US Politics

Silva said:
The money belongs to the men and women who break their backs in Amazons windowless warehouses., and the communities that make those warehouses possible.
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You obviously don't know much about capitalism. The money belongs to the person who founded the company and those who run the company seek to appropriate it to. The employees are at will participants who are not obliged to work for the company.
 
Raoul said:
You obviously don't know much about capitalism. The money belongs to the person who founded the company and those who run the company seek to appropriate it to. The employees are at will participants who are not obliged to work for the company.
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I know enough about it to see through its inane apologetics.
 
How many of the people posting breathless tweets about Trump and North Korea objected to Obama's massive expansion and consolidation of executive power? How many of them mocked the people who objected to a president having unilateral ability to rain death from the sky? How many of them spoke up when Obama renewed the Patriot Act?
 
Silva said:
And a sociopathic abuse of your employees.
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There are government labor laws that Amazon and all other companies comply with. Employees are obviously there 'at will' - they can leave whenever they want if they don't like it and find a company that complies with your idealistic standards
 
And also, it takes a prosperous society, public defence of private property, legal defence of intellectual property, well-established infrastructure including logistics, a highly trained workforce, and lax labour laws to succeed a la Amazon.
 
berbatrick said:
And also, it takes a prosperous society, public defence of private property, legal defence of intellectual property, well-established infrastructure including logistics, a highly trained workforce, and lax labour laws to succeed a la Amazon.
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It definitely takes a soceity that isn't overburdened with regulations, otherwise such companies wouldn't ever take flight. The people who start them would simply take their ideas to a more business friendly environment and set up shop there.
 
Raoul said:
There are government labor laws that Amazon and all other companies comply with. Employees are obviously there 'at will' - they can leave whenever they want if they don't like it and find a company that complies with your idealistic standards
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This is classic victim blaming. No, they can't leave. If they do they wind up homeless and unable to afford the basics in life. "oh man, you're drinking water? how can you even criticise the way that natural resources are used?"
 
Raoul said:
It definitely takes a soceity that isn't overburdened with regulations, otherwise such companies wouldn't ever take flight. The people who start them would simply take their ideas to a more business friendly environment and set up shop there.
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As I said lax labour laws were essential to Amazon' competitive edge.
 
berbatrick said:
As I said lax labour laws were essential to Amazon' competitive edge.
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Its not just labor laws, its a general business friendly climate. And of course Amazon isn't the only company to benefit from all of this. I suppose its Bezos' recent encroachment of the $100b net worth mark that has unleashed this recent round of e-jealousy.
 
Raoul said:
Its not just labor laws, its a general business friendly climate. And of course Amazon isn't the only company to benefit from all of this. I suppose its Bezos' recent encroachment of the $100b net worth mark that has unleashed this recent round of e-jealousy.
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Yes, which makes your "get a different job, loser" argument all the more pointless. "should I work for this sociopathic conglomerate, or that sociopathic conglomerate?" They all need to be brought to order.
 
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*hundreds of years ago*

merchant "people who make goods should be allowed to trade them with others"

raoul "you obviously don't understand, all trade belongs to the king. you may want to trade with people but that is not the way things are"
 
MTF said:
It sure is arrogant, to look at someone pretty accomplished and only manage to think 'c*nt'.
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Not really when a lot of his companies business practices are questionable at best. At the factory nearest to where I am it's a notoriously horrible environment to work in.
 
berbatrick said:
And @Raoul you have been using Obama videos liberally, so here's another from 2012:
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He's partially right - its takes both structure and agency to build an Amazon. Like I said, you need a business friendly environment that promotes, not punishes, entrepreneurship.
 
Eboue said:
For the record, I didn't vote for Jill Stein. It's just a lie that fishfingers has repeated often enough that people have started to believe it.

I voted straight dem ticket with the exception of President. I willingly threw my vote aside because as kaos said, so much of what she represents and what she would do is antithetical to my values. It was a protest vote borne out of deep dissatisfaction with the lack of a candidate who was against wars of empire and who wasn't beholden to corporate interests.
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Didn't you vote for the dead gorilla? I'm sure I remember someone doing that in Michigan and posting it here.
 
What's also interesting is that because Bezos has wealth in stock, in a company that doesn't pay dividends because it doesn't consistently generate cash flow so its value is just the market's appreciation of its future profit potential, he's about a handful of potential disruptors away from being just another millionaire.

And then we could all talk about something else...
 
Silva said:
Nothing speculative about it. Middle class families can't afford to give their kids $300K to start a business.
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And even then a family that's actually properly middle class in the US is still far better off than most people in the country and in most other countries. Obviously it depends on the definition of middle class but I'd generally term it as someone who's not quite 'rich' so to speak but has a fair amount of disposable income to the point where they could probably go a few months without working and not been in substantial difficulty at all.
 
Silva said:
Yes, which makes your "get a different job, loser" argument all the more pointless. "should I work for this sociopathic conglomerate, or that sociopathic conglomerate? They all need to be brought to order.
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If you don't want to work for Amazon, then don't work for them. There are millions of other jobs in both the private and public sector out there.

BTW...still waiting for a source on your claim that Bezos was fronted 300k
 
Raoul said:
Its not just labor laws, its a general business friendly climate. And of course Amazon isn't the only company to benefit from all of this. I suppose its Bezos' recent encroachment of the $100b net worth mark that has unleashed this recent round of e-jealousy.
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He had a good idea and worked hard to make it a success. The notion that that one good idea and its successful management (did he even write a single line of code for the website?) is worth more than the lifetime income of 1.5 million Indian peasants because of the work *he* put in is laughable and offensive.
 
Raoul said:
If you don't want to work for Amazon, then don't work for them. There are millions of other jobs in both the private and public sector out there.

BTW...still waiting for a source on your claim that Bezos was fronted 300k
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If you're someone who's poor and your only option is to either take a job with Amazon or not be able to afford to live then of course you're going to take the job with Amazon. It's not a particularly open choice for people who aren't well-off and who are much more limited when it comes to employment options.
 
Cheesy said:
And even then a family that's actually properly middle class in the US is still far better off than most people in the country and in most other countries. Obviously it depends on the definition of middle class but I'd generally term it as someone who's not quite 'rich' so to speak but has a fair amount of disposable income to the point where they could probably go a few months without working and not been in substantial difficulty at all.
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I grew up in a middle class neighborhood with middle class parents. Something like this is way beyond what my parents or their peers could have afforded.
 
Il Prete Rosso said:
I agree with you there. Amazon is way too successful and Bezos is wealthy enough to not have to treat their employees like slaves.
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His entire point is misguided. He's mad at Bezos for making money but has offered nothing in terms of improving the labor laws at the federal government level that would alleviate the poor working conditions he claims to reject. The problem isn't at the Amazon level. They are simply participants in a system comprised of thousands of companies who play within the parameters the government allows.
 
Eboue said:
I grew up in a middle class neighborhood with middle class parents. Something like this is way beyond what my parents or their peers could have afforded.
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Yeah I'd agree with that, privileges he seems to have been afforded would certainly be above that of the average middle class family.
 
MTF said:
It sure is arrogant, to look at someone pretty accomplished and only manage to think 'c*nt'.
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A lot of leftists think that the existence of that wealth makes that person a cnut. I don't think so, I think though that the fact that one person has *so* much while others literally starve to death means that the system is cnutish.
For Bezos specifically I think his labour practices especially regarding bathroom breaks, and employees freezing during work are evidence of a cnutish person (and obviously the system that allows/forces him to be cnutish).
 
Cheesy said:
If you're someone who's poor and your only option is to either take a job with Amazon or not be able to afford to live then of course you're going to take the job with Amazon. It's not a particularly open choice for people who aren't well-off and who are much more limited when it comes to employment options.
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I can agree with that and I'm sure it happens all the time. People need work and what better place to find it than a big company that is going to be around for a long time.
 
Raoul said:
His entire point is misguided. He's mad at Bezos for making money but has offered nothing in terms of improving the labor laws at the federal government level that would alleviate the poor working conditions he claims to reject. The problem isn't at the Amazon level. They are simply participants in a system comprised of thousands of companies who play within the parameters the government allows.
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Federal removal of at-will firing. Federal card-check unionisation. Federal rejection of state-based right-to-work laws. Federally imposed higher min wages. A more robust, federally funded safety net that reduces pressure on the bottom of the job market. Take your pick.
New laws (which I admit I don't know anything about) regarding contract employees.
 
Raoul said:
I can agree with that and I'm sure it happens all the time. People need work and what better place to find it than a big company that is going to be around for a long time.
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Of course. But it's not really much of a choice for someone to say, "Nah, I don't want to work for Amazon" when their choice is to do so or be unable to afford to live.
 
Cheesy said:
Of course. But it's not really much of a choice for someone to say, "Nah, I don't want to work for Amazon" when their choice is to do so or be unable to afford to live.
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I wasn't blaming the job seeker for anything. Nor am I blaming the company for doing what all successful companies do, which is behave according to profit logic. I just take exception to the idea that Bezos is somehow to blame for a system of rules that he is merely a participant in. The argument between business and labor is one American society has been grappling with for ages with no clear consensus. Its one of the reasons Republicans and Democrats have been operating in a state of gridlock for decades.
 
berbatrick said:
And also, it takes a prosperous society, public defence of private property, legal defence of intellectual property, well-established infrastructure including logistics, a highly trained workforce, and lax labour laws to succeed a la Amazon.
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Yes and that all can be factored into a corporation's success if they pay their fair share of taxes. Problem is that a lot of these giant companies indulge in tax evasion by exploiting any loop hole out there or negotiate their own tax rate in guise of some veiled threat of moving away or get tax breaks when they are sitting on massive cash reserves. The minimum wage too absolutely needs to be increased, the argument by industrialists against it all around the world be it US or India is compltely intellectually dishonest.
 
berbatrick said:
A lot of leftists think that the existence of that wealth makes that person a cnut. I don't think so, I think though that the fact that one person has *so* much while others literally starve to death means that the system is cnutish.
For Bezos specifically I think his labour practices especially regarding bathroom breaks, and employees freezing during work are evidence of a cnutish person (and obviously the system that allows/forces him to be cnutish).
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I agree with the latter part, and Bezos is hardly my favorite of these 'tech titans'. Working for Amazon on the corporate side also doesn't sound the most pleasant (albeit they don't need food-stamps). I read the book on him... he's low on agreeability and empathy, but insanely single-minded and intelligent. Personally, I would hope that if I ever had that level of responsibility I would be more caring (and I intentionally say this as hypothetical because I believe that its easy to imagine virtue when you don't have the responsibility).

But people are oversimplifying what Amazon's business is, and the differences it has vs. others historically and today (hint: everyone can treat employees as badly as the law allows them, its not a real competitive advantage). The running of the logistics system, where most of these examples are coming from, is not priority #1 at the management level today (it was when the system was overwhelmed earlier in history). Its not an excuse, just stating to point out that his talent isn't "I figured out how to shaft workers better than anyone else in history".
 
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