Nearly everyone involved in this debate is "fake". The people railing against Amazon are mostly people who have never done manual labor in their lives and (wro

Nearly everyone involved in this debate is "fake". The people railing against Amazon are mostly people who have never done manual labor in their lives and (wrongly) view people who have as little better than slaves. Even the Amazon (or ex-Amazon) employees who speak against the company are doing so in an environment where the only tolerated sentiment is attacking Amazon. There's no room for nuance. Perhaps that's okay and reasonable new provisions for Amazon employees will come out of all this or perhaps the debate will get less and less rational. This situation makes me think of Ikiru, a Kurosawa movie. The main character is dying. He looks around for meaning in life and eventually settles upon a former employee of his, a young girl. He spends time with her and buys her things just to be around her, not out of any romantic of sexual motive, just because he's drawn to her liveliness, her attitude toward the world. Eventually she gets tired of this situation and no longer wants to see him. As she leaves, he begs her to tell him how she's so happy. She explains that she now works in a factory making toys for Japanese kids and this gives her life meaning. The main character decides that he can make his life meaningful by creating something durable in the world for other people before he dies. My point is that we often view workers as oppressed but an Amazon warehouse worker contributes in a very real way to billions of people getting things that they need. I write code for a living and I'm not convinced that I contribute any more to the world than an Amazon warehouse worker. And don't think the workers are unaware of this, some of them take pride in it, whether or not they express it on twitter, and they should. A lot of this comes down to your attitude toward the world. Are you a pessimist? Do you view human interaction as oppressive, is it mainly comprised of corrupt, powerful people manipulating kind, weak people? Or are you an optimist? Do you find it remarkable that things work as well as they do, do you take pride in your part, no matter how small, in keeping civilization afloat? Neither of these sentiments is wrong but only one is taken seriously in certain circles.