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Comment by quotemstr | Hacker News Reader

We're in the middle of a situation in which delivery is the only reasonable option for many people to get goods and the people staffing the delivery infrastructure go on strike and demand extraordinary pay? Shame on the strikers for exploiting a catastrophe. There are millions of people out of work right now. Fire and replace all the strikers.

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I find it amazing that humans have the capacity to have empathy for one class, people who might die from an illness, yet have zero empathy for another, people who are currently working in a now high-risk job who are demanding fair pay. The cognitive dissonance is astounding.

Who decides what pay is fair?

> Who decides what pay is fair?

>>> ...demand extraordinary pay? Shame on the strikers for exploiting a catastrophe...

I mean, apparently you felt qualified...

> I mean, apparently you felt qualified...

My benchmark is the market. That people are working for whatever Amazon is paying is evidence that their wages are adequate. What's your line of reasoning? Is Amazon somehow enslaving these people?

I dont understand how this is also not purely the market as well. Are they not simply just removing their labor voluntarily? Their coordination is no different than the coordination of any large corporation that involves thousands of independent minds.

> My benchmark is the market. That people are working for whatever Amazon is paying is evidence that their wages are adequate.

That's begging the question and totally separate from your OP strikers are "exploiting a catastrophe" argument.

It's evidence that this is their current best opportunity. 1.5 million American families live on less than $2 / person / day

> It's evidence that this is their current best opportunity.

So? That's how markets work. It's why you're paid whatever you get instead of making $10 billion per year. We each earn our marginal product. There is no rational basis for arbitrarily selecting certain market outcomes and calling them "unfair". A fair wage is whatever the market establishes.

If people were paid their marginal product, no company would make money. If you pay someone the amount of money they bring to the company, the company would make zero additional dollars by employing them. We are paid based off how hard it is to replace ourselves, not the value we bring. Say x is marginal product, y is the salary someone is paid, and z is the salary to minimize replacement. Every efficient job is x>=y>=z. Fairness is when Y is as close to X as possible. It is fair to get paid as closely to the value you bring as possible, but the market often creates y that are closer to z.

Yes. The marginal product thing is an asymptote in the steady state, so it's not quite true in the real world, as you point out.

That rational basis you're looking is called morals. We owe things to each other, although you seem inclined to believe otherwise, and are pushing what is obviously a callous and simplistic version of our society.

I will not continue to argue with you though as this argument is not worth considering any longer.

Normally I would agree. Shift the employment to people currently making zero. Unemployment is very generous right now the current delivery workers will be just fine.

However, the optics of a mass layoff and replacement would be very damaging to Instacart. Probably not worth it for them, since other than the cost of PPE the rest of the cost is shifted onto the customer not Instacart.

I predict they will give into demands, but because of the extraordinary circumstances it will not be a landmark case.

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