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> ask them to break their backs so the extravagantly wealthy can make a bit more money That's a very hostile way to describe working a warehouse job. Offering

by Pyxl101 11y ago

> ask them to break their backs so the extravagantly wealthy can make a bit more money That's a very hostile way to describe working a warehouse job. Offering someone a job is not asking them to break their back. Working for an employer has nothing to do with the extravagantly wealthy. All companies need employees, and companies are valuable because they serve their customers. You could equally say "break their back so random Internet consumers get their products", or "Burger King / WalMart employees break their backs so you get a cheap cheeseburger / grocery product". Working a job tends to make people better off, and offering someone a job they didn't have before is giving them a new option. We can wish for a world where even better jobs were available, but wishing doesn't make it so. It's strictly better for the homeless to have one more job opportunity, than one fewer. You can wish there were even better opportunities, but are you prepared to provide them yourself? Or is this your position: "I'm not going to do anything about it myself, but I'm going to criticize those who do something positive, even if it's just providing a low value opportunity. Someone should provide a better opportunity than that, but I won't be the one to do it." By demonizing companies that offer jobs to poor people or the homeless, you're committing the fallacy called the Copenhagen Interpreation of Ethics. http://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/ http://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethi...

biomene 11y ago
> Working for an employer has nothing to do with the extravagantly wealthy. You're very right about this, it was wrong of me to describe the purpose of the operation as being that of making someone rich. The purpose is to maximise profits for the employer – which can lead to extreme wealth or poverty, depending on your success. Besides, in order to appreciate how shit a situation is for someone it is irrelevant to know whether someone else is profiting from it. So thanks for pointing that out. > Working a job tends to make people better off [...] It's strictly better for the homeless to have one more job opportunity, than one fewer. I think this is wishful thinking. The article actually points out that this is not true: getting this job actually made the situation worse for a lot of them. > but are you prepared to provide them yourself? As a pauper myself, I am not. I don't have the resources to do so. > to criticize those who do something positive As I tried to show before, good intentions was not what motivated Amazon to offer jobs to these people. Also, leaving someone worse off than before is not what I would call a positive outcome. So this cannot be my position. > By demonizing companies that offer jobs to poor people or the homeless, I definitely did not mean to demonise Amazon. I pointed out in my last comment that this was a feature of our world, not a feature of a particular company. That's the saddest thing of this whole story: Amazon acted completely rationally, and it's easy to see how it almost had no choice but to use up these homeless people and then throw them away. Not because it's evil, but because that's what's required of it as a company. If Amazon stops churning out profits, it won't be a company for much longer. > you're committing the fallacy called the Copenhagen Interpreation of Ethics. Nitpick: what you call the Copenhagen Interpreation of Ethics is not a fallacy, there's no logic involved here since it relates to people's moral values. It's a phenomenon at best. But once again, the point was not to say that Amazon is evil; the point is to say this world is broken.

by Pyxl101 11y ago

biomene 11y ago

> Working for an employer has nothing to do with the extravagantly wealthy. You're very right about this, it was wrong of me to describe the purpose of the operation as being that of making someone rich. The purpose is to maximise profits for the employer – which can lead to extreme wealth or poverty, depending on your success. Besides, in order to appreciate how shit a situation is for someone it is irrelevant to know whether someone else is profiting from it. So thanks for pointing that out. > Working a job tends to make people better off [...] It's strictly better for the homeless to have one more job opportunity, than one fewer. I think this is wishful thinking. The article actually points out that this is not true: getting this job actually made the situation worse for a lot of them. > but are you prepared to provide them yourself? As a pauper myself, I am not. I don't have the resources to do so. > to criticize those who do something positive As I tried to show before, good intentions was not what motivated Amazon to offer jobs to these people. Also, leaving someone worse off than before is not what I would call a positive outcome. So this cannot be my position. > By demonizing companies that offer jobs to poor people or the homeless, I definitely did not mean to demonise Amazon. I pointed out in my last comment that this was a feature of our world, not a feature of a particular company. That's the saddest thing of this whole story: Amazon acted completely rationally, and it's easy to see how it almost had no choice but to use up these homeless people and then throw them away. Not because it's evil, but because that's what's required of it as a company. If Amazon stops churning out profits, it won't be a company for much longer. > you're committing the fallacy called the Copenhagen Interpreation of Ethics. Nitpick: what you call the Copenhagen Interpreation of Ethics is not a fallacy, there's no logic involved here since it relates to people's moral values. It's a phenomenon at best. But once again, the point was not to say that Amazon is evil; the point is to say this world is broken.