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America’s Largest Unions Are Calling on the FTC to Stop Amazon
- votepaunchy 6y agoWhy wouldn’t Amazon pass through the French tax to French sellers and therefore French customers? I don’t expect Frenchmen to pay my American sales taxes. The French taxes make Amazon less competitive against smaller competitors, as intended.
- lizardmancan 6y agoIt always struck me as weird how the US persecuted communist and anything that merely smelled like it as if self evident. Now that amazon has taken gov sponsored centralisation to these new heights im starting to grasp fromwhere the fear.
- andromeduck 6y agoRent-seekers rent-seeking, more at 11.
- neutronman 6y agoAt least unions grift to build a strong blue collar middle class. That raises standard of living and creates a strong consumer economy.
- ActorNightly 6y agoThe biggest advantage of strong unions these days is that it will create a strong push towards automation.
- missedthecue 6y agoDon't be misled; Unions procure high wages at the expense of you and me
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago"Why should anyone want a better living, it will cost me more money. Screw them." The selfishness and corporate worship is just endemic to the US at this point. No wonder it is in decline.
- missedthecue 6y agoI'm not in the business of doing charity with every product I buy. Cartels are bad when OPEC does them, and they're bad when labour unions do them.
- fallingfrog 6y agoUnions don’t give workers an unfair advantage; they merely level the field and make it a fair negotiation. After all the boss already has the power of a large organization behind them, why should the workers not have their own?
- missedthecue 6y agoThe idea that it 'levels the playing field' is an opinion. I reject that opinion out of hand. If a company's workforce unionizes, a company cannot do much but pay the wages they demand. That is not a fair playing field. That is a cartel. Cartels are bad. >After all the boss already has the power of a large organization Poor representation of the facts. A boss has the authority to buy labour as he sees fit, and to offer a sum for it that he thinks he can afford. He does not have the power to force an employee to be hired at a price he wants.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> If a company's workforce unionizes, a company cannot do much but pay the wages they demand. If a company’s workforce unionizes, the single employer and single collective bargaining negotiator are on much more equal footing than if the workforce does not unionized. The shareholders whose interest the firm represents are already a cartel through the formation of the firm.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoMy perception is that, at least lately, unions grift to build a powerful (and therefore wealthier) union official hierarchy. (There was a day when they actually were for the blue collar workers, in practice as well as in theory, but that day is long gone.)
- foolzcrow 6y agoPower to the people is Amazon's worst nightmare.
- fallingfrog 6y agoEconomic rights are rights too. The right to bargain collectively is extremely important and should not be restricted to those holding large amounts of capital.
- pythonslayer 6y agoThe “economic rights” category is awkward. There is no justifying delineation for this. The reality is poor people don’t have equal rights and never have. Poor people don’t even have basic rights, no matter how hard they work or how valuable they are to society. Poor people are not even allowed to cooperate with one another in mutual sacrifice of their own labor. This is just basic human rights, not a special category.
- zxcvbn4038 6y agoI don’t agree that Amazon is taking advantage of the pandemic - people were making similar claims about Amazon before any of that happened. Wal-mart could ship me products and I would be happy to buy from them, but since March everything at Walmart has been pickup only or doesn’t ship to my zip code (NYC), so I order from Amazon. Target is even worse off - it’s not that items are pickup only or not shipping to my zip code, they are simply unavailable. So my message to Wal-Mart and Target is evolve or become the next US Steel. Amazon built a logistics pipeline that fits in well with the new normal. Walmart built a bunch of super-centers that don’t. Spoils to the victor.