5 ms·

Jeff Bezos wants to pay the least for the most amount of work, and the workers want the most money for the least amount of work. It sounds like both parties sho

by papito 5y ago

Jeff Bezos wants to pay the least for the most amount of work, and the workers want the most money for the least amount of work. It sounds like both parties should meet themselves half-way as opposed to living in what is effectively modern-day slavery. Suggesting such a thing, however, is "radical" and "communist", and essentially one step away from a dystopian fascism hellscape something something ANTIFA.

pc86 5y ago
This isn't specific to Bezos, and it's not specific to any particular class or type of "worker." If Bezos could double his money today with zero work he'd certainly do it. The family business down the road would cut every employees' salary in half tomorrow if it could. It's just the free market, nothing particularly interesting or scary about it. Everyone wants to get the absolute best deal for themselves, and some are more successful than others.
- burlesona 5y ago
  There are a LOT of small business owners who choose to pay their employees more than they “have” to because they genuinely want to. There are a LOT of entrepreneurs who see “making my company a great place to work” as one of the core values of their job. I don’t think this is so common when you were talking about mega companies, in part because the work of operating a mega company is a lot less fun than a smaller company, and so you have this selection pressure where (a) people who pursue that path are more likely to value wealth and growth over quality of life, and (b) ruthlessness seems to usually help companies compete and win in the market. Thus the biggest and most famous companies of the world are more likely to be focused on cutthroat efficiency and, as a result, miserable places to work. But that’s no more a feature of capitalism than cancer is a feature of DNA. It’s a pervasive malfunction, but I believe it’s treatable, particularly through aggressive anti-trust and wealth taxes. Remember that the vast majority of capitalism is little businesses like your local veterinarian or florist, not FAANG.
  - shadowlight 5y ago
    >Remember that the vast majority of capitalism is little businesses like your local veterinarian or florist, not FAANG. That is the vast minority. Corporations dictate much of the business in the states and the world. It's really easy to see this without resorting to statistics. What is the ratio of your friends who work for corporations vs. the amount that own/work for small businesses? The anecdotal percentage here is a good indicator of the real percentage of economic output produced by corporations vs. small businesses. You will find that as how most of your friends direct their own economic output in service of corporations so does most of America.
    - azemetre 5y ago
      I believe it, I remember reading an article saying that there were 3 times as many small businesses in the 70s than there are today. It makes sense. There are many requirements and licenses for to start hair salons, barbers, wanting to garden, etc the system is set up to support the established elite today. At least IMO.
- whakim 5y ago
  This is a very myopic way of looking at things. There are plenty of family businesses that aren't only interested in capturing an ever greater share of profits.
  - throwaway2037 5y ago
    Yes absolutely -- in many places, like Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Germany, Austria, France, Netherlands, etc.
- wpietri 5y ago
  Nah. That's not "the free market". And that's not how most employers are. Wanting extra useless billions even if it immiserates others isn't commerce, it's sociopathy. Even sticking with industrial titans, look at Henry Ford, who insisted on paying his workers a living wage. That was revolutionary at the time, and put America on the road to having a significant middle class.
  - whakim 5y ago
    > Even sticking with industrial titans, look at Henry Ford, who insisted on paying his workers a living wage. That was revolutionary at the time, and put America on the road to having a significant middle class. Henry Ford didn't pay a "living wage" (I have no idea if the amount Ford paid was actually technically a living wage or not, but just using your terminology) out of the goodness of his heart - he did so in order to combat extremely high turnover. It actually cost less money to pay his workers more and spend less money on hiring and training new staff.
    - wpietri 5y ago
      Sure, and that's a lesson that Bezos failed to learn. There are a lot of people who consider it ideal to treat workers terribly. It's a common ethos; "The cruelty is the point." Which is why it was revolutionary for Ford to say, "Wait, what if we treated people well?" That's lesson that the car industry sadly lost track of over the years too. A good example is the NUMMI plant, a joint venture where Toyota tried to teach GM its superior ways. They took GM's worst plant and made it a top performer by treating workers with respect. This American Life did a moving story about it a few years back: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015 https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015
      - whakim 5y ago
        I understand Ford asked "what if we treated people well?", but he did it in the context of "useless extra billions" (to use your language) - he paid people a little bit better than his competitors in order to enable a competitive advantage which earned him more money. If treating them worse would have earned him more money, he would have done that instead. (n.b. that the increased wage also came with a bunch of moralistic lifestyle strings attached that were rigorously enforced.) My point is that there exist businesses and business owners who aren't solely motivated by increasing their share of the profits (even though our system strongly encourages this) - I just don't think Henry Ford just is a good example of that.
- papito 5y ago
  This is not a fair fight, however. Do you know how often US lawmakers talk on the phone with a billionaire? About once a week. They get the preferential treatment, they get the laws passed, and if the "normals" want to do something crazy like organize to negotiate working conditions, then it's a code-red emergency in Washington the sky is falling somebody do something.
akarma 5y ago
> Jeff Bezos wants to pay the least for the most amount of work, and the workers want the most money for the least amount of work. It sounds like both parties should meet themselves half-way as opposed to living in what is effectively modern-day slavery. The way it currently works is what you describe here. Amazon pays the least they can for the most amount of work, and workers work the least they can for the most amount of pay. They meet at the equilibrium where Amazon receives adequate labor, and the workers receive adequate pay. There's nothing radical or communistic about that idea.
- whakim 5y ago
  Where "the equilibrium" ends up changes over time though. Over the past 40-50 years in most developed countries, capital's (i.e. businesses') share of gross national income has been rising and labor's has been falling. This means that on average "the middle" has been trending towards companies paying less for the same amount of labor.
  - akarma 5y ago
    This is true, and it wouldn't suggest anything is amiss. In the US for example, there's a lot of factors in increasing labor supply: (1) From 1955 to today, women have gone from 36% labor force participation to 59%. (2) The percent of immigrants in the US in the 1950s to 1970s was less than 50% of what it is today. When the labor supply grows, it'll push downward on wages as the equilibrium price shifts. America's a country designed to be optimized for freedom, which includes women having the ability to participate in equal numbers to men in the workforce if desired, and immigrants having the ability to come and build their lives here if desired. That will lower wages, which is just one part of the picture in terms of economics and policy.
    - whakim 5y ago
      This isn't actually true because the growth of Gross National Income is proportional to the size of the working population. I'm also not talking about wages in absolute terms, I'm talking about the wage share (the percentage of GNI which goes to wages, as opposed to capital). Definitionally, the wage share has been declining since the 1970s because rates of growth have been slowing, which increases the capital/income ratio and (assuming return rates on capital remain relatively constant) will increase the capital share of income (and thus decrease the wage share). I'm not necessarily claiming to know what the correct value should be for the wage share, only that it's significantly lower than it used to be (and will probably continue to decline for the forseeable future). That being said, the wage share is obviously closely tied to inequality; if you reduced returns on capital and/or increased growth, you'd likely also increase the wage share.

by papito 5y ago

pc86 5y ago

This isn't specific to Bezos, and it's not specific to any particular class or type of "worker." If Bezos could double his money today with zero work he'd certainly do it. The family business down the road would cut every employees' salary in half tomorrow if it could. It's just the free market, nothing particularly interesting or scary about it. Everyone wants to get the absolute best deal for themselves, and some are more successful than others.

burlesona 5y ago
There are a LOT of small business owners who choose to pay their employees more than they “have” to because they genuinely want to. There are a LOT of entrepreneurs who see “making my company a great place to work” as one of the core values of their job. I don’t think this is so common when you were talking about mega companies, in part because the work of operating a mega company is a lot less fun than a smaller company, and so you have this selection pressure where (a) people who pursue that path are more likely to value wealth and growth over quality of life, and (b) ruthlessness seems to usually help companies compete and win in the market. Thus the biggest and most famous companies of the world are more likely to be focused on cutthroat efficiency and, as a result, miserable places to work. But that’s no more a feature of capitalism than cancer is a feature of DNA. It’s a pervasive malfunction, but I believe it’s treatable, particularly through aggressive anti-trust and wealth taxes. Remember that the vast majority of capitalism is little businesses like your local veterinarian or florist, not FAANG.
- shadowlight 5y ago
  >Remember that the vast majority of capitalism is little businesses like your local veterinarian or florist, not FAANG. That is the vast minority. Corporations dictate much of the business in the states and the world. It's really easy to see this without resorting to statistics. What is the ratio of your friends who work for corporations vs. the amount that own/work for small businesses? The anecdotal percentage here is a good indicator of the real percentage of economic output produced by corporations vs. small businesses. You will find that as how most of your friends direct their own economic output in service of corporations so does most of America.
  - azemetre 5y ago
    I believe it, I remember reading an article saying that there were 3 times as many small businesses in the 70s than there are today. It makes sense. There are many requirements and licenses for to start hair salons, barbers, wanting to garden, etc the system is set up to support the established elite today. At least IMO.
whakim 5y ago
This is a very myopic way of looking at things. There are plenty of family businesses that aren't only interested in capturing an ever greater share of profits.
- throwaway2037 5y ago
  Yes absolutely -- in many places, like Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Germany, Austria, France, Netherlands, etc.
wpietri 5y ago
Nah. That's not "the free market". And that's not how most employers are. Wanting extra useless billions even if it immiserates others isn't commerce, it's sociopathy. Even sticking with industrial titans, look at Henry Ford, who insisted on paying his workers a living wage. That was revolutionary at the time, and put America on the road to having a significant middle class.
- whakim 5y ago
  > Even sticking with industrial titans, look at Henry Ford, who insisted on paying his workers a living wage. That was revolutionary at the time, and put America on the road to having a significant middle class. Henry Ford didn't pay a "living wage" (I have no idea if the amount Ford paid was actually technically a living wage or not, but just using your terminology) out of the goodness of his heart - he did so in order to combat extremely high turnover. It actually cost less money to pay his workers more and spend less money on hiring and training new staff.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    Sure, and that's a lesson that Bezos failed to learn. There are a lot of people who consider it ideal to treat workers terribly. It's a common ethos; "The cruelty is the point." Which is why it was revolutionary for Ford to say, "Wait, what if we treated people well?" That's lesson that the car industry sadly lost track of over the years too. A good example is the NUMMI plant, a joint venture where Toyota tried to teach GM its superior ways. They took GM's worst plant and made it a top performer by treating workers with respect. This American Life did a moving story about it a few years back: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015 https://www.thisamericanlife.org/561/nummi-2015
    - whakim 5y ago
      I understand Ford asked "what if we treated people well?", but he did it in the context of "useless extra billions" (to use your language) - he paid people a little bit better than his competitors in order to enable a competitive advantage which earned him more money. If treating them worse would have earned him more money, he would have done that instead. (n.b. that the increased wage also came with a bunch of moralistic lifestyle strings attached that were rigorously enforced.) My point is that there exist businesses and business owners who aren't solely motivated by increasing their share of the profits (even though our system strongly encourages this) - I just don't think Henry Ford just is a good example of that.
papito 5y ago
This is not a fair fight, however. Do you know how often US lawmakers talk on the phone with a billionaire? About once a week. They get the preferential treatment, they get the laws passed, and if the "normals" want to do something crazy like organize to negotiate working conditions, then it's a code-red emergency in Washington the sky is falling somebody do something.

akarma 5y ago

> Jeff Bezos wants to pay the least for the most amount of work, and the workers want the most money for the least amount of work. It sounds like both parties should meet themselves half-way as opposed to living in what is effectively modern-day slavery. The way it currently works is what you describe here. Amazon pays the least they can for the most amount of work, and workers work the least they can for the most amount of pay. They meet at the equilibrium where Amazon receives adequate labor, and the workers receive adequate pay. There's nothing radical or communistic about that idea.

whakim 5y ago
Where "the equilibrium" ends up changes over time though. Over the past 40-50 years in most developed countries, capital's (i.e. businesses') share of gross national income has been rising and labor's has been falling. This means that on average "the middle" has been trending towards companies paying less for the same amount of labor.
- akarma 5y ago
  This is true, and it wouldn't suggest anything is amiss. In the US for example, there's a lot of factors in increasing labor supply: (1) From 1955 to today, women have gone from 36% labor force participation to 59%. (2) The percent of immigrants in the US in the 1950s to 1970s was less than 50% of what it is today. When the labor supply grows, it'll push downward on wages as the equilibrium price shifts. America's a country designed to be optimized for freedom, which includes women having the ability to participate in equal numbers to men in the workforce if desired, and immigrants having the ability to come and build their lives here if desired. That will lower wages, which is just one part of the picture in terms of economics and policy.
  - whakim 5y ago
    This isn't actually true because the growth of Gross National Income is proportional to the size of the working population. I'm also not talking about wages in absolute terms, I'm talking about the wage share (the percentage of GNI which goes to wages, as opposed to capital). Definitionally, the wage share has been declining since the 1970s because rates of growth have been slowing, which increases the capital/income ratio and (assuming return rates on capital remain relatively constant) will increase the capital share of income (and thus decrease the wage share). I'm not necessarily claiming to know what the correct value should be for the wage share, only that it's significantly lower than it used to be (and will probably continue to decline for the forseeable future). That being said, the wage share is obviously closely tied to inequality; if you reduced returns on capital and/or increased growth, you'd likely also increase the wage share.