Nearly 20 years later, and under a tighter labor market, amazon has raised the minimum for pickers to $15 an hour. It's great that this guy likes his job, but I have no doubt that amazon has been a suppressive force on waged labor.
As far as I can tell, there hasn't been much impact on wages in either direction in that particular local labor market. Without strong unions, the labor market keeps warehouse wages at "just high enough that you can have a slightly better life than what you could get working in the service industry". There's always excess supply because warehouse work -- although physically demanding -- is relatively accessible.
There's more, though. And I write all this as a pro-social, anti-libertarian leftist:
The obsession with trying to "help" the workers in these jobs—and in industries like Uber—mirrors a lot of the arguments you'll see in the pro-life vs pro-choice debate. People are fond of pointing out that conservatives care disproportionately about unborn fetuses when measured against how willing conservatives are to let infants be thrown to the wolves after birth. I see the public outcry that something has to be done about these companies (so as to help their workers, but comparatively little care for what's in store for those workers after the movement's immediate goals are met) as the left's own paradox (to call it by a charitable term; "hypocrisy" if you're less worried about hurting anyone's feelings).
Shouldn't be surprising. Most "opinion" is accounted for as a bunch of dumb trends and fashion and idpol talking points more than it is arrived at by thoughtful consideration.
HN is a community. Users needn't use their real name, but do need some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...