Comment by laborcontract | Hacker News Reader

Comment by laborcontract | Hacker News Reader

After reading both the article and his letter, I can't help but feel so, so sad. There's no glory for this guy. In the States, you'd be able to parlay something like this into a speaking/podcast tour, a book deal, and some consultancy gigs.

This guy's life is ruined, his extended family's social credit sullied and, in addition to serving time, he's become the one of the abused workers he tried to protect.

If I was the owner of a company and I had read that letter, I wouldn't be able to live with myself without first trying to do something about it. Maybe that's why I'm not the CEO of Amazon. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised. I know a guy who went mentally ill after his tenure there. Took him ten years to get back into another job. We're talking about the guy who thought a Vogue Cover with Lauren Sanchez was a good idea.

I'm not anti capitalism, anti manufacturing in china, or anti billionaire. I only wish that a human would deliver that letter to Jeff.

I would guess that Bezos has never read this letter. An underling of his would never present this letter to him unless Bezos has specifically asked to be presented such letters, and the fallout from this letter will never be sufficient to warrant his attention.

It's unfortunate that American and European voters don't realize that allowing our companies to do business with places famous for worker's rights abuses and lack of environmental controls affects them, too.

> I would guess that Bezos has never read this letter.

I would guess someone might have informed him of this letter or he might even as well have read it already. What I would not guess about is whether he would give two fucks about it. Because no he would not. Yes, he and his company has proven this.

Business and profit over all else. That is not just really a Chinese problem.

It surprises me how people still love to try to think that “Oh, this is such a horror! If only the Western corporate overlords had the time in their busy schedules to know of these, this would most likely go away”.

Nope, those cheap contracts were signed with this expectation to begin with it.

  It surprises me how people still love to try to think that “oh this is such a horrors!

You got me there, fella. Deeply dreadful nihilism has never been one of my strong points.

It's not nihilism. It is only nihilistic if you don't judge the corporate overlords to be morally inferiors to the average human.

Isn't US using prisoners for (effectively) forced labor ?

US and EU are abusing (often illegal) immigrants and turning a blind eye to their terrible working conditions (eg. the slaughter house scandals in the EU that broke out during COVID).

Plenty of shit on our doorstep and people don't seem to be bothered that much stepping over it. Why would we be upset about a larger pile of shit a continent away ? We are so isolated from Chinese culture, I know very very little about China compared to NA and EU.

Also the west is happy to trade with way worse systems (by "our" standards) than China, middle east being the first to come to mind.

Not justifying China, just confused where these moral standard expectations are coming from.

> (eg. the slaughter house scandals in the EU that broke out during COVID)

And got forgotten about shortly after. At least that was my impression here in Germany, but I hope I’m wrong.

I would guess that Bezos read this letter, shruged and said something along the lines of "sucks to be him" while ordering a solid gold toilet for his yacht, because the platinum one was "too flashy"

This is unlikely. Solid gold is extremely dense, and would cause weight and balance problems on a yacht, even a large one. I have a family member who used to work at a luxury yacht-building company; they avoided even putting granite countertops and other surfaces on those craft because of the weight, even though the owners could certainly afford it. Instead, they had faux stonework painted by artists.

In addition to removing the bling factor of solid platium there is also a weight saving with the solid gold toilet being 11% lighter than the platinum equivalent.

Nevertheless, weight and balance can be an issue this is why you need to have a yacht extension to increase length (and occasionally girth - you have to use the swedish pumps for that one). In addition you need to buy multiple solid gold toilets for all the bathrooms, plus a couple extra to use as balast to get the correct balance.

Why would you think Jeff would care?

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