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Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#81

Post by vasco »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #77
vasco wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Globalization is one of the best things that has ever happened to humanity. It allows whoever is willing to understand the peoples of the world share way more than what makes them different. Globalization, specially through the internet, but trade as whole, is my personal bet on what could "end all wars". In fact it is the first necessary step for the philosophical parts of the communist manifesto that are salvageabl…

It is only good if you take a short-term, human-supremacist view of the world. If you consider all life to have worth independent of its value to humanity, then globalization is a horror. And then globalization and the industrial society is the cause of climate change, so it's only good in the short-term.

If by "short-term" you mean "until we stop killing each other in massive wars" (I doubt we can eliminate individual murder), I guess I agree, but by my estimation that will take several centuries at least. If by short term you mean before that, I doubt that we can agree. I'm talking about something that to me is already so far in the future that it was strange to hear "short-term" as a response to that argument!

Regarding human-supremacist view, I hadn't seen that expression before but if I interpret it correctly, I would say that describes a great big majority of the world population and I believe anyone would have a really hard time making this case to anyone on the street. I respect the moral purity in a way, but I think it's wildly impractical to call people around you human-supremacists, when like I said we are still not totally in agreement that things like wars should not happen. We say we do but there's never not been wars in our history. I don't know man, I feel like you're too deep in this rabbithole of morality to be able to have a normal discussion about getting a lightbulb at the local store when you start calling other people human-supremacists. But I do enjoy the banter!

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#82

Post by Retric »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #61
vasco wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my grandpa's village everything was local production and commerce but they all lived way worse than me and my friends that get paid through remote companies and spend our money online. It's incredibly unclear to me why a super poor and undeveloped local economy is better than a specialized globalized one. In my country there was a dictatorship with protectionism and when we opened things got way better, not worse.…

> In my grandpa's village everything was local production and commerce but they all lived way worse than me and my friends that get paid through remote companies and spend our money online. (1) That is because technology also takes away components of life that one can enjoy without being rich such as accesss to nature and local food production. (2) The global economy is only so "good" because it takes advantage of th…

(2) They where literally describing a poor area being better off with global trade.

Economies of scale and local advantages make the world better off. There’s no advantage to growing bananas in greenhouses in Iowa when you can grow wheat and trade with Panama.

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#83

Post by vouaobrasil »

Retric wrote: post #82
vouaobrasil wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In my grandpa's village everything was local production and commerce but they all lived way worse than me and my friends that get paid through remote companies and spend our money online. (1) That is because technology also takes away components of life that one can enjoy without being rich such as accesss to nature and local food production. (2) The global economy is only so "good" because it takes advantage of th…

(2) They where literally describing a poor area being better off with global trade. Economies of scale and local advantages make the world better off. There’s no advantage to growing bananas in greenhouses in Iowa when you can grow wheat and trade with Panama.

That local trade involves taking advantage of the commons (putting CO2 in the atmosphere) to make it work. In my opinion, we do not have the right to take that advantage.

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#84

Post by robertlagrant »

InDubioProRubio wrote: post #32
t-writescode wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are taxed for road repairs. It's a common tax on gasoline here in the United States; and, yes, there is a known issue around this with electric cars and some efforts in place to try and rectify it.

Amazon in europe went "untaxed" quite a while via the irish route, thus beeing subsidized by mom & pop stores.

Amazon employing people creates a lot of taxes. Don't forget everything's taxed, not just corporation tax. Every employee generates income tax, employee tax, if they invest their money the interest is taxed, almost everything they buy from a shop has VAT, fuel they purchase is taxed, everything they buy has a higher price because that business has to pay tax and so do its employees, ad infinitum. There's tax everywhere, and the roads will still be there if none of those people had jobs and weren't paying any tax.

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#85

Post by rectang »

ramon156 wrote: post #5

Had to buy some simple toolkit today. It was 5 bucks on Amazon, but I decided to find a local store that sells it. Same price btw. I think we should be a bit more aware about the impact of ordering everything through Amazon. Not only regarding delivery, but also the message it sends to local stores.

Apple Pay has raised my confidence level about buying directly from smaller internet sites. Since those sites don’t get my raw credit card info when I use Apple Pay, I don’t have to worry about whether they’ve implemented CC handling well (most have not).

I almost never have to resort to Amazon any more.

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#86

Post by sokoloff »

chgs wrote: post #57
_1tem wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because the absolute centralization of business in one entity is almost indistinguishable from Communism. For now it may appear that Amazon is cheaper/more convenient, but in the long run this type of monopoly leads to worse products and services.

It’s all the downsides of communism, but non of the benefits.

"All the downsides"?! I find living in the US to be quite different from what I've seen of life depicted in current/past communist countries.

It sure seems to me as if there were a few additional downsides in those communist countries that I don't see to anywhere near the same degree in the US.

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#87

Post by ptero »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #79
ptero wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On (1), I grew up behind the iron curtain in a pre-internet age next to a village (no TV, no organized entertainment). The typical non-working activity there was not to enjoy the beauty of nature (as farmers they were fed up with it) but to be bored, get drunk and start fights with anyone non local. When the economy opened up in late 1980s anyone who could ran out to cities. I will take technology and some globalism…

False dichotomy. Both situations are bad because both are predicated on lack of wisdom. A lack of wisdom in a poor place implies brawls and wanton violence. A lack of wisdom in a rich, technological age implies resource destruction and climate change. Wisdom combined with restricted technology would be ideal, such as with the Amish. They have their problems but they show that a technologically restricted society is b…

Who is going to do this "severe restriction of technology"? The people themselves, as you write, do not want to do it.

And anytime a self-appointed elite start doing "what is best for the people" against their will, police repression and labor camps are also on the menu. Nah, I will take my freedom, including the freedom to make mistakes.

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#88

Post by vouaobrasil »

vasco wrote: post #81
vouaobrasil wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is only good if you take a short-term, human-supremacist view of the world. If you consider all life to have worth independent of its value to humanity, then globalization is a horror. And then globalization and the industrial society is the cause of climate change, so it's only good in the short-term.

If by "short-term" you mean "until we stop killing each other in massive wars" (I doubt we can eliminate individual murder), I guess I agree, but by my estimation that will take several centuries at least. If by short term you mean before that, I doubt that we can agree. I'm talking about something that to me is already so far in the future that it was strange to hear "short-term" as a response to that argument! Rega…

Well, when I see people dump their shit into the homes of animals, then I think that comes from an attitude of human supremacy. When I see pristine forests cut down for profit but laws protecting the homes of people, that's human supremacy.

My goal is not to get most people to like me, or agree with my views. I fully acknowledge that I am a fundamentalist in the sense that I have a few axioms (all life is equal and technology must be regressed) and I have a zero compromise policy on that. Of course, unfortunately, to make a living I must participate in some of our atrocities.

I don't think it's necessary either, that I conform and discuss as others. There is no shortage of conformists. Either our destructive ways will stop, in which case I am working to bring them down through my writing, or I will fail. It's something I believe in and nothing will change that.

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#89

Post by toyg »

lupusreal wrote: post #55
vasco wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an interesting take. I'm not sure it's true but I will look it up. My knee-jerk reaction is that most large purchases already siphon your money away (home, car, travel), and overthinking where to buy a random small object for the house makes no difference, but I hadn't considered the locality of money circulation!

Honestly it's interesting to me that this is a novel take to you. I believe it is a generally understood, if not acted on, principle. Money sent off to Detroit or Japan for your car is as good as lost to your community, but as I said even a small amount of money spent locally will help your local community a small amount, which is more than none. Even eating at a locally owned McDonald's franchise is slightly better…

> it is a generally understood, if not acted on, principle

I think you'd be surprised to realize how much that's not actually the case.

If you google the "Preston model", you'll find a lot of material waxing lyrical about the government of a lone city in England that actually dared to follow that principle in their procurement strategies. They are doing well, but the fact that it feels revolutionary for mainstream sensibilities shows that those principles are still very unknown to most.

(I should add: the principle of locality is not always a good thing, because there are scoundrels everywhere. Again in England, the regeneration of massive swaths of land previously used for steelmaking is being done through well-connected local businessmen and corrupted politicians, and it is a shameful rip-off for the taxpayer. If a national government had done that, the relevant minister would have faced the sack; but it's ”old boys” from the area, the national press is not interested, and so it's just business as usual.)

Re: Amazon workers to strike at multiple US warehouses during busy holiday season

#90

Post by rjh29 »

rectang wrote: post #85
ramon156 wrote: post #5

Had to buy some simple toolkit today. It was 5 bucks on Amazon, but I decided to find a local store that sells it. Same price btw. I think we should be a bit more aware about the impact of ordering everything through Amazon. Not only regarding delivery, but also the message it sends to local stores.

Apple Pay has raised my confidence level about buying directly from smaller internet sites. Since those sites don’t get my raw credit card info when I use Apple Pay, I don’t have to worry about whether they’ve implemented CC handling well (most have not). I almost never have to resort to Amazon any more.

Did America go straight from giving full credit card info to Apple Pay? Chip and pin and card contactless both solve that problem
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