[HN Gopher] Amazon Is Creating Company Towns Across the United S...
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Amazon Is Creating Company Towns Across the United States
Author : samizdis
Score : 207 points
Date : 2021-07-25 11:00 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jacobinmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jacobinmag.com)
| JCM9 wrote:
| Like a lot of these stories there's lots of ways to spin reality.
|
| Headline could read "Company turns up providing much needed high
| paying jobs to region left devastated by failed industries
| (steel, manufacturing, ...". Or you could say "Evil company moved
| in and sets up company town."
|
| Honestly agnostic to this whole thing but it's interesting to
| watch efforts to spin things one way or another.
| GoodJokes wrote:
| Companies don't provide jobs. People provide labor and
| companies exploit said labor for profit.
| Aunche wrote:
| Workers receive compensation for their labor. They aren't
| entitled to future profit that results from their labor.
| Otherwise, I'm "exploiting" Apple for make profit off of my
| work laptop.
| iratewizard wrote:
| Companies exploit people. People exploit their employers.
| People exploit each other. People exploit themselves.
|
| Midwit theories of Utopia always seem to single in on one
| thing they can turn into a boogieman, and ignore the rest of
| the complex system.
| nscalf wrote:
| Then quit, don't get another job, and stop complaining about
| it. But most people can't, because they aren't just blindly
| exploited, they're compensated for their work and that gives
| them more freedom and future options. If you want to say
| they're not fairly compensated, go work to get a bill passed.
| Or run for office. Or make your own company. Just do
| SOMETHING, making flippant remarks online and whining isn't
| productive and doesn't help anyone.
| username90 wrote:
| Labour without a job is almost useless. People with the
| ability to figure out good use of labour is the limiting
| factor, not labour itself. And it is really hard to get
| enough value out of labour to pay modern salaries.
|
| If you disagree, why don't you just hire people yourself and
| tell them to do stuff? Easy money from exploiting labour, no?
| ativzzz wrote:
| The comment you replied to predicted your comment:
|
| > it's interesting to watch efforts to spin things one way or
| another
| 0x262d wrote:
| political and class ambivalence is also a way to spin
| things. which the original comment itself did. this is a
| navel-gazing, meaningless criticism. if you disagree
| substantively you should just say so.
| friedman23 wrote:
| Class ambivalence? Who is upper class here? Jeff Bezos?
| He was born to single mother out of wedlock in
| highschool. Or is class something you can buy your way
| into now?
| true_religion wrote:
| Yes. Social mobility is one of the hallmarks of a class
| system.
|
| If you can't spend your entire life improving yourself
| from the circumstances of your birth then you don't have
| a class system, you have a caste system.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| And yet his parents were able to slide him a cool quarter
| million to start Amazon without breaking a sweat.
| Aunche wrote:
| Before he started Amazon, Bezos had already been already
| an SVP at DE Shaw, so it's not like he would have any
| trouble finding another quarter million from investors.
| username90 wrote:
| Most people here on HN could do the same for their kids
| once their kids are adults.
| [deleted]
| 0x262d wrote:
| Bezos' profits on the basis of how much work his
| employees do, minus how much he pays them. that's what
| class is. it's pretty hard to deny it exists.
| friedman23 wrote:
| That's being rich not upper class. There is a difference.
| Fargren wrote:
| Is there? To me the terms are interchangeable. I tried
| googling for it and I can't find any clear distinction.
| Can you tell me what is the difference?
| 0x262d wrote:
| no, class (in the marxist sense, everything else is
| meaningless cultural signifiers) is not about "upper" or
| "lower", it's about either getting paid for wage labor,
| ie being working class, or getting paid for other
| people's use of property you own, ie being capitalist
| class. this is extremely basic and is the fundamental
| divide under capitalism.
| friedman23 wrote:
| ah thanks for tankiesplaining
| 0x262d wrote:
| dumb comment. this isn't "tankie" it's basic labor theory
| of value.
| woodruffw wrote:
| > Or is class something you can buy your way into now?
|
| In America, class has _always_ been something you can buy
| your way into. Take a trip to Newport some time, and
| visit the mansions of the robber barons: each is
| _stuffed_ with mediocre classical and neoclassical
| mimicry. The purpose of these ostentatious displays was
| to _prove_ to each 's neighbors that they were
| sufficiently landed, wealthy, and worthy of their class
| designation.
|
| Edit: But of course note: wealth is neither necessary nor
| sufficient for class; it only makes it much, _much_ more
| accessible.
| anm89 wrote:
| I love how simply framing a concept that 99.9% of the
| population is ok with in Marxist language is supposed to make
| people recoil in horror.
|
| If you want to call it exploitation than call it
| exploitation. I'm fine with exploitation if the definition of
| exploitation is "jobs"
| [deleted]
| nsporillo wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfp2O9ADwGk
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| If Amazon were to pay its employees with company scrips,
| employees could shop at whole foods and buy at least a loaf of
| bread and some bananas with a week of pay. Banana sandwiches can
| go a long way. Buy some peanut butter on credit and work some
| O.T. to pay it off.
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| In defense of the company town:
|
| https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/in...
| LightG wrote:
| Snowcrash - the full reality release. Coming soon to a town near
| you.
|
| Tickets available to purchase via your local Mayor.
| mud_dauber wrote:
| Both of my grandparents, and a couple of uncles, worked in
| Appalachia's coal mines. I've seen the last vestiges of coal
| camps (Amazon towns' predecessors) up close.
|
| This article is a real bummer.
| codetrotter wrote:
| The United States of Amazon then?
| m_ke wrote:
| United Corporations of America
| iamacyborg wrote:
| > When deep space exploration ramps up, it'll be the
| corporations that name everything, the IBM Stellar Sphere, the
| Microsoft Galaxy, Planet Starbucks.
| beckman466 wrote:
| > the warehouse worker is neither seen nor heard by the customer;
| at least at Walmart, you go to a store and you see the workers --
| you know they exist.
|
| This made me think of the movie 'The Island' where in one scene,
| somewhere in the beginning of the movie, they show us the work
| our protagonists do in their community. There are tubes coming
| out of the wall on one side of the room and out the other; tubes
| which have a flowing liquid inside which the protagonists and
| their friends are trained to perform an action on, which is
| essential for some kind of process.
|
| Only later do we find out the awful purpose of these tubes.
|
| There is an increasing level of alienation that is hard to
| describe to anyone who has been lucky enough to be a labor
| aristocrat for most of their lives. I honestly think everyone
| around us is capable of so much more. Our current system, through
| Intellectual Property types such as copyrights and trade secrets,
| has made it hard to ascend 'intellectual ladders' because the
| intellectual ladders used by those in power have kicked them away
| (after they were used by them). In other words: there is a lack
| of diversity of methods and approaches and opportunities due to
| the commodification and privatization of knowledge (i.e.
| technology and science overall). [1],[2]
|
| I believe the human needs for growth and play are foundational to
| a happy society, and in modern society, those needs go massively
| unmet, and the working class is being squeezed and squeezed like
| never before (not to mention the workers in the global south who
| I would argue are exploited to an even greater extent [3]).
|
| It's also ironic that Amazon calls their production facilities
| 'Fulfillment Centers', because the most important people they do
| not create 'fulfillment' for are their workers... you know, the
| people who are actually creating all the value:
|
| > If class is a social relation and the working class is made and
| remade daily, that formation is increasingly happening inside the
| massive structures that house Amazon's warehouses, where workers
| face capital embodied in the whir of machinery and barking
| managers and the beeps of the scanner in their hands, prodding
| them to pick up the pace. It is happening in the parking lots
| outside, where people smoke and linger and chat and dread.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25753856
|
| [2] https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley
|
| [3] https://anti-imperialism.org/2012/09/18/understanding-and-
| ch...
| zo1 wrote:
| >"I believe the human needs for growth and play are
| foundational to a happy society, and in modern society, those
| needs go massively unmet, and the working class is being
| squeezed and squeezed like never before (not to mention the
| workers in the global south who I would argue are exploited to
| an even greater extent [3])."
|
| I believe the fundamental problem we are facing is one of over-
| correction with constant meddling. We simply are making more
| "humans" than we know what to do with or that the market can
| bear. _Simplistically_ I 'd say this devalues the value of our
| labour way more than we're comfortable occurring, but at the
| same time we're too uncomfortable to say that maybe we
| shouldn't be allowing our population to grow unchecked like
| this.
|
| It's a multi-generational ponzi scheme that we are running in
| order to make this all work, and we're starting to see the gaps
| form. What we see makes us uncomfortable, but we can't describe
| why or form a concrete opinion against it. And goodness we
| definitely can't tell people that it's not their fundamental
| right to impose obligations on the rest of us to take care of
| the poor new souls they bring into this world without thinking
| it through.
| gruez wrote:
| >I honestly think everyone around us is capable of so much
| more. Our current system, through Intellectual Property types
| such as copyrights and trade secrets, has made it hard to
| ascend 'intellectual ladders' because the intellectual ladders
| used by those in power have kicked them away (after they were
| used by them).
|
| Can you give some examples? "Intellectual Property" isn't
| preventing you from learning programming and earning 6 figures.
| beckman466 wrote:
| > "Intellectual Property" isn't preventing you from learning
| programming and earning 6 figures.
|
| I honestly believe you might be missing the bigger picture
| here.
|
| _" Whereas we were once led to believe that the network
| society would produce an egalitarian world, we increasingly
| see tech as a machine for the commodification of information
| itself. Something that has the potential to be abundant is
| made artificially scarce, because capital finds it profitable
| to enclose the digital commons and dictate its terms of
| access. [...] These corporations serve social functions
| integral to modern life, in ways similar to industries that
| were nationalised in the past -- and yet, not only are they
| not publicly owned, they are immune to any sort of democratic
| control.
|
| This is the dark side of Silicon Valley, the uncomfortable
| reality that lurks beneath its glitzy exterior. Whatever its
| emancipatory narrative, Silicon Valley is facilitating a
| system where wealth concentrates, labour is disciplined, the
| public sphere is diminished, and global inequities are
| reinforced."_
|
| From earlier in the article:
|
| _" The most salient example is Apple: recently crowned the
| world's most valuable company, Apple rakes in enormous
| quarterly profits even as the Chinese workers who actually
| assemble its products are driven to suicide."_ [1]
|
| My comment isn't about me being able to 'learn programming
| and earn 6 figures', as you put it, it's about the
| overarching system, laws and culture that surround us all.
|
| This also feels relevant:
|
| _" "Knowledge is power and so it tends to be hoarded.
| Experts in any field rarely want people to understand what
| they do, and generally enjoy putting people down." [ - Ted
| Nelson]
|
| Computer Lib was published in 1974, and it's kind of eerie
| that those words ring so true today. The tech industry that
| grew out of this knowledge still feels like a priesthood, one
| dominated by men who are either white or a specific kind of
| Asian, who define the parameters of what's considered "real"
| tech talent according to what they themselves are good at.
| They hire people with similar academic backgrounds,
| programming journeys, and knack for solving brainteaser
| questions in interviews as themselves.
|
| The worst of them outright resent the existence of coding
| bootcamps and other efforts to get underrepresented groups
| into tech, seeing them as a threat to their own privileged
| status, even if they wouldn't admit it as such. They're not
| real programmers, so the reasoning goes, if they didn't go
| through the desert of learning how to code in the days before
| GitHub and StackOverflow and Codecademy, when you asked for
| help on mailing lists and IRC channels and usually expected
| no response. Unlike the high priests who discovered tech long
| before they knew how lucrative it could be, these newcomers
| are motivated primarily by the money, and that makes their
| qualifications suspect. For many of them, it's just a job -
| the worst possible sin to those who believe you should do
| what you love, and who perhaps spent some of their most
| formative years in social isolation in pursuit of that love.
|
| I definitely went through a phase, probably entwined with my
| Ayn Rand phase, where I wholeheartedly believed this view. It
| took a while before I saw it for the self-aggrandising
| gatekeeping it is. It's similar to what Alex Williams has
| called "negative solidarity": a requirement that other people
| suffer as you have, not because you believe that it will be
| better for them, but because it makes you feel better about
| yourself. The most common form of gatekeeping that occurs in
| tech isn't driven by a noble desire to build better products
| by keeping out the less capable; it's driven by a much more
| selfish desire to implicitly validate the choices and skills
| and perspectives of those already doing well in the
| industry."_ [2]
|
| [1] https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley
|
| [2] https://dellsystem.me/posts/fragments-50
| gruez wrote:
| I fail to see how this has anything to do with your
| original claim that "Intellectual Property types such as
| copyrights and trade secrets, has made it hard to ascend
| 'intellectual ladders'". or that "everyone around us is
| capable of so much more."
| aww_dang wrote:
| Even if we were to accept class theory, in the 21st century
| nearly everyone has access to a computer, one of the most
| productive goods.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27903630
| beckman466 wrote:
| > Even if we were to accept class theory, in the 21st century
| nearly everyone has access to a computer, one of the most
| productive goods.
|
| You sure that's all that's needed? I am continually surprised
| when someone claims the internet is some all-mighty resource-
| rich network. It wasn't the internet that made world class
| scientists, it was access to privileged firewalled networks:
| capitalist universities, as well as state-funded yet
| privately controlled multinationals (more and more through
| trade secret law [1]), which 'own' and house - read: hoard
| and violently withhold - the sum total of all human knowledge
| (commons which belongs to all of earth's children, not just
| ones with rich mommies and daddies).
|
| When someone like Aaron Swartz is driven to his death for
| campaigning for open access, it shows that he has come upon
| something that wants to stay hidden: the structures and
| dynamics of outdated knowledge hierarchies. Have you read his
| short and concise manifesto? It's an awesome (and better)
| articulation of what I am talking about here. [2]
|
| That story about the Indian man is not empirical data, it's
| an example of an anecdotal story that helps to keep the
| working class distracted, stopping them from seeing how the
| system actually works. Stories like that are 'magical
| voluntarist' fantasies that end up alienating more people
| than they inspire. [3]
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26805062
|
| [2] https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Go
| amj...
|
| [3] http://theoccupiedtimes.org/?p=12841
| aww_dang wrote:
| I can agree with that sentiment up to a point. We're still
| better off now than before. Information is more generally
| available. If you want to publish online or create
| software, nearly every resource is available. The Internet
| is its own paradigm of value.
|
| There are still specialized fields guarded by academic
| gatekeepers. However even there, knowledge is more widely
| available than before.
|
| Hypothetically speaking, if a researcher progressed to a
| high level in a traditionally academic field, the term
| "world class scientist" is a bit loaded. The rank of "world
| class" would most likely be determined by academic or other
| large institutions. If he acquired the knowledge without
| the receipts from an institution, he could easily be
| excluded. Therefore the gatekeeping to achieve this status
| is not strictly one of knowledge acquisition. It becomes a
| bit self-referential.
|
| >That story about the _Nepali_ is not empirical data. It 's
| an anecdotal story that keeps the working class distracted,
| and stops them from seeing how the system...
|
| I disagree strongly. It is that kind of can't do attitude
| that stops people from even starting.
|
| "How can I ever succeed, when the deck is stacked against
| me? The world is unfair, therefore I shouldn't even bother
| to try. Better to go back to wage based employment. I blame
| the _system_! "
|
| If that's the view you take, you'll never manifest success
| outside of the institutional paradigms you observe. No, the
| world isn't fair. The world has never been fair. Some will
| always have an advantage. That doesn't mean that Internet
| doesn't provide amazing opportunities for those who are
| willing. If you want different results, it stands to reason
| that you'll have to do something different. It is possible
| to escape day to day drudgery if you are willing, motivated
| and prepared to fail repeatedly.
| beckman466 wrote:
| > We're still better off now than before.
|
| I didn't claim we weren't?
|
| > Information is more generally available. If you want to
| publish online or create software, nearly every resource
| is available. The Internet is its own paradigm of value.
|
| I'd claim it's actually harder to be productive and to be
| exposed to the real problems facing the world. Today all
| of it is all hoarded, 'owned' and locked away by a small
| group of people. Just look at Shell oil company
| accurately predicting the devastating impacts of oil
| production and use back in the 1980's, or big co's
| burying of the early electric car (shown in 'Who Killed
| The Electric Car').
|
| Instead of the magical wonderful world capitalist firms
| promise in their advertisements, we live in a single-use
| non-modular black-box nature-killing hellworld.
|
| There is no universal invitation to follow your
| curiosity, no modularity and access to non-scarce
| resources (knowledge), despite us living with the most
| advanced technology we've ever had.
|
| All this knowledge commodification means people are kept
| from understanding the physics (or just, science,
| overall) of everyday tools and products, leading to high
| levels of alienation [1] (not to mention all the mental
| health effects of all this coercion and domination).
|
| I believe in a future where we can learn anything about
| anything. A world where we can physically take part in a
| myriad of different (democratic) open source production
| systems and processes, throughout our long lives. A world
| where our material accounting systems accurately reflect
| real-world scarcity, and not systems that upholds
| arbitrary laws that make life-saving tools, technology
| and science artificially scarce (and 'owned' by a very
| small group of people), and tries to shame and intimidate
| people for making a copy (e.g. shaming people in
| campaigns like: "You Wouldn't Steal A Car. Piracy, It's a
| Crime") [2].
|
| Today we live in a world where the tools humans need to
| work together are black boxes owned and created by
| billionaire property 'owners'. This is why I'm excited
| about the growth of the DWeb, because it's all about
| agent centricity. Some projects are starting to enable
| open apps whose public functions are hashed to create
| unique app DNA's that can evolve organically as the apps
| are implemented and used. It enables an ecology of
| distributed micro-service apps.
|
| We need to take back not just the internet, but the
| world. This is about creating human-friendly living
| spaces for all. Bike-able cities. Green spaces and
| gardens everywhere for kids and adults to play. Not a
| world where certain types of work are made artificially
| scarce and tied down to a specific place (e.g. knowledge
| work in Silicon Valley) because of a violent archaic
| claim system (the 'Intellectual Property' system).
|
| > the term "world class scientist" is a bit loaded
|
| 'World class' was bad word choice. I mean anyone with a
| STEM degree from a global north university that provided
| them access to the resources which are locked away for
| 99.999% of the working class. Someone who can command a
| big salary (as they're part of the labor aristocracy), as
| well as work on exciting research projects (much less
| alienating work).
|
| [1] Gabor Mate on alienation:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs39tNLQss8
|
| [2] that's why I am excited about Valueflo.ws by
| Mikorizal, and the holographic chain framework by the
| MetaCurrency project.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| This would normally have been true. Sadly we've invented
| intellectual property to commoditize knowledge, making
| computers much less productive unless you have intellectual
| capital (IP, etc...)
|
| Beyond that, without structural change, it won't help you to
| become a programmer unless most people can't become a
| programmer.
| aww_dang wrote:
| >won't help you to become a programmer unless most people
| can't become a programmer.
|
| This assumes you're not willing to do what others cannot or
| will not do. Innovation and developing your own ideas is
| key. Even in the 19th and 20th centuries industrial goods
| were only as good as the purposes they were applied to. The
| difference is that those industrial goods required greater
| investment and labor.
|
| Today you can use a computer, develop products and
| services, market them online and collect revenue with only
| your own labor. It is a cottage industry with worldwide
| reach.
| jefftk wrote:
| A key aspect of company towns is that there's only one serious
| employer. This then gives that employer a very dangerous amount
| of power, which is why we don't like this structure.
|
| Possibly this is true in don't places with Amazon, but the
| article doesn't make the argument. The closest they get is saying
| that Amazon is a large employer in Seattle, but that's not enough
| -- the city is large enough that there are tons of non-Amazon
| options.
| Itsdijital wrote:
| It's a band aid to bridge the gap between the insane demand in
| HCOL areas and the inability to find labor in those markets.
|
| How can you staff a warehouse for $15/hr in places were a
| studio starts at $1250/mo?
|
| I wouldn't be one bit surprised of Amazon starts getting into
| real estate, offering employees monthly "rent vouchers".
| imbnwa wrote:
| Or just starts approximating to the future of "Sorry to
| Bother You" and just builds its own campus where you live and
| work.
| ghaff wrote:
| Why wouldn't they just pay more? If they're giving you a rent
| voucher for an apartment whose market rate is $1250 a month,
| normally that would show up as income on your W2.
| https://www.thebalancesmb.com/when-is-employee-housing-
| taxab...
|
| There are cases like remote locations where an employer can
| provide housing tax-free but likely not near an expensive
| city.
| scotty79 wrote:
| They might issue voucher nominally for $1250. But redeem it
| for $1000.
|
| So the landlords might decide if they want to not rent to
| Amazon employees or agree to take less from them but keep
| the high listing price for others.
| randomdata wrote:
| Historically, company town companies also paid in their own
| currency that was only spendable in the company stores. Amazon
| still appears to be paying in standard dollars.
| beckman466 wrote:
| Be careful what you wish for!
| vmception wrote:
| Every time I pay an employee with a crypto we issued, I
| always chuckle that I get to pay in corporate scrip
|
| It's like "lol I read the wikipedia article about this!"
|
| anyway, great way to save costs, extend runway and get
| massive tax deductions at the same time. the best tax
| deductions are ones that don't require you spending your fiat
| dollars, so this is pretty high up there.
| kazen44 wrote:
| isn't this mainly because paying in anything other then the
| national currency is illegal in most western nations?
|
| For tax purposes, even things like free lunch are considered
| paymeny aswell.
| [deleted]
| paulddraper wrote:
| Regardless the cause, it would still make it not a company
| town, yes?
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Assume that I give you on top of salary Amazon coupons for
| 1000$. No tax shenanigans. I (employer ) pay all needed
| taxes to be clean with IRS.
|
| This way I can guarantee quite a nice chunk of revenue for
| the whole foods store that is opened there. And I
| effectively subsidize it.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Even better: Make it an employee discount of 50% off at
| Whole Foods for all Amazon employees, up to some monthly
| limit. If structured this way, would it even be taxable
| at all? I'm not aware of employee discounts being taxed.
| bzbarsky wrote:
| In the US tax handling of employee discounts at least on
| physical goods is as follows: if the discount brings the
| price paid below cost, then the below-cost subsidy is
| treated as income received by the employee.
|
| Concrete example: Company sells widgets for $12, of which
| $2 is profit. Then as long as the employee price is at
| least $10 there are no tax implications for the
| employees. If it were $9 they would owe tax on $1 per
| widget bought, etc.
|
| That said, some companies will pay the relevant taxes for
| you, or at least try to by guessing at your marginal
| rate...
| taurath wrote:
| I wonder how clearance items work with that.
| burntoutfire wrote:
| > isn't this mainly because paying in anything other then
| the national currency is illegal in most western nations?
|
| Which makes company towns illegal, hence Amazon is not
| creating company towns...
| [deleted]
| DenisM wrote:
| >isn't this mainly because paying in anything other then
| the national currency is illegal in most western nations?
|
| I can offer you 10 chickens to dig a trench, nothing
| illegal about that. You'd have to pay income tax tho, and
| the IRS does not accept (fractions of) chickens.
| _delirium wrote:
| As a one-off barter or contractor arrangement sure, but
| in the U.S., if you're paying anyone who'd be considered
| an employee, you have to pay at least minimum wage in
| cash or equivalent, except that you can deduct the cost
| of room and board if you provide it. Details:
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/29/531.27
| DenisM wrote:
| Good point, I did not know that.
| ghaff wrote:
| I am not an accountant but presumably any material issuance
| of some sort of scrip that could be exchanged for goods
| would be seen as tax evasion.
|
| Free meals are allowed under certain guidelines, which seem
| to be written in a way that generally lets companies like
| Google skate right up to the edge and not go over it
| (AFAIK). Things like loyalty points and rebates on business
| expenses are similarly ignored.
| gruez wrote:
| > I am not an accountant but presumably any material
| issuance of some sort of scrip that could be exchanged
| for goods would be seen as tax evasion.
|
| It's not. You just have to pay taxes on it.
| ghaff wrote:
| At which point, why would I want "fake" money that I
| could only spend in one place rather than real dollars?
| (That said, this does happen at a small scale with things
| like peer reward points and so forth but that's a fairly
| straightforward point->dollar exchange through things
| like gift cards.)
| gruez wrote:
| >At which point, why would I want "fake" money that I
| could only spend in one place rather than real dollars?
|
| You might want it because the company paying you "fake"
| money gives you more than the competitor that gives you
| legal tender. The company might also give you access to
| discounted goods/services, which makes each dollar of the
| "fake" money more valuable. There's another comment that
| goes to this in more detail:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27948860
| steviedotboston wrote:
| Jacobin is not a publication worth taking seriously.
| aww_dang wrote:
| Is there an argument for not having Amazon as an employer in
| these towns?
|
| Is there an argument for not having Amazon support the local
| school system?
|
| I understand that working conditions are rarely ideal. Many would
| prefer to enjoy leisure and collect a paycheck as the ideal
| source of income. Jobs pay because workers need an incentive to
| provide labor.
|
| What exactly would JacobinMag.com's alternative to Amazon
| employment look like?
|
| Why aren't they providing this alternative?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy#Perfect_soluti...
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Why aren't they providing this alternative?
|
| Because Bezos/Amazon spent years building barriers to entry?
|
| Because people's preference for shopping at Amazon, like their
| preference for shopping at malls 30-40 years earlier, began the
| disintegration of other forms of retail work?
|
| Because "fulfillment" centers (are you fulfilled yet?) benefit
| from being in locations that are not typically the ones where
| people are choosing to live. They need only space and
| transportation (typically highway) access, and there's no need
| for there to be other excellent reasons for vibrant human
| communities to be in the vicinity.
|
| Because employee-owned business (a Jacobin and personal
| favorite) face numerous obstacles in the US due to legal,
| political and cultural factors.
|
| Because it's the entire economy, not just Amazon, that is
| collapsing into "low wage jobs that we don't have robots for
| yet" and "high wage jobs that can be done from anywhere" (plus,
| well paid skilled manual labor). When the alternative to one
| low wage job that will eventually be automated is another low
| wage job that will eventually be automated, there's not a lot
| of motivation to create that alternative.
| gruez wrote:
| >Because Bezos/Amazon spent years building barriers to entry?
|
| What barriers? Is amazon lobbying local governments to
| prevent competitor warehouses from being built? Or is they're
| just so ahead of everyone in terms of service/price?
|
| >Because people's preference for shopping at Amazon, like
| their preference for shopping at malls 30-40 years earlier,
| began the disintegration of other forms of retail work?
|
| People's preferences change. If something better comes along,
| you have to adapt as well, not complain that your competitor
| is "disintegrat[ing]" your business model.
|
| >Because "fulfillment" centers (are you fulfilled yet?)
| benefit from being in locations that are not typically the
| ones where people are choosing to live.
|
| From the rest of the argument it looks like you're trying to
| paint this as an advantage for amazon, but to me it seems
| more like a _disadvantage_. If amazon warehouses are located
| in "locations that are not typically the ones where people
| are choosing to live", doesn't that mean they'll have an
| harder time finding workers and you having an easier time
| finding workers?
|
| Also, I'm not sure how applicable your claim is across all of
| amazon. In a rural area your argument would make sense (ie.
| warehouse in the middle of nowhere rather than in a
| population center), but in metropolitan areas they're almost
| always surrounded by houses (eg.
| https://goo.gl/maps/bfT3ePP1dfupKnuo6)
|
| >Because employee-owned business (a Jacobin and personal
| favorite) face numerous obstacles in the US due to legal,
| political and cultural factors.
|
| I'm not sure why it _has_ to be employee owned. It seems like
| you 're repeating the nirvana fallacy that gp was talking
| about.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > What barriers?
|
| It's likely that you don't know that I was the 2nd employee
| at Amazon. I don't want to spend time here going into all
| the ways that Bezos sought to create barriers to entry for
| competitors, but Brad Stone's two books on the company get
| into this.
|
| > People's preferences change. If something better comes
| along,
|
| People in general are very bad at carrying out long term
| analysis of their preference-based decisions. People went
| to malls while professing to love Main St., most of them
| not realizing that the former would eventually kill the
| economics of the latter. Likewise, people's preference for
| online shopping doesn't actually amount to a desire to kill
| bricks-n-mortar retail, even though that is (likely) the
| eventual result. People's preferences generally express
| short-term feelings, rather than longer term rational
| analyses of how their lives, homes and societies may be
| affected by their choices.
|
| > If amazon warehouses are located in "locations that are
| not typically the ones where people are choosing to live",
| doesn't that mean they'll have an harder time finding
| workers and you having an easier time finding workers?
|
| That's why there's an article on HN (Jacobin, really) title
| "Amazon is creating company towns across the United
| States".
|
| > but in metropolitan areas they're almost always
| surrounded by houses
|
| Most of amzn's fulfillment centers are rural or exurban.
| Most of amzn's current development plans are focused on
| rural locations.
|
| And I described this in order to make the point that rural
| areas are almost always more difficult places to generate
| economic alternatives than cities.
|
| > I'm not sure why it has to be employee owned
|
| The question was about alternatives. Jacobin authors
| probably don't see much difference trading one multi-
| billionaire CEO for another, so I was mentioning the most
| practical genuine alternative to the sort of economic
| entity that amzn represents.
| beckman466 wrote:
| > Is there an argument for not having Amazon as an employer in
| these towns?
|
| > Why aren't they providing this alternative?
|
| >
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy#Perfect_soluti...
|
| Why are you opposed to this critique? You can offer critique
| without needing to provide alternatives. From your questions it
| sounds like you yourself are falling victim to the 'just world
| fallacy'.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis
|
| If you have/had kids, would you be excited to hear the
| following story from them about their day? Probably not, yet
| this is exactly what's happened in marginalized communities.
|
| From the article:
|
| _" "A dozen students sat clustered at work tables inside an
| air-conditioned classroom, which was designed to emulate the
| inside of an Amazon facility. On one wall, Amazon's giant logo
| grinned across a yellow and green banner. The words "CUSTOMER
| OBSESSION" and "DELIVER RESULTS" were painted against a
| corporate-style yellow backdrop. On a whiteboard, a teacher had
| written the words "Logistics Final Project," and the lesson of
| the day was on Amazon's "14 Leadership Principles." Each
| teenager wore a company golf shirt emblazoned with the Amazon
| logo.
|
| Students and staff members expressed pride in being associated
| with the company. Amazon partnered with the school as part of
| its five-year anniversary in the Inland Empire, donating
| $50,000 to start the pilot program, the giant sweepstakes-style
| Amazon check displayed prominently at the classroom entrance.
| The students had already taken field trips to tour the nearby
| Amazon warehouse."
|
| A public high-school classroom designed to resemble an Amazon
| facility, with students wearing Amazon logos on their clothing
| as they memorize Amazon's leadership principles (which, it is
| worth noting, also include "Ownership" and "Think Big,"
| injunctions that hold merit for readers of this magazine when
| imagining how we might solve the problems exemplified by
| Amazon). Such a relationship between the company and public
| goods like a high school is part of what it means to consider
| Amazon as "the major working-class space of suburban and
| exurban socialization."
|
| The behemoth is here, producing not only profit but people,
| too. That entails corporate indoctrination, social
| estrangement, and profound alienation from one's labor, which
| is particularly meaningless as one breaks one's body to get so
| many goods to people's doors."_
| aww_dang wrote:
| Employees work for Amazon because it is an improvement over
| their current situation. If it wasn't an improvement, they
| wouldn't take the job. Whether they deserve it or not is
| something the employee has to evaluate, along with the
| subjective valuation of their labor.
|
| If there's an alternative where employees could earn more for
| less labor, that might be a good opportunity to explore. Not
| just for the employees, but any potential entrepreneurs as
| well.
|
| There are several areas where I feel critical of Amazon's
| policies. Voluntary employment isn't one of them.
|
| Nor am I a fan of the public education system. If I found
| myself in that situation, it would be a teachable moment.
| azemetre wrote:
| The argument against Amazon not "supporting the local school
| system" is that it's a public good in most western democracies.
| Amazon can support the school system by appropriately paying
| taxes.
|
| I won't argue against the employer aspect, because many of
| these jobs are in dilapidated towns and they are often better
| than the alternatives (unemployment/workmans comp claims or
| fast food versus getting scheduled work with great benefits).
| fallingfrog wrote:
| I'm going to make a prediction/wild guess as to what the future
| will look like. Edit: I do want to emphasize the "wild guess"
| aspect of this!
|
| Since capitalism is now international, nation states are losing
| the ability to regulate it. This would lead to collapse though,
| eventually, and the international capitalist class is recognizing
| that. Recently the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
| Development proposed a minimum corporate tax of 15%. I foresee
| that most law and regulations governing the business and
| financial world will be decided by international NGOs and banking
| organizations, not nation states.
|
| However those organizations have no real interest in the well
| being of the working class, so I would predict that inequality
| will continue to increase and capitalism will become more and
| more authoritarian and the capitalist class will become more and
| more isolated from the workers, to the point that they will
| become unaware of the suffering of the mass of the people. Small
| businesses of any kind will be gone; only large institutions will
| survive and diverse competition will be replaced by a series of
| necrotic monopolies.
|
| At some point in the future this will either become unbearable
| and a global revolution will occur, leading to some unified
| government, maybe democratic, maybe not, or the corporate class
| will have good enough tools of control that a grinding dismal
| stability will be achieved.
| JeanMarcS wrote:
| So we are back to the 19th century ?
|
| Will they have their own money only usable there and pay their
| local employees with it too ? /s
| mysterydip wrote:
| They can use any money they want, but if they choose to use
| PrimeDollars (tm), they will earn a 5% discount and free
| shipping on all purchases!
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| Company towns aren't that rare. Here's an example:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_City,_Pennsylvania
| ZanyProgrammer wrote:
| Though according to that article the actual Ford plants have
| been closed for years.
| amelius wrote:
| 19th century?
|
| This smells more of medieval style feudalism.
| Sharlin wrote:
| From a peon^Wworker's point of view, there may not be much of
| a difference between a medieval fiefdom and a 19th century
| company town. The term "robber baron" is apt.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| There was enormous difference. For one thing, workers in
| company towns were free to quit and move somewhere else,
| while medieval peasants could not.
| Sharlin wrote:
| In theory, anyway. Being _legally permitted_ to do
| something is a really low bar to clear. Even now, in the
| era of cheap transportation and free real-time
| information to base your decisions on, for the majority
| of working-class families the idea of packing up and
| trying again somewhere else is less than feasible. In the
| 1800s? Not a fscking chance, even if your employee was
| gracious enough to pay you with hard currency rather than
| Monopoly (heh) money. No cars. Trains were expensive and
| only an option in some places. No Internet, TV, or even
| radio. No formal education to speak of. Wages at
| subsistence levels, because why would they pay you a
| penny more?
| xyzzyz wrote:
| In 1800s, people packed up on oxen wagons, and crossed
| the continent on undeveloped trails. If you look at the
| actual statistics, in early 1900, people used to move
| around the country _more_ , not less than today.
| samizdis wrote:
| In the UK, there's a great example of a late-19C/early 20C
| "model village", called Bournville, created by the Cadbury
| family to house workers for its factory. It was quite
| visionary in its day, and remains highly desirable.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bournville
| jaclaz wrote:
| In Italy, there is Rosignano Solvay, a small town that is
| actually named after the company (producing essentially
| sodium bicarbonate):
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosignano_Solvay
|
| You'll need to use the italian wikipedia for more details:
|
| https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosignano_Solvay
|
| The actual "Solvay village", i.e. the Company Town:
|
| https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villaggio_Solvay
|
| was built in the '20's and '30's.
| rjsw wrote:
| Other one-company model villages in the UK are Saltaire [1]
| and Port Sunlight [2]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltaire [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Sunlight
| gruez wrote:
| >This smells more of medieval style feudalism.
|
| In what way? Are people obligated to work for amazon?
| wildrhythms wrote:
| When Amazon is the only viable place of employment in your
| town, yes.
|
| Look to Walmart- America's largest supermarket chain, and
| America's second largest employer (second only to the U.S.
| government). Rural America is a sea of "Walmart towns",
| where the best employment is the only employment.
| rcstank wrote:
| Common sense says otherwise. If this were true, Walmart
| would eventually siphon all of the money out of that
| town. Have we seen this happen widespread? Many people
| commute to larger towns/cities for work which may only be
| a 15-20 minute drive.
| gruez wrote:
| > When Amazon is the only viable place of employment in
| your town, yes.
|
| >Rural America is a sea of "Walmart towns", where the
| best employment is the only employment.
|
| Are you being hyperbolic by saying that amazon/walmart is
| the "only" or "only viable" place of employment? Are
| there literally no other places to work? If you're being
| hyperbolic, at what point does it count as "medieval
| style feudalism"? I searched around on wikipedia for what
| "feudalism" is, and despite my best efforts I can't pin
| down on a good definition. However, it definitely doesn't
| seem to be "one entity provides most of the employment in
| an area".
| truffdog wrote:
| I mean- no one is bound to the land, and Amazon's claim is
| not contingent on Bezos providing an army to the state on
| request.
| GaryTang wrote:
| In small towns these employers usually provide a significant
| boost in prosperity for the constituents. It's in cities where I
| see most exploitation. Anyone who has lived in both will agree.
| alephnan wrote:
| I just went to Gunkanjima ("battleship") island in Nagasaki,
| Japan. At one point it was the most densely populated area on
| earth.
|
| It was used at the villain backdrop in the 007 movie.
|
| The history of the island is that it was owned by Mitsubishi
| mining company during Japan's industrial revolution thru World
| War II. There they mined coal from the seabed.
|
| Apparently, some 40% of miners died. There also used forced labor
| from prisoners of war. Japan is filled with UNESCO heritage
| sites, and this site is one of them, but it's bid was met with
| criticism.
|
| In these small towns in Japan, the industrialists and barons have
| statues erected for them, but the story of the common worker is
| often lost and not presented during these tours.
| ericmay wrote:
| I can't wait to visit Japan once it's safe. There is so much
| cool history.
| rcstank wrote:
| Once it's safe?
| ericmay wrote:
| COVID-19....
| vortico wrote:
| >$15 an hour, Amazon's starting wage, is below the average for
| the warehousing industry
|
| Where are they getting this information? The average wage in the
| US is lower, like $13-14.
|
| https://www.indeed.com/career/warehouse-worker/salaries
|
| https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Warehouse_Worker/Ho...
| swyant wrote:
| I believe it partly comes from this, which is for non-
| supervisory positions across the board (including truckers):
| https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag493.htm#earnings
|
| However, if you look at the table below that, even when you
| differentiate to more specific occupation, median (and
| certainly mean) wages are above $15. Perhaps there's a further
| differentiation to "hand laborers and materials movers" that
| brings this number down further, per the other BLS link in this
| thread.
|
| I'd be curious about regional differences though, e.g. in
| Bessemer
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/business/economy/amazon-w...
| fortran77 wrote:
| They also seem to pick on "seasonal work". I'm sure there are
| many people who are willing to take a job that's a bit of a
| "grind" to have some extra cash for a holiday celebration. If
| you know you'll only be doing this job for two months, you'll
| have a different mindset and you won't feel trapped.
| seventytwo wrote:
| They said "warehousing industry", and you looked up "warehouse
| worker".
|
| That's probably the discrepancy, fwiw.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >Where are they getting this information? The average wage in
| the US is lower, like $13-14
|
| Could just be a calculation error. If you just saw indeed's
| average total yearly salary that would show slightly over $15
| an hour but wouldn't factor in overtime hours.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| I have a long-time friend who tried to get an Amazon Warehouse
| job after relocating to a new city for his SO's career. Given
| all of the negative press he assumed they'd be desperate for
| employees and he could walk right into the job. It turns out
| those jobs are highly competitive in the area because they paid
| relatively well and had good benefits.
|
| The hourly rate alone doesn't tell the full story. Many more
| typical warehouse jobs are truly hourly jobs with minimal or no
| benefits. He said a lot of them tried to hire people for less
| than full time to avoid having to provide benefits. For all of
| the negative press, it sounded like the Amazon Warehouse was
| the place to be if you wanted a decent warehouse job with
| benefits in his area.
| clajiness wrote:
| Found the Amazon exec.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| Not the US, but 2 of my siblings have worked in Amazon
| warehouses in the UK and it's the same story. The pay is
| decent, the work is simple (if physically taxing), and plenty
| of overtime is available. Only downside is the warehouses
| tend to be outside bus/train routes so getting there without
| a car is an arse, but Amazon set up shuttle buses to
| compensate for that.
| Retric wrote:
| A relative worked at Amazon's warehouse, he described it as
| slightly above average pay for the area with above average
| benefits. However, the job really sucks, injuries are common,
| and turnover is high at least in VA. There is a huge range of
| warehouse jobs including many with a lot of paid downtime,
| the easier the job the less they can pay.
| ornornor wrote:
| Are amazon jobs the new McJobs?
| strombofulous wrote:
| Serious question, how do you injure yourself in an Amazon
| warehouse? I thought there wasn't any heavy machinery or
| other dangerous machines. Is it just from too much walking?
| saynay wrote:
| Aren't they lifting and moving packages? All sorts of
| muscle strains possible from that. Especially if there is
| little downtime for rest throughout the day.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Amazon calls their warehouse staff "industrial athletes"
| in internal docs.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/2/22465357/amazon-
| industrial...
|
| > Amazon tells its warehouse employees to think of
| themselves not as overworked cogs in an enormous, soul-
| crushing machine, but as "industrial athletes," and to
| prepare their bodies for that experience like someone
| training for a sporting event, according to a pamphlet
| obtained by Motherboard. The comparison is a troubling
| euphemism for a company whose workers have almost double
| the amount of serious injuries as the rest of the
| warehousing industry and who reportedly are often unable
| to take bathroom breaks.
|
| > The pamphlet tells employees that some of them will
| walk up to 13 miles throughout the course of the day,
| burning an average of 400 calories an hour. It also
| suggests all sorts of ways to help workers prepare for
| the athlete life, including changes to their diets and
| sleep schedules and making sure they're not dehydrated
| throughout the day by keeping an eye on the color of
| their urine. It also suggests that employees buy shoes
| "at the end of the day when [their] feet are swollen" to
| avoid tightness and blisters -- advice that will be
| familiar to distance runners or multi-day hikers.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I read an article about the native inhabitants of
| Australia and their very low rates of heart disease. It
| turns out that the males walked an average of 9 miles a
| day, the women 5.
| ghufran_syed wrote:
| "Double the amount of serious injuries" - using a metric
| based on whether you got time off or a change in duties.
| So if your company is _better_ about making you see a
| doctor when you get an injury, and _better_ about
| honoring the doctor 's recommendation regarding light
| duty or time off, your company's number on this metric
| would get _worse_.
|
| I see a lot of illegal workers in the ER who get injured
| at work but refuse to fill out the workman's comp forms -
| you can guarantee that _their_ employers have a _zero_
| rate for serious injuries using that metric
|
| [Edit - If you're looking to really improve conditions,
| maybe focus on the workers who _don 't_ show up in the
| official numbers? Reminds me of the old story about the
| drunk guy looking for his lost keys by the lamppost, not
| where he dropped them "because the light is better here"]
| [deleted]
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| Good Lord, that's genuinely dystopian. People often say
| the '70s was too biased in favour of unions, but I can't
| help but wonder if the pendulum has swung too far in the
| opposite direction in the present. Those two paragraphs
| make me want to retch like a cat puking up a hairball.
| andrepd wrote:
| >I can't help but wonder if the pendulum has swung too
| far in the opposite direction
|
| We are full on into an unopposed neoliberal world order.
| The pendulum has swung so far in this direction that an
| alternative or an opposition to this philosophy simply
| does not exist anymore in the public sphere.
| wincy wrote:
| A friend of mine working at an Amazon center injured
| himself because he walks 5+ miles per shift. He also
| weighs like 350 pounds. He's lost like 50 pounds already
| so hopefully he'll get to a weight where he's not
| injuring himself before he ends up having to quit.
|
| Amazon isn't obligated to provide my morbidly obese
| friend with a job, and he knows that, and he's doing his
| best to keep on without destroying his body.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > 5+ miles per shift
|
| This really isn't that much. The average Disneyland
| visitor probably walks 5 miles per day. A nurse might
| walk 4 miles in a shift. I'd expect most people who
| aren't overweight would be able go adapt to 5 miles per
| day pretty quickly, and 10 is fairly doable.
| hellomyguys wrote:
| > This really isn't that much. The average Disneyland
| visitor probably walks 5 miles per day.
|
| What a bizarre comparison. Most people are pretty tired
| after visiting Disneyland. You also don't do that 300
| times a year.
| dehrmann wrote:
| They're completely untrained in it, though. You gain
| endurance pretty quickly, and the fact that most people
| can go from couch potato to 5 miles in a day and just
| feel pretty tired shows that distance isn't a big deal--
| we're just lazy.
| rebuilder wrote:
| Try doing that with 350 lbs bodyweight, though!
| walshemj wrote:
| Seems a little low I just checked my phone and last time
| in commuted to our office in London I walked 2.5 miles.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Sounds unpleasant, but really good for him and
| potentially life extending. The trick is keeping it off
| after switching jobs. A friend is dealing with that after
| moving off a busy manufacturing line to office work.
| sjg007 wrote:
| It actually sounds like a great way to lose weight if you
| can handle it. We need to walk more. I've thought about
| moving to NYC just to walk more.
| hughrr wrote:
| We do need to walk more but it's a crappy way to lose
| weight. You have to put a huge number of miles in to lose
| a significant amount. Tracking your eating and eating
| less calories is the only winner really.
|
| Put it this way: Don't eat a 250 cal chocolate bar or
| take a 60 minute walk? Same impact.
|
| Incidentally I have walked 103 miles in the last 24
| days...
| robocat wrote:
| > but it's a crappy way to lose weight
|
| Maybe a crappy way if you are obese.
|
| But AFAIK over years walking will strongly help maintain
| a good weight and keep you healthy. It certainly does
| help reduce weight and improve fitness compared to just
| potatoing. You can do more, but as a minimum starting
| point it is pretty bloody good.
|
| One observation: people are generally not obese in
| central London and part of the reason is the few km
| walking per day to get to and from work via the tube.
| neilv wrote:
| Boston is pretty walkable, too.
|
| Example: Some routes between Harvard Yard and Long Wharf
| take you through residential and nightlife areas where a
| lot of people life, past biotechs, MIT, a few FAANG
| outposts, over a bridge with great views, across the
| Esplanade park, past at least a major hospital, financial
| district, through North End (Italian restaurants),
| tourist area, and to harbor walk, to sit on Long Wharf
| and watch the boats and airplanes.
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Harvard+Yard,+Massachuset
| ts+...
|
| (Separate from walking, a lot of people bicycle here, and
| you'll see heavy bikes on some streets during commuter
| hours, but don't beware that bicyclist safety is so-so
| here. If you decide to bike instead of walk, watch out
| for car doors opening into your path, trucks making
| turns, negligent car drivers, other bikers ignoring road
| rules, mild resentment of bicyclists, etc. Personally, I
| just walk, and know that there's a good chance that a
| driver even going through the busiest Central Square
| intersection is looking at their phone. :)
| claytoneast wrote:
| I'm not sure how anyone could walk 5+ miles a shift
| @350lbs and not injure themself, unless they were that
| big from training for Strongman or the like. Humans are
| not meant to have that much fat.
| wincy wrote:
| I mean, agreed, and he has been injuring himself. He's
| dieting and trying to slim down though. Guy used to work
| out and be really buff back when he was in the military
| but it seems like a good number of people once they get
| out no longer have the discipline to keep fit once you
| don't have all the structure of military service.
| setr wrote:
| According to my iPhone tracking, I apparently walk
| several miles a day just from a habit of walking when on
| calls (largely circling around the parking lot like a
| vulture, for no apparent reason and probably confusing
| bystanders and co-workers continuously). Not for any
| particular reason; I'm just fidgety.
|
| Well into obese (but less than 300) and it's really not
| an issue at all -- walking is a very light activity (and
| far easier than standing). Also notably, this habit has
| not lead to any weight-loss, or perhaps I eat to make up
| for it.
|
| Ask me to run however and I'm dying in short order.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| These are repetitive strain or slip and fall injuries
| from handling heavy or unwieldy objects. Not mashed limbs
| from heavy machinery.
| [deleted]
| Retric wrote:
| They do operate some heavy equipment in the warehouse,
| but the people on foot aren't that safe. Many injuries
| are based on people being unprepared for such an
| extremely athletic job, repetitive strain, or continuing
| to work injured. The more serious injuries are normally
| stuff like back injuries from lifting heavy weights bent
| over in a hurry, falls etc.
|
| One example was dog food stored under a low platform so
| people needed to Cary 50lb bags while bent over. It's
| possible to do that safely, but when you're tired and in
| a hurry it's easy to hurt yourself doing that.
| redisman wrote:
| Software engineers (including me) tend to forget what the
| labor market is like outside our own bubbles. Most people
| can't do things we take for granted like hop to a better
| paying job when they get bored/unhappy.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| A close friend and I were talking about this the other day.
| We both have well-paid tech jobs and recruiters coming out
| the wazoo, but our partners are both minimum wage service
| workers. It's making us both gradually move leftwards in
| our politics.
| tester756 wrote:
| who would've thought that vocal minority on twitter does not
| reflect reality for all, cuz at the end of the day Amazon
| hires above milion ppl
|
| So, just to add another opinion
|
| I've seen only positive comments (sample size around 3) about
| working in Amazon's warehouse in Poland
| snypher wrote:
| 3 more anecdotes isn't going to make the data any better :)
| treeman79 wrote:
| It makes 3 points better. Just needs a few thousand more!
| drewcoo wrote:
| Actually, more noise makes the data worse.
| Rexxar wrote:
| The problem is not the number of points but the sampling
| method. It should be properly randomize to be useful.
| salawat wrote:
| >He said a lot of them tried to hire people for less than
| full time to avoid having to provide benefits.
|
| There needs to be naming and shaming of those that perpetuate
| this practice. I know retailers (Tractor Supply) for
| cashiers.
|
| If you're doing warehouse work, you are part of the logistics
| backbone, you deserve not to have your chain jerked around.
| Arguably, no one should be getting their chain jerked around,
| but I'll call it a win to purge this pathological HR hacking
| from another business layer.
| dehrmann wrote:
| You're complaining that companies don't want to do the job
| of government.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > There needs to be naming and shaming of those that
| perpetuate this practice.
|
| Government, by tieing things that should be universal to
| mandates to employers who employ a person for a certain
| number of hours in a week. Which, in addition to promoting
| this kind of behavior as a cost/utility optimization,
| encourages a feudal lord-servant relationship between
| employers and employees rather than a capitalist market-
| exchange relationship, and necessarily (even ignoring the
| effect of the optimization incentives) assures that what
| should be universal is instead limited to a narrower fully-
| employed class.
|
| If the government provides the benefit universally and
| taxes to cover the costs, the perverse incentives to limit
| employment and further narrow access to the intended
| general benefit is eliminated.
|
| Naming and shaming the people who follow the incentives
| government creates is pointless; name and shame the
| government for setting up the broken system of incentives.
| Any other target is just a perpetual game of whack-a-mole.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| What causes this is trying to mandate "benefits" by law.
|
| Suppose the benefits cost the company the equivalent of
| $3/hour. Then at the same cost they can either offer a job
| that pays $15/hour without benefits or a job that pays
| $12/hour with benefits. They're not idiots; they're going
| to offer the one that best allows them hire and retain
| workers.
|
| That it happens to be the one with the higher pay should be
| telling us something -- that some workers value the money
| over the benefits.
|
| Which makes a lot of sense. Many people have a family
| health plan from their spouse's job. They may value the
| flexibility of choosing when to take unpaid time off
| instead of working for $12/hour with paid time off, which
| is a monetary loss equivalent to more than 10 weeks of
| unpaid time off when working at $15/hour instead. They
| simply get less from the benefits than they get from being
| paid the money it costs the employer to provide them.
|
| Stop requiring employers to provide "benefits" that many
| employees don't want and people wouldn't have to
| voluntarily work around it like this, at the cost of being
| unable to work 40 hours a week even if you want to.
| jsjsbdkj wrote:
| Benefits only work if there's a large population where
| the risks can be averaged out. If you let people pick and
| choose whether they want insurance, people with known
| health problems will overwhelmingly want insurance, and
| the price will be driven up. Really this shouldn't be
| dealt with at the employer level but by the government -
| there's a net public good to everyone having guaranteed
| healthcare, because preventative care avoids larger
| emergency expenses and allows for more efficient
| allocation of resources. But instead you get this hyper-
| individualism where people want to opt into the social
| contract piecemeal at the time it benefits them, and opt
| out when it doesn't.
| josephcsible wrote:
| I 100% agree that adverse selection is a problem, but the
| government's rule doesn't really fix it. All that
| happened is that people with known health problems will
| look harder for full-time jobs, and healthier people will
| take the part-time jobs that pay slightly more per hour.
| salawat wrote:
| The issue there is that that if you divest the employer
| from the consequences of working conditions, the
| individual is left carrying the bag.
|
| If as an employer you just can't get a break on the rates
| it costs to insure you, that's a really strong signal you
| have something wrong. Doing it through the government in
| theory gives people freedom of moving from employer to
| employer, but I guarantee you there is some juju that
| needs characterization in wresting some of the incentive
| shaping powers of insurers and vesting them in
| Government.
| katbyte wrote:
| ? If healthcare/benefits is provided by the government
| from taxes outside of your job then it doesn't matter if
| you have a full/part time job?
| josephcsible wrote:
| > If healthcare/benefits is provided by the government
| from taxes outside of your job
|
| But that's not the case today in the US. My point is that
| the government mandating that full-time jobs provide
| benefits (which is the case today in the US) doesn't fix
| the adverse selection problem. All it does is lead to a
| bunch of jobs right under the cutoff for full-time.
| h2odragon wrote:
| > There needs to be naming and shaming
|
| It's probably easier to name and promote the few places
| that _don 't_ do the "39.5hr week".
| leesalminen wrote:
| I thought the cutoff was 29.5 hours, otherwise they would
| have to offer health insurance due to the Affordable Care
| Act. I haven't worked those types of jobs in 10+ years
| but that's how it was back then at least.
| h2odragon wrote:
| My wife worked at lowes for years, and they were serious
| about the ".5", even. they reported to the IRS that
| they'd sell us health insurance for $90/mo for a family
| plan; but then all they could actually sell to us was a
| $400/mo _each_ plan; and we never did figure out that
| one... before her health deteriorated to the point she
| had to quit that job.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _The average wage in the US is lower, like $13-14._
|
| Not all sources support that claim:
| https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/warehouse-w...
| MaxGhenis wrote:
| >Our starting hourly wages are at least $15 per hour for all
| full time, part time, and seasonal employees and contractors.
|
| https://www.aboutamazon.com/workplace/employee-benefits
| fastball wrote:
| Presumably they're being disingenuous and comparing the average
| salary across the entire industry (including senior positions /
| management / etc) to Amazon's salary floor, while you are
| making the appropriate comparison to a warehouse _worker_.
|
| And even then comparing an average to a minimum would _still_
| be disingenuous.
| lrdswrk00 wrote:
| Disingenuous based upon math.
|
| Bezos' wealth is disingenuous built on disingenuous narrative
| he did it himself and is somehow entitled to as much
| political scrip he can leverage.
|
| Fiat currency makes belief in a persons wealth not much
| different than belief in a holy mans connection to God.
|
| Decoupled from their actual output, coupled to their ability
| to maintain a social meme.
|
| Religion is effectively the same; belief decoupled from
| observable reality.
|
| We're all playing a disingenuous semantic game, and it's
| hurting all of us.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Was it ever different?
|
| The saying "All that glitters is not gold" exists for a
| reason.
| lrdswrk00 wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| All your warm fuzzies about yourself are not for me to
| bother with.
|
| I am as beholden to coddling all y'all's self as you are
| to making sure people who need it today have cheap
| insulin.
|
| It's a semantics free market not a financial one. If my
| efforts undo your wealth, zero fucks.
|
| See we get to pick and choose who figuratively exists.
| Doesn't have to be Bezos or you. Or me. None of us are
| gold or glitter. As none of us are concepts. Just meat
| bags.
|
| I'm fine disabusing people of their importance so long as
| they are inclined to allow it to happen to others.
|
| You're all on your way out. There is no Valhalla and your
| work will be forgotten. Why assign value to such
| unimportant things?
|
| Edit: oh no downvotes; all my influence! Good thing I was
| around to buy AAPL in the 90s at $6-9/share.
|
| Four letters are more valuable to me than your opinions.
| I know you all get that.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Good luck with your mental health.
| lrdswrk00 wrote:
| My goal is to make you all feel how I feel reading this
| forum.
|
| Seems it worked.
| f6v wrote:
| You're downvoted because it's gibberish.
| lrdswrk00 wrote:
| Yup, so is the original comment.
|
| The meaning of all that "glitters is gold" applied to
| reality is arbitrary.
|
| I don't have obligation to recite some historical meaning
| the author might intend.
|
| I can see Bezos as glittering now but not gold.
|
| I can see accruing fiscal wealth as the same.
|
| The only language with concrete meaning are the outputs
| of physical science experiment. There is or is not a
| physical object or force.
|
| Colloquialism are subjective. The when and where to apply
| a math formula is subjective. Just because one can be
| defined such that it abides the order of operations of
| math doesn't mean it represents reality accurately. Who
| eats still comes down to political influence.
|
| We can help a lot more people thrive if we socially
| allowed for less rounding off of who is valuable. But
| since we prefer to do that; why not round off this
| community as unimportant? You're all just as normal as
| anyone.
| Frost1x wrote:
| I take data from these sites with a grain of salt because it
| seems far too easy and tempting to poison the data well for
| those wishing to see the rates lower than reality. Payscale is
| a bit closer to what I think reality might be. It's unfortunate
| how gaming perception and such information is such a
| potentially successful strategy.
|
| The OOH from DOL puts it closer to $14.66/hr which I put a bit
| more faith in:
|
| https://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/m...
| jefftk wrote:
| That's 'median pay', though, not 'average starting pay'.
| vortico wrote:
| I don't see starting average pay on the OOH website, only
| median pay.
| mint2 wrote:
| So a measure less skewed by outliers, even better.
| renewiltord wrote:
| It's pretty flattering to Amazon to compare them to the
| industry median pay and find that their starting pay
| beats it. If you start at Amazon you beat half of all
| warehouse workers across their entire tenure.
| Frost1x wrote:
| That is correct.
| sergefaguet wrote:
| An extremely efficient and competent corporation doing everything
| it can to deliver goods cheaper and faster to hundreds of
| millions of people while creating value for tens of millions of
| shareholders? And now it has more and more impact running social
| services too?
|
| How dare they do this travesty without democratic oversight.
| Clearly the best way forward is to regulate them so that they are
| on a level playing field with other democratically overseen
| government services.
| oblio wrote:
| What happens when the largest employer in the company town
| shuts the warehouse or whatever town?
|
| I guess the town shuts down, right?
| xyzzyz wrote:
| No, it goes back to square one. Amazon is not literally
| _building_ these towns. These towns have been there before.
| Then Amazon came, and made job market better. If it leaves,
| it won't be worse off than it was on the first place.
| rcstank wrote:
| Why is that a bad thing? People are smart. They'll figure
| something out just like humans have done for centuries.
| beckman466 wrote:
| How dare workers ask to not be treated like shit! /s
|
| You do know Amazon has been caught union busting right? I'm not
| so sure what your definition of democracy is when workers can't
| voice their concerns.
| sergefaguet wrote:
| Interesting. I must have missed the point when unions became
| about voicing concerns. Last I recall, creating unions is an
| attempt at monopolizing labor to extort the employer. When
| this tactic is applied to any other factor of production it
| is called a "cartel" and engaged in "market manipulation."
|
| How surprising that employers who pay above-market wages do
| not wish to be extorted further. All the modern propaganda
| says they have to welcome this benevolent expression of
| democratic freedoms!
| beckman466 wrote:
| > creating unions is an attempt at monopolizing labor to
| extort the employer. When this tactic is applied to any
| other factor of production it is called a "cartel" and
| engaged in "market manipulation."
|
| Wow, I'm not even gonna comment on this first paragraph. I
| only have one question: do you live in the US?
|
| > How surprising that employers who pay above-market wages
| do not wish to be extorted further.
|
| Employers in our current system always pay their employees
| less than what they produce for them, it's called profit.
|
| Are you really claiming that tech workers extort Silicon
| Valley companies because they get paid a lot of money? Wow
| I didn't expect that argument.
| rcstank wrote:
| > Wow, I'm not even gonna comment on this first
| paragraph. I only have one question: do you live in the
| US?
|
| You neither proved your point nor disproved their point.
| thethethethe wrote:
| > Last I recall, creating unions is an attempt at
| monopolizing labor to extort the employer. When this tactic
| is applied to any other factor of production it is called a
| "cartel" and engaged in "market manipulation."
|
| This seems like an argument in bad faith but I'll bite.
|
| You are ignoring the pre-existing power imbalance between
| employer and employee, where the employer holds
| authoritarian control of production and the lives of
| employees. Cartels and market manipulation are mechanisms
| used by those with existing autocratic power to grow and
| strengthen their control over production and people, while
| unions try to balance this power by giving workers a seat
| at the table. I think it's pretty obvious that they are not
| the same thing
| sergefaguet wrote:
| I'm not ignoring this.
|
| You are making the moral assumption that just because
| someone has a better negotiating position in a situation
| there is a moral obligation to intervene in some
| centralized way to "correct the imbalance."
|
| I am denying your assumption and presenting a different
| point of view which has no less of a claim to morality or
| truth than yours.
| SigmundA wrote:
| Sounds just like the East India Company.
| Andy_G11 wrote:
| There are two ways to approach the problem of deepening
| inequality:
|
| 1) With the perspective that this feature of how society operates
| can and should be changed; 2) With the perspective that this is
| simply how society works and you can adapt or die.
|
| Either can be viewed as more tractable than the other (probably
| quite correctly depending on one's circumstances).
|
| To adopt the former approach may mean that you are faced with the
| dilemma of whether or not to override the rights of detractors
| and those who disagree.
|
| Even if you adopt the second approach, you may encounter a
| similar dilemma, e.g. you will decide to order your shoes from a
| company with operations in a third world nation paying lower
| local wages, or buy via Amazon despite reservations about their
| practices.
|
| Whatever approach is adopted, awareness of what choices exist and
| what consequences they bring will be required.
|
| To develop the tools that will enable this awareness and
| measurement is a massive problem on its own because of the
| complexity of interrelated systems, events, consequences and
| disparate interests. It may not even be possible.
|
| But when there is no objective or even widely accepted 'true
| north' for decision making, the trend to deepening inequality is
| likely to continue.
| dalbasal wrote:
| I suppose we'll see how this play out but... I think there are
| some serious chasms between 19th century manufacturing's take on
| mass employment and the tech industries'.
|
| Henry Ford's ideal for manufacturing workers was long term
| employment, high commitment. The modern tech industry's ideal for
| logistical work is a fluid, low commitment workforces, with "gig
| economy" at the extreme end. I don't think amazon want to arrive
| at a place where the average employee has been working in the
| warehouse for a decade.
| christkv wrote:
| They are doing that here in northern Spain as well with a giant
| logistics center being built. My YouTube is now full of ads on
| how great it would be to work in Amazon fulfillment
| the-dude wrote:
| There is a browser extension for that.
| christkv wrote:
| This is a common enough nuisance that someone wrote a plug-in
| to address it. Amazing
| the-dude wrote:
| uBlock origin, it is amazing.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Not the first company.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hershey,_Pennsylvania
| [deleted]
| cblconfederate wrote:
| I 'll wait for Amazon Town Services
| dalbasal wrote:
| I suppose the name of the magazine implies this, but the amount
| of "concept terms" loaded into each sentence sounds so old timey,
| or something, to me.
|
| " _Such a relationship between the company and public goods like
| a high school is part of what it means to consider Amazon as "the
| major working-class space of suburban and exurban socialization."
|
| The behemoth is here, producing not only profit but people, too.
| That entails corporate indoctrination, social estrangement, and
| profound alienation from one's labor..._"
|
| You kind of need to be steeped into the literary culture to
| "fluent." Reading it, it feels like I'm "looking up" the words in
| my memory to follow the meaning. I suppose it's not too different
| from the "tech talk" dialect we're more used to on HN: "
| _disruptive potential of this novel user space paradigm_ " or
| whatnot.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Or maybe it's because the education system you were provided
| with has significant incentives to avoid getting you too
| familiar with these words and concepts?
|
| "Old timey" in this context might translate into "written by
| someone who is aware of a century or three's thinking and
| writing about the relationships between labor and capital and
| how they impact social and economic structure".
| dalbasal wrote:
| My early education was, in fact, was quite steeped in such
| terms. I'm a apostate, not an infidel.
|
| Anyway, my point wasn't a criticism of the content, or
| anything really. Just pointing out that its clunky and
| verbose sounding, to my rusty old ears.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Fair enough. But I haven't seen anyone describe these sorts
| of concepts in any other terms other than cloying cute
| folksy-funny stump speeches that tend to obfuscate things
| as much as they make them more accessible.
|
| The relationships between labor and capital are not obvious
| to the naked eye, and are subject to a lot of different
| kinds of analysis. Trying to describe them with language
| from outside the field can end up missing the critical
| points.
| dalbasal wrote:
| I'd say that this type of jargonized writing makes
| articles extremely _unaccessible_. It would be pretty
| hard to understand without some pretty substantial roots
| in marxist, or social science literature. Ironically,
| that means most people working at an amazon warehouse
| wouldn 't understand what it's trying to say.
|
| Re: The relationships between labor and capital are not
| obvious.
|
| Parts of that relationship are pretty damn obvious:
| people work for the owners of companies.
|
| The only accessible part of this article quotes another
| article describing (in plain, un-jargonized english)
| about a local high school that teaches Amazon corporate
| culture, with financial sponsorship by amazon. Without
| that part, no one would have a hope of deciphering what
| the hell _Amazon as "the major working-class space of
| suburban and exurban socialization,"_ whether or not I
| had spent my teenage years as a member of a red lace
| youth group.
|
| This style of writing tells you more about the author
| than the thing they're writing about, and its totally
| meaningless to the uninitiated. Once you get used to it,
| you see every particular as derivative of the greater,
| abstract truth with no space for novel or dissident
| interpretations. That's not my opinion, it's George
| Orwell's, a lifelong socialist.
|
| This isn't a criticism of Marx. It is a criticism of
| Marxism. 200 years ago, "alienation from the product of
| labour" meant something when he used it. It described a
| process that was taking place att. If you're "analysing"
| Amazon's influence on towns where they are the biggest
| employer, it means nothing. It certainly means nothing to
| workers.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| what language would you use to describe the concept of
| "alienation from the product of labor" today, here in
| 2021, if the intended audience is the workforce of an
| amazon fulfillment center?
| dalbasal wrote:
| I wouldn't. The idea wasn't abstract in the 1830s. It
| meant the difference between having a loom in your house
| and working at a mill. We could debate the importance of
| this, but we'd be starting by talking about an actual
| thing that is happening in the world. You could talk to a
| mill worker about it and it described their life.
|
| You can't think of relevant ways of describing
| alienation, because the thing you are trying to describe
| isn't happening now. It happened hundreds of years ago.
| All that's left is a psycho-economic abstraction and a
| history lesson.
|
| Say I coin a term to describe the digitisation of
| workplaces, WFH, and such. Call it "workplace
| etherealisation." We can use that in "analysis" of
| labour-capital dynamics. In 200 years, "workplace
| etherealisation" and our analysis probably won't mean
| anything anymore. Or rather, it will be a trivial, clunky
| way of describing the world from the perspective of past
| people.
|
| That was my initial point. This article isn't written to
| have meaning to amazon workers, or readers beyond a
| particular circle. It's written to have meaning "in-
| theory," deep inside abstract theories that the author is
| interested in for abstract treasons that have nothing to
| do with workers. It's mastabatory.
| prince781 wrote:
| Alienation isn't a historical event. It's a term that
| describes how a human being, in the present, relates to
| the things he creates.
|
| The concept is simple:
|
| Most people today are put in the unusual position
| (anthropologically speaking) of creating things they do
| not themselves sell. From this flows a lot of
| consequences for social conflict, politics, mental
| health, etc, something we should try to understand.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Alienation is/was a term coined at a particular time. It
| was easy to understand at that time, because it was
| related to changes in the world that were happening. You
| didn't have to be a marxist to use it in a sentence.
|
| Today it is still used, because it's part of abstract
| theory, to which other abstract theory relates, in ways
| that are entirely meaningless outside of this theory.
| What's the non-alienated version of an amazon worker, a
| door-to-door salesman?
|
| >> From this flows a lot of consequences for social
| conflict, politics, mental health, etc.
|
| Whether or not this was ever true, it was at least a
| legible statement 200 years ago. Today, it's a completely
| meaningless, mumbling piety.
| prince781 wrote:
| The term remains easy to understand. Whether you
| agree/disagree with it is a separate matter.
|
| > What's the non-alienated version of an amazon worker?
|
| An Amazon worker that can exclusively determine who gets
| to be on the board of directors.
|
| >> From this flows a lot of consequences for social
| conflict, politics, mental health, etc.
|
| > Whether or not this was ever true, it was at least a
| legible statement 200 years ago. Today, it's a completely
| meaningless, mumbling piety.
|
| Is your contention that alienation is _not_ one source
| (among many) of social conflict? Certainly history is not
| on your side here.
| dalbasal wrote:
| It's my "contention" that alienation is a term, very
| abstract, not a discrete thing that can have
| consequences.
|
| I contend that in the early 19th century, the term made
| for good rhetoric. IE, you could use it to describe the
| world and convey ideas. If it hadn't been coined then,
| but someone coined it now, it would be weak rhetoric. An
| uncompelling abstraction that doesn't describe anything,
| convince anyone or explain anything... like a joke that
| needs to be explained. No one would give it any
| attention. It's not even wrong, it's just irrelevant.
| Marx was wrong about lots of things, right about other
| things. He was rarely irrelevant though, at least until
| his later years.
|
| I'd also point you to the fact that this kind of mumbo
| jumbo is why an amazon union vote failed a few weeks ago.
| The corporate culture BS that amazon (the point of this
| article) is _teaching in schools now_ makes more sense
| and has more meaning to workers than the marxist theology
| that this article is written in. The _present_ is not on
| your side.
|
| I'll finally contend that a young Karl Marx himself would
| not be writing or talking like this, or reading Jacobin.
| He had new ideas, that made sense in his time. He got
| those ideas by observing the _world_ , not arcane
| language written by some 15th century philosopher. That's
| what conservatives do. It ain't radical.
|
| Workers don't want to hear about their alienation. They
| want a raise, dignity, childcare and a stake in the game.
| They don't want to be surveilled, or fired by an email
| generated by an NN.
|
| >> The term remains easy to understand
|
| The term is 100% unintelligible.
| prince781 wrote:
| > Workers don't want to hear about their alienation. They
| want a raise, dignity, childcare and a stake in the game.
| They don't want to be surveilled, or fired by an email
| generated by an NN.
|
| All of those things are encompassed by a single word--
| alienation. They are all a consequence of a loss of
| control over your working life.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Ah yes! The fact that workers find this shite meaningless
| is further proof that it's true. Of course all those
| things are encompassed by alienation. Alienation
| encompasses everything, because it doesn't mean anything.
| Thinking back on teenage me on may day. What an
| embarrassment. I'm done.
| renewiltord wrote:
| It's socialist intelligentsia lingo. For whatever reason, that
| field writes in a style that favors high-specificity jargon.
| dalbasal wrote:
| I know what kind of lingo it is, just remarking on how much
| of it there is in every sentence.
|
| IDK if I'd call the jargon high-specificity though. I'd say
| that it tends to be broad and abstract. "Suburban and exurban
| socialization" isn't highly specific.
|
| As I mentioned though, it's not very different from the tech
| world jargon that's more common on HN. IE, when we talk about
| "disruptive," "democratizing," "platform" or somesuch. These
| are loaded terms too.
|
| I was just noting that with concepts like "alienation," it's
| hard to imagine explaining it to someone without referring to
| past centuries, artisan candlemakers or somesuch.
| anm89 wrote:
| Jacobin finds the act of running a for profit business under any
| circumstances to be unethical so does it really matter what they
| have to say past that?
|
| Jacobin is left Breitbart.
| pinewurst wrote:
| I think they're actually more left authoritarian than Breitbart
| (feh) is right authoritarian.
|
| I'm reminded of the old Soviet joke than under capitalism, man
| exploits man, but under socialism it's the other way around.
|
| In the ideal Jacobin world, all towns would be company towns
| ("owned by the people"). Please keep that in mind.
| snypher wrote:
| I think it would be less of a company town if the workers
| owned the entirety of the company.
| nofinator wrote:
| A lot of people in this thread are caught up with the term
| "company town". I agree this headline is poorly chosen. The
| article itself lacks depth.
|
| For a better analysis of Amazon's entrenched relationship with
| the Inland Empire in California, check out Erika Hayasaki's
| writing for the NY Times Magazine:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/magazine/amazon-workers-e...
| dalbasal wrote:
| This article actually quotes her. It's the only part of this
| article that isn't just a string of abstract jargon. Without
| the quote, I would have no clue what it's even about.
| ilaksh wrote:
| The article ends with an idea like, "workers band together and
| fight Amazon". I'm all for workers getting a better deal and more
| humane conditions while these jobs last, but they won't.
|
| Th most common jobs in these places are being intensely
| researched by roboticists. As soon as it's feasible and
| economical to replace the people with robots they will. For some
| of the jobs, that could come in a matter of months, or only a few
| years. It will continue.
|
| I am going to tie this into something more controversial. Basic
| income. And I think even more controversial is that we may need
| to change how money fundamentally works in order to make basic
| income work.
| aww_dang wrote:
| "Is Guaranteed Basic Income the Solution to Robots Taking Our
| Jobs?"
|
| https://mises.org/wire/guaranteed-basic-income-solution-robo...
|
| >The UBI advocates are correct that some jobs are replaced when
| capital goods do the work that was done by labor. Robots are a
| capital good. If the same amount of output can be produced by a
| mix of more robots and fewer people, an industry will not offer
| as much employment as before. Does it follow that when one
| industry uses fewer workers there is no need for their services
| anywhere else? How would the advocates of this view explain the
| enormous growth in the labor force since the Industrial
| Revolution two centuries ago--a period characterized by
| increasing capital intensity?
| 8note wrote:
| There was another set of labourers before the industrial
| revolution - animals.
|
| They don't have much work nowadays since their jobs in _all_
| industries were replaced with automation.
| aga98mtl wrote:
| The article seems to contain nothing that would qualify for the
| words "Company Town". It appears to boil down "look amazon is
| big, surely it means that it must be evil!".
| anshumankmr wrote:
| Of course, it's published on Jacobin.
| eganist wrote:
| > The article seems to contain nothing that would qualify for
| the words "Company Town". It appears to boil down "look amazon
| is big, surely it means that it must be evil!".
|
| I guess this is the difference between a literal v. figurative
| interpretation of the title. The article itself is speaking to
| Amazon's efforts to sustain its hiring pipeline in the face of
| colossal churn, describing activities such as sponsoring
| secondary schools while installing their own branding as a
| condition of sponsorship.
|
| > > A dozen students sat clustered at work tables inside an
| air-conditioned classroom, which was designed to emulate the
| inside of an Amazon facility. On one wall, Amazon's giant logo
| grinned across a yellow and green banner. The words "CUSTOMER
| OBSESSION" and "DELIVER RESULTS" were painted against a
| corporate-style yellow backdrop. On a whiteboard, a teacher had
| written the words "Logistics Final Project," and the lesson of
| the day was on Amazon's "14 Leadership Principles." Each
| teenager wore a company golf shirt emblazoned with the Amazon
| logo.
|
| > > Students and staff members expressed pride in being
| associated with the company. Amazon partnered with the school
| as part of its five-year anniversary in the Inland Empire,
| donating $50,000 to start the pilot program, the giant
| sweepstakes-style Amazon check displayed prominently at the
| classroom entrance. The students had already taken field trips
| to tour the nearby Amazon warehouse.
|
| > A public high-school classroom designed to resemble an Amazon
| facility, with students wearing Amazon logos on their clothing
| as they memorize Amazon's leadership principles (which, it is
| worth noting, also include "Ownership" and "Think Big,"
| injunctions that hold merit for readers of this magazine when
| imagining how we might solve the problems exemplified by
| Amazon). Such a relationship between the company and public
| goods like a high school is part of what it means to consider
| Amazon as "the major working-class space of suburban and
| exurban socialization."
|
| Further (and quite interesting) reading on the concept of a
| company town: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town
| ctvo wrote:
| > I guess this is the difference between a literal v.
| figurative interpretation of the title. The article itself is
| speaking to Amazon's efforts to sustain its hiring pipeline
| in the face of colossal churn, describing activities such as
| sponsoring secondary schools while installing their own
| branding as a condition of sponsorship.
|
| Isn't this very banner in the outfield of little league games
| in America? As in, companies big and small ask for their
| branding to be visible when they sponsor things.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| _As in, companies big and small ask for their branding to
| be visible when they sponsor things_
|
| I think there's a material difference between a monopolist
| trying to impress its values upon the audience and a market
| participant trying to attract some of the audience.
| emteycz wrote:
| So what? The EU and other similar institutions require their
| branding to be present in classes too. I'd rather have
| obviously absurd corporate branding than slow but sure
| political indoctrination (e.g. the EU makes it look like the
| local government is incapable of doing anything on its own,
| while the fact is that everything worked pretty well before
| the EU and even today 90%+ of funding is local - but the EU
| flag _must_ be displayed prominently!).
| ipaddr wrote:
| The EU is not a company. It's a government voted for by
| citizens of countries.
|
| Amazon is a private company.
| detaro wrote:
| > _require their branding to be present in classes too_
|
| No they don't.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>while the fact is that everything worked pretty well
| before the EU
|
| I don't know where you're from, but as a Pole I do _not_
| share this sentiment at all. Seeing the EU flag displayed
| everywhere makes me proud to be an EU citizen and it 's a
| great thing to see.
| emteycz wrote:
| If I was from Poland, I'd feel the same. Here in Czechia,
| it is a lie - this country worked well on its own.
| Membership in EU is great, but acting like there wouldn't
| be schools and public parks without EU is not.
| phatfish wrote:
| Who is acting like that? The main criticism I have seen
| about EU funding is that it only gets allocated to the
| "easy" projects like renovating a park or some
| information board. Not that such things would never
| exist.
|
| However even that is not true as the UK is finding out,
| as we are now scrambling to fill the funding gap that EU
| programs gave to anything from universities to farmers.
| All this while our corrupt government hands PS37 billion
| to their corrupt friends for COVID "track and trace".
| rswail wrote:
| The issue here is that the school is teaching not general
| knowledge, but knowledge that is only useful in the Amazon
| context.
|
| It's a "company town" mentality. Amazon needs the workers,
| so it makes sure that the workers need it.
|
| That's completely different to EU/Government funding.
| That's a debate between two levels of government about who
| gets the political benefit of the funding. However, by
| definition, publicly funded facilities are examples of
| "Your taxes at work".
| unishark wrote:
| > The issue here is that the school is teaching not
| general knowledge, but knowledge that is only useful in
| the Amazon context.
|
| The public high school in California? They might add some
| extra stuff to spend that (whopping) $50k from Amazon,
| but it seems hard to believe that the state will allow a
| high school to just ditch the education code
| requirements. Especially a public school.
| kazen44 wrote:
| the EU doesn't require its "branding" present in schools.
| also, even If that was the case, there is an enormous
| difference between amazon and the European union. mainly
| the fact that as a citizen I can vote (directly through the
| parlement elections, indirectly through council of
| ministers which is made up of elected officials of member
| states) who is in "control" of the governance of the
| European union. while I cannot vote on who is CEO of
| amazon...
|
| the EU also has contributed signifanctly to post world war
| 2 European peace.
| jollybean wrote:
| The EU definitely needs it's 'branding' just as does
| Nike.
|
| You did not even know who Ursula Von Der Leyen was when
| you went to the polls - she was 'decided' as your leader
| in a back room, closed door meeting in which MEPs had no
| influence. When you cast your vote, you had no clue what
| her platform was, or what she would bring about as
| leader.
|
| To suggest that this is somehow 'democratic' is a farce.
| The EU was designed to keep the plebes at bay.
|
| Whether it's the fact that voters have almost no role in
| leadership selection, that leaders can be chosen
| arbitrarily, that there is no required vetting process,
| that MEPs cannot introduce legislation, have very limited
| power to censure leaders, there is almost zero voter
| awareness of the political apparatus, the individuals or
| contemporary issues, low voter turnout, that
| constitutional rights were ceded to the EU without
| referendum, or worse, that clear and unambiguous
| referendum results directed leaders to _not_ cede power
| to the EU - they did it anyhow. The EU has barely any
| claim to democratic legitimacy, people promulgating it as
| such are propagandizing.
|
| Literally French voters unambiguously rejected the Treaty
| of Lisbon - and it was ratified anyhow ceding major
| elements of sovereignty.
|
| If they wanted democracy the commission would have direct
| elections and/or the MEPs would chose directly, and,
| there would be a lot of rules around campaigning etc. You
| wouldn't possibly be able to vote for the President of a
| Commission without knowing who they were. MEPs would
| certainly be allowed to introduced legislation and
| censure leaders.
|
| So yes, it does take a lot of 'marketing' to convince
| people of the legitimacy of something when it doesn't
| have that legitimacy in many ways.
|
| The EU had nothing to with keeping the peace in the Post
| WW2 order, that was 1) The Marshall Plan and the American
| Nuclear Umbrella 2) NATO and existential threat from the
| USSR and 3) The EEC.
|
| The reason the EU wants their flag in the town council
| chambers is the same as Nike might want that, or the
| French Government might want their flag especially in
| parts of France that are not historically very French
| i.e. it's a form of marketing/propaganda, like anything
| else.
|
| I don't like Amazon, so I don't buy from them. If people
| did that, they wouldn't have their weird company towns
| and creepy 'high school sponsorships'.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| I went to school in British and French schools and never
| saw European flags. You're talking absolute nonsense.
| tomcooks wrote:
| https://www.euronews.com/2019/09/02/french-and-eu-flags-
| comp...
|
| For obvious reasons there's no British equivalent.
| rgblambda wrote:
| If you bothered to read the article you linked, you would
| know it says this is a French policy decision, not
| mandated by the EU Commission. Also that it was a
| compromise with a right wing party wanting the French
| flag prominently displayed in classrooms.
| [deleted]
| emteycz wrote:
| I believe that, these countries are strong-willed because
| they had enough time to develop on their own before the
| EU. I am from eastern EU and well, you can't go outside
| without seeing an EU flag, much less to a school (see
| other replies under my comment confirming this to be the
| case).
|
| Today's children think this country was a shithole prison
| before it joined the EU, while in reality it was a pretty
| strong economy quickly recovering from the trauma of
| communism with opportunities booming everywhere, good
| educational system and well functioning healthcare and
| social system. Not even 2 decades and the history is
| rewritten - that's not good.
| throw474747 wrote:
| Having been in multiple educational institutions in
| different EU countries I have never seen this anywhere.
|
| Did you perhaps confuse this with the common signs
| indicating that the EU funded that particular
| project/institution?
| emteycz wrote:
| I am not confusing anything, that's exactly what I mean.
| The EU sends a minor (sub 1%, in many cases) contribution
| but its flag must be displayed on the right side of the
| local flag facing the children/people - that's exactly
| the problem. Now the flag is everywhere - public parks,
| public transit, hospitals, schools, etc - and today's
| children think there was nothing before the great EU
| funds rescued us from total poverty - a total lie.
| tomcooks wrote:
| Sub 1% is a figure I don't see anywhere here
| https://europa.eu/european-union/about-
| eu/countries/member-c...
|
| Edit: ah yes, less than 1% is what Chzechia contributes
| TO the EU.
|
| ```
|
| Intra-EU trade accounts for 84% of the Czech Republic's
| exports (Germany 32%, Slovakia 8% and Poland 6%), while
| outside the EU 2% goes to both the United States and
| Russia.
|
| In terms of imports, 76% come from EU Member States
| (Germany 29%, Poland 9% and Slovakia 6%), while outside
| the EU 8% come from China and 2% from the United States.
|
| ```
|
| ``` Total EU spend in Czechia - EUR
| 4.123 billion (equivalent to 2.10 % of the Czech
| economy) Total contribution to EU budget - EUR
| 1.720 billion (equivalent to 0.88 % of the Czech
| economy)
|
| ```
| detaro wrote:
| EU contributions do not lead to any flagging
| requirements, flags on public buildings are state
| decisions. (E.g. here in Germany, even different federal
| states have differing policies on flying the EU flag -
| some do it if there is space, others only if there is a
| specific EU-relevant event going on, similar to UN flags)
|
| The funding programmes generally literally just require
| you to put a poster up for smaller contributions, for
| >500kEUR you need a "permanent" sign if its a building
| etc, for projects a mention in info material. If a single
| "this building was supported through EU fund ABC with
| XXXXXX EUR" sign (AFAIK the amount is allowed to be
| listed but not required, and anyways far from your
| "present in classes" claim, and far from the level
| described in the article) leads to people thinking that's
| all that was impossible otherwise, that sounds like an
| education problem. And is not that out of the ordinary
| for funding contributions - here it's not unusual to see
| that sign grouped with equal large signs of other (state,
| federal, ...) authorities providing funding.
| bserge wrote:
| Oh please, corporate indoctrination is still
| indoctrination.
|
| You can see it in stuff like young people saying "We need
| to conserve bandwidth, the ISPs can't handle it" (talking
| about 100GB/mo on mobile, which is apparently a huge number
| for some, but why defend the ISP).
|
| And subscription models for everything, but "it's OK, X
| company is trustworthy."
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > everything worked pretty well before the EU
|
| Just, you know, two World Wars.
| emteycz wrote:
| I'm not aware of any world war occurring between 1989 and
| 2004.
|
| Edit: I see what you mean now. What I wanted to say was
| "before joining EU" (so pre-2004), I didn't mean 1950's
| or pre-war period.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| Even the phrase "company town" itself does not signify anything
| evil. In fact I'm wondering if such a place might be better
| than the usual government administered cities and towns.
| aga98mtl wrote:
| Honestly, I was hoping Amazon was actually making housing for
| its workers. I think high density housing within walking
| distance of your job is the realistic solution for lowering
| co2 emissions.
| beckman466 wrote:
| > I was hoping Amazon was actually making housing for its
| workers.
|
| In the movie 'Sorry To Bother You' by Boots Riley, they
| have an Amazon-like entity called 'WorryFree' that does
| exactly this.
|
| I'm not sure we actually want this (Amazon or other big
| employers making housing for laborers they employ),
| especially since these workers are often not labor
| aristocrats, and therefore will have little bargaining
| power.
| CryptoPunk wrote:
| >>I'm not sure we actually want this (Amazon or others
| making housing for their workers), especially since these
| workers are often not labor aristocrats, and therefore
| will have little bargaining power.
|
| Even in the 19th century, workers had a significant
| amount of bargaining power, and company towns were in
| fact an attempt to improve working conditions, in light
| of workers' sensitivity to high prices.
|
| Without things like company stores and company housing,
| what was found to happen is that an independent store
| owner or housing provider would take advantage of their
| monopoly status, and raise prices, leading to workers
| quitting. So just like oil rigs have their own company
| restaurant on-site, isolated 19th century worksites had
| their own company businesses on-site to ensure their
| workers had competitively priced goods available to them.
|
| Companies did this at the time because workers in the
| 19th century were aware of the comparative wages/living-
| standards on offer, and had enough mobility to leave
| sites that didn't offer the best available in the market
| at that time. Compared to the late 19th century, workers
| today have enormous mobility, and ready internet-based
| knowledge of market options, so what would happen if
| company towns emerged today would not be exploitive.
| davidcbc wrote:
| What happens if you want to switch jobs? Tying basic
| necessities like housing to your employer is a disaster
| that traps people in jobs. It's part of the reason
| healthcare in the US is so screwed up.
| aga98mtl wrote:
| The housing could be normal rentals not conditional on
| keeping the job. I would guess that most Amazon
| facilities are located in urban areas. It would not be
| isolated mining town like in 1900s
| sofixa wrote:
| Doesn't it? It usually signifies abuses like being paid in
| company "currency" only usable in company owned stores, being
| unable to change jobs without having to move ( with the
| associated inability to refuse whatever the employer throws
| at you, however hard/illegal/dangerous).
|
| Is there anything positive about company towns? Maybe they're
| better than towns with no jobs, but I'm not even sure about
| that..
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| It's on Jacobin, so this is to be expected. Not exactly a
| neutral publication.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > Jacobin
|
| Oh, I'm surprised that is allowed on HN.
|
| Like one step above tabloids.
| Havoc wrote:
| Reminds me of the series "Incorporated". Corporations taking over
| more & more of the roles countries used to
| missedthecue wrote:
| I think this is because of the massive pushback in recent
| decades to Milton Friedman's essay _"The Social Responsibility
| of Business Is To Increase Its Profits,"_ where he put forth
| that the most net benefit would be provided to society if firms
| focused their efforts and resources onto their core
| competencies.
|
| Now, people think that is distasteful and that businesses
| should be doing all kinds of things like charity work and soup
| kitchens and funding housing developments and schools and so on
| so forth. This is called "stakeholder capitalism". It produces
| the result you describe.
| prytania wrote:
| Playa haters ball finalist
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