?
My point was look at what a few yokels did on January 6th, and they weren't even armed with weapons and frankly I don't think 80% of them even thought they'd get in the building and do the damage that they did do. For many of those folks they found themselves almost in an accidental insurrection.
Can local SWAT open up fire with machine guns and gun all those people down (especially without weapons)? Sure they can. But that's crossing one hell of a Rubicon and not the standard operating procedure for this kind of stuff. Instead of gunning people down they wait until things cool off and then arrest people 1 by 1.
> What Democratic candidate is saying we should be a “communist country”?
As I already explained you don't have to say "we should be a communist country" - instead you can just espouse communism views or other harmful views with various twists of language. You know that's true because MAGA does it.
You don't have to be a candidate for office either, you just need to have influence. That's an arbitrary requirement you made up.
Again, separating out Democrats from Progressives, you can find various instances of folks advocating for things like nationalization of industries, "equity", and so forth. I don't need to provide a specific example because there's no point - what does that accomplish? If I provide an example of a Progressive arguing for communism or communist ideology (whether explicit or implicit) what does that change?
If I find a single example of a Progressive politician arguing for communism or specific features of communist ideology what does that change? Are you going to reply "I was wrong"? It's just arguing for arguing sake.
Bigger picture, I'm not sure why you're so hung up on this. Communism and its ill effects are just one of many things that you can find Progressives arguing in favor of, similar to things like Open Borders. Those policies are unpopular for a good reason, hence Trump and Republicans won the election and Trump got more votes than he did last time. The reason Democrats are losing is because Progressive ideology and frankly I don't care what we really call it (socialism, communism, whatever it's just one big basket of deplorable ideas) is unpopular with Americans and the votes continue to prove that out. I'm pointing this out as someone who is independent and quite frankly votes Democrat most of the time. You don't have to agree with my assessment, but you can look at the election results and see for yourself that I'm right. If the Democrats don't drop this nonsense they'll continue to lose elections because for most people (not me necessarily) MAGA is a preferable alternative to Progressive and I don't see that changing anytime soon unless Trump is out of the picture.
Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division
#453Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's also a total gut-punch to employees. "We had a great quarter!... not a good enough though, so GTFO" I can only imagine what this will do to morale. If even positive quarters means job cuts, why even try to have a positive quarter.
>It's also a total gut-punch to employees. "We had a great quarter!... not a good enough though, so GTFO" If you take the comment about "AI" at face value, isn't that exactly what you'd expect? If a textile mill is making record profits because of new textile machinery, would you consider it reasonable for the business to keep the old workers around, even though they're not needed anymore? Yes, it always sucks to los…
With that said, I would consider doing layoffs after a profitable quarter to be anti-social / anti-culture. It creates fear and uncertainty in the organization which will cause people to move to 'cash checks until I am fired then I'll leverage this to get a job somewhere else' versus trying hard to make the company their career where they put down roots.
In my opinion, chasing ever increasing profitability as a tech company is cannibalizing future earnings. By cutting over and over in pursuit of more profit, you are trading compound earnings (ie: create new products) for money today by injecting fear into your 'innovation centers'.
Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division
#454Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I wish employees would instead have an opportunity to sign up for lower salary. They do, almost every year when health insurance premiums/copays/deductibles/out of pocket maximum go up and number of in network or tier 1 providers goes down.
Are you getting cost of living raises that beat inflation recently? How do I negotiate for those
Or, even easier, just be a capital owner, instead of a wagie. (/s)
Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division
#455Earlier quoted context omitted.
Worse, we’ve been in one but have been pretending we aren’t. Stock goes up.
Previously discussed: “ Without data centers, GDP growth was 0.1% in the first half of 2025” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45512317
Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division
#456Earlier quoted context omitted.
>It's also a total gut-punch to employees. "We had a great quarter!... not a good enough though, so GTFO" If you take the comment about "AI" at face value, isn't that exactly what you'd expect? If a textile mill is making record profits because of new textile machinery, would you consider it reasonable for the business to keep the old workers around, even though they're not needed anymore? Yes, it always sucks to los…
They absolutely didn't. It's within Amazon's legal rights to cut as many employees as they like for any reason (besides a protected one). With that said, I would consider doing layoffs after a profitable quarter to be anti-social / anti-culture. It creates fear and uncertainty in the organization which will cause people to move to 'cash checks until I am fired then I'll leverage this to get a job somewhere else' vers…
So going back to the textile mill example above, what should the owner do? Keep the workers around even though they're not needed until the next recession, and only then fire them? If it's a particularly profitable industry, it might even still be profitable even with a recession, so is amazon on the hook for decades, until there's some sort of industry-wide crisis (think the one that hit the American auto industry in 2008), and by then it's too late because upstarts without the burden of older employees have already overtaken them?
Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division
#457Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re still being hand wavy. Saying “we should have government run grocery stores where there are food deserts and wouldn’t be profitable for private corporations” is not “communism”. Do you know what Communism actually is? Give a specific example. What Democratic candidate is saying we should be a “communist country”? But your original arguments was that J6 was evidence that a few people with guns could have taken…
> But your original arguments was that J6 was evidence that a few people with guns could have taken over the entire federal government and that the full force of even local SWAT couldn’t have intervened. I don't think that's really what my argument was, and things are getting convoluted here. Happy to clarify to the best of my ability. What was written that I responded to was: > Can you actually come up with a scenar…
You haven’t seen videos of local police taking on protestors during the civil rights movement with impunity? Do you think the current administration would have any problem doing the same in all of the cities he’s invaded with the National Guard and that his supporters - 40% of the country - wouldn’t just shrug like they did when he pardoned 1500+ domestic terrorist who look and think like them?
I’m limiting it to national politicians who won the nomination to represent their party in Congress because no one cares what someone’s crazy uncle who calls themselves a Democrat thinks.
You brought up “Communism”? What ideas are you now calling “socialist”?
And everyone loves “socialism” as long as it benefits them - see almost every red state that gets more in federal tax dollars than they pay, Medicare, Medicaid, the ACA (as long as they don’t call it “ObamaCare”), give a few “socialist” ideas that national Democrats want to implement that you are afraid of?
And “open borders” is another boogeyman talking point. Check how many illegal immigrants were deported by Obama vs Trump for instance or even Biden.
Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division
#458Earlier quoted context omitted.
They had the infrastructure and muscle to put a dent into Google Search and Microsoft Enterprise software... but instead they've ceeded to OpenAI and Anthropic. They had a bridgehead device of the type that OpenAI are struggling to create with Jonny Ive in Alexa... but nothing seems to be happening with Alexa now.
If Microsoft couldn’t compete with Google in search, how could Amazon? Even if the search were better, how do you get people to switch to it if Google is the default everywhere? Besides Alexa was losing billions when it was backed by the relatively cheap to run Amazon Lex pattern matching service. It would have lost more being backed by an LLM and it actually got worse from all indications.
Google clearly believe : a chunk.
People switched to GPT and Claude...
Amazon risk becoming logistics and datacenters, what's wrong with that you ask? Well, it's not where the money is. The money is in the website and the application layer.
Re: Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division
#459Once a company moves on to recurring, large-scale layoffs justified by vague corporate Mumbo-Jumbo, I think it is safe to assume it is a "day 2" company.