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Comment by civilized | Hacker News Reader

> It smacks of using people

Work is fundamentally transactional. Those for whom it is more than that are lucky.

> treating them like props in order to secure private gain

I worry about moralizing on behalf of the marginalized. They should be asked whether they'd prefer the option to have the work.

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>> I worry about moralizing on behalf of the marginalized. They should be asked whether they'd prefer the option to have the work.

perfect quote! Nothing else really needs to be said.

People who oppose Amazon - I want to see you guys giving thousands jobs to convicts, before criticizing Amazon. Thank you. Talk is cheap

Respectfully, I disagree with the postulate that there is no possibility of solidarity with “the marginalized”, and think this is a good example of why. When you say ask “them,” who do you mean? Ex-convicts, Amazon workers, teamsters, some combination of these, or what? And who are you going to listen to when people (inevitably, even within the same faction) disagree? I think that what this approach does is renders ethical discussions impossible. By denying the possibility of a common rationality in which moral questions can be weighed, ethics is reduced into a collision of interests, and the unsurprising result is that nothing can happen without the approval of the strongest party in the conflict. See Occupy Wall Street for another example of this principle in action.

I see what you're saying. I think the moral thing here is to beat them at their own game. Presumably any ex-cons hired by Amazon can be brought on board as union members just as well as anyone else.

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