Comment by chenning | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chenning | Hacker News Reader

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You know, I've seen countless times when, say, Walmart or some other retailer gets caught and body slammed for stocking a product on their shelves that was known to be manufactured under substandard working conditions. It's possible that I'm just not seeing the same frequency of articles lobbed at Amazon, but there's no doubt they are guilty of the same thing on some level. Is it because Amazon found a way to sort of diffuse the responsibility, perhaps by claiming that they're just :the platform" shrug? I'm curious though, what kinds of consequences does Amazon actually face for stocking products manufactured under unfair working conditions, stolen intellectual property, and so on? I'm sure their official policy is that they don't tolerate it. Of course. But in reality, what are they actually doing about this, what incentive do they have to do anything, and how effective has it been?

Well the thing is "unfair working conditions" is subjective and lacks binding force unlike say illegal trade with a sanctioned country. So the consequences are "whatever the consumers decide".

That's the thing though. How subjective is "unfair working conditions" really? I ask that in all seriousness. At least in the US (my only frame of reference) there are fantastic arguments about minimum wage. Should it be raised to $15/hr? Maybe less? Maybe more? But no one is really arguing wether or not $1/day is a livable wage. I think most people with a pulse would say that $1/hr is not a livable wage. The question I was really asking is, what's Amazon's position on this? Do they ever come knocking on anyone's door demanding to see their working conditions? If they are, what does that look like? What incentives do they have to do that? Or, in the worst case, do they just sort of look the other way?

> I think most people with a pulse would say that $1/hr is not a livable wage.

Depends on who is getting that $1 and where they are at in the world. I am certain there are places in the world where $1 an hour would be considered almost unheard of by the working class people in the country. Places where $1 a day is considered good money.

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