There’s no greater demonstration of their internal class divide than what would happen if they asked HQ employees to stop working from home and do the same.
It does not matter whether you are employed or not: your kids will get the same quality of schooling (almost no private schools), you get the same healthcare treatment everybody else gets, your kids will go to university for free - if they can’t afford living expenses the government will give them a free loan for that, you get 6 weeks of vacation and unlimited sick days.
THIS has nothing to do with Amazon, BMW, Google, Facebook or the holy church.
There is a divide - bit it’s not the “working classes” like Marx liked to predict but social/political systems.
So yes, this is about corporations, and specifically corporatists aiding and abetting the private takeover of public life as we know it.
So, give me a break with for-profit company morale - or put differently: what is YOUR baseline to compare these actions against?
So to get to your question: I am not being comparative here. I am attempting to study the fundamental drives that sustain and grow corporations. I am interested in contrasting what are generally considered "human rights" (in both positive and negative senses[1]) with what ends up being encouraged and perpetuated by the actions of those corporations as singular entities. My baseline to compare the actions of corporations is versus what I would imagine a compassionate superintelligence might do. Obviously this is biased toward my own ethics/morals but I think that's ok because I generally try to reduce suffering and make things more equitable.
My baseline is basically 1) what is "affordable" for the actors which are wielding their power vs the benefits for the people whom are subject to the consequences of the decisions of those actors, and 2) what those actors actually do with the money and power at their disposal vs what they could have done to improve the material conditions of a large number of people.
Using precedent as a baseline seems stupid to me... only consider the fact that the tradition of "law" is quite young and has been continuously shaped by those in power since its inception, and so shall not be a basis for moral or ethical understanding.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights
What's the difference, exactly? the social/political systems create the group of under-paid, under-served people. Call them working class or not, the problem is still there.
In the US, employers pay drastically less for physical labor than knowledge work, government does not offer a social safety net, and social services are offered almost exclusively as paid services. People get trapped in a multi-generational cycle of lower wages, which means less desirable housing, worse schools, worse health care, which means their children have less opportunity for better-paying jobs. This creates, effectively, a low-wage-jobs-only group of people.
Yeah, I get it, HN doesn’t like them but you say yourself the problem is something else. So why the company bashing?
The destruction of the social safety net in the US allows companies to act differently in the US than in other countries.
So: Amazon pays above minimum wage, gives more leave to its employees than legally required, has stricter safety standards than legally required (didn’t a president just ask in a press conference recently whether drinking bleach couldn’t cure Corona? Where was that again - rural South America?) - and still they are the evil ones.
In Europe, any Amazon warehouse worker’s has full medical health coverage (including his family), his kids go to university for free, get the same schooling as the kids of a CEO, probably has 5-6 weeks vacation and if he quits his job - all of that will still hold. So per your logic, we should praise Amazon for all of that. But that would be equally illogical - because Amazon is not the root cause for all these benefits.
No Jeff Bezos means: well, no shipments in times of dire need, no cloud compute, no 75+k jobs during the biggest “job recession” in American history. Also means no Blue Origin and no Washington Post.
What I find interesting: You guys seem so paranoid and jealous about giving any benefit you have earned yourself so hard (e.g. health insurance) to anybody that appears to achieve less than you do that you collectively fight any improvement to the system. You DO NOT want all the benefits of a social safety net for everybody - hence nobody gets anything. Don’t blame this on Bezos, but blame it on yourself.
In the USA, labor rights were earned by literally committing armed rebellion against corporate "company towns" [0], as in the West Virginia coal wars [1]. Without this, the USA would not have weekends or eight-hour workdays.
Even if Amazon did not exist, Facebook would still need a lot of computers and Google would still have a lot of spare compute, so public clouds might still happen. And if they didn't, well, maybe that's not a bad thing! It's not clear that public clouds are good.
The Washington Post is older than Bezos; it turns 143 this year [2]. Without Bezos, perhaps the paper would be dead right now, but perhaps it would be thriving, since the paywall on their online content was only built after Bezos took over.
I find your view "not even wrong" [4]; your history of the issue is so shallow that I can't even critique it without first establishing the historical context.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_coal_wars
I mean, at least we have established that it’s not Amazon but “the system and everybody else” is the problem.
People (normal people, anyway) generally have a lot less say in that system than you seem to think. I don't get to vote on whether or not a major employer offers better pay for physical labor. I don't get to vote on whether or not for-profit schools exist. I don't get to vote on whether or not employers will (consciously or not) discriminate against job applicants who look poor or don't speak eloquently as a result of low-quality education.
Hell, I don't even, really, get to write to my congressperson and tell them they should propose a law that would achieve any of that, because I don't have the money and connections to shepherd that bill through congress (i.e., pay bribes).
Voting for candidates who will work for change is important, but it's not magic, and it's also not something that people who care about this weren't already doing every time we get the chance.
Found a company, and pay more for physical labor. Not only will that directly cause it, you will influence the market. Only buy products from companies that pay what you believe are fair wages, if you're unwilling to found a company yourself.
> I don't get to vote on whether or not for-profit schools exist.
No, but you can found a non-profit school, or donate to them (I do!).
> I don't get to vote on whether or not employers will (consciously or not) discriminate against job applicants who look poor or don't speak eloquently as a result of low-quality education.
Again, you can hire whoever you want (within legal confines) at your own company.
You are not helpless. What you aren't able to do in the US is just force other people to do what you want. Put in the work, create something and show that the approach you believe in is viable, or even superior. Be the change you want to see.
And THAT is the reason why it is as it is. Why is Amazon then always the scapegoat?
Also, you may be interested in this bit from the site guidelines:
>Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
I should have put it differently: for those who disagree: please tell me how I’m wrong - so at least I can learn something from it
I get you hate them and take any opportunity for bashing. But that doesn’t mean that cause and effect relationships should be arbitrarily reversed, should it?
Some demonstration of class divide, that.
Also, it should go without saying, that one section of corporate employees being in more danger than their peers doesn’t disprove the broader reality and divide between warehouse and HQ workers.
I do, btw, happen to agree that amazon warehouse employees should organise. Considering Amazon's massive profitability, there's room to do better.