https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-polices-based-jeff-be...
1: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/15/us/amazon-wor...
My issue with not with your point, my issue is with business insider being cited as an authority for any news.
It's just the free market, nothing particularly interesting or scary about it. Everyone wants to get the absolute best deal for themselves, and some are more successful than others.
I don’t think this is so common when you were talking about mega companies, in part because the work of operating a mega company is a lot less fun than a smaller company, and so you have this selection pressure where (a) people who pursue that path are more likely to value wealth and growth over quality of life, and (b) ruthlessness seems to usually help companies compete and win in the market. Thus the biggest and most famous companies of the world are more likely to be focused on cutthroat efficiency and, as a result, miserable places to work.
But that’s no more a feature of capitalism than cancer is a feature of DNA. It’s a pervasive malfunction, but I believe it’s treatable, particularly through aggressive anti-trust and wealth taxes.
Remember that the vast majority of capitalism is little businesses like your local veterinarian or florist, not FAANG.
That is the vast minority. Corporations dictate much of the business in the states and the world. It's really easy to see this without resorting to statistics.
What is the ratio of your friends who work for corporations vs. the amount that own/work for small businesses? The anecdotal percentage here is a good indicator of the real percentage of economic output produced by corporations vs. small businesses.
You will find that as how most of your friends direct their own economic output in service of corporations so does most of America.
It makes sense. There are many requirements and licenses for to start hair salons, barbers, wanting to garden, etc the system is set up to support the established elite today. At least IMO.
Even sticking with industrial titans, look at Henry Ford, who insisted on paying his workers a living wage. That was revolutionary at the time, and put America on the road to having a significant middle class.
Henry Ford didn't pay a "living wage" (I have no idea if the amount Ford paid was actually technically a living wage or not, but just using your terminology) out of the goodness of his heart - he did so in order to combat extremely high turnover. It actually cost less money to pay his workers more and spend less money on hiring and training new staff.
Also same article said the pace of work in Ford factories was brutally unsustainable. Which might also be why he went to an 8 hour work day.
That's lesson that the car industry sadly lost track of over the years too. A good example is the NUMMI plant, a joint venture where Toyota tried to teach GM its superior ways. They took GM's worst plant and made it a top performer by treating workers with respect. This American Life did a moving story about it a few years back: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015
My point is that there exist businesses and business owners who aren't solely motivated by increasing their share of the profits (even though our system strongly encourages this) - I just don't think Henry Ford just is a good example of that.
I actually agree with you that as a person he wasn't "only in it for the money" - I am only arguing that his wage-setting policies were purely about the money.
Ford's whole life shows that he was up to more than just maximizing profit. Look at his energetic pacifism or his vigorous paternalism toward workers. Or his antisemitism for that matter. Wealth to him was a means to a variety of ends.
If you want to argue that the the higher wage was purely profit-driven, you'll have to show it was not just profitable, but unrelated to those other motivations that drove him. I don't think that's doable. And if it were, I'm not seeing it as relevant to my point, which is that Bezos is being mean-spirited and short-sighted even in comparison to jerks like Henry Ford.
I simply picked it as one of the many long list of sites that you'll find if you simply search "Henry Ford $5 wage". They all tie the increased wages to turnover issues and financial motivations. If you disagree with what appears to be the prevailing wisdom, then please feel free to cite sources to refute it.
> Ford's whole life shows that he was up to more than just maximizing profit. Look at his energetic pacifism or his vigorous paternalism toward workers. Or his antisemitism for that matter. Wealth to him was a means to a variety of ends.
You'll see I said that 'I actually agree with you that as a person he wasn't "only in it for the money" - I am only arguing that his wage-setting policies were purely about the money.' You'll need to back up the last statement with sources.
> If you want to argue that the the higher wage was purely profit-driven, you'll have to show it was not just profitable, but unrelated to those other motivations that drove him. I don't think that's doable. And if it were, I'm not seeing it as relevant to my point, which is that Bezos is being mean-spirited and short-sighted even in comparison to jerks like Henry Ford.
The onus is on you to disprove what most people have to say about the issue. It's also not even clear that Bezos would earn more money even if he raised wages; Amazon already pays a $15 minimum wage which is much higher than the competition (and much higher than the $7ish federal minimum wage), so I think it's pretty clear that both Henry Ford and Jeff Bezos paid/are paying enough in order to avoid extremely high turnover while asking their workers to do laborious jobs.
The entire first page of Google agrees with me, which seems a reasonable proxy for the prevailing wisdom.
I don't have a particularly strongly-held opinion on the matter to be honest, but what you're saying isn't what the internet writ large appears to be saying, so I would love to see the sources which support your point of view.
I appreciate you clearing up that talking with you about this is definitely a waste of my time.
The way it currently works is what you describe here. Amazon pays the least they can for the most amount of work, and workers work the least they can for the most amount of pay. They meet at the equilibrium where Amazon receives adequate labor, and the workers receive adequate pay.
There's nothing radical or communistic about that idea.
In the US for example, there's a lot of factors in increasing labor supply: (1) From 1955 to today, women have gone from 36% labor force participation to 59%. (2) The percent of immigrants in the US in the 1950s to 1970s was less than 50% of what it is today.
When the labor supply grows, it'll push downward on wages as the equilibrium price shifts.
America's a country designed to be optimized for freedom, which includes women having the ability to participate in equal numbers to men in the workforce if desired, and immigrants having the ability to come and build their lives here if desired. That will lower wages, which is just one part of the picture in terms of economics and policy.