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But what do all the comments on my reply have to do with Amazon then? Yeah, I get it, HN doesn’t like them but you say yourself the problem is something else.

But what do all the comments on my reply have to do with Amazon then? Yeah, I get it, HN doesn’t like them but you say yourself the problem is something else. So why the company bashing?

lidHanteyk 6y ago
Because, counterfactually, no Jeff Bezos means no Amazon means no abuse of Amazon employees. So, to some extent, Bezos and Amazon are responsible, even if they aren't wholly responsible.
- looping__lui 6y ago
  As I mentioned in another comment: I think you get cause and effect wrong - and that is imho a big issue and makes the entire discussion really annoying. The destruction of the social safety net in the US allows companies to act differently in the US than in other countries. So: Amazon pays above minimum wage, gives more leave to its employees than legally required, has stricter safety standards than legally required (didn’t a president just ask in a press conference recently whether drinking bleach couldn’t cure Corona? Where was that again - rural South America?) - and still they are the evil ones. In Europe, any Amazon warehouse worker’s has full medical health coverage (including his family), his kids go to university for free, get the same schooling as the kids of a CEO, probably has 5-6 weeks vacation and if he quits his job - all of that will still hold. So per your logic, we should praise Amazon for all of that. But that would be equally illogical - because Amazon is not the root cause for all these benefits. No Jeff Bezos means: well, no shipments in times of dire need, no cloud compute, no 75+k jobs during the biggest “job recession” in American history. Also means no Blue Origin and no Washington Post. What I find interesting: You guys seem so paranoid and jealous about giving any benefit you have earned yourself so hard (e.g. health insurance) to anybody that appears to achieve less than you do that you collectively fight any improvement to the system. You DO NOT want all the benefits of a social safety net for everybody - hence nobody gets anything. Don’t blame this on Bezos, but blame it on yourself.
  - lidHanteyk 6y ago
    Careful with your "you guys". I'm a leftist, and I advocate for health care as a human right. In the USA, labor rights were earned by literally committing armed rebellion against corporate "company towns" [0], as in the West Virginia coal wars [1]. Without this, the USA would not have weekends or eight-hour workdays. Even if Amazon did not exist, Facebook would still need a lot of computers and Google would still have a lot of spare compute, so public clouds might still happen. And if they didn't, well, maybe that's not a bad thing! It's not clear that public clouds are good. The Washington Post is older than Bezos; it turns 143 this year [2]. Without Bezos, perhaps the paper would be dead right now, but perhaps it would be thriving, since the paywall on their online content was only built after Bezos took over. I find your view "not even wrong" [4]; your history of the issue is so shallow that I can't even critique it without first establishing the historical context. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_coal_wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_coal_wars [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Post [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong
    - looping__lui 6y ago
      Why don’t you have free health care, free education and that stuff? Are you honestly citing a 100 year old riot as a proof the American people want it? Obviously they 1) don’t or 2) want it but can’t have it. I mean, at least we have established that it’s not Amazon but “the system and everybody else” is the problem.

But what do all the comments on my reply have to do with Amazon then? Yeah, I get it, HN doesn’t like them but you say yourself the problem is something else. So why the company bashing?

lidHanteyk 6y ago

Because, counterfactually, no Jeff Bezos means no Amazon means no abuse of Amazon employees. So, to some extent, Bezos and Amazon are responsible, even if they aren't wholly responsible.

looping__lui 6y ago
As I mentioned in another comment: I think you get cause and effect wrong - and that is imho a big issue and makes the entire discussion really annoying. The destruction of the social safety net in the US allows companies to act differently in the US than in other countries. So: Amazon pays above minimum wage, gives more leave to its employees than legally required, has stricter safety standards than legally required (didn’t a president just ask in a press conference recently whether drinking bleach couldn’t cure Corona? Where was that again - rural South America?) - and still they are the evil ones. In Europe, any Amazon warehouse worker’s has full medical health coverage (including his family), his kids go to university for free, get the same schooling as the kids of a CEO, probably has 5-6 weeks vacation and if he quits his job - all of that will still hold. So per your logic, we should praise Amazon for all of that. But that would be equally illogical - because Amazon is not the root cause for all these benefits. No Jeff Bezos means: well, no shipments in times of dire need, no cloud compute, no 75+k jobs during the biggest “job recession” in American history. Also means no Blue Origin and no Washington Post. What I find interesting: You guys seem so paranoid and jealous about giving any benefit you have earned yourself so hard (e.g. health insurance) to anybody that appears to achieve less than you do that you collectively fight any improvement to the system. You DO NOT want all the benefits of a social safety net for everybody - hence nobody gets anything. Don’t blame this on Bezos, but blame it on yourself.
- lidHanteyk 6y ago
  Careful with your "you guys". I'm a leftist, and I advocate for health care as a human right. In the USA, labor rights were earned by literally committing armed rebellion against corporate "company towns" [0], as in the West Virginia coal wars [1]. Without this, the USA would not have weekends or eight-hour workdays. Even if Amazon did not exist, Facebook would still need a lot of computers and Google would still have a lot of spare compute, so public clouds might still happen. And if they didn't, well, maybe that's not a bad thing! It's not clear that public clouds are good. The Washington Post is older than Bezos; it turns 143 this year [2]. Without Bezos, perhaps the paper would be dead right now, but perhaps it would be thriving, since the paywall on their online content was only built after Bezos took over. I find your view "not even wrong" [4]; your history of the issue is so shallow that I can't even critique it without first establishing the historical context. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_coal_wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_coal_wars [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Post [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong
  - looping__lui 6y ago
    Why don’t you have free health care, free education and that stuff? Are you honestly citing a 100 year old riot as a proof the American people want it? Obviously they 1) don’t or 2) want it but can’t have it. I mean, at least we have established that it’s not Amazon but “the system and everybody else” is the problem.