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I don’t see anything wrong with this. Most of the warehouse operations will get automated soon. So it’s better (from the laborers’ perspective) to keep manual

I don’t see anything wrong with this. Most of the warehouse operations will get automated soon. So it’s better (from the laborers’ perspective) to keep manual labor as efficient/profitable as possible, otherwise they’ll make it attractive to automate all manual labor. i.e., those who are considered good warehouse workers, are at risk of losing their jobs too to automation if the not-so-good workers are not fired.

sagebird 7y ago
Just because robots exist does not imply humans should accept being treated like one in order to be maximally competitive. Societies get to collectively decide what the floor is for human treatment, not just market forces. (Hint- the market has no floor in this regard.) (I upvoted your comment for making a salient point that I think has merit though I disagree with it.)
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  That would have nothing to do with Amazon choosing to automate a process. Society, i.e. government, has the power to decide what the floor is for human treatment. The people lucky to live in democracies can choose to vote for representatives that provide minimum amounts of paid leave, maximum amount of hours worked, etc.
  - sagebird 7y ago
    A society could reasonably elect that firings must be reviewed and signed off by a human. In real life, there are instances of hard working people who through some bad luck end up having to do manual work into their 70’s. They haul ass and have a high work ethic, but can’t keep up with workers who are 50 years younger. They don’t meet quotas in terms of productivity, but usually management is happy to keep them on. Sure, you could automate compassion by formulating a metric that keeps these people, but let’s be honest, Amazon is not doing that. So a reasonable society might say that a human must be part of the process in order to offer “humane” relief for extenuating circumstances, or at least present an opportunity for that. It’s kind of fucked if Amazon realized they can save money by removing human judgement from the loop because humans are not universally in dispossession of a heart or compassionate facility.
  - newsgremlin 7y ago
    Unfortunately governments plan in 5 year cycles, companies plans of Amazon scale are typically longer than that. I fear we will, and in some ways already have, reached a point where corporation actions influence government decision through public perception. PR is corporate propaganda, although it's currently inconsequential save for consumers being ripped off, in a democracy if you can convince your company is doing good and politicians are bad, then the role of government in regulating those companies is subject to people whose careers are being decided by the electorate that believe the words of a private entity more than a public one. Suddenly reform is off the cards. In more recent events people keep saying these huge companies need to pay their fair share of taxes, yet politicians have made no headway with closing the mechanisms that allow them to avoid it, and if people lose their jobs because companies are suddenly forced to pay taxes they would have otherwise look to avoid paying, then the government will most likely be given the blame.
- calvinbhai 7y ago
  I kind of agree with your point. The way I foresee it is, if extracting every bit of value from manual labor becomes costly, for a business, that means comparatively the automation option is becoming cheaper. Subsidies / tax breaks etc for the businesses can ensure that manual labor in warehouses is not so easily replaced by automation. But that can only work until a certain point. Problem is not with existing set of automation solutions. It is with making the future solutions for automation more attractive. in future, if a fully automated warehouse is possible, then no one (from the society) get's to decide how a warehouse worker should be treated, because they don't exist. It's like the elevator operators in the past (they dont exist in most countries if not any). That's how I see the current set of warehouse workers (they can get automated out even before truck/car drivers).

sagebird 7y ago

Just because robots exist does not imply humans should accept being treated like one in order to be maximally competitive. Societies get to collectively decide what the floor is for human treatment, not just market forces. (Hint- the market has no floor in this regard.) (I upvoted your comment for making a salient point that I think has merit though I disagree with it.)

lotsofpulp 7y ago
That would have nothing to do with Amazon choosing to automate a process. Society, i.e. government, has the power to decide what the floor is for human treatment. The people lucky to live in democracies can choose to vote for representatives that provide minimum amounts of paid leave, maximum amount of hours worked, etc.
- sagebird 7y ago
  A society could reasonably elect that firings must be reviewed and signed off by a human. In real life, there are instances of hard working people who through some bad luck end up having to do manual work into their 70’s. They haul ass and have a high work ethic, but can’t keep up with workers who are 50 years younger. They don’t meet quotas in terms of productivity, but usually management is happy to keep them on. Sure, you could automate compassion by formulating a metric that keeps these people, but let’s be honest, Amazon is not doing that. So a reasonable society might say that a human must be part of the process in order to offer “humane” relief for extenuating circumstances, or at least present an opportunity for that. It’s kind of fucked if Amazon realized they can save money by removing human judgement from the loop because humans are not universally in dispossession of a heart or compassionate facility.
- newsgremlin 7y ago
  Unfortunately governments plan in 5 year cycles, companies plans of Amazon scale are typically longer than that. I fear we will, and in some ways already have, reached a point where corporation actions influence government decision through public perception. PR is corporate propaganda, although it's currently inconsequential save for consumers being ripped off, in a democracy if you can convince your company is doing good and politicians are bad, then the role of government in regulating those companies is subject to people whose careers are being decided by the electorate that believe the words of a private entity more than a public one. Suddenly reform is off the cards. In more recent events people keep saying these huge companies need to pay their fair share of taxes, yet politicians have made no headway with closing the mechanisms that allow them to avoid it, and if people lose their jobs because companies are suddenly forced to pay taxes they would have otherwise look to avoid paying, then the government will most likely be given the blame.
calvinbhai 7y ago
I kind of agree with your point. The way I foresee it is, if extracting every bit of value from manual labor becomes costly, for a business, that means comparatively the automation option is becoming cheaper. Subsidies / tax breaks etc for the businesses can ensure that manual labor in warehouses is not so easily replaced by automation. But that can only work until a certain point. Problem is not with existing set of automation solutions. It is with making the future solutions for automation more attractive. in future, if a fully automated warehouse is possible, then no one (from the society) get's to decide how a warehouse worker should be treated, because they don't exist. It's like the elevator operators in the past (they dont exist in most countries if not any). That's how I see the current set of warehouse workers (they can get automated out even before truck/car drivers).