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This post neglects a lot of externalities. Before, a single kettle could last generations. I'm personally very disturbed by the idea of more and more people get

This post neglects a lot of externalities. Before, a single kettle could last generations. I'm personally very disturbed by the idea of more and more people getting many deliveries every single day. That kind of consumption is insanity and just think of the carbon footprint. They mention clothing too. Clothing is an incredibly harmful industry for the environment and don't forget how it affects workers - be they seamstresses in unsafe factories in Bangladesh or inmates in cotton fields in Louisiana. I don't know why we should be happy how many clothes we can all wear now. The big problem with automation is the trend of who really benefits most. The point is made in the article that the consumer will experience massive benefits. And this is true if you are a first world professional, like people working in silicon valley. But how much of the new employment in Amazon is in fulfilment centres? Those don't sound like the kinds of jobs we should be happy that automation is creating and they are hardly going to last long either. I'd love if all vehicles became smart electronic driverless miracle machines and getting blood to dying mothers sounds great. I just can't support these shifts if there isn't also a big change in the class structure of the society that these changes are happening in. The wealth this creates should be less concentrated and the benefits and TRUE costs (incl. Environmental) shared more equally.

saint_fiasco 9y ago
The kind of people who benefit most from being able to buy cheap clothes made in sweatshops is not Silicon Valley professionals, it's poor people. Get rid of the unsafe factories and poor people won't be able to afford clothes anymore. And the workers of those unsafe factories won't be able to afford anything. There is no easy answer.
- FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago
  The can most certainly afford clothing, if not make their own. What they can't afford is fashion
  - saint_fiasco 9y ago
    No they can't. Being able to change clothes (incl. underwear) everyday is a recent custom, and a luxury. Even if they can, the extra money they would have to spend is money that they won't be able to spend in food and other essentials. Time they spend making clothes is time they can't spend making money for buying other things, or in education.
    - eeZah7Ux 9y ago
      > Being able to change clothes (incl. underwear) everyday is a recent custom, and a luxury Replace or just wash? The latter has been absolutely common across many cultures that had access to water and hot enough climate to dry clothes quickly. Sturdy cotton lasts 10 years or even more.
- Scramblejams 9y ago
  Agreed. When people think they're doing the third world a disservice by buying consumer electronics, I point them to Paul Krugman's essay, In Praise of Cheap Labor: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/1997/03/in_praise_of_cheap_labor.html http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/19...
  - kiliantics 9y ago
    This is just fancy apologetics for exploiting cheap third world labour. It completely ignores the brutal violence underlying the whole story. There are good reasons why people there can't have jobs unless we hire them for buttons. It's not the natural state of things that we are generously saving them from. There's a history of colonial domination in all of these places that was exploited to negotiate very one sided trade deals with western nations. So they are being paid buttons because we hold their governments hostage to get nice deals for our industry. And when they don't play ball, we send in the troops like that coup in Chile for a famous example.
- tetraodonpuffer 9y ago
  > Get rid of the unsafe factories and poor people won't be able to afford clothes anymore poor people have always been able to afford clothes, it was called saving for a while to buy a good pair of pants and mending it for many years until it pretty much fell apart. Poor people would not be able to afford new clothes all the time, sure, but clothes in general most certainly. And let's not forget about thrift stores, go into any goodwill and you will be able to buy plenty of good quality extremely lightly used clothes for very little money.
- s73ver 9y ago
  I do not believe that for one single second. There is absolutely zero reason whatsoever to disregard safety in manufacturing.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- davedx 9y ago
  What a load of rubbish. Ever heard of a thrift shop? Hand-me-downs? There are plenty of ways for poor people to get clothes that don't involve buying stuff produced in a Bangladeshi sweatshop.
- crdoconnor 9y ago
  "The kind of people who benefit most from being able to buy cheap clothes made in sweatshops is not Silicon Valley professionals, it's poor people." The benefit they gain through slightly cheaper clothes is more than offset by the benefits from the jobs they could have had if the manufacture of clothing (like everything else) was not offshored. The real winner is Stefan Persson and the $28 billion he made from H&M's sweatshop labor arbitrage. "There is no easy answer." There is. Make trade deals contingent on good labor and environmental conditions and ruthlessly enforce that. That will bring jobs home and improve working conditions in 3rd world countries. Then, deal with the fact that that new top is going to cost $4 more and Stefan Persson won't be quite so spectacularly wealthy.
  - devdas 9y ago
    As long as the people from 3rd world countries can easily relocate to places with better working conditions.
    - crdoconnor 9y ago
      To be clear, this usually means poor 3rd world countries pay for the educations of their best and brightest and then see no benefit from doing so. Most people ignore this subsidy from poor countries to rich.
      - devdas 9y ago
        I do mean unrestricted. That includes unlimited immigration of unskilled/lower skilled labour as well.
- kiliantics 9y ago
  But why are they poor to begin with? A big reason is the capture of wealth by industries like those in silicon valley that engage in exploitative labour practices and pay low taxes. There is easily enough money going around to have safe work conditions and still get everyone enough to have access to the basics and then some.
Retric 9y ago
Deliveries are often vastly lower carbon footprint than that same person going shopping. The best example is mail where 100 people can get mail on a street vs. 100 people all doing the same trip to the post office.
- oh_sigh 9y ago
  Also, I've found that many times I go out driving in search of a product and end up coming home with nothing or only part of what I needed. Just yesterday I drove 20 minutes to home Depot to buy a saw blade, which their website listed exactly how many were in stock(16) and where to find them. I go there and they're no where to be found, so I ordered one for next day delivery on Amazon while standing at the aisle where the product should have been. Events like this make me much less likely to go out and buy specific items. Generic items I will still get in person where their specifications aren't too important.
  - kiliantics 9y ago
    Why not bike and get some exercise while you're at it
    - oh_sigh 9y ago
      Because I would need to ride my bike on the shoulder of a 55mph highway to do that. People do it frequently, but I don't have a death wish
- CM30 9y ago
  Maybe they are in the US, but in a lot of the world people walk or take transport when it comes to going to the shops. In these places, deliveries would obviously have a far higher carbon footprint.
  - Retric 9y ago
    First, I am an American and often walk to stores so your mileage may vary. However, items also get shipped to stores so it really depends, but if your walking to the store it's a likely a fairly meaningless difference. Buses are generally considered efficient, but items are often vastly smaller than people which shifts things again. Moving 100+ pound people is simply less efficient than moving sub 1 pound objects. It may come down to packaging which seems to be in favor of going to the store. But, Amazon packaging does not need to look good or be tamper resistant and can thus often avoids using a lot of clear plastic on some items etc. In the end it's a surprisingly complex optimization problem. Made worse when you consider the vast overhead of physical stores which must be cooled/heated/cleaned and have a wide selection on hand etc.
rmason 9y ago
We're undergoing a transformative shift in the nature of jobs. I am an optimist, we will experience a lot of uncertainty in the next few years but come out the other side with full employment. Listened to an engaging interview Jason Calacanis had on TWIST with Ryan Carson from Treehouse. He said that our universities are graduating 400,000 programmers a year but we need over a million. He's arguing that education needs to change. http://thisweekinstartups.com/ryan-carson-treehouse/ http://thisweekinstartups.com/ryan-carson-treehouse/ There are plenty of people right here in America that are either unemployed or under employed that can take those jobs. But it's going to be with $8000 for a developer bootcamp or if you're able to learn online for $1200 with Treehouse. Someone has to service the robots of the future and the driverless car software. Just like Twilio allowed even average developers to create telephony apps a future company will allow smart people to knit together expert systems with API calls to a framework with something like Google's TensorFlow on the back end. Sorry @sama but I just don't see a need for basic income, the jobs will be there but they just haven't been invented yet.
- gaius 9y ago
  People who hire engineers say there should be a surfeit of engineers. Meanwhile have you seen the bloodbaths going on at IBM and HP? This is not a field I could recommend in good faith to any young person. Go into something that can't be offshored, without the rampant ageism...
  - runT1ME 9y ago
    What profession would you advise young people go into, if you are dissuading them from one of the few careers that can pay a living wage right out of the bat with almost unlimited upside potential (second only to law/medicine).
    - gaius 9y ago
      Yep, law or medicine. Maybe biotech. Don't be mislead by Silly Valley - most working programmers sit in cubicles cranking out code for the same salary as any other office worker while their managers plot and scheme day and night how to offshore their jobs.
Matt3o12_ 9y ago
The trend of fast fashion (buying clothes just to wear them a few times) has nothing to do with Amazon though. It is a direct result of our modern society. We now have the luxary to afford more then we actually need to survive so we strive to have more and more. This is really fused by the fashion industry and advertising companies rather then AI and automation. Fast fashion has been practiced long before we really had automation, and while I believe automation will drive down the prices (and thus increase the demand), the important advantage is fewer people who do jobs. Wether we use automatiom for that or not will only have a marginal difference. People buy so many clothes because they can (they are relatively cheap now compared to other expenses in our lives). Lastly, I believe Amazon (or shipping in general) actually brings down the carbon footprint. If you think about it, buying a new cable for me is either: drive about 9 miles to a mall to buy a single cable and drive 9 miles back or shipping it to my address which is bundled with many other and the driver only needs to drive an extra mile for me (at most) instead of 18. sure there is more packaging but there is also a lot of behind the scenes packaging for “in-store” items. Maybe not as much but I believe, in almost all cases, the carbon footprint for driving all the way to the mall for picking up a cubic feet and 1 pound of materials is rather wasteful.
- spynxic 9y ago
  > ..We now have the luxary to afford more then we actually need to survive so we strive to have more and more. I've come to the conclusion that this is primary issue with a establishing a universal income. Providing everyone with a means to buy essentials for life would insist that no one overbuys -- which would have the effect of inflating market prices and eliminate any benefits imagined from having such an income.
  - thesagan 9y ago
    I have concerns as well. My own suspicion is that UBI would give policymakers a mighty political carrot-and-stick; debating the morality of certain spending habits, etc., and slowly de-universalizing UBI into something with strings attached. I prefer the idea of creating our own value for trade, if we could iron out some of the kinks in the system we have already.
blazespin 9y ago
"That kind of consumption is insanity and just think of the carbon footprint." Here here! I was doing well at amazon interview for IOT when I suddenly blurted out "but why would I want to work on this? Do we really want to encourage people to buy a fridge connected to the internet?" Couldn't help myself. Boy, you could see the manager's blood pressure rise. I didn't get the job..
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Thank you for your honesty at the interview. We really need more people to point out to people in management that some ideas are just stupid and simply should not be done.
holografix 9y ago
Why can't the western world properly tax large job destroyers? I don't mean to sound inflammatory just focusing solely on the negative impact to mum and dad shops that Amazon can cause. Large American based organisations have been hoarding an extreme amount of cash. Why is this allowed? Why do they feel the need to "give back" and engage in philanthropy? Can't we just stop them from using tax loopholes and re-invest it in society with new preemptive educational programs and universal healthcare? Seriously now, why do I keep seeing examples of corporate America outdoing themselves on Corporate Social Responsibility? Why is it not just about applying special taxes on the mega profitable monopolistic entities?
- ci5er 9y ago
  "Now that you are super-successful - let the state take your money. Because, reasons" ? Why do you believe that the state (with its lifetime employeed mediocraties or venal politicians), with no competition itself to always be improving, would or could be a better steward of resources than a corporation?
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    > would or could be a better steward of resources than a corporation? Because as an abstract entity, a corporation doesn't give a damn about the society beyond ensuring it has market opportunities to exploit. A state, on the other hand, will redirect those resources towards social good. At least that's how it happens in the ideal world. Our world is a bit more messy, but the base argument retains some merit.
    - ci5er 9y ago
      > A state, on the other hand, will redirect those resources towards social good. A state is also an abstract entity. Composed of people with a range of incentives based on their positions. Elected representatives offer us a fine view into what economists call "The Agency Problem" [0][1] Pournelle's "Iron Law of Bureaucracy" states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists, and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration. Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc. The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization. In both cases, the "state" is less benign than what one might suppose. But, because we are all (mostly) taught by agents of the state from childhood - this is never really brought to our attention during our early indoctrination process. [0]: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/agencyproblem.asp http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/agencyproblem.asp [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...
imgabe 9y ago
I don't think we're all going to be buying disposable kettles every day. Think about the infrastructure that had to exist to replace that kettle before. We had to build a network of brick and mortar stores all over the place and keep them supplied with kettles and all kinds of other things in case someone needed them. When a replacement was needed, the person who needed it had to drive there alone and get it. Now we have a warehouse (which the brick and mortar stores had anyway) and instead of millions of individuals making trips alone, we have delivery van that is driving around anyway bringing things to whoever needs them that day. Overall, I think we've gained a lot of efficiency and reduced the amount of resources necessary to get goods to people who need them.
delazeur 9y ago
> Before, a single kettle could last generations. I'm personally very disturbed by the idea of more and more people getting many deliveries every single day. That kind of consumption is insanity and just think of the carbon footprint. I agree that this type of rampant consumerism is an entirely new (and disturbing) thing, but there is an enormous surivorship bias in a statement like "a single kettle could last generations." All the kettles in the world today that someone inherited from their great-grandparents were extremely well made, but it does not follow that all the kettles that generation owned were well made.
- jhoechtl 9y ago
  > All the kettles in the world today that someone inherited from their great-grandparents were extremely well made, but it does not follow that all the kettles that generation owned were well made. I cannot follow this argumentation. A kettle lasted to generations (assumed working) -- isn't that 'well made'?
  - delazeur 9y ago
    Some percentage of kettles were not well made and did not last. All the kettles that did last were well made. It's wrong to look at the population of kettles that lasted, observe that they are all well made, and conclude that all kettles made long ago were therefore well made.
  - autokad 9y ago
    i think you are missing their point, which is talking about selection bias
  - nindalf 9y ago
    You misunderstood him. His point was this - say in 1900 they made 100 kettles, only 10 of which were well made. Those 10 were passed down as heirlooms while the other 90 were consigned to the scrap heap. Now 117 years later people go looking for old kettles, look at those 10 and say "wow, they don't make 'em like they used to". In reality we're making them possibly better than we were earlier.
shubb 9y ago
A lot of people don't like regulation on general principal, but it's important. We need laws to stop people just taking stuff from stores and we need laws to stop companies destroying rivers or putting employees at risk. One driver for globalisation has been to evade regulation, whether that is the globalisation of money with tax havens or hands off supplier networks that don't follow even local labour law in pursuit of higher margins. Governments have not figured out how to deal whith this. Regulation could drive automation so that long working hours in dangerous conditions were not necessary. Or incentivise products that made in ways that don't damage the environment (see German vs Chinese solar panel manufacture). But they don't. As long as African children are cheaper than robots and no one is saying no, we don't get no robots. What could help with this? Possibly international systems like TPP, possibly better informed consumers. Ultimatum I dont think either of these are enough abs don't know what is..

saint_fiasco 9y ago

The kind of people who benefit most from being able to buy cheap clothes made in sweatshops is not Silicon Valley professionals, it's poor people. Get rid of the unsafe factories and poor people won't be able to afford clothes anymore. And the workers of those unsafe factories won't be able to afford anything. There is no easy answer.

FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago
The can most certainly afford clothing, if not make their own. What they can't afford is fashion
- saint_fiasco 9y ago
  No they can't. Being able to change clothes (incl. underwear) everyday is a recent custom, and a luxury. Even if they can, the extra money they would have to spend is money that they won't be able to spend in food and other essentials. Time they spend making clothes is time they can't spend making money for buying other things, or in education.
  - eeZah7Ux 9y ago
    > Being able to change clothes (incl. underwear) everyday is a recent custom, and a luxury Replace or just wash? The latter has been absolutely common across many cultures that had access to water and hot enough climate to dry clothes quickly. Sturdy cotton lasts 10 years or even more.
Scramblejams 9y ago
Agreed. When people think they're doing the third world a disservice by buying consumer electronics, I point them to Paul Krugman's essay, In Praise of Cheap Labor: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/1997/03/in_praise_of_cheap_labor.html http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/19...
- kiliantics 9y ago
  This is just fancy apologetics for exploiting cheap third world labour. It completely ignores the brutal violence underlying the whole story. There are good reasons why people there can't have jobs unless we hire them for buttons. It's not the natural state of things that we are generously saving them from. There's a history of colonial domination in all of these places that was exploited to negotiate very one sided trade deals with western nations. So they are being paid buttons because we hold their governments hostage to get nice deals for our industry. And when they don't play ball, we send in the troops like that coup in Chile for a famous example.
tetraodonpuffer 9y ago
> Get rid of the unsafe factories and poor people won't be able to afford clothes anymore poor people have always been able to afford clothes, it was called saving for a while to buy a good pair of pants and mending it for many years until it pretty much fell apart. Poor people would not be able to afford new clothes all the time, sure, but clothes in general most certainly. And let's not forget about thrift stores, go into any goodwill and you will be able to buy plenty of good quality extremely lightly used clothes for very little money.
s73ver 9y ago
I do not believe that for one single second. There is absolutely zero reason whatsoever to disregard safety in manufacturing.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
davedx 9y ago
What a load of rubbish. Ever heard of a thrift shop? Hand-me-downs? There are plenty of ways for poor people to get clothes that don't involve buying stuff produced in a Bangladeshi sweatshop.
crdoconnor 9y ago
"The kind of people who benefit most from being able to buy cheap clothes made in sweatshops is not Silicon Valley professionals, it's poor people." The benefit they gain through slightly cheaper clothes is more than offset by the benefits from the jobs they could have had if the manufacture of clothing (like everything else) was not offshored. The real winner is Stefan Persson and the $28 billion he made from H&M's sweatshop labor arbitrage. "There is no easy answer." There is. Make trade deals contingent on good labor and environmental conditions and ruthlessly enforce that. That will bring jobs home and improve working conditions in 3rd world countries. Then, deal with the fact that that new top is going to cost $4 more and Stefan Persson won't be quite so spectacularly wealthy.
- devdas 9y ago
  As long as the people from 3rd world countries can easily relocate to places with better working conditions.
  - crdoconnor 9y ago
    To be clear, this usually means poor 3rd world countries pay for the educations of their best and brightest and then see no benefit from doing so. Most people ignore this subsidy from poor countries to rich.
    - devdas 9y ago
      I do mean unrestricted. That includes unlimited immigration of unskilled/lower skilled labour as well.
kiliantics 9y ago
But why are they poor to begin with? A big reason is the capture of wealth by industries like those in silicon valley that engage in exploitative labour practices and pay low taxes. There is easily enough money going around to have safe work conditions and still get everyone enough to have access to the basics and then some.

Retric 9y ago

Deliveries are often vastly lower carbon footprint than that same person going shopping. The best example is mail where 100 people can get mail on a street vs. 100 people all doing the same trip to the post office.

oh_sigh 9y ago
Also, I've found that many times I go out driving in search of a product and end up coming home with nothing or only part of what I needed. Just yesterday I drove 20 minutes to home Depot to buy a saw blade, which their website listed exactly how many were in stock(16) and where to find them. I go there and they're no where to be found, so I ordered one for next day delivery on Amazon while standing at the aisle where the product should have been. Events like this make me much less likely to go out and buy specific items. Generic items I will still get in person where their specifications aren't too important.
- kiliantics 9y ago
  Why not bike and get some exercise while you're at it
  - oh_sigh 9y ago
    Because I would need to ride my bike on the shoulder of a 55mph highway to do that. People do it frequently, but I don't have a death wish
CM30 9y ago
Maybe they are in the US, but in a lot of the world people walk or take transport when it comes to going to the shops. In these places, deliveries would obviously have a far higher carbon footprint.
- Retric 9y ago
  First, I am an American and often walk to stores so your mileage may vary. However, items also get shipped to stores so it really depends, but if your walking to the store it's a likely a fairly meaningless difference. Buses are generally considered efficient, but items are often vastly smaller than people which shifts things again. Moving 100+ pound people is simply less efficient than moving sub 1 pound objects. It may come down to packaging which seems to be in favor of going to the store. But, Amazon packaging does not need to look good or be tamper resistant and can thus often avoids using a lot of clear plastic on some items etc. In the end it's a surprisingly complex optimization problem. Made worse when you consider the vast overhead of physical stores which must be cooled/heated/cleaned and have a wide selection on hand etc.

rmason 9y ago

We're undergoing a transformative shift in the nature of jobs. I am an optimist, we will experience a lot of uncertainty in the next few years but come out the other side with full employment. Listened to an engaging interview Jason Calacanis had on TWIST with Ryan Carson from Treehouse. He said that our universities are graduating 400,000 programmers a year but we need over a million. He's arguing that education needs to change. http://thisweekinstartups.com/ryan-carson-treehouse/ http://thisweekinstartups.com/ryan-carson-treehouse/ There are plenty of people right here in America that are either unemployed or under employed that can take those jobs. But it's going to be with $8000 for a developer bootcamp or if you're able to learn online for $1200 with Treehouse. Someone has to service the robots of the future and the driverless car software. Just like Twilio allowed even average developers to create telephony apps a future company will allow smart people to knit together expert systems with API calls to a framework with something like Google's TensorFlow on the back end. Sorry @sama but I just don't see a need for basic income, the jobs will be there but they just haven't been invented yet.

gaius 9y ago
People who hire engineers say there should be a surfeit of engineers. Meanwhile have you seen the bloodbaths going on at IBM and HP? This is not a field I could recommend in good faith to any young person. Go into something that can't be offshored, without the rampant ageism...
- runT1ME 9y ago
  What profession would you advise young people go into, if you are dissuading them from one of the few careers that can pay a living wage right out of the bat with almost unlimited upside potential (second only to law/medicine).
  - gaius 9y ago
    Yep, law or medicine. Maybe biotech. Don't be mislead by Silly Valley - most working programmers sit in cubicles cranking out code for the same salary as any other office worker while their managers plot and scheme day and night how to offshore their jobs.

Matt3o12_ 9y ago

The trend of fast fashion (buying clothes just to wear them a few times) has nothing to do with Amazon though. It is a direct result of our modern society. We now have the luxary to afford more then we actually need to survive so we strive to have more and more. This is really fused by the fashion industry and advertising companies rather then AI and automation. Fast fashion has been practiced long before we really had automation, and while I believe automation will drive down the prices (and thus increase the demand), the important advantage is fewer people who do jobs. Wether we use automatiom for that or not will only have a marginal difference. People buy so many clothes because they can (they are relatively cheap now compared to other expenses in our lives). Lastly, I believe Amazon (or shipping in general) actually brings down the carbon footprint. If you think about it, buying a new cable for me is either: drive about 9 miles to a mall to buy a single cable and drive 9 miles back or shipping it to my address which is bundled with many other and the driver only needs to drive an extra mile for me (at most) instead of 18. sure there is more packaging but there is also a lot of behind the scenes packaging for “in-store” items. Maybe not as much but I believe, in almost all cases, the carbon footprint for driving all the way to the mall for picking up a cubic feet and 1 pound of materials is rather wasteful.

spynxic 9y ago
> ..We now have the luxary to afford more then we actually need to survive so we strive to have more and more. I've come to the conclusion that this is primary issue with a establishing a universal income. Providing everyone with a means to buy essentials for life would insist that no one overbuys -- which would have the effect of inflating market prices and eliminate any benefits imagined from having such an income.
- thesagan 9y ago
  I have concerns as well. My own suspicion is that UBI would give policymakers a mighty political carrot-and-stick; debating the morality of certain spending habits, etc., and slowly de-universalizing UBI into something with strings attached. I prefer the idea of creating our own value for trade, if we could iron out some of the kinks in the system we have already.

blazespin 9y ago

"That kind of consumption is insanity and just think of the carbon footprint." Here here! I was doing well at amazon interview for IOT when I suddenly blurted out "but why would I want to work on this? Do we really want to encourage people to buy a fridge connected to the internet?" Couldn't help myself. Boy, you could see the manager's blood pressure rise. I didn't get the job..

TeMPOraL 9y ago
Thank you for your honesty at the interview. We really need more people to point out to people in management that some ideas are just stupid and simply should not be done.

holografix 9y ago

Why can't the western world properly tax large job destroyers? I don't mean to sound inflammatory just focusing solely on the negative impact to mum and dad shops that Amazon can cause. Large American based organisations have been hoarding an extreme amount of cash. Why is this allowed? Why do they feel the need to "give back" and engage in philanthropy? Can't we just stop them from using tax loopholes and re-invest it in society with new preemptive educational programs and universal healthcare? Seriously now, why do I keep seeing examples of corporate America outdoing themselves on Corporate Social Responsibility? Why is it not just about applying special taxes on the mega profitable monopolistic entities?

ci5er 9y ago
"Now that you are super-successful - let the state take your money. Because, reasons" ? Why do you believe that the state (with its lifetime employeed mediocraties or venal politicians), with no competition itself to always be improving, would or could be a better steward of resources than a corporation?
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  > would or could be a better steward of resources than a corporation? Because as an abstract entity, a corporation doesn't give a damn about the society beyond ensuring it has market opportunities to exploit. A state, on the other hand, will redirect those resources towards social good. At least that's how it happens in the ideal world. Our world is a bit more messy, but the base argument retains some merit.
  - ci5er 9y ago
    > A state, on the other hand, will redirect those resources towards social good. A state is also an abstract entity. Composed of people with a range of incentives based on their positions. Elected representatives offer us a fine view into what economists call "The Agency Problem" [0][1] Pournelle's "Iron Law of Bureaucracy" states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists, and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration. Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc. The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization. In both cases, the "state" is less benign than what one might suppose. But, because we are all (mostly) taught by agents of the state from childhood - this is never really brought to our attention during our early indoctrination process. [0]: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/agencyproblem.asp http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/agencyproblem.asp [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...

imgabe 9y ago

I don't think we're all going to be buying disposable kettles every day. Think about the infrastructure that had to exist to replace that kettle before. We had to build a network of brick and mortar stores all over the place and keep them supplied with kettles and all kinds of other things in case someone needed them. When a replacement was needed, the person who needed it had to drive there alone and get it. Now we have a warehouse (which the brick and mortar stores had anyway) and instead of millions of individuals making trips alone, we have delivery van that is driving around anyway bringing things to whoever needs them that day. Overall, I think we've gained a lot of efficiency and reduced the amount of resources necessary to get goods to people who need them.

delazeur 9y ago

> Before, a single kettle could last generations. I'm personally very disturbed by the idea of more and more people getting many deliveries every single day. That kind of consumption is insanity and just think of the carbon footprint. I agree that this type of rampant consumerism is an entirely new (and disturbing) thing, but there is an enormous surivorship bias in a statement like "a single kettle could last generations." All the kettles in the world today that someone inherited from their great-grandparents were extremely well made, but it does not follow that all the kettles that generation owned were well made.

jhoechtl 9y ago
> All the kettles in the world today that someone inherited from their great-grandparents were extremely well made, but it does not follow that all the kettles that generation owned were well made. I cannot follow this argumentation. A kettle lasted to generations (assumed working) -- isn't that 'well made'?
- delazeur 9y ago
  Some percentage of kettles were not well made and did not last. All the kettles that did last were well made. It's wrong to look at the population of kettles that lasted, observe that they are all well made, and conclude that all kettles made long ago were therefore well made.
- autokad 9y ago
  i think you are missing their point, which is talking about selection bias
- nindalf 9y ago
  You misunderstood him. His point was this - say in 1900 they made 100 kettles, only 10 of which were well made. Those 10 were passed down as heirlooms while the other 90 were consigned to the scrap heap. Now 117 years later people go looking for old kettles, look at those 10 and say "wow, they don't make 'em like they used to". In reality we're making them possibly better than we were earlier.

shubb 9y ago

A lot of people don't like regulation on general principal, but it's important. We need laws to stop people just taking stuff from stores and we need laws to stop companies destroying rivers or putting employees at risk. One driver for globalisation has been to evade regulation, whether that is the globalisation of money with tax havens or hands off supplier networks that don't follow even local labour law in pursuit of higher margins. Governments have not figured out how to deal whith this. Regulation could drive automation so that long working hours in dangerous conditions were not necessary. Or incentivise products that made in ways that don't damage the environment (see German vs Chinese solar panel manufacture). But they don't. As long as African children are cheaper than robots and no one is saying no, we don't get no robots. What could help with this? Possibly international systems like TPP, possibly better informed consumers. Ultimatum I dont think either of these are enough abs don't know what is..