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'I'm not going to put productive energy into anything that doesn't improve civilization. Why would I? What would I be trying to do?” Um, help workers get off f

'I'm not going to put productive energy into anything that doesn't improve civilization. Why would I? What would I be trying to do?” Um, help workers get off food stamps? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-12-17/amazon-amzn-job-pay-rate-leaves-some-warehouse-employees-homeless https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-12-17/amazon-am...

amelius 6y ago
"Yeah, those workers are only a temporary problem that will be gone when we have the automation in place." /s
- mathgladiator 6y ago
  The sarcasm may not be too far off. I used to have ambitions to build a company, but now the future plan is to pick up the task of being a solo developer. Why? people are the worst and I have no desire to have anyone on payroll. Those workers are definitely a temporary problem until those warehouses are 100% automated. Once all the people are gone, all the labor concerns are gone as well. No more safety. AC costs are minimized to what is needed for product safety. No more restrooms with no more plumbing. Just machines which ingest goods and distribute goods.
  - apocalypstyx 6y ago
    >Why? people are the worst No offense intended. But do you classify yourself as part of humanity? Or one of the good ones? I mean, I know one or two people who profess to think this, and they admit they themselves are just as disgusting, so at least I can have some respect for their self-reflection.
    - rpdillon 6y ago
      A charitable reading is that there are many parts of running a business, but managing employees/contractors is definitely one of the most difficult to get right while also being perceived as peripheral to the core goal; if you can still accomplish a mission you care about without bringing in all that extra work, it might be preferable. As an engineer, this reading resonates for me to some degree. I'm naturally more interested in engineering problems than I am by payroll, performance management, and hiring.
    - lisper 6y ago
      Not the OP, but I share hir antisocial attitude. But here's how I frame it: humans are a result of an undirected design process whose only quality metric is reproductive fitness. As a side effect of this process, we ended up with brains that care about things other than reproductive fitness, things like beauty and mathematical elegance and self-actualization and discovery for its own sake. As a consequence of this, we ended up inventing birth control. That invention is distinguished among human inventions because it is an immediate existential threat to our short-term reproductive fitness: genes that make brains that choose not to have children don't reproduce as well (in the short term) as genes that make brains that, say, have an instinctive revulsion against using birth control, and which (say) take seriously the idea that the Creator of the Universe commanded them to be fruitful and multiply. The problem is that those people still have access to the leverage provided by technology, and so now they pose an existential threat to civilization by way of carbon emissions. So it's not so much "good one" vs "bad ones" as brains that optimize for short-term reproductive fitness vs ones that don't. It's not an epic struggle between good and evil, it's just, quite literally, evolution in action. Like all living things, I want "my side" to win. The tricky bit is deciding where "my side" ends and "the other" begins. Everyone has to struggle with that.
      - mathgladiator 6y ago
        It's more practical than that. I have no problem hiring people, but I want to them to do work rather than other shit. However, people need so much care that it is so draining. The crazy thing is that these problems don't manifest until a business is reasonably successful and the medium growth spurt happens. That's when you need to get HR, and at the moment the business becomes a prison.
    - konschubert 6y ago
      Yea, I think it’s a consistent view to think that dealing with people is hard, and knowing that one would also find it hard, or even harder, to deal with oneself as colleague or employee
    - mathgladiator 6y ago
      Yes, I am no saint. I accept that I'm a dumb dirty primate. The problem now feels that we have a minority of very loud people that cause expensive problems. I can't wait until I have AI to amplify myself.
- dustingetz 6y ago
  There is not anyone to build the pyramid if all the slaves are dead ... more absolute civilization value is produced by humans with aligned interests than humans being dominated ... capitalism is a prisoners dilemma stuck at backstab
  - savanaly 6y ago
    You may be interested to read this article I saw the other day that claims that slave labor being used to build the pyramids was a myth. [0] I wonder if at some distant point in the future a similar mistake will be made by internet commentators under the impression that Amazon's workers were slaves because there's a few extant references to it, even though the reality is they make over minimum wage. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jan/11/great-pyramid-tombs-slaves-egypt https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jan/11/great-pyramid-...
trollski 6y ago
and how did amazon improve civilization? by fastfoodization of technology and anihilating thousands of small businesses? thanks jeff.
analog31 6y ago
As my daughter once mentioned to me, Jeff Bezos wakes up every morning and decides not to end world hunger.
- lookdangerous 6y ago
  You assume all it takes is money to end world hunger.
  - capableweb 6y ago
    Don't think that's the assumption. But it's a start. And since no one is throwing money to end world hunger, no one can even start. Hence Jezz Befos does indeed wake up every day and decide not to do anything about ending world hunger.
    - sickofparadox 6y ago
      What planet do you live on where there is no one throwing money to end world hunger? Western Governments provide billions in foreign aid to poorer countries to assist with development programs, there are hundreds of charities dedicated to teaching farming techniques and providing food to those who need it, and if that isn't enough, the Gates foundation is working on eradicating hunger in Africa by 2030. To say that no one is working on ending world hunger is not just wrong, it makes the original point look ridiculous by association.
- heartbreak 6y ago
  You (your daughter) overestimate the power of a hundred billion USD. The US Government has invested multiples of that and still hasn’t managed to end “world hunger.”
  - slindz 6y ago
    I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. I think it's *likely a motivated mega-billionaire would be far more effective with 100B than a self-interested bureaucracy.
missedthecue 6y ago
The article says that's 4000 employees out of 1.3 million on government assistance. The only way they are still qualifying at $15 an hour is if they're a single mother with multiple children, or particularly disabled. If you want companies to not have any employees like that on government assistance, they'll just stop hiring single mothers and disabled people. Their skills aren't suddenly worth $25/hr just because they have children. The government subsidizing their pay is a good thing, and I hope it happens to more people like those 4000 at Amazon.
- throwaway2245 6y ago
  > The government subsidizing their pay is a good thing The government is really subsidising the money into Jeff Bezos's accounts. The skills aren't considered worth $25/h because they are not paid according to the value they are providing, which is evident by the grotesque profits that Amazon is making. Amazon arguably has monopoly power over this type of job, which means there isn't competition for the workers, and they aren't paid correctly. That should be corrected, rather than subsidised.
  - elindbe3 6y ago
    Who's to say that those jobs are providing the value though? You'd have to do a much deeper analysis than looking at Amazon's profit margins given the fact that they have all sorts of automation their employees didn't pay for.
    - throwaway2245 6y ago
      There's no objective measure of value and the amount the workers are paid is more a function of their (very little) power: if those types of workers vanished, Amazon would not have any value.
      - elindbe3 6y ago
        Well I'm glad we're in agreement there's no objective measure of value of these workers. > if those types of workers vanished, Amazon would not have any value. I disagree, in a world with only higher wage workers, a business like Amazon's would be even more important since they have such a focus on automation. Look at what happened during COVID. A lot of low wage work was shut down and who took their place in the economy? A few large companies.
unchocked 6y ago
I think it helps to view people as charitably as you can. I think Jeff, like most capitalists, is looking for leverage. So he wants to change the future, rather than mitigate the present. There's certainly good faith arguments to be made against his choices. But I don't think one needs to imagine he's selectively blind or a hypocrite when different positive values and different time horizons serve to explain.

amelius 6y ago

"Yeah, those workers are only a temporary problem that will be gone when we have the automation in place." /s

mathgladiator 6y ago
The sarcasm may not be too far off. I used to have ambitions to build a company, but now the future plan is to pick up the task of being a solo developer. Why? people are the worst and I have no desire to have anyone on payroll. Those workers are definitely a temporary problem until those warehouses are 100% automated. Once all the people are gone, all the labor concerns are gone as well. No more safety. AC costs are minimized to what is needed for product safety. No more restrooms with no more plumbing. Just machines which ingest goods and distribute goods.
- apocalypstyx 6y ago
  >Why? people are the worst No offense intended. But do you classify yourself as part of humanity? Or one of the good ones? I mean, I know one or two people who profess to think this, and they admit they themselves are just as disgusting, so at least I can have some respect for their self-reflection.
  - rpdillon 6y ago
    A charitable reading is that there are many parts of running a business, but managing employees/contractors is definitely one of the most difficult to get right while also being perceived as peripheral to the core goal; if you can still accomplish a mission you care about without bringing in all that extra work, it might be preferable. As an engineer, this reading resonates for me to some degree. I'm naturally more interested in engineering problems than I am by payroll, performance management, and hiring.
  - lisper 6y ago
    Not the OP, but I share hir antisocial attitude. But here's how I frame it: humans are a result of an undirected design process whose only quality metric is reproductive fitness. As a side effect of this process, we ended up with brains that care about things other than reproductive fitness, things like beauty and mathematical elegance and self-actualization and discovery for its own sake. As a consequence of this, we ended up inventing birth control. That invention is distinguished among human inventions because it is an immediate existential threat to our short-term reproductive fitness: genes that make brains that choose not to have children don't reproduce as well (in the short term) as genes that make brains that, say, have an instinctive revulsion against using birth control, and which (say) take seriously the idea that the Creator of the Universe commanded them to be fruitful and multiply. The problem is that those people still have access to the leverage provided by technology, and so now they pose an existential threat to civilization by way of carbon emissions. So it's not so much "good one" vs "bad ones" as brains that optimize for short-term reproductive fitness vs ones that don't. It's not an epic struggle between good and evil, it's just, quite literally, evolution in action. Like all living things, I want "my side" to win. The tricky bit is deciding where "my side" ends and "the other" begins. Everyone has to struggle with that.
    - mathgladiator 6y ago
      It's more practical than that. I have no problem hiring people, but I want to them to do work rather than other shit. However, people need so much care that it is so draining. The crazy thing is that these problems don't manifest until a business is reasonably successful and the medium growth spurt happens. That's when you need to get HR, and at the moment the business becomes a prison.
  - konschubert 6y ago
    Yea, I think it’s a consistent view to think that dealing with people is hard, and knowing that one would also find it hard, or even harder, to deal with oneself as colleague or employee
  - mathgladiator 6y ago
    Yes, I am no saint. I accept that I'm a dumb dirty primate. The problem now feels that we have a minority of very loud people that cause expensive problems. I can't wait until I have AI to amplify myself.
dustingetz 6y ago
There is not anyone to build the pyramid if all the slaves are dead ... more absolute civilization value is produced by humans with aligned interests than humans being dominated ... capitalism is a prisoners dilemma stuck at backstab
- savanaly 6y ago
  You may be interested to read this article I saw the other day that claims that slave labor being used to build the pyramids was a myth. [0] I wonder if at some distant point in the future a similar mistake will be made by internet commentators under the impression that Amazon's workers were slaves because there's a few extant references to it, even though the reality is they make over minimum wage. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jan/11/great-pyramid-tombs-slaves-egypt https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jan/11/great-pyramid-...

trollski 6y ago

and how did amazon improve civilization? by fastfoodization of technology and anihilating thousands of small businesses? thanks jeff.

analog31 6y ago

As my daughter once mentioned to me, Jeff Bezos wakes up every morning and decides not to end world hunger.

lookdangerous 6y ago
You assume all it takes is money to end world hunger.
- capableweb 6y ago
  Don't think that's the assumption. But it's a start. And since no one is throwing money to end world hunger, no one can even start. Hence Jezz Befos does indeed wake up every day and decide not to do anything about ending world hunger.
  - sickofparadox 6y ago
    What planet do you live on where there is no one throwing money to end world hunger? Western Governments provide billions in foreign aid to poorer countries to assist with development programs, there are hundreds of charities dedicated to teaching farming techniques and providing food to those who need it, and if that isn't enough, the Gates foundation is working on eradicating hunger in Africa by 2030. To say that no one is working on ending world hunger is not just wrong, it makes the original point look ridiculous by association.
heartbreak 6y ago
You (your daughter) overestimate the power of a hundred billion USD. The US Government has invested multiples of that and still hasn’t managed to end “world hunger.”
- slindz 6y ago
  I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. I think it's *likely a motivated mega-billionaire would be far more effective with 100B than a self-interested bureaucracy.

missedthecue 6y ago

The article says that's 4000 employees out of 1.3 million on government assistance. The only way they are still qualifying at $15 an hour is if they're a single mother with multiple children, or particularly disabled. If you want companies to not have any employees like that on government assistance, they'll just stop hiring single mothers and disabled people. Their skills aren't suddenly worth $25/hr just because they have children. The government subsidizing their pay is a good thing, and I hope it happens to more people like those 4000 at Amazon.

throwaway2245 6y ago
> The government subsidizing their pay is a good thing The government is really subsidising the money into Jeff Bezos's accounts. The skills aren't considered worth $25/h because they are not paid according to the value they are providing, which is evident by the grotesque profits that Amazon is making. Amazon arguably has monopoly power over this type of job, which means there isn't competition for the workers, and they aren't paid correctly. That should be corrected, rather than subsidised.
- elindbe3 6y ago
  Who's to say that those jobs are providing the value though? You'd have to do a much deeper analysis than looking at Amazon's profit margins given the fact that they have all sorts of automation their employees didn't pay for.
  - throwaway2245 6y ago
    There's no objective measure of value and the amount the workers are paid is more a function of their (very little) power: if those types of workers vanished, Amazon would not have any value.
    - elindbe3 6y ago
      Well I'm glad we're in agreement there's no objective measure of value of these workers. > if those types of workers vanished, Amazon would not have any value. I disagree, in a world with only higher wage workers, a business like Amazon's would be even more important since they have such a focus on automation. Look at what happened during COVID. A lot of low wage work was shut down and who took their place in the economy? A few large companies.

unchocked 6y ago

I think it helps to view people as charitably as you can. I think Jeff, like most capitalists, is looking for leverage. So he wants to change the future, rather than mitigate the present. There's certainly good faith arguments to be made against his choices. But I don't think one needs to imagine he's selectively blind or a hypocrite when different positive values and different time horizons serve to explain.