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I don't think many people in amazon agree with Tim Bray. The pragmatic ones know that these kind of stories have a heavy political overtone , but more important

by la6471 6y ago

I don't think many people in amazon agree with Tim Bray. The pragmatic ones know that these kind of stories have a heavy political overtone , but more importantly amazon probably have better conditions than all other retailers in the world. Granted it is not perfect but a more meaningful way to change the condition of minimum wage or low wage laborers is through legislative changes or basic income schemes.

jrochkind1 6y ago
By "many people in amazon", you don't mean those "minimum wage or low wage laborers" in the warehouses, right? I suspect most of them who know about it appreciate Tim Bray standing up for them and consider it a "meaningful way". I don't understand what you are saying is a "more meaningful way" than what. You are saying keeping your mouth shut at work and just calling your legislator is a "more meaningful way to change the conditions"? That's a nice story to tell yourself when you want to preserve your good salary and safe working conditions that the workers in the warehouse don't have. I couldn't really say if most well-paid employees at Amazon agree or not, I'm not familiar with enough of them. But if we can't learn to protect each other, we've got nothing. This is not a test.
Wilem82 6y ago
> more importantly amazon probably have better conditions than all other retailers in the world That's not possible, the US has the worst worker protection laws in the world, it's really quite an undeveloped country in that regard.
- vinay427 6y ago
  Source needed on that first claim. I've spent a decent amount of time in some developing countries and I came out with no confidence that these types of labor laws are ordinarily enforced, if they even exist. I think you grossly overestimate these protections for relatively low-skilled labor outside of the developed world. I'm not taking the claim you replied to at face value (it's exceedingly extreme to even be plausibly true) but they at least included a "probably" to allow for some doubt.
brchn 6y ago
he's talking about the firing of whistleblowers though
billy_beef 6y ago
I think it’s more likely that smart people understand that speaking out or appearing to be in open dissent to the way amazon works is not a wise career move. Seems like a perfectly reasonable place to expect widespread preference falsification.

by la6471 6y ago

jrochkind1 6y ago

By "many people in amazon", you don't mean those "minimum wage or low wage laborers" in the warehouses, right? I suspect most of them who know about it appreciate Tim Bray standing up for them and consider it a "meaningful way". I don't understand what you are saying is a "more meaningful way" than what. You are saying keeping your mouth shut at work and just calling your legislator is a "more meaningful way to change the conditions"? That's a nice story to tell yourself when you want to preserve your good salary and safe working conditions that the workers in the warehouse don't have. I couldn't really say if most well-paid employees at Amazon agree or not, I'm not familiar with enough of them. But if we can't learn to protect each other, we've got nothing. This is not a test.

Wilem82 6y ago

> more importantly amazon probably have better conditions than all other retailers in the world That's not possible, the US has the worst worker protection laws in the world, it's really quite an undeveloped country in that regard.

vinay427 6y ago
Source needed on that first claim. I've spent a decent amount of time in some developing countries and I came out with no confidence that these types of labor laws are ordinarily enforced, if they even exist. I think you grossly overestimate these protections for relatively low-skilled labor outside of the developed world. I'm not taking the claim you replied to at face value (it's exceedingly extreme to even be plausibly true) but they at least included a "probably" to allow for some doubt.

brchn 6y ago

he's talking about the firing of whistleblowers though

billy_beef 6y ago

I think it’s more likely that smart people understand that speaking out or appearing to be in open dissent to the way amazon works is not a wise career move. Seems like a perfectly reasonable place to expect widespread preference falsification.