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Comment by bbddg | Hacker News Reader

Do you believe there should be minimum standards for working conditions?

That's a specious question - there are minimum standards for wrking conditions. What people upset at Amazon really want is to change those standards, which is a completely fair standpoint. Let's not muddy the waters by papering over 100 years of accomplishemnts of US labor...

I was just questioning the ideology of the person I replied to, not making a statement on the current situation. I'm trying to get people to see that the current situation is the result of organized labor, not some natural condition we happen to find ourselves in.

To the degree that workers are not your slaves or property, yes. They should be free to decide who to work for, and employers cannot treat people as their property. But as long as there's informed consent, most things are pretty fair.

So you are against things like paid time off, 40-hour work week, weekends off, workplace safety/health standards, ect.?

all things that exist without the government and which vary wildly amongst professions. i work far more than 40 hours and don't take most weekends - as I am entitled to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Labor_Standards_Act_of_19...

Can I say "yes" without being down-voted? I'd like the government not to limit free association of moral agents. Two people should be free to work together under whatever arrangement they voluntarily enter into.

All our current system of labour and union law has accomplished is the offshoring of suffering. We've not gotten rid of the existence of, nor our reliance on abhorrent working conditions. We've just moved them elsewhere, in the process wasting tremendous amounts of energy (not to mention the associated destruction of the environment) shipping things to and from more lenient jurisdictions.

I propose that if the working conditions we rely on were present under our noses, we would do more to try to actually mediate our dependence their production.

See: the Inclosure Act.

I understand that viewpoint,and even agree with it mostly on a person to person level, but if the government didn't have these laws why would it be any better. When people tried to negotiate with companies without the states involvement, the companies used violence to try and get their way.

Corporations aren't moral agents and can't be treated as such

  the companies used violence to try and get their way

And that's exactly where we need the state, in order to protect us from violence. I'd just like there to be limits on the scope of its authority. Corporations are just groups of people.

Corporations may be groups of people but they don't get treated like people. There's no corporate death penalty for companies that end up killing people. There's no corporate jail to remove companies that can't behave out of society for a set amount of time. There's fines that seem to never be greater than the profit the companies earn from breaking the law and it just becomes a cost of business.

If they're going to be treated like people then go all the way, but until then they need to be regulated to prevent the worst of their excesses that have been played out again and again

  Corporations may be groups of people but they don't get treated like people

They don't have to be. All we have to do is hold individuals accountable for their actions. If a person in a corporation orders violent suppression of a labour dispute, then they are personally accountable. A corporation is a legal fiction. It can't be held accountable because it doesn't do anything, the people who run it do.

As I replied to the parent, the laundry list of items is a little odd, since, in the US at least, the only thing there that's protected by law are the workplace health and safety standards.

And... I guess I must not be as optimistic as you are. If we didn't have things like OSHA, I do not expect that most workplaces would act in the best interests of their workers' health and safety. Look at countries where there aren't OSHA-like laws and see how well they do there. (Hint: not well.)

Minimum wage is certainly protected by law.

  Look at countries where there aren't OSHA-like laws and see how well they do there

That's exactly my point though isn't it? We still rely on goods produced in those places, we just don't have any visibility into the conditions they are produced in. We've just offshored the suffering, not alleviated it.

I'm fully agreed with this. The question is then what are the ways we can improve the working/living conditions of people around the world. The way workers around the world have fought for better conditions is by using their ability to withhold labor and collectively bargain with the capitalist class.

And they should continue to do that. In fact this works quite well without government interference (labour/union law) or even in spite of it (See the Indian independence movement). I'm suggesting we need the government to protect us from violence when negotiations go awry, not to interfere in said negotiations between free private entities.

In the US, at least, paid time off, a 40-hour work week, and weekends off are not specified by any kind of law.

I'm definitely a fan of workplace health and safety standards, though. Countries without those tend to cut corners to their workers' detriment.

Not against them. I'm against them being required by law. (Some safety standards should definitely be part of the law). But if the law limits hours then it hurts some people more--if they didn't have to pay overtime, you might be able to work twice as many hours. For many programmers, working 1.5x as many hours might be worth 1.5x the salary. But if the company is required to pay for overtime by law, it may be more economical to just hire new workers. In that case, the guy who wants to work overtime is at a disadvantage. This is similar to what happens in part time jobs where people want to work more hours but it's cheaper for the company to hire someone else. The long-term effect is that people have to work 3 part time jobs to get by rather than 1 full time job where there's more opportunity for growth/raises.

With health and safety standards, there's always going to be some really shitty jobs. For example, in terms of health and safety mining coal is pretty undesirable. But if nobody is doing the job, the demand still stays there and the position is available for much higher pay. If you could earn $500k a year doing a job that's destructive to your body it can still be very much worth it. Of course, most of these workers either have few choices for work or are not totally aware of all the health issues associated with their jobs. This is obviously of concern, but I don't think banning the job outright is the right way to go.

Informed consent to piss in bottles to meet impossible quotas, or die from starvation. Good choice.

If their next best option to working at an Amazon warehouse is starvation, then it's a pretty good thing for them that Amazon has a warehouse there. That said, I strongly suspect they have better "next best" options.

An Amazon warehouse being there is the reason they don't have many other options.

Funnily enough, we have enough food and shelter in the U.K. that this shouldn’t need to be a choice people have to make - the issue is one of inefficient resource allocation. Instead of noticing this and solving the problem, our Government have decided that if you desire any sense of dignity, you deserve to die.

Have some fucking empathy.

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