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Comment by david_w | Hacker News Reader

I know what you mean and in ordinary times there's a lot to say for this kind of attitude. But just the raw force of supply and demand applied to this situation is amoral and ultimately feeds the anti-capitalist rhetoric. That's bad since capitalism lifts people out of poverty like nothing else.

There's lots of truly terrible things that could be allowed to happen "naturally" if we just let anyone work under any conditions for any wages. Then we're China or some really terrible place. But one of the main values of the West is exactly we're NOT China and we don't do ruthless things to people and we don't suffer those things to be done by others.

In the end, and make no mistake about it, that's the general neighborhood we're playing in for the moment, a civilization is more than the price of its aluminum or labor or even its stocks. Now is the time when we enact our deepest values.

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I'm not sure where I expressed any attitude or opinion in my comment, positive or negative (other than perhaps the "not going to end well for those people" - although I think my opinion that "not end well" is a good description of their likely summary dismissal that would meet broad consensus). Them's just the breaks.

It seems you may be advocating for government intervention to prevent these people from being fired and replaced during their strike. Is that what your comment means? Or do you simply expect the employers to meet their demands, and not replace them? I don't think that's very likely, considering the already extremely-high turnover in these unskilled, low-wage positions.

Number 2 - I expect Amazon to meet some of their demands depending on what exactly those demands are and how long the adjustments are demanded to be in effect. I don't expect Amazon to accept this as a union's chance to get its big camel nose under its tent and I hope they don't.

I don't expect the government to intervene because that's not their expertise.

In short I expect Bezeos to apply the same level of creativity and innovation to his employee's and fellow American's well-being and safety during this crisis as he's applied to the task of creating the greatest buyer/seller/supply chain marketplace the world has ever seen. I expect that and so does everyone else, even if not in those words.

Nothing could be clearer than there's a universal and urgent need to identify and then do the decent thing during this emergency.

Everything I've read suggests that there are many, many people eagerly competing to get access to work for Instacart. I imagine the situation is, or will be very soon, much the same at Amazon.

What incentive do they have to meet these demands, versus just replacing the staff that doesn't like working under those conditions?

Supposing a total lack of basic human good will towards their fellow human- which I don't assume they do not have- they are dependent on the good will of the public which is not absolutely bottomless. Serious answer, not snark.

> Supposing a total lack of basic human good will towards their fellow human

I don't think that replacing someone who is unhappy with their job with someone who is eager to have it is a lack of basic human goodwill, unless you are the only employer in the world, which Amazon is not.

I agree normally. 100%. At the risk of double posting from a thread above, what about Amazon's hazard of customer defection / new regulatory burden if people taking, and quitting these jobs, both, start dropping or spreading it? What if public perception becomes: "Amazon could have done a lot to prevent this tragedy, but didn't".

A cynical person might even float the idea that Amazon WANTS that to happen so that there IS a regulatory burden because it can bear it and its would-be competitors / start-ups can't.

But that's too dark even for me... for now.

So back to original question- what about the risk of future, widespread #AmazonHate ?

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