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Comment by MattGaiser | Hacker News Reader

Isn't Amazon's fear of running out of people a sign of the market correcting this?

They're in no danger of running out of people to employ. Social safety nets are too weak and economic conditions for the poor are too precarious that there are plenty of people willing to endure abusive conditions for a paycheck. The high turnover rate only ensures that they end up employing the most desperate and vulnerable.

Not if the alternative to working for Amazon is, well, death by starvation. People say communism falls apart once subjects stop having reasonably similar goals. Market economy is certainly more resistant to this, but is it infinitely more resistant? How far can we push inequality before that becomes an issue?

Edit: That was meant as a response to the parent comment.

A radical thought: If i have the alternative to work for an dystopian megacorp or starve to death... why then not choose the third option: Go to jail while causing as much damage as possible?

(Disclaimer: Only a philosophical thought)

Well you don't need a Joker-style nihilistic attitude to cause as much damage as possible to everyone without distinction. This can also be achieved in a meaningful way following the workers tradition of sabotage and direct action.

Hurt or destroy those people/structures making our lives hell. That makes sense. Just don't drag random people into it.

Yeah, this is what i have thought... in german there is the saying "Mach kaputt was euch kaputt macht" (more or less "destroy what destroys you").

I like it even though i don't speak german. Thanks for sharing!

Your third option is likely to only reinforce the sociopolitical conditions that lead to corporatism and starvation in the first place.

I have thought about this: We know that pressure produces counterpressure, the more you knock down a populous the more likely they are to rise up and burn everything down regardless the consequeces (see the various slave revolts in history)... it might not IMPROVE the situation directly, but with every burning down of a society there is a new chance that what rises out of the ruins may be better.

Hegelian dialectics

Because your actions will then give mega corps and the governments they control a reason to reduce your freedom even more.

I mean, they've literally been discussing this as a risk themselves internally, so I'm not sure how you can be so sure of that.

Amazon is worried about it.

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-turnover-wo...

It helps that a minimum wage and absurd regulation conspire to eliminate a good size of firms that would otherwise be competing in a fair labour market. And let's not get started on the taxes that small and medium sized businesses have to pay, and that Amazon is exempt from.

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.

Do you actually think small and medium sized businesses can really compete with Amazon at this point? Their advantage at this point, technologically and operationally, is far more than simply lower tax burden.

The name of the game is positive-sum. Amazon can be a behemoth and also face competition in the labour market and others. It isn't Amazon or Mom&Pop, in a fair market there's space for both surely.

Considering the shortage of minimum wage workers your hypothesis is clearly wrong?

Not quite a sign of the market correcting this, but rather a possibility of the market correcting it. It all depends on whether Amazon's fears motivate them to improve their behaviour, or whether market forces make said improvements unnecessary or they find alternative solutions that are better aligned with their own interests but do not actually improve the wellbeing of their workers.

Isn't the existence of Amazon's current practices a sign of the market not correcting anything ?

I suspect their logistics competitors are even worse.

I am curious about this. Are Amazon's practices uniquely brutal or is it just brutal at scale while nobody can name Joe's Logistics and thus if they pee in bottles, nobody knows?

If people are still working at Amazon, the problem isn't Amazon, the problem is everyone else who isn't offering anything better. Seriously. The workers are working at Amazon because that was the best option they had. And the bright idea is to set Amazon on fire?

There's nothing about market forces correcting for bad behavior that says it has to happen quickly. It just says it will, eventually. Eventually they'll need to either raise pay or change practices to keep people employed, but that may take a while.

Do you seriously and honestly believe that the market will by itself create better conditions for workers?

No, if Amazon was afraid they would have changed things.

Amazon will have run the numbers, they'll have an elastic pay scale to respond with if things go downhill.

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