Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon
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I'm not surprised that treating humans like cattle on their way to slaughter is hugely profitable. But I'm not sure we want to operate large companies like WW2 prisoner camps. Even if you truly don't care about the poor souls who have to work there, the people who turn insane from this treatment will still live in your country and maybe their kids will meet your kids in school and "educate" them on the cruelty of life.
It's best not to push anyone down the mental abyss in the first place. And yet, here we (software developers) are, developing new monitoring and automation systems and deciding to delete someone's entire online life (Google account) without any oversight (AI) in the name of "efficiency" (higher profits for shareholders that we never met and never will).
Why do people treat working for a company as something different from selling any other services or goods? If there was a law that limited your ability to cancel a gym membership or going to a different supermarket, you would rightfully object — it's not a government's business to get involved in your voluntary business transactions. Why treat a company that hires workers differently?
The labor market in the US is highly liquid, even for unskilled workers. This described power imbalance simply does not exist.
Yes it does. See Amazon preventing workers from unionising.
In my country, there are laws to protect both sides. Unless an agreement is negotiated, the employee cannot leave without giving a ~2 months notice, the employer cannot fire/layoff withing giving a ~2 months notice.
In many cases, though, there is a strong power imbalance. If, for some reason, you decide to sue your (former) employer, or if your (former) employer decides to sue you, you most likely cannot afford the same budget for lawyering up as they can. Also, your main power against your employer (besides possibly unions) is, as you mention, the ability to change job, but that only works when changing job is possible. Both for highly skilled positions and unskilled positions, getting a new job is hard and may require you to move to a new place - something that you may not be able to do if you have children or a working spouse.
As anecdotal examples, I know former C*Os of influential companies who have been working make up jobs for several years because they cannot find anything matching their skills, even at much reduced salaries. I know burnt out teachers who do not leave their jobs because nothing matches their skills. I have several friends in IT, or in admin positions, or with lawyer degrees who just cannot find anything or could not find anything for years because they happen to live in the wrong place and cannot leave because that would cost their spouse a job or they would abandon elders, etc.
Having myself changed (HN-style) jobs a few times, I can confirm that it's long and certainly not easy, in particular when you also need, at the same time, to care for a young child, or a sick family member, or when you're burnt out, or depressed by a personal crisis, or by the rejections you encounter from potential employers, or by the institutional bullying on unemployed people. I imagine it's even harder as you get older - I'm not looking forward to be labelled too-old-for-HN-style-jobs.
All of that is in a G7 country whose unemployment rate is decreasing. Testimonies from friends in neighbouring countries make me feel that it's even worse in many places. Testimonies from friends in the US make me feel it's not as rosy as you describe, at least not in all fields/regions.
So... yeah, I believe that there is a power imbalance. You may be in a field and/or location in which you do not witness it, and if this is your case, I'm happy for you. But for many people, it exists.
> the employer cannot fire/layoff withing giving a ~2 months notice.
Leads to this:
> Both for highly skilled positions and unskilled positions, getting a new job is hard
In particular
> Testimonies from friends in the US make me feel it's not as rosy as you describe, at least not in all fields/regions.
You're shifting the power balance in an artificial way that doesn't fully change it. You're only shifting it in one particular market; this power balance still exists in other countries. Which creates a potential for arbitrage: instead of hiring people in a country which enacts those measures, hire them elsewhere.
You're also not exactly making the employee "more powerful"; you're actually limiting his freedom on the market. You're making his services more expensive to a buyer, and he can do nothing about it. He might have wanted to offer his services at a discount to get an edge above competitors who have more experience, for example; now he's unable to.
Do you really think that limiting someone's freedom is empowering?
That's how you get 2x salaries for engineers in US as compared to Europe, which leads to many brilliant engineers leaving Europe for US (or working remotely), which, with higher commitment requirement, contributes to the difference in startup scene between Europe and US. Of course, engineers are not the type of workers whom do you think about in such a conversation, but this happens in many other industries as well.
Employees generally have 1 job (at a time) and 1 career.
It's really hard for an employee to screw over a company for good and trivial for companies to completely destroy an employee's career and life.
The asymmetry needs to be counterbalanced actively, especially since companies can have people on their payroll 24/7 to fight for more company rights. Employees can't afford that.
It's important to note that the company gets help from the state shouldn't they be able to pay their workers. So it's not only enforced on the employers but backed by the state
Remember that for you as - I am assuming - an IT professional getting a new job is easy, for lots of professions not so much.
Germany is known that once you are in an active work relationship its difficult to get fired.
So yes, there is a difference as it is generally frowned upon these days to call people a resource which implies an interchangeable unit of work force.
Next, I think you are contributing, because companies really, truly operate as if people were flesh robots and your perspective, rather than being trolling, is actually dominant in corporations.
Thirdly, that you could potentially have accepted the narrative that we are fleshbots, ready for exploitation, no different than any other raw material and not needing any more care or consideration than cattle or cotton says something deeply disturbing things about the state of humanism.
It's a shame that HN makes no difference between "what you're writing has no place here" and "I disagree with you" I remember discussing with people who were experimenting with this kind of mechanism for comments on newspaper websites, but I believe that this hasn't had much success.
Your question has as much relevance to the question at hand as mine.
So is the implication here that humans are less faulty, or that there's something intrinsically wrong about an AI making this decision rather than a human?
If the former, then this is an issue that the technology will probably eventually solve. If the latter, well... that doesn't seem very justifiable, to say the least.
If Amazon has leaned too far in the direction of automation without oversight, then we'll see other firms fail to adopt these same practices. But it seems pretty inevitable to me that we'll see many more AI-driven hiring/firing decisions in 10 years or so than fewer. And if some sclerotic regulations try to slow this down, that will likely be unfortunate for consumers.
There is no nuance, no leeway, and no way for you to reason your case with a thinking human on the other side of the decision. The algorithms & systems are also almost always completely opaque in their workings, with neither the person on the receiving end nor the company's staff having any insight into why they made decisions or what data was used.
Using algorithms for life-affecting decisions like this would not be nearly as bad if you had a reasonable ability to appeal and have the decision be taken as final.
It doesn't even have to be AI, or an algorithm. The British Post Office Horizon scandal is an example of lives ruined by an assumption that accounting software could never be wrong.
I think that falls under OC's argument and it seems eventually solvable. Still, what you are pointing is a human bias. Humans have been taking similar unfair decisions without possibility for recourse or review since forever, so it would be interesting to have a review mechanism in general.
Not solvable by purely technical means and the idea that the AI or algorithms will just keep getting better, which is what the OP seemed to be saying.
> Still, what you are pointing is a human bias. Humans have been taking similar unfair decisions without possibility for recourse or review since forever, so it would be interesting to have a review mechanism in general.
Sure. Having systems be human-driven doesn't inherently make them better. But over time the recognition of human fallibility has led legislators to enforce the creation of systems of review and recourse in many cases.
AI is just humans hiding behind a machine. And everything else being the same, those who have to hide their reasons or themselves are always intrinsically weaker and worth less than those who don't. That needs no explanation for people who own their shit, and no explanation will suffice for those who do.
> that will likely be unfortunate for consumers.
Consumers aren't just consumers. They have jobs, they have friends and family who have jobs.
Just because people work on AI algorithms doesn't mean that this is true.
Many people in the world have noticed the difficulty in getting people to change their minds once made up.
>And if some sclerotic regulations try to slow this down, that will likely be unfortunate for consumers.
Maybe not the consumers that have jobs though.
Seems here with amazon we are quick to suggest humans are the best way but in nearly all other inclusion/diversity posts we are fighting against the humans being faulty.
Interesting problem for sure
This assumes that bias and unfair reasons aren't codified or part of the training set, which we've seen previously, simply isn't true.
There's an example of a company using AI to do a first pass on CVs for recruiting throw away female CVs. Another example of a company using AI to identify people in photos identify certain skin tones as being animals instead.
AI isn't a magic bullet, simply because it's still coded by humans who make mistakes, conscious or otherwise.
Or to put it another way, garbage in, garbage out.
I actually feel quite comfortable with the idea of AI making the hiring decisions, it seems like it would be as good as a human. But make no mistake, firing people is a miserable thing to do for both sides of the conversation. If managers can palm the responsibility off as "well, gee, the AI told me to so ... y'know, my hands are tied" then they will. Even if the AI algorithm is as blatant as "print out the name the manager entered in to the system".
There is some reasonableness to the argument that when an important decision is made that some human must be empowered as the decision maker. If nobody is responsible, suspicious things can happen.
By "leaned too far" I feel like you mean they relied on it in a way that made them less profitable than if they had not, in which case I agree. But I think most of us are worried that they leaned too far in a way that ruins peoples lives unfairly, we are more worried about that than Amazons bottom line. As a consumer I'm totally fine with paying 10% more for my coffee machine or whatever if ending such practices prevents even a single person from having their life upended.
What utter nonsense. What will happen in reality: business "thought leaders" of all types will say "Amazon does it, Amazon is successful, therefore we should do it" regardless of whether it's actually a good idea. And they'll be praised by their peers for doing so.
Just like Jack Welch's leadership philosophy (and stack ranking) in the 2000s and Google style interviews for every low-level tech job in the 2010s.
> WW2 prisoner camps
For starters, those camps would shoot anyone who tried to leave. Not the same thing at all.
There are good reasons why judicial systems have higher instances in them to which you can appeal to if you don't agree with lower instance.
Programmed, or even worse trained, which means there’s no general intelligence around that really understands why it does what it does.
Another programmer has 4 kids, lives pay check to paycheck, and has a wife with a medical condition...
The dept has to be downsized by 1 programmer, both programmers have the same income, the single programmer is slightly more productive..
Should the single programmer should be fired over the other because of there personal life situation?
If these same people got what they wanted, then realised it didn’t turn out the way they envisioned, and had worse outcomes, then used the new information to change their minds, then I don’t see what the problem is.
There is no objective answer to "How productive is this employee", it's not something you can measure empirically.
While I think you can measure 'how productive is this employee' according to some metrics, the problem is in the metrics. Someone who is mediocre at his job in the quantified sense can be a huge boon to the company due to soft skills or knowledge.
Someone not living for their job could be important to an entire community.
It is a philosophical problem, in addition to finding any kind of metric that actually kinda works.
I don't know about most people but objectivity can fly out the window when it comes to my essential needs. I want another group of humans involved who have similar needs and may consider things an objective metric likely won't.
Some mixture of a utilitarian performance metric balanced with some empathy, morale, and ethical reasoning seems like a better blend to me. Either extreme leads to undesired outcomes in my opinion.
With pure human involvement you can have extremely biased no justifiable firings based on emotion, hatred, racism, sexism, ageism, whatever and in those cases, a metric is your friend. It can potentially show that undesired bias for what it is to others.
On the other hand, that bias may be a good bias. Perhaps your manager is a reasonable human being, they know data the algorithm doesn't like how many additional hours you put in unclocked or that you helped your coworker through a rough problem a few months back, perhaps that you saved the company at a critical junction. They also know your performance recently dropped because there's a pandemic and subequent emotional distress might be effecting you. Perhaps they also notice your performance dropped just like the metric identified, but they know the cause of this is because you just became a parent and have had to divert focus and time towards your family. Your manager has the ability here to step in and override the metric because they know better, have empathy, and understand the world isn't about constantly working at maximal efficiency. This is, to me, a desirable bias.
If we keep chasing and supporting utilitarianism pushed by corporations full-steam, we're going to create quite the hellscape that no one wants to live in.
Even a judge has limits on comprehensiveness and objectivity. No human judge has perfect knowledge of every law in the United States. When making law, judges choose to uphold stare decisis in most cases but overturn decisions in others because of a certain gravitation towards certain interpretations that largely remain unarticulated. The latter is not done out of some "special" knowledge unobtainable by AI, but by the very subjectivity an AI is meant to rule out in its own considerations.
In contrast, an AI judge could provide an exact numerical weighting and ranking to the sources it cited or present the conditions under which there would be contradictions between one law and another if one were to rule in a certain way. AI doesn't have to be a black box. If done right, it can be most transparent and revealing legal tool to have ever been created.
Cute line, but obviously people have always wanted criteria to be objective and fair.
If the rule was "take the ordinal value of each letter in employee's name, sum mod 365, and if the result matches the day of the year, they're fired!" -- that's completely objective, and also bonkers. Nobody ever thought all objective formulas were good, and it's sophistry to suggest otherwise.
You do understand that the is a logical impossibility, as "fairness" is a subjective standard...
What is "fair" to me, likely will not be what you believe is "fair" thus something can not be objective and "fair"
> "take the ordinal value of each letter in employee's name, sum mod 365, and if the result matches the day of the year, they're fired!"
My Objection to this standard would not be "it is unfair" but rather it makes no logical sense to have employment choices made by that system and would likely cause many objectively valuable employees to be separated from the company.
Objective rules need to make sense in the context for which they are apply, "fairness" would not come into play here
It is an exaggeration, but with the health & social care systems that the US has it isn't a million miles away either.
As programmers we really should know better than blindly trusting software.
It's the same as when project managers track how many commits per week each employee makes and use that as a metric for how much work they're doing - an exceptionally dumb example but it literally happens at a lot of companies. And for an algorithm such as this, I doubt they have much better/more useful data to feed it.
Humans have their own set of issues as well though, as you've mentioned. I feel that the problem stems from the way companies are organized with a single entity having full control over resources and decision making, as opposed to responsibility, resources, and power being divided among the people doing the work, in a self-organized and likely democratic way.
FWIW I think your comment would've been more powerful without the Godwin.
After 2 years she succeeded.
I admittedly didn't care because I got a higher paying job in a better field, but I'll take AI over office politics.
Not very different from "not financially viable", "your health insurance have expired", "your credit score does not meet the requirements".
The decision of implementing such rules and methods and use such phrasing is entirely done by humans.
Article 1 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights states "Human dignity is inviolable. It must be respected and protected." I feel like that would be broken were we to allow this behaviour towards workers.
Don't kid yourself thinking that the EU is a special place that is somewhat exempt of any of this.
The larger point of EU workers having more rights is, on average, very true. The US (and China and Russia) treats their workers very poorly by comparison.
There are limits though.
You have a 3 months period where you can stay in another UE country then the national authorities can ask for your leaving. There are statuses that allows you to stay longer (work, studies, retirement, etc.) but those statuses have requirements and obligations. You can't take your tent, set it up somewhere in another country and declare you live there without some fiscal authorities coming for you at some point.
If I understand correctly you are free to move from and to any states (notwithstanding court orders) in the US .
I'm not so much saying you're wrong as afraid you're right, do you have sources ?
> People who are employed in another EU country are entitled to live there. Jobseekers are also allowed to stay in another country while they are looking for a job. (See the right to look for a job)
> The host country may require them, as "EU migrant workers", to register with the authorities as residents. (See Directive 2004/38/EC)
> Other legal and administrative formalities depend on the length of stay – up to 3 months, more than 3 months, or permanent.
https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/residence/residence-ri...
> Still looking for a job after 6 months
> […]
> Can you be deported or asked to leave?
> Your host country can ask you to leave if you can't prove that you have a realistic chance of finding work there.
> In exceptional cases, your host country can deport you on grounds of public policy, public security, or public health - but only if it can prove you pose a serious threat.
> The deportation decision or request to leave must be given to you in writing. It must state all the reasons for your deportation and specify how you can appeal and by when.
https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/residence/residence-ri...
This is part of the FAQ/information forms when asking for information about moving in a EU country for EU citizens.
As an EU citizen, you have the right to move to any EU country for a period of up to 3 months as long as you have a valid identity card or passport. If you want to settle in another EU country but you have no intention to take up any work or education there, you need to prove that you:
have sufficient resources for you and your family during the time you want to stay in your new country
have comprehensive health insurance
During the first 3 months of your stay in your new country, as an EU citizen, you cannot be required to apply for a residence document confirming your right to live there - although in some countries you may have to report your presence upon arrival.
After 3 months in your new country, you may be required to register your residence with the relevant authority (often the town hall or local police station), and to be issued with a registration certificate.
You will need a valid identity card or passport and:
proof of comprehensive health insurance
proof you can support yourself without needing social assistance benefits: resources may come from any source, including from a third person.
You may live in the other EU country as long as you continue to meet the conditions for residence. If you no longer do so, the national authorities may require you to leave.
I couldn’t register in Finland as an EU citizen (when I was one) without an employment contract or proof of self sufficiency. You have three months from arriving to register. It's true that if you don’t you're unlikely to be actively tracked down - but good luck trying to achieve anything here without that registration.
[1] I.e. with a government body responsible for enforcing immigration. It is likely that you would be asked to register to be on the electoral register at the house you are living in. This is not really the equivalent, I am talking about going to the Immigration authority of the country with your passport and papers.
Yes, in addition to alibarber reporting their experiences in Finland, the same is true for EU citizens in Denmark: https://www.nyidanmark.dk/en-GB/You-want-to-apply/Residence-...
Where you see that you can stay in Denmark provided you're a worker at a Danish company, a student, a self-employed person, have sufficient funds or are from another Nordic country.
So this is very much up to the EU country and Denmark really doesn't want to have people moving there (and the rules for non-EU citizens are even more restrictive).
So in general the EU freedom of movement is "freedom of movement of workers", not just anyone.
Exactly. For Americans (and other) readers there are four freedoms in the single EU market: free movement of goods, capital, services, and workers, known collectively as the "four freedoms".
People and workers may/are often used interchangeably but in laws it is about worker's freedom to move between borders, not people.
I think it's an interesting difference with the united states which is older than the EU but younger than Europe. It also highlights that in law, in modern Europe, capital goods, services and workers have rights to cross borders while the US American citizens are free to cross state borders.
Strangely those laws are all about workers and the market but nevertheless and contrary to the US most EU countries still have a much better social security net (for people) than "neoliberalcapitalisticmoneyhungryonly" US which has freedom at its core.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Single_Market#People
> Since its foundation, the Treaties sought to enable people to pursue their life goals in any country through free movement.[122] Reflecting the economic nature of the project, the European Community originally focused upon free movement of workers: as a "factor of production".[123] However, from the 1970s, this focus shifted towards developing a more "social" Europe.[124] Free movement was increasingly based on "citizenship", so that people had rights to empower them to become economically and socially active, rather than economic activity being a precondition for rights. This means the basic "worker" rights in TFEU article 45 function as a specific expression of the general rights of citizens in TFEU articles 18 to 21. According to the Court of Justice, a "worker" is anybody who is economically active, which includes everyone in an employment relationship, "under the direction of another person" for "remuneration".[125] A job, however, need not be paid in money for someone to be protected as a worker. For example, in Steymann v Staatssecretaris van Justitie, a German man claimed the right to residence in the Netherlands, while he volunteered plumbing and household duties in the Bhagwan community, which provided for everyone's material needs irrespective of their contributions.[126] The Court of Justice held that Mr Steymann was entitled to stay, so long as there was at least an "indirect quid pro quo" for the work he did. Having "worker" status means protection against all forms of discrimination by governments, and employers, in access to employment, tax, and social security rights. By contrast a citizen, who is "any person having the nationality of a Member State" (TFEU article 20(1)), has rights to seek work, vote in local and European elections, but more restricted rights to claim social security.[127] In practice, free movement has become politically contentious as nationalist political parties appear to have utilised concerns about immigrants taking jobs and benefits.
There's probably not a great incentive chasing down and expelling other EU nationals unless they are actually causing trouble or breaking other laws.
Obviously you would have to pay taxes. Or I miss the point about fiscal authorities finding you.
The only 'requirement' is that the government (may) want to see you can provide for yourself in the form of capital, a job, a retirement pension, etc. This is because most countries in the EU have a social safety net, and some have a very strong one. Without this rule the countries with the most generous social security would see mass immigration from rent seekers with no recourse.
The USA doesn't need this rule because it lacks the strong social security.
Whilst it's great to make generic EU vs. US statements the EU(/EEA) is still ~30 different sovereign nations with their own citizenships.
Maybe on paper. I wonder how much this is used.
The only time I remember this being used in practice, is when Sarkozy ordered the deportation of ~100 Romanian Romanies back to Romania, as part of his attempt to siphon far right votes.[1]
Apart from these few political stunts, I doubt this is often used.
[1] https://www.swissinfo.ch/fre/toute-l-actu-en-bref/la-france-...
I think as general rule of thumb for all intents and purposes it becomes a problem when you don't have money (or do criminal stuff).
> You may live in the other EU country as long as you continue to meet the conditions for residence. If you no longer do so, the national authorities may require you to leave.
> In exceptional cases, your host country can deport you on grounds of public policy or public security - but only if it can prove you represent a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat affecting one of the fundamental interests of society.
> The deportation decision or the request to leave must be given to you in writing. It must state all the reasons for your deportation and specify how you can appeal and by when.
Can you do that within any one single country? In Germany I have to register within 4 weeks of moving anywhere, it has to be a place that is registered as residential zone and you need an owner-ship or rental agreement certificate (even when living with your parents). Nothing of that is about your citizenship, so what does it have to do with another country?
I don't think so, this would be surprising.
> Nothing of that is about your citizenship, so what does it have to do with another country?
I am sorry I don't understand this point.
> In Germany I have to register within 4 weeks of moving anywhere, it has to be a place that is registered as residential zone and you need an owner-ship or rental agreement certificate (even when living with your parents).
For the record, in Belgium, when moving to a different administrative territory (for lack of a better word, think cities, small territories) you have to register to your new town hall and a police officer will check you actually moved in.
But if you are homeless and still have a social net the social worker can register a public place as your contact address so you keep your rights and their benefits.
And the US is a big country. You can work in CA which has unemployment insurance, cheap healthcare coverage, plenty of worker protections, etc.
It's not like Poland and Hungary are doing so without any kind of repercussions from EU.
Those in power who commit crimes will usually never spend a single day in prison, and when they exceptionally do they get built a special-purpose luxury cell which has nothing to do with prison. The rest of us get tortured and imprisoned because of fake police testimonies.
The situation is not as bad here in France as it is in Belarus/China/USA/Colombia, but it's certainly not as good as human rights declaration imply. If only human rights declarations were respected, then we would have a decent life and nobody would struggle for basic survival (food & housing). Unfortunately, we all know how it goes in the 5th richest nation in the world with 10% of the population living under the poverty line.
It is rather laughable looking at the lives of many citizens even in richer countries, though.
The grievance is that the US lacks many of those articles.
Principles of EU > Principles of US >>>> Principles of China.
First of which, if your rights are being infringed, then you have to wait for years and years to be able to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, only after all of your national appeals have been depleted. Which, when you know how national governments can destroy you trough legal proceedings (eg. Aaron Swartz, physical/psychological torture by police/prison, etc) is a HUGE problem.
The truth is there's no place for human dignity anywhere in the industrial capitalist civilization, because it's all about profits. Remember the Aquarius? European governments were competing in cruelty, refusing to welcome these refugees. At one point, a french-colonized island (Corsica) proposed to receive them... which the national government denied.
Or take a look at police abuse cases. How many people have to die or lose an eye before we acknowledge the police is a terrorist organization and needs to be treated as such? TRIGGER WARNING: this is just from the gilets jaunes protests, there's a lot more injuries/deaths due to "non-lethal weapons" -> http://lemurjaune.fr/
Lately, the French government has renewed its tradition to persecute anarchists (in the 19th century, anarchism became illegal and the ancestor of Interpol was founded to repress anarchism) and keeps on rounding up more people for "criminal organizations with a terrorist purpose" (association de malfaiteurs à caractère terroriste). This happened in anti-nuclear struggles in Bure as well as for spraypaint in Toulouse (though not with the terrorist label), in anti-GSM struggles in the plateau des Mille-Vaches, but also against activists who are not accused of anything beyond thought crimes (the 8th of december arrestees), one of which is being held in solitary confinement since early december as psychological torture in an attempt to break him down before trial.
No, human rights are never compatible with a Nation State. Because a Nation State is a construct based on violence and exploitation. In my humble opinion, we should burn all States and corporations if we want a tiny chance to live free. But since today is french national day, let's take a minute to remember that this day celebrates July 14th 1789 when armed peasants took the Bastille prison by force and liberating everyone, marking the start of the revolution. Kissing the arse of the french army's défilé is an insult to the french revolution. Admittedly, all of France is an insult to the french revolution and its ideals of freedom, equality and siblinghood. Nique la France! Feu aux prisons!
Let me strongly disagree here. Modern republics like France/USA were explicitly built against democratic ideals which were seen as dangerous "rule of the mob". Also, the executive branch has so much power that it is in fact a monarchic republic where the people at the top are entirely unaccountable both to the people and to the rest of the State apparatus (neither Sarkozy nor Bush spent a single day in prison despite their many well-known crimes against the people).
Finally, since they exist these "democratic republic" have strongly fought off any popular movement. These same republic were endorsing slavery and fought off slaves rebelling, just like they were endorsing women being properties of men and fought off women rebelling, etc... When you dare to protest established power structures, you're faced with an army of robocop psychopaths (recruited for their fascist tendencies) who are grinning about hurting people like us.
A proper democracy requires a few properties: no political parties or elections because every body gets to decide on EVERYTHING (delegating power to a parliament is the INVERSE of democracy), the lower scale can always override decisions from the top because higher-up structures are only there to coordinate not to impose, and people are not bound to a single nation-wide identity (a principle imposed by the nazis in France, which the proto-fascist government of De Gaulle was happy to retain), or to quote from 1981:
`If we look back at the history of the past 40 years, police has hunted in the name of Republican or National order freemasons, communists, jews, resistant fighters, collaborators, Indochine's independance partisans, Algeria's independance partisans, members of the OAS, leftists, terrorists. Just imagine: if that police had done their job right every time, what would be left today in France? Democracy mandates this irreducible minimum that one can forge fake identity papers.`
>The executive branch has so much power that it is in fact a monarchic republic
That is not true. The executive does not hold power for life, rule is not hereditary. Also, the executive branch is not a republic. What would that even mean? The executive branch is more like a dictatorship within government that is held accountable by congress, the judiciary, and the people. And the executive is ultimately held accountable by the people via the election of representatives.
To your point that democratic republics fight popular movements such as the protesting of slavery, every state has the capability to do bad. This is not surprising in the least. This is about as surprising as saying ‘humans are capable of doing bad’. The good news to my mind is that the democratic republic is the least bad option and has performed fairly well over time in response to changing social mores.
But man, compared to the US where I can give notice, take my left over vacation and start at a new company all in 2 weeks, it does a lot for worker mobility.
[Surprise or downwards] mobility is what people want to avoid in permanent employment.
Such contracts are meant to give people the peace of mind that they focus on life and work and not think constantly about searching for the next job.
If you want mobility and higher pay, contracting is very popular in the UK.
In the US you may be free in theory but if your job requires you to work 14 hours a day and you can't afford to quit, then, in practice, you are a slave. In many parts of Europe, you have laws that simply don't allow people to work 14 hours a day, and the remaining hours are under a minimum wage. So yes, it is a restriction on the individual, but in the end, employees have more freedom.
It is far from perfect, but in general most of the EU is less stressed than the US. But as you said, to each their own, to a minority of people, the US is the best. Many software devs are part of that minority.
Edit: That was meant as a response to the parent comment.
(Disclaimer: Only a philosophical thought)
Hurt or destroy those people/structures making our lives hell. That makes sense. Just don't drag random people into it.
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-turnover-wo...
Raising social safety nets would only lead to inflation, and so now you need to put a price ceiling on essential goods&services, which leads to a shortage, and now you're in a bigger mess than when you started. Inflation and shortages in the long term does not lead to growth, it leads too stagflation.
In this instance, where there is a failure in the labour market, you don't actually have to 'fix' it, you just have to give a fair labour market a chance.
Amazon will have run the numbers, they'll have an elastic pay scale to respond with if things go downhill.
This is in part, because of ideological reasons, but also because other online shops offer a better service than Amazon, and are also reasonably priced.
In particular, I dislike that it seems to me more and more products are sold by third party sellers. I don't mind paying a bit extra from a retailer with a good reputation in my own country. I don't want to have to deal with a seller who is based in the other side of the world.
Recently I made a large order of cycling gear from a specialist shop. I couldn't imagine buying it from Amazon, as I would be concerned some would be counterfeit, or only be available if it came from about 5 different sellers, all dispatching at different times.
I used to order a lot of stuff from Amazon, because it was very convenient.
Now it's a mess of 3rd party resellers, when I search an item I drown in indistinguishable copies of copies.
In the other hand, there is small online shops or companies who have their own shops and sell directly. These sites just look better and you buy a specific brand or product.
Stripe (and similar providers and other developments) made ordering from random Webshops as convenient to me than going to Amazon.
It's like going to Apple, Bose, Levi's store instead of Walmart.
Yeah, I agree that workers shouldn't be working so hard that they can't even go to the bathroom.
Would we have a better world if Amazon didn't exist? I personally doubt it. So, it's not Amazon per se, it is the system, isn't?
So, what are the solutions? How do we make it better? How do we minimize the suffering of these people? Or is it actually working pretty well and we should accept that some people will struggle badly no matter what the system is?
You could, for example, offer these workers better jobs. Can you?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative
Perhaps one can replace the legal contracts involved in this with algorithms to achieve the necessary scale.
No one is stopping anyone to create worker cooperatives.
It sounds perfect. But how would we achieve it? Rewrite laws that prohibits private property and free enterprise?
One idea could be to collectively pool money to give as rewards to anyone who improves society in a way that people think is worth rewarding. To prevent corruption this process should be transparent and democratic (preferably direct democracy).
Because it takes lots of work, risk, and sacrifice. If rewards are small (which, obviously, they would be in your scenario where people pool their money together to reward someone), then why take on such difficult task? I know I wouldn't be trying to do any business in your system. Many wouldn't.
The risk part is a problem, I agree. If the risk is larger than the potential reward, it isn't worth it. The risk should somehow be collectively handled as well.
I'd frame the problem as follows:
"Capitalism is a powerful tool, but fails as the sole guiding principles of a society's values. Christianity, a former enabler of pro-social norms on a massive scale, is dead.
Wat do."
"SCIENCE says we're all living in a simulation, and probability suggests it was created by a COMPUTER."
It seems impossible to me but I would love to be surprised.
Might I gently point out that the difficulty of the problem is all political. The easiest "solution" is of course to take all the wealth that exists in the world and fairly distribute it while keeping everyone working as effectively as they are now.
Now obviously that idea isn't anywhere near being a solution. Neither is your idea.
What you are suggesting I can't even understand because of how vague and impossible complex it is to even start to define what it would mean to fairly distribute all wealth the wealth in the world.
Amazon needs workers, workers need jobs. If you increase the number of jobs and decrease the number of unemployed, people can say "no" to shitty jobs. This is currently happening in parts of USA, due to people moving around, some illegals leaving and new standards, where shitty employers are forced to close down, because they cannot get workers, and competent workers moving "up". And getting workers is easy... just offer a better working enviroment for more money than their current workplace is offering, and you've got one.
I'm not sure about US laws, but here in slovenia, there are a bunch of bureaucratic requirements, things that need to be paid, taxes that have to be paid, even if you just started a business and literally earned zero money. Taxes, pension and health insurance are theoretically defined as percentages of earned money, but have hard minimum set in, so if you earn very little money the first few months, they can be higher than the money earned. Just to start a business, you have to register it's location, and if you live in an apartment building, you need permission from all your neighbours (even if you're a programmer, or even a construction worker (= don't work at home)), and one grumpy neighbour means you need to rent out a place. Permits for regulated businesses are also expensive.
There is also no "soft-start" for going to unemployment to a business owner... if you're unemployed, you get some money (social benefits). Want to start a business.. let's say translation (just need a laptop), you immediately lose all benefits, and have to pay ~400eur per month minimum for health and pension insurance, even if you earned zero money that month. Fail, and want to close the business? You might not even get unemployment/social benefits, because you didn't get fired but closed it yourself. Want to do a one-time job (eg. unemployed and someone wants to pay you to paint their house)... impossible to do here.
I've been watching louis rossman a lot, and he has more us-specifc complaints: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oDjSoic9Zk
Other would like, or even try. But Amazon management, an enormous American corporations, are determined to not allow to do so. Amazon warehouse workers are, generally, not a particularly wealthy or powerful segment of the society.
But I don't think mandatory unions are a solution. Unions would have to be very popular for such legislation to pass. But if they were so popular, they would no longer need compulsory membership.
In general it is unions and organized labor that push legislation meant to help workers, so starting with legislation instead is putting the cart before the horse.
One of the interesting solutions I have heard: Board-level representation of workers. Currently all board members represent shareholders, and unsurprisingly the company is willing to sacrifice workers to satisfy shareholders. Make it so a third, or half the board has to be elected by workers.
The company I work at recently had everyone install some advanced monitoring software on every company’s laptop. Being fully remote, this effectively gives root access to someone in my home 8 hours a day. Sure, it’s a “company laptop” and all of that, but something feels extremely invasive about it and I don’t like it one bit.
Of course when companies do it - through trade associations or lobbying - it's seen as natural and necessary for their survival.
Switzerland is next to Germany, and has almost no union and there is not so much difference in overall standard of living and how workers are treated.
The idea that Unions are this universal good and talking negative about them is simply being anti-worker pro-capitalist exploitation is a tiered talking point.
- business owner
- absolute free market fetishists
- one bad experience cherry pickers
Just because you don't hear of it - or don't want to hear of it - doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
What kind of reasoning is it to look for one or a few examples of individuals screwing up and then claiming it as a property of the species? I think we found more than one criminal company or CEO, but you would not use that as an example for how useless or even bad companies and CEOs are.
I would also have preferred that OP instead of pointing to the name of the source (and nothing else!) would at least have added something about the actual content of the linked article. It seems to me to be rarely justified to argue by just pointing at the source of the argument as if that is a counter argument to the actual argument that was made (which at that point remains unexplored and unknown, implying it's not even worth looking at it - but it was still worth formulating a comment?).
The only solution is to maintain and expand democratic decision making from within. An organization that claims to be about the people, its members, absolutely has to be run by those people directly.
* Governments are frequently corrupt and when they are they should be reformed.
* Businesses are frequently corrupt and when they are they should be reformed.
* Unions are frequently corrupt. They should therefore not exist.
Realistically corruption is a feature of all human institutions. Unions are special only insofar as they are institutions that threaten rather than defend the wealth of the American ruling classes.
You can't realistically abolish businesses. An economy of just individual tradesmen all working independently cant come close to the efficiency gains a large business has and just straight up lack the capacity for large scale projects and R&D. It's going to lead to the same outcome as your government being abolished and then businesses being reinstated.
Listed alongside the other two, the special thing about unions is they don't have this "you just straight up cant get rid of them and keep them gone" factor. So I think its completely reasonable for a person very concerned with corruption to take reform, reform, get rid of them stances respectively. Remove the institutions you can and fight corruption in the ones you cant.
You can abolish businesses too. The 2nd largest economy from 1950-1970 did precisely that, TINA propaganda notwithstanding. Chinese SOEs also serve as a model for a business that isnt really a business. It's great if you're on the central committee.
You can abolish unions as well. The results also arent exactly pleasant for the 90% of people who rely on selling their labor to survive.
But it's fucking great for that top 10% if they dont exist.
And even such general things such as negotiating pay will only be good for the lower performers, anyone who is a high performer will be better off negotiating their own salary.
On any union site - there are terms like "solidarity" with images of fists raised rather than actual data about improvement of wages or working conditions.
This is why unions get trounced in votes by real workers, things like Prop 22 pass with easy margins, etc.
I think it also has to do with the massive discrepancy in resources pro and anti-union advocates are able to put towards those races. Uber and Lyft invested massively in defeating prop 22, even advertising in their app directly.
1) I do not believe they are in equal footing generally and never stated that - I was pointing out the nuances with respect to Prop 22. Gig cos. didn't win just because they had more money - they won because AB5 is a despised policy.
2) Unions != Labor. Workers == Labor. This is the key point I'm trying to make.
This would seem to imply equal footing, wouldn't it?
> Unions != Labor. Workers == Labor. This is the key point I'm trying to make.
So I'm not sure how this is relevant to the prop 22 discussion - did the legislation have anything to do with unionization? As far as I know it was only about extending existing labor protections to gig workers.
And there's a distinction there, to be sure, albeit a pedantic one. Outside of organized labour, how exactly do these "workers" exert any power in the work place or politics?
Prop 22 is strongly linked with AB5 - the entire push was by union leaders and the leaders of both AB5 and No on 22 (e.g. Lorena Gonzalez) regularly tweet things like "#AB5IntoAUnion."
I actually think there is no currently effective system. I believe in collective bargaining, but I just think that unions as a tool have become increasingly concerned with political representation and political power rather than worker representation. Using AB5 as a case study, there are virtually n=0 freelancers in California (incl. myself) that are happy with the law. It's a universally despised policy by workers and businesses alike, loved by unions...
What does this mean and why aren't you being specific about what you're saying was dirty fighting? You're omitting your argument and just leaving the FUD.
I find it sad.
Every job I didn't despise secretly had union affiliation.
Uber did buy prop 22. They used simple psychological ployes to pass their prop. (Yes--I know prop 22 was just about Independant Contrators. They will use similar tactics if we ever see an uptick in unions.)
More start-ups/companys will use it in the future.
Uber knew they could get desperate guys to go out and buy a late model 4 door car, pay all expenses, and be at the mercy of Uber.
America The Great is not so great anymore. An idiot became president exploiting the obvious. Yes--he went to race, but it's of his flock only went to working conditions.
We have a lot of lousy jobs.
Calling it a Side Hussle, or your ouwn boss, was just a beautiful ploy. I hope the fresh faced immoral corporate MBA stooge who brought that up in the meeting was well compensated.
I don't know very many people (Americans) who don't believe they will make it someday. They liked the little bit of autonomy Uber provided, even if that meant working for under minimum wage, after computing the car, insurance, maintance, and gas.
Driving for Uber was just going to be temporary.
The psychology is I'm an entrepreneur, and this Uber gig is just a stepping stone until I get a better gig. (Rap music playing in the backround)
The truth is most will never get a better gig, or worse--might go bankrupt, be fired over email, or just become Judgement proof after they ruin their credit.
Uber played into this mind puck beautifully.
They actually got those desperate guys fearful they would not be successful if they were just employees.
If you want to improve conditions for workers, just say that you want to improve pay / $hr, increase break time by x min, and define xyz working conditions and have a detailed plan to support that. I've personally seen 0 unions pursue this approach... but have seen plenty advocate support for completely unrelated, purely political topics (e.g. voicing support for Palestine)
This is probably the purest, and most direct example of the insane propaganda trying to separate economics and politics as if they weren’t inherently and inseparably tied together.
“Oh, I’m so sorry that we can’t spend money on health care, or pay a living wage, or provide elder care, unfortunately, due to ECONOMICS.
Ah, you need some corporate pork, and a bailout..? Of course! Let’s shower private enterprise with tax payer money, it’s the best course of action due to ECONOMICS”
None of this shit is apolitical, and the suggestion that it is, is deeply political, no matter how much people try to define themselves out of reality.
The fact that you have already have been convinced that unions are the big problem, while corporations are stealing tax payer-money (while utilizing “tax avoidance” to not even contribute in the US), says it all doesn’t it?
Workers are not dumb, do not lack agency nor are as influenceable by propaganda as one might think - this a myth perpetuated by the paternalistic left, which has actually served it terribly - and in many cases have freely chosen to ignore or root out these organizations.
People don't notice the propaganda that works on them. Indeed, many go as far as to unknowingly make it part of their identity.
People only notice the propaganda that doesn't work on them.
>paternalistic left
Realistically there is no organized left left - paternalistic or otherwise. There are two competing corporate factions, each as paternalistic as the other.
in the USA unions are pretty shit IMO. Over here in austria, they bargain for ALL workers in that field. And that bargaining sets a minimum per law, which means that no matter if you are union or not, you can still bargain yourself into a better deal.
Are you talking about unions, or companies?
It's also not voluntary when there's a law that says one cannot work in a particular profession without joining the union.
For one it is about workers having some say in their lives outside of voting with their feet. Collective bargaining is one proven way to achieve that.
The other is about the dehumanization of work environments with the help of "AI" AKA software. Similarly there are companies that force you to install spyware on your working device.
If it’s their device, what’s wrong with that? Use your own device when you want privacy.
Also, it is not strictly "their" device in every case. There are firms that require freelancers/contractors to do the same on their device.
This kind of behavior is a huge red flag, but too many juniors otherwise naive or desperate workers tolerate it.
Do you use it in your house? Does it then record everything it can see and hear within your house?
The goal isn’t to mistreat humans or even to provide them with jobs. The goal is to gather data, build models, and replace the human components over time.
This is... a mistake. What did they mean by this?
Bezos is far from perfect, but do we really think that that was his primary consideration of building and growing Amazon?
Pretty much every organization that gets large enough tends to rot from the inside and get dystopian, despite the efforts of the founders.
Anyone remember “don’t be evil”? Right.
Maybe, just maybe, he resigned because he couldn’t deal with the dystopian aspects of how Amazon grew.
My point is that it’s not a good idea to put the fact that a huge organization becomes “dystopian” at the feet of its founder.
In some ways the company has lived on past the CEOs desires to maintain it, but it's also not the same place. It's effectively turned into a way to push overstocked amazon wares. What was a big push to bring temporary employees on full-time 2 years prior has probably been disassembled for Amazon style hiring. After I left a enclosed cage and turnstile was added to the warehouse employee entrance (probably loss prevention, not totally unneeded, but who wants to feel like a prisoner at their job).
It’s amazing to me how many software engineers claim to be taking a moral stand by refusing to work for defense contractors, yet are willing to write these surveillance and “optimization” (worker squeezing) programs that give more power to employers… which is just as bad if not worse. The US government at least does a mix of good and evil things, whereas profit-motivated employers are clearly out for one side.