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Comment by poisonborz | Hacker News Reader

Wouln't have expected this article from this source. Worth noting that Washington Post is owned by Amazon founder Bezos. It was usually said that billionaires owning mass media is used by them to push their free market agenda (and there were certainly a number of occassions where it denounced upper class taxation or stayed mum on the Bezos/UAE phone leak scandal) but also some counter-examples like reporting on toxicity in Blue Origin (also owned by Bezos). Glad to see more of such pieces, this shows that the media landscape is not as black and white as some make it out to be.

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Worth noting that Washington Post is a national newspaper (peer to NYC in reach and stature) and is thus under much closer scrutiny than the thousands of local news outlets that are owned by the moneyed elite and do in fact refrain from reporting negatively on their owners or their business interests. While its great that WaPo isn’t corrupted by billionaire ownership, that should be the minimum expectations of press freedom in the US.

Unless this article was intentionally allowed to be released as a way to counter the recent accusations that WaPo is just a Bezos mouthpiece.

Intentionally allowing anti-Bezos viewpoints would make the WaPo more than "just a Bezos mouthpiece" regardless of why they were allowed, no?

No as long as they would selectively pass only articles which look anti-Bezos at quick glance but are actually supportive with full read.

How is this article "actually supportive" of Amazon/Bezos?

I really hope you're not going to claim because they put in responses from an Amazon spokesperson that makes the whole article pro-Amazon.

I'd say it wouldn't even be required for all bad press to be somehow "actually supportive". If they were to selectively choose to publish articles that are in no way supportive when it doesn't matter so much to them, but still bury any articles that they fear would meaningfully harm them it's still serving Bezos/Amazon and allowing the relatively "harmless" articles helps to insulate them from accusations that their reporting is dictated by what's acceptable to Amazon/Bezos.

Being able to choose your bad press is just about as good as preventing all of it, and if your goal is trick people into thinking you aren't manipulating what gets published, it's even better than censoring every negative article.

It is not a matter of being "supportive", so much as a way for them to have a hand at managing the narrative which the discussion will take and proactively lampshading upcoming arguments

Not really. Controlled opposition tends to veer into tin-foil hat stuff pretty quickly, but is nonetheless a normal tactic used by all sorts of entities. It essentially where some entity works to create (or appropriate) opposition to itself, while using that opposition -still ostensibly opposed to the entity- to further their own ends.

The most common example of this would be to poison-the-well. Make the opposition to something to something look crazy, and it can help to make it look like that something is only opposed by people who are a few screws short. I'll conclude with the final paragraphs of this article:

"The road to holding a union election in Campbellsville could be a long one. Already, [union organizer who had the cops called on him] Litrell said, members of his organizing committee have quit out of concern that Amazon will learn of their involvement and fire them. Workers in Campbellsville can’t afford to lose their Amazon jobs, Litrell said.

“There’s other factories and such, but you’d have to go outside of Campbellsville to find a decent-paying job. Campbellsville is dependent on Amazon — it’s like a company town,” he said. “The other jobs are fast food or a telemarketing company and some small factories that don’t pay worth a damn.”

“Amazon is the best employer in Campbellsville,” he said."

>“Amazon is the best employer in Campbellsville”

That's dire indeed. :(

You cut out the fact that last section is from an Amazon spokesperson. Including Amazon's side of the story makes this article pro-Amazon and is "poisoning the well"???

The comments are from Matt Litrell, the union organizer who had the cops called on him - not an "Amazon spokersperson."

Not necessarily, it could just build plausible deniability for the paper not being independent. I don't at all believe that is the case here, but it could be that Amazon expects unionization to be inevitable and later articles undermine certain key position as unreasonable. The lie would get a mantle of truth. Or integrity in this case. The is why real independence for news rooms is important because you can never know.

That would be like 4D chess, but it makes some sense. I might trust the state Chinese press more if it wrote an article critical of Xi once in awhile.

I can’t imagine bezos being able to exert much direct control over the WaPo, however; too many people would know and talk about it. Instead, his influence would be a more long term thing (eg hiring Amazon sympathetic reporters and editors over a decade).

>if it wrote an article critical of Xi once in awhile.

They do this in scmp for international readers. Of course for internal news that's not allowed

See also: WaPo reminding us that billionaires, like, totally feel bad about inequality: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30145208

More likely to get in early on a story they wouldn't be able to keep a lid on anyway. Damage control is a key pillar of PR.

Is this surprising? Well-run news organizations have integrity and keep an arm's length relationship with their owners.

You say that "it was usually said that billionaires owning mass media is used by them to push their free market agenda," which seems like a convenient way to make a statement without attributing it to a source or taking ownership of it yourself.

How exactly does it hurt him?

This influence is used less obviously, when it matters, at elections!

> This influence is used less obviously, when it matters, at elections!

What is that based on?

Last line of the article:

“Amazon is the best employer in Campbellsville,” he said.

Are the jobs in Campbellsville decent to begin with or not?

Amazon is the best employer in many of the podunk towns they set up operations in.

Wouln't have expected this

It's only unexpected if you're an adherent of one very pat, messageboard-y Theory of Journalism. But it's really just run-of-the-mill evidence that particular theory is not very good.

Maybe since he stepped away from running Amazon he's had time to think and realize he went too far in turning people into robots and now wants to make up for it. It's not likely, but it's possible. He's got some tough competition in the "do good" department from his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott

Just the fact that you think the credibility of the WashingtonPost is derived by Jeff Bezos' mood is proof enough that billionaires(modern Kings/feudal lords) owning media companies is ass backwards.

It's not really new. William Randolph Hearst is probably the best example. He built a nice castle on the California Coast, I'll give him that.

People like him never really change.

Bill Gates did a good job of reputation laundering through his foundation trying to reinvent himself as a “friendly elder statesmen”; then the whole Epstein shit came to light, his wife divorced him etc.

Yes, every robber baron billionaire eventually tries to launder their reputation through philanthropy. Yes, it’s nice that Andrew Carnegie built a bunch of libraries, and the Gates Foundation apparently has helped AIDS and polio in Africa, but when you really look at how much they’re giving versus how much they have (and still gain), it’s laughable.

Ever billionaire that has taken Buffet’s so-called philanthropy pledge, will always be a billionaire.

Now Mackenzie Scott on the other hand, has been giving money away faster than anyone, and an order of magnitude more than Jeff “I can’t think of any other way to spend my money except on an interplanetary escape pod for myself” Bezos.

You're assuming giving away money philanthropically is easy! It's not. If you do it wrong you end up giving all your money to grifters and outright fraud. Look at the disaster the lockdown "loans" turned into in most countries. Billions and billions trousered by fraudsters. I'm not a fan of the GF actually but the primary constraint on how quickly Gates can give away money isn't his personality but rather the availability of non-fraudulent people who can actually do something useful and good with the funds. If the rate at which worthwhile beneficiaries can be identified is less than the ROI of the parked money, you get a foundation with growing funds instead of shrinking funds as you'd expect.

And frankly the reason I'm not a Gates Foundation fan is exactly that it funds all sorts of low quality nonsense research, and has distorted the disease fighting community in all kinds of ways. Not saying I'd be able to do it better mind you. Just that any time you have vast sums of money and give it away you always end up distorting things and maybe creating new problems via broken incentives.

Two words: Helicopter money.

Seriously. The problems you describe come from trying to pick winners. You cant. Just rent helicopter, and let the market decide.

Haha the people who think that bill gates and jeff bezos is actually sitting on that money in cash, LOL

Think also a bit about who is benefitting and making money from instigating this type of jealousy, being exploited as an unpaid click puppet is even worse than being a warehouse worker.

> Think also a bit about who is benefitting and making money from instigating this type of jealousy

I'll bite. Who? Who has the money, power, and motivation to secretly manipulate the pliable masses to turn against the billionaires, for their own nefarious ends?

> I'll bite. Who? Who has the money, power, and motivation to secretly manipulate the pliable masses to turn against the billionaires, for their own nefarious ends?

Everyone who is not a billionaire, but still currently holds a privileged position compared to the pliable masses, will benefit from such propaganda of over simplified "injustice", because if will deflect attention away from their own privilege and keep them safe.

You will see this most clearly if you look at ivory tower academics or cultural elite, who love to hate rich capitalists for being greedy, to get the "people" on their side to avoid having their own privilege under scrutiny, which in reality is often just as greedy and selfish.

Who told you this? Petey "Women should never have gotten the vote" Thiel?

https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/educatio...

It is rumored that Mackenzie Scott was responsible for the philanthropy in the first place.

For our younger readers, here's how the game works:

1. Amazon makes a big show about fighting unionization. Police, media, all the rest.

2. While doing (1), they quietly install leaders in the union movement that will do what they are told. The easiest way is to buy off whatever organic leadership emerges, but anybody can't be bought outright can be... persuaded.

3. Once (2) is complete, the proverbial dam breaks, and management is "forced" to accept unionization. There might be a few token concessions to show the masses that they have won a victory.

4. Now that there's a union, they act as legally independent enforcers for whatever the owners want, backed by the social force of the worker mob.

This is how unions worked in the Soviet Union and its various client states. I've found Soviet organizational patterns be the most predictive model for understanding the current state of things.

Workers absolutely had union representation to collectively bargain against "management" (the State).

Your union just happened to bargain its way to whatever the State wanted them to do. Union bosses lived very comfortable lives.

If you complained to the union, they'd hold one of the rigged votes that socialists are so famous for, and in the end, you'd likely be branded a "counter-revolutionary" and a "spreader of misinformation", and face consequences.

This seems to me to be an unlikely way a company would fight a union in the modern US. Do you have any examples of this happening?

My doubt is largely because they can just stop them existing and face little to no consequences. Why bother being cute?

> My doubt is largely because they can just stop them existing and face little to no consequences. Why bother being cute?

If Amazon's workforce manages to organize outside of the penumbra of the company boot, then there absolutely will be negative consequences for Amazon. Why not just get ahead of that using a cheap, time-tested, and well-proven strategy that makes your position even stronger?

Because bribery and ”persuasion”, as you call it, is illegal and thus carries a lot of risk? Not to mention what a PR catastrophe were it to be uncovered. Not saying that it’s impossible, but the certainty you’re expressing this theory with doesn’t seem warranted.

> Because bribery and ”persuasion”, as you call it, is illegal and thus carries a lot of risk?

You're thinking like a commoner. Which I get, I'm a commoner, too. I certainly wouldn't try that kind of "persuasion". That'd land me in jail for a million years.

But the the rules are different when you're a member of the ruling class or serving their interests.

It's unfortunate. It really is. But that's how things are.

Of course you don't get a bribe like a bag full of cash, you just get a promotion to be able to manage your new responsibilities.

> Why not just get ahead of that using a cheap, time-tested, and well-proven strategy that makes your position even stronger?

The cheap, time-tested way is just busting the union. I've yet to hear any examples of unions working like you propose in the US, but there's as many examples as you could want for companies preventing unions from existing.

This is an extremely common modus operandi. It is like the police invades groups suspected of crime too. This isn't some elaborate conspiracy plan, it is one of the most effective ways to undermine any group. And of course PR is important, even and especially if you own a newspaper.

Didn’t Stalin kill millions of socialists in order to wrestle control into his hands? Weren’t Bolsheviks explicitly anti-socialism?

Stalin found reasons to kill everybody over time, including Bolsheviks.

Bolsheviks were "socialist" because at the time socialism and communism were largely interchangeable terms; you might be thinking of the various factions with "social" in their names that vied with Bolsheviks around the revolution (Social Democrats, Social Revolutionaries). Socialism certainly didn't have the "softer" connotation it has now.

What does this have to do with the US, and US unions, or any unions in free, democratic countries?

> one of the rigged votes that socialists are so famous for

What socialists are famous for rigged votes? The Soviet Union was famous, but they weren't socialist. Is Sweden famous for rigged votes?

> The Soviet Union was famous, but they weren't socialist.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics wasn't socialist? Just famous? What?

They were no true Scottsman. [1]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

They were as socialist as they were democratic - which is to say, in name only.

You have to understand the theory behind the religion of Socialism/Communism/Democracy/Whatever The Current Re-Brand Is.

A Socialist society is one in which True Equity has been achieved. The State sort of just fades out of existence, as it is no longer needed to ensure cooperation.

This has never happened, because it will never happen, ergo cue the cries of "True Communism has never been tried!"

The fact that every attempt has made the Nazis look like a troop of Jainist Girl Scouts is immaterial. Slaughtering a hundred million people while redefining the depths of human misery is fine and dandy, as long the goals are noble. Can't make that omelette without breaking a few eggs.

One could easily point out that murdering people isn’t a function of socialism (eg Where all the dead Swedes?), but rather authoritarianism.

Authoritarians — regardless of their purported economic philosophy — always leave the streets red.

But actual attempts at socialism always require authoritarianism which is why it's never worth distinguishing them. Sweden isn't actually socialist, that's some US idea that would get you laughed at in Europe itself. Sweden is a capitalist democracy like any other. Relatively minor differences in tax rates does not a socialist country make!

Sweden is social democratic.

> The fact that every attempt has made the Nazis look like a troop of Jainist Girl Scouts

This is just Nazi revisionism. The Soviets were horrible, so were the Nazis.

> Slaughtering a hundred million people while redefining the depths of human misery is fine and dandy, as long the goals are noble. Can't make that omelette without breaking a few eggs.

Same goes for the fascists, all over the world. The problem is extremists (and their great empowerers, Western apologists).

Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a direct democracy. It comes directly from the absolutist ruler.

Sweden is not socialist. Better example might have been socialist pre 1990s India

Socialism means worker ownership of all means of production.

The Soviet union was quasi-socialist. It had elements of social ownership of means of production, but wasn't democratic, so means of production weren't actually in the hands of workers.

Sweden was social democratic. This is not socialism, although it's sort of supposed to be: However, Sweden's social democracy failed to achieve any kind of true worker influence, in fact, it created the illusion of social equality when in fact Sweden has extreme capital concentration (Sweden is one among four countries with wealth GINI above 85-- the club is Russia, the US, Sweden and the Netherlands). Essentially the Swedish economy is controlled by a very small number of multi-billionaires.

What you see in Sweden is instead redistribution from ordinary workers to slightly poorer ordinary workers and to the unemployed, so the high taxes are not actually a progressive or pro-worker policy, but a regressive policy where resources taken from successful workers are used to reduce the dissatisfaction of the poorest with the economic system.

This could perhaps be acceptable if it led to high wages but this has not been the result-- with economic power comes political power, and in my assessment the the desire by the capital-owning class to keep Swedish exports competitive have led to use of low central bank interests rates, intended to reduce the value of wages, as well as a surprising political support for immigration which has existed in the political parties which has no mirror in the views of ordinary people. It has been so successful that it's not unusual to see programmers working on quite hard stuff get paid 45 000-50 000 USD per annum before taxes. At present the wage share of GDP in Sweden extraordinary low, 55%, to be compared to 59% in the US-- so Swedish workers are actually more exploited than US workers.

This is 100% true. People like to pretend that the higher equality in sweden actually means that rich people share with poor people, but in reality it's the working middle class that pays the price for it.

And it leads to a more classist society with even higher wealth concentration, and real struggles with motivating people to actually perform, because of the lack of opportunity and glass ceiling.

Sweden probably has the poorest middle class of all of the western nations, and way poorer even than many asian and south american countries.

I really can't see how sweden could stay competitive, I think there will be some significant brain drain with the younger generations that can speak fluent english.

Yeah, same thing in Germany.

I recall chatting with some highly-placed dude in Deutsche Post a few years back. He had come in from the tech industry to unfuck their... well, tech, and was amazed at the level of opulence available to him as a highly-placed public servant.

A full-spec Mercedes S-class limousine with a chauffeur for his exclusive use was just the start. It was nuts.

The marketing is fantastic. Let's all chip in to help each other out, take care of the poor, all that jazz. But sweet baby Jesus doesn't that machine just grease the hell out of its own wheels.

This is not the same thing that the person you were responding to was talking about. Swedish civil servants do not lead extravagant lifestyles, even at the highest levels, nor do politicians (not directly by virtue of being in politics, at any rate, although sometimes indirectly).

What they were saying is that the Swedish system is very friendly to wealthy individuals operating in the private sector, while letting the middle class bear the brunt of subsidizing costs for those with lower income, which is true.

All very interesting claims, but can you back them up?

Sweden achieves great outcomes for its population, and the people there seem happy with it. They are all deceived and you know their business better than they do?

What claims did you have in mind, and what great outcomes?

The wealth GINI data can be found here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_in...). What the page is based on is an excellent analysis by Credit Suisse which takes care to estimate also the largest fortunes, which in these countries are of course particularly important. As you see the Netherlands, Russia, Sweden and the US are on top.

With regard to what I've said about wages, there's a Swedish labour union (in Sweden basically who doesn't run their own company is part of a union, even managers), Unionen, which has made a list of typical wage intervals for the wages of 'systemutvecklare', a term that essentially refers to programmers. It can be found here (https://www.unionen.se/rad-och-stod/om-lon/marknadsloner/sys...).

They divide programmers into three difficulty levels, the lowest for which they suggest the wage interval 41231-54190 USD, the middle 47122-61204 USD and the highest 55319-72974 USD. This doesn't count a payroll tax called arbetsgivaravgift, which is 31.42%, so we have to multiply all these numbers by 1.3142 to get the actual pre-tax compensation:

Thus we obtain 54185-71216 USD for the lowest level, 61927-80434 USD for the middle level and 72700-95902 USD for the highest level.

They characterize levels as follows: for level 1 they write 'Analyserar och bedömer programförutsättningar, specificerar program samt programmerar. Testar och dokumenterar program' 'analyses and judges what is required for a program, specifies programs and programs. Tests and documents programs', level 2 'Medverkar i utveckling av IT-projekt eller förvaltar existerande IT-system och svarar för utveckling och förvaltning av delsystem. Leder delprojekt eller mindre projekt. 'participates in development of IT projects or maintenance of IT systems, being responsible for development and maintenance of subsystems. Leads subprojects or smaller projects' with level being ' Leder utveckling av nya eller förvaltning av existerande system ifråga om omfattande och komplicerade system, från framtagning av förstudie och kravspecifikation till att systemets tagits i drift hos användare.' 'Leads development of new or the maintainance of existing systems involving large and complex systems, from pre-studies and requirements specifications to when the system is made available to the user', so level 2 and 3 are for engineering managers, and even the top level has its top below 100 000 USD p.a.

With regard to outcomes, in my assessment we have very severe problems of several kinds, and simultaneously; and I find the view that we have great outcomes as quite strange, although some severe outcomes for individuals are avoided. A critical aspect of our current state of society is that schools are very ill-functioning. That alone is cause for great fear.

Here is alternative view: https://www.epi.org/blog/union-decline-rising-inequality-cha...

I will trust our younger readers to draw their own life lessons here, but the general model being described is that of the "company union." They were outlawed in the United States in 1935.

Rule of law isn't exactly fashionable these days.

Especially with amazon breaking the law via union busting using dirty and outright illegal tactics.

More and more laws feel like a smokescreen to stop us from doing what they can.

ie- laws for thee, but not for me.

In 1935, with the Wagner Act, which guaranteed the right to unionize and to strike, also guaranteed several other rights. Among them, unions (and corporations, natch) are allowed to donate money, shops are allowed to be closed/union shop, and codified the NRLB.

[Citation needed]

Regardless of billionaire influence, WaPo has some questionable ethics and reporters:

https://twitter.com/PalmerLuckey/status/1533622885306503168

I've never seen them as a highly trusthworthy and informative source.

> Wouln't have expected this article from this source. Worth noting that Washington Post is owned by Amazon founder Bezos

Sounds like someone's getting the cops called on them/fired.

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