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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

#61

Post by orwin »

laborcontract wrote: post #28
crossroadsguy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would guess that Bezos has never read this letter. I would guess someone might have informed him of this letter or he might even as well have read it already. What I would not guess about is whether he would give two fucks about it. Because no he would not. Yes, he and his company has proven this. Business and profit over all else. That is not just really a Chinese problem. It surprises me how people still love t…

It surprises me how people still love to try to think that “oh this is such a horrors! You got me there, fella. Deeply dreadful nihilism has never been one of my strong points.

It's not nihilism. It is only nihilistic if you don't judge the corporate overlords to be morally inferiors to the average human.

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

#63

Post by DanielHB »

Didn't the US have a whistleblower bounty with the IRS? I heard it was one of the most successful programs they ever ran. Whistleblow on your company's tax evasion and you get paid a pretty good chunk of money from the IRS. IRS collects its due and you get paid proportional to the amount of tax revenue evaded (I remember a few cases where the whistleblower got tens of millions of dollars).

It is kind of bizarre, but the incentives are perfectly aligned, if the tax evasion sum is low you get paid less therefor it is not worth whistleblowing. The IRS doesn't want to catch the small fries, to some extent tax evasion is desired for smaller companies.

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

#64

Post by ako »

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 can't afford to care, as their consumers are buying based on price. Bad working conditions usually mean lower prices, and more success for the company using this.

You can't expect companies to fix this, this needs to come through politics and government. Unfortunately, these days governments who try to address it will be considered enemies of capitalism, considered leftish or communist. As prices will have to rise and consumers won't allow for that.

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

#66

Post by maxlamb »

rmellow wrote: post #20
docflabby wrote: post #11

In a world run by sociopaths - whistleblowing is a trap to catch the people who could if instead of reporting the issues, they organised together and then could stop you... I've yet to see any whistleblowing case not end badly.

Not to dismiss your statement entirely, but Frances Haugen is doing fine: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Haugen

By her own admission she is supporting herself financially from “having bought crypto at the right time.” I’m guessing the vast majority of whistleblowers have that kind of financial cushion to risk it all like this. Source: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/10/25/facebook-whistl...

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

#67

Post by zurfer »

sour-taste wrote: post #4

Here's the mentioned letter: [PDF] https://chinalaborwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Engli...

Thank you for linking that. It is worth reading.

I'm always amazed how cheap and well China can manufacture a wide variety of devices. There is ofc a lot of expertise and economies of scale at work, but the letter is a sad reminder that at least some part comes from exploitation.

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

#68

Post by sgjohnson »

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…

Except this has nothing to do with the west. The west is not responsible for working conditions in China in any way, shape or form. It's strictly a Chinese problem.

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

#70

Post by sgjohnson »

ako wrote: post #64
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…

Western companies can't afford to care, as their consumers are buying based on price. Bad working conditions usually mean lower prices, and more success for the company using this. You can't expect companies to fix this, this needs to come through politics and government. Unfortunately, these days governments who try to address it will be considered enemies of capitalism, considered leftish or communist. As prices wi…

> this needs to come through politics and government.

There's nothing western politicians can do to fix working conditions in China.

Embargo them? The working conditions in China won't get any better, and you'll simply put a lot of Chinese out of work by doing that.

Higher tariffs? That's just a tax on importing goods for China. While it helps the domestic manufacturing sector, it still does nothing to fix the working conditions in China.

Consumers suddenly start caring? The same as the "higher tariffs" scenario.

Any other ideas?

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