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Comment by pas | Hacker News Reader

worth of labor is not the worth of product/service.

Amazon picks the places where it can hire extremely cheap labor, because usually they are the only game in town. (monopsony market for labor.)

it happened without automation and happens with automation too.

of course it's on society to help those who are stuck in these unfortunately places.

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Isn’t that how the market should work? Economically depressed area has people in need of jobs, companies should come in and satisfy that demand, making the place less economically depressed and eventually raising the cost of labor. No point to put an Amazon warehouse in Seattle’s south lake Union neighborhood, for example.

it's not how it works if there is a monopoly. E.g amazon is the only employer. I think this is where the local and federal governments should step in. If someone is working for 40 hours and needs foods stamps then the companies should be required to reimburse the government. It's a disgrace for society to take advantage of people like that.

If Amazon has a monopoly because they are the only ones interested in taking advantage of the surplus labor, then that’s a huge problem, but unless they are somehow locking other companies out, they aren’t the cause of that problem. Are you trying to tell me that Amazon shouldn’t bring those jobs to those areas, and that would somehow be better for the residents? I don’t see any good logic in that, yes, they are taking advantage of an opportunity, but no, those people are worse off if they don’t take advantage.

I’d love to see you go to a place like Yazoo Mississippi and tell the residents how lucky they are to not have Amazon there employing them.

The issue is simply companies taking advantage of people. We like to call it the market, but the market only works when there is a balance. I am simply advocating for a balancing force. Government or Unions usually fill this role.

I would equally challenge you to go to a warehouse and listen to peoples stories about their working conditions and personal stories.

I have friends who are immigrants and have heard them recommending Amazon to each other for warehouse work; apparently Amazon is very flexible if your schedule has to change.

Amazon is a huge player in e-commerce, but there are a lot of employers of warehouse workers and Amazon isn't close to having labor pricing power from what I can see. It's true I am located in a large city and they might have more wage-setting power in smaller cities.

In most cases for low end jobs, you have a lot choices, you just work somewhere else. Amazon usually isn’t the only job in these towns, just the one that pays the most without requiring much education and experience. Ya, life still sucks for a lot of these people working in a warehouse, but less than it would without the job.

The edge could be taken off of these jobs by just giving health insurance to everyone and not making it employer responsibility anymore. This would actually hurt Amazon since they often provide health benefits more easily than the rest (by giving enough hours). Detaching healthcare and maybe even minimum wage (via UBI) would go farther than expecting companies provide everything to workers no matter the job value.

Do amazon workers not require house, food, entertainment, etc.? Amazon isn't the only employer anywhere. Those people want and need services.

only doesn't mean they don't have effective pricing power in the local labor market due to their size

It is how it works given enough time and size and spherical cows and a bit of vacuum. :)

Amazon does provide jobs, in fact it provides too many jobs, crowding out other buyers on the local market, then after they downside/close, Amazon can effectively set the price of labor there, and it sets it to the minimum. (Meaning Amazon takes all the economic surplus produced, basically those who work there cannot save, cannot really raise children, etc.)

The problem is not that the market doesn't work, the problem is that it doesn't help with the desirable things society wants.

And if we only consider economic surplus, it is better to have Amazon there than not. (Before Amazon we can assume people there had even worse jobs, and the region heavily subsidized by various welfare programs.) But big companies inherently do very profitable things that look like coordination (ie. they look like they are in a cartel), that's why - other factors being equal - they won't open factories/warehouses in already saturated labor markets, instead they pick a place where cost of operation is cheaper (wages are lower).

And then through consolidation the market can get into a (pathological) state where there are only big companies, and they just buy/deter/sabotage new small companies.

> monopsony market for labor

Yes, when the inelastic aggregate supply of labor (expressed as an explicit work quota or expressed as an implicit work quota equal to cost of living divided by wages) exceeds the demand for labor, capitalism turns what should be a happy situation (let's all work a bit less!) into a horror show where working hard for scraps is a privilege and rotting in unemployment is the norm.

Which system works better?

We've been here before, shortly after the industrial revolution. Some countries tried communism, some countries tried fascism, and the US tried Roosevelts. The results speak for themselves. Large, meaningful compromises to labor can thread the needle well enough to avoid bloodshed. We need us another Roosevelt.

Whatever system they use in Scandinavian countries.

we are working less.

is it due to capitalism? is it just the technological progress fairy? (maybe the fairy is more attracted to the smell of capitalist pigs?)

it's not capitalism's fault that people are extremely bad at coordination problems (it's Mr. Moloch's fault obviously, who poisons people's minds with shortsightedness!)

it's not capitalism's fault that people choose to block densification of cities, higher taxes, welfare reforms, or that people vote based on their xenophobia.

> Amazon picks the places where it can hire extremely cheap labor, because usually they are the only game in town

That only works for some of their locations. They are limited by the need for their distribution centers to be in good proximity to the customers they deliver to. In my area, that means their largest distribution center is in one of the more expensive areas of the city. And the other big one is in a less-nice area that is probably still fairly expensive because it's close to the center of the metro area.

Sure, but their move into cities was after they already had a brutal margin and the free money press of AWS.

And cost pressure always applies.

They might put smaller less labor-intensive centers in those places. (Maybe a handover depo for last-mile delivery with some Prime stuff.) Though, of course, maybe the cost of managing non-uniform centers is more than vice versa.

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