The point is that the way the system is currently set up, it sustains itself by using poor and working class bodies as consumable parts which are replaced when they inevitably crack under the pressure. Yes if you get a good education and get a desk job you can work from home. That's obvious. What is less obvious is who, on average, has the means and access to get to that position.
Hey, I am German. Assembly line worker generally earn similar to university graduates.
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.
Amazon routinely involves themselves in social/political systems to exploit the circumstances to their benefit. See: their involvement in Seattle politics vs Kshama Sawant; the recent bidding war between cities for Amazon's HQ2 and all the tax benefits that were laid at their feet; the routine union-busting efforts including literally forcing some workers to attend an online course about why unions are bad... the list goes on. Amazon, Google, Facebook, and the holy church all have immense influence in American politics through the lobbyists and frothing evangelical base.
So yes, this is about corporations, and specifically corporatists aiding and abetting the private takeover of public life as we know it.
The Catholic Church in Germany had it written into LAW that they can deny its employees to unionize or strike and they can discriminate them (e.g., fire them) for their personal and religious beliefs. Oh, and did I mention that thousands of cases of sexual abuse went unpunished because the German Catholic Church made sure that they would not be prosecuted?
So, give me a break with for-profit company morale - or put differently: what is YOUR baseline to compare these actions against?
I actually never used the term "for-profit" to describe the issues, for good reason. Money is useful only insofar as it helps you gain and maintain power -- it is power and the ability to influence reality to your benefit that is the fundamental quantity being optimized in this system. Framing the power grab as fundamentally about power (is obvious, and) makes it apparent that the Catholic church in your example wanted to maintain a public reputation positive enough to continue to earn donations and devoted followers, which is why they made sure to avoid prosecution since that's usually a huge hit to one's public reputation. So your comment about "The Catholic Church in Germany had it written into LAW" aligns with my point perfectly because again they are wielding influence to improve their circumstances, independent of considerations of the consequences for others.
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.
(And for context: the Catholic Church is the biggest employer in Germany - I am not talking about priests and nuns, but all the organisations and companies they run here)
> it’s not the “working classes” like Marx liked to predict but social/political systems
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.
Like you can actually vote? Like there are more than two parties with the same take on social security? So you are telling me that the system in the US is like how the majority of people want it or that people have no say in the system?
The US did have many candidates with different takes on social security, just that people didn't vote for them. One of those candidates even raised more money than the winner. Now you can say people are brain washed. But people didn't vote for alternative takes on social security in US, or else they could have voted otherwise.
Because, counterfactually, no Jeff Bezos means no Amazon means no abuse of Amazon employees. So, to some extent, Bezos and Amazon are responsible, even if they aren't wholly responsible.
As I mentioned in another comment: I think you get cause and effect wrong - and that is imho a big issue and makes the entire discussion really annoying.
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.
Careful with your "you guys". I'm a leftist, and I advocate for health care as a human right.
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.
Why don’t you have free health care, free education and that stuff? Are you honestly citing a 100 year old riot as a proof the American people want it? Obviously they 1) don’t or 2) want it but can’t have it.
I mean, at least we have established that it’s not Amazon but “the system and everybody else” is the problem.
oh I'm certainly not saying that the system in the US is good by any means, what I'm saying is that it currently is the way I describe it.
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.
> I don't get to vote on whether or not a major employer offers better pay for physical labor.
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.
I am a bit shocked that all those people downvoting me apparently do not understand a simple fact: democracies give the power to decide over the distribution of wealth and the justification for “taking a fair share” to the majority; that’s how votes work; democracies justify taking 80% of tax from 20% of population by popular opinion that “high incomes should pay greater shares because it is fair”; so how exactly does your exploitation Marx stuff work at scale - unless your system is corrupted and non-democratic; but why do you blame THAT on a single company?
I agree with your assessment of the nature and consequences of a well-functioning democracy. I think it self evident that ours (USA) is not working especially well, particular with regard to resisting corruption. On the other hand, I'm not sure anyone has blamed this on a single company?
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.
No. The commentors purposefully reverse the causal relationship present here. The short comings in the political and social system CAUSE the stuff that you feel so strongly about. Amazon has been around for 25 years. They may have benefitted from the destruction of any social safety net - but they are not the reason for the current situation. In fact, they are paying above minimal wage, in fact they were offering paid leaves before other companies did.
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?
