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Amazon Is Creating Company Towns Across the United States

234 points by samizdis 5y ago

LightG 5y ago
Snowcrash - the full reality release. Coming soon to a town near you. Tickets available to purchase via your local Mayor.
codetrotter 5y ago
The United States of Amazon then?
- m_ke 5y ago
  United Corporations of America
- iamacyborg 5y ago
  > When deep space exploration ramps up, it'll be the corporations that name everything, the IBM Stellar Sphere, the Microsoft Galaxy, Planet Starbucks.
JeanMarcS 5y ago
So we are back to the 19th century ? Will they have their own money only usable there and pay their local employees with it too ? /s
- FartyMcFarter 5y ago
  Company towns aren't that rare. Here's an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_City,_Pennsylvania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_City,_Pennsylvania
  - ZanyProgrammer 5y ago
    Though according to that article the actual Ford plants have been closed for years.
- amelius 5y ago
  19th century? This smells more of medieval style feudalism.
  - Sharlin 5y ago
    From a peon^Wworker's point of view, there may not be much of a difference between a medieval fiefdom and a 19th century company town. The term "robber baron" is apt.
    - xyzzyz 5y ago
      There was enormous difference. For one thing, workers in company towns were free to quit and move somewhere else, while medieval peasants could not.
      - Sharlin 5y ago
        In theory, anyway. Being legally permitted to do something is a really low bar to clear. Even now, in the era of cheap transportation and free real-time information to base your decisions on, for the majority of working-class families the idea of packing up and trying again somewhere else is less than feasible. In the 1800s? Not a fscking chance, even if your employee was gracious enough to pay you with hard currency rather than Monopoly (heh) money. No cars. Trains were expensive and only an option in some places. No Internet, TV, or even radio. No formal education to speak of. Wages at subsistence levels, because why would they pay you a penny more?
        xyzzyz 5y ago
        In 1800s, people packed up on oxen wagons, and crossed the continent on undeveloped trails. If you look at the actual statistics, in early 1900, people used to move around the country more, not less than today.
  - samizdis 5y ago
    In the UK, there's a great example of a late-19C/early 20C "model village", called Bournville, created by the Cadbury family to house workers for its factory. It was quite visionary in its day, and remains highly desirable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bournville https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bournville
- mysterydip 5y ago
  They can use any money they want, but if they choose to use PrimeDollars (tm), they will earn a 5% discount and free shipping on all purchases!
alephnan 5y ago
I just went to Gunkanjima (“battleship”) island in Nagasaki, Japan. At one point it was the most densely populated area on earth. It was used at the villain backdrop in the 007 movie. The history of the island is that it was owned by Mitsubishi mining company during Japan’s industrial revolution thru World War II. There they mined coal from the seabed. Apparently, some 40% of miners died. There also used forced labor from prisoners of war. Japan is filled with UNESCO heritage sites, and this site is one of them, but it’s bid was met with criticism. In these small towns in Japan, the industrialists and barons have statues erected for them, but the story of the common worker is often lost and not presented during these tours.
- ericmay 5y ago
  I can’t wait to visit Japan once it’s safe. There is so much cool history.
  - rcstank 5y ago
    Once it’s safe?
    - ericmay 5y ago
      COVID-19....
christkv 5y ago
They are doing that here in northern Spain as well with a giant logistics center being built. My YouTube is now full of ads on how great it would be to work in Amazon fulfillment
- the-dude 5y ago
  There is a browser extension for that.
  - christkv 5y ago
    This is a common enough nuisance that someone wrote a plug-in to address it. Amazing
    - the-dude 5y ago
      uBlock origin, it is amazing.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cblconfederate 5y ago
I 'll wait for Amazon Town Services
aga98mtl 5y ago
The article seems to contain nothing that would qualify for the words "Company Town". It appears to boil down "look amazon is big, surely it means that it must be evil!".
- anshumankmr 5y ago
  Of course, it's published on Jacobin.
- eganist 5y ago
  > The article seems to contain nothing that would qualify for the words "Company Town". It appears to boil down "look amazon is big, surely it means that it must be evil!". I guess this is the difference between a literal v. figurative interpretation of the title. The article itself is speaking to Amazon's efforts to sustain its hiring pipeline in the face of colossal churn, describing activities such as sponsoring secondary schools while installing their own branding as a condition of sponsorship. > > A dozen students sat clustered at work tables inside an air-conditioned classroom, which was designed to emulate the inside of an Amazon facility. On one wall, Amazon’s giant logo grinned across a yellow and green banner. The words “CUSTOMER OBSESSION” and “DELIVER RESULTS” were painted against a corporate-style yellow backdrop. On a whiteboard, a teacher had written the words “Logistics Final Project,” and the lesson of the day was on Amazon’s “14 Leadership Principles.” Each teenager wore a company golf shirt emblazoned with the Amazon logo. > > Students and staff members expressed pride in being associated with the company. Amazon partnered with the school as part of its five-year anniversary in the Inland Empire, donating $50,000 to start the pilot program, the giant sweepstakes-style Amazon check displayed prominently at the classroom entrance. The students had already taken field trips to tour the nearby Amazon warehouse. > A public high-school classroom designed to resemble an Amazon facility, with students wearing Amazon logos on their clothing as they memorize Amazon’s leadership principles (which, it is worth noting, also include “Ownership” and “Think Big,” injunctions that hold merit for readers of this magazine when imagining how we might solve the problems exemplified by Amazon). Such a relationship between the company and public goods like a high school is part of what it means to consider Amazon as “the major working-class space of suburban and exurban socialization.” Further (and quite interesting) reading on the concept of a company town: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town
beckman466 5y ago
> the warehouse worker is neither seen nor heard by the customer; at least at Walmart, you go to a store and you see the workers — you know they exist. This made me think of the movie 'The Island' where in one scene, somewhere in the beginning of the movie, they show us the work our protagonists do in their community. There are tubes coming out of the wall on one side of the room and out the other; tubes which have a flowing liquid inside which the protagonists and their friends are trained to perform an action on, which is essential for some kind of process. Only later do we find out the awful purpose of these tubes. There is an increasing level of alienation that is hard to describe to anyone who has been lucky enough to be a labor aristocrat for most of their lives. I honestly think everyone around us is capable of so much more. Our current system, through Intellectual Property types such as copyrights and trade secrets, has made it hard to ascend 'intellectual ladders' because the intellectual ladders used by those in power have kicked them away (after they were used by them). In other words: there is a lack of diversity of methods and approaches and opportunities due to the commodification and privatization of knowledge (i.e. technology and science overall). [1],[2] I believe the human needs for growth and play are foundational to a happy society, and in modern society, those needs go massively unmet, and the working class is being squeezed and squeezed like never before (not to mention the workers in the global south who I would argue are exploited to an even greater extent [3]). It's also ironic that Amazon calls their production facilities 'Fulfillment Centers', because the most important people they do not create 'fulfillment' for are their workers... you know, the people who are actually creating all the value: > If class is a social relation and the working class is made and remade daily, that formation is increasingly happening inside the massive structures that house Amazon’s warehouses, where workers face capital embodied in the whir of machinery and barking managers and the beeps of the scanner in their hands, prodding them to pick up the pace. It is happening in the parking lots outside, where people smoke and linger and chat and dread. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25753856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25753856 [2] https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley [3] https://anti-imperialism.org/2012/09/18/understanding-and-changing-an-interview-with-zak-cope-author-of-divided-world-divided-class/ https://anti-imperialism.org/2012/09/18/understanding-and-ch...
- aww_dang 5y ago
jefftk 5y ago
A key aspect of company towns is that there's only one serious employer. This then gives that employer a very dangerous amount of power, which is why we don't like this structure. Possibly this is true in don't places with Amazon, but the article doesn't make the argument. The closest they get is saying that Amazon is a large employer in Seattle, but that's not enough -- the city is large enough that there are tons of non-Amazon options.
- randomdata 5y ago
  Historically, company town companies also paid in their own currency that was only spendable in the company stores. Amazon still appears to be paying in standard dollars.
  - beckman466 5y ago
    Be careful what you wish for!
  - kazen44 5y ago
    isn't this mainly because paying in anything other then the national currency is illegal in most western nations? For tax purposes, even things like free lunch are considered paymeny aswell.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      I am not an accountant but presumably any material issuance of some sort of scrip that could be exchanged for goods would be seen as tax evasion. Free meals are allowed under certain guidelines, which seem to be written in a way that generally lets companies like Google skate right up to the edge and not go over it (AFAIK). Things like loyalty points and rebates on business expenses are similarly ignored.
      - gruez 5y ago
        > I am not an accountant but presumably any material issuance of some sort of scrip that could be exchanged for goods would be seen as tax evasion. It's not. You just have to pay taxes on it.
aww_dang 5y ago
Is there an argument for not having Amazon as an employer in these towns? Is there an argument for not having Amazon support the local school system? I understand that working conditions are rarely ideal. Many would prefer to enjoy leisure and collect a paycheck as the ideal source of income. Jobs pay because workers need an incentive to provide labor. What exactly would JacobinMag.com's alternative to Amazon employment look like? Why aren't they providing this alternative? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy#Perfect_solution_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy#Perfect_soluti...
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  > Why aren't they providing this alternative? Because Bezos/Amazon spent years building barriers to entry? Because people's preference for shopping at Amazon, like their preference for shopping at malls 30-40 years earlier, began the disintegration of other forms of retail work? Because "fulfillment" centers (are you fulfilled yet?) benefit from being in locations that are not typically the ones where people are choosing to live. They need only space and transportation (typically highway) access, and there's no need for there to be other excellent reasons for vibrant human communities to be in the vicinity. Because employee-owned business (a Jacobin and personal favorite) face numerous obstacles in the US due to legal, political and cultural factors. Because it's the entire economy, not just Amazon, that is collapsing into "low wage jobs that we don't have robots for yet" and "high wage jobs that can be done from anywhere" (plus, well paid skilled manual labor). When the alternative to one low wage job that will eventually be automated is another low wage job that will eventually be automated, there's not a lot of motivation to create that alternative.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >Because Bezos/Amazon spent years building barriers to entry? What barriers? Is amazon lobbying local governments to prevent competitor warehouses from being built? Or is they're just so ahead of everyone in terms of service/price? >Because people's preference for shopping at Amazon, like their preference for shopping at malls 30-40 years earlier, began the disintegration of other forms of retail work? People's preferences change. If something better comes along, you have to adapt as well, not complain that your competitor is "disintegrat[ing]" your business model. >Because "fulfillment" centers (are you fulfilled yet?) benefit from being in locations that are not typically the ones where people are choosing to live. From the rest of the argument it looks like you're trying to paint this as an advantage for amazon, but to me it seems more like a disadvantage. If amazon warehouses are located in "locations that are not typically the ones where people are choosing to live", doesn't that mean they'll have an harder time finding workers and you having an easier time finding workers? Also, I'm not sure how applicable your claim is across all of amazon. In a rural area your argument would make sense (ie. warehouse in the middle of nowhere rather than in a population center), but in metropolitan areas they're almost always surrounded by houses (eg. https://goo.gl/maps/bfT3ePP1dfupKnuo6 https://goo.gl/maps/bfT3ePP1dfupKnuo6) >Because employee-owned business (a Jacobin and personal favorite) face numerous obstacles in the US due to legal, political and cultural factors. I'm not sure why it has to be employee owned. It seems like you're repeating the nirvana fallacy that gp was talking about.
vortico 5y ago
>$15 an hour, Amazon’s starting wage, is below the average for the warehousing industry Where are they getting this information? The average wage in the US is lower, like $13-14. https://www.indeed.com/career/warehouse-worker/salaries https://www.indeed.com/career/warehouse-worker/salaries https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Warehouse_Worker/Hourly_Rate https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Warehouse_Worker/Ho...
- fastball 5y ago
  Presumably they're being disingenuous and comparing the average salary across the entire industry (including senior positions / management / etc) to Amazon's salary floor, while you are making the appropriate comparison to a warehouse worker. And even then comparing an average to a minimum would still be disingenuous.
  - lrdswrk00 5y ago
    Disingenuous based upon math. Bezos’ wealth is disingenuous built on disingenuous narrative he did it himself and is somehow entitled to as much political scrip he can leverage. Fiat currency makes belief in a persons wealth not much different than belief in a holy mans connection to God. Decoupled from their actual output, coupled to their ability to maintain a social meme. Religion is effectively the same; belief decoupled from observable reality. We’re all playing a disingenuous semantic game, and it’s hurting all of us.
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      Was it ever different? The saying "All that glitters is not gold" exists for a reason.
      - lrdswrk00 5y ago
        Exactly. All your warm fuzzies about yourself are not for me to bother with. I am as beholden to coddling all y’all’s self as you are to making sure people who need it today have cheap insulin. It’s a semantics free market not a financial one. If my efforts undo your wealth, zero fucks. See we get to pick and choose who figuratively exists. Doesn’t have to be Bezos or you. Or me. None of us are gold or glitter. As none of us are concepts. Just meat bags. I’m fine disabusing people of their importance so long as they are inclined to allow it to happen to others. You’re all on your way out. There is no Valhalla and your work will be forgotten. Why assign value to such unimportant things? Edit: oh no downvotes; all my influence! Good thing I was around to buy AAPL in the 90s at $6-9/share. Four letters are more valuable to me than your opinions. I know you all get that.
sergefaguet 5y ago
An extremely efficient and competent corporation doing everything it can to deliver goods cheaper and faster to hundreds of millions of people while creating value for tens of millions of shareholders? And now it has more and more impact running social services too? How dare they do this travesty without democratic oversight. Clearly the best way forward is to regulate them so that they are on a level playing field with other democratically overseen government services.
- beckman466 5y ago
  How dare workers ask to not be treated like shit! /s You do know Amazon has been caught union busting right? I'm not so sure what your definition of democracy is when workers can't voice their concerns.
  - sergefaguet 5y ago
    Interesting. I must have missed the point when unions became about voicing concerns. Last I recall, creating unions is an attempt at monopolizing labor to extort the employer. When this tactic is applied to any other factor of production it is called a “cartel” and engaged in “market manipulation.” How surprising that employers who pay above-market wages do not wish to be extorted further. All the modern propaganda says they have to welcome this benevolent expression of democratic freedoms!
    - beckman466 5y ago
      > creating unions is an attempt at monopolizing labor to extort the employer. When this tactic is applied to any other factor of production it is called a “cartel” and engaged in “market manipulation.” Wow, I’m not even gonna comment on this first paragraph. I only have one question: do you live in the US? > How surprising that employers who pay above-market wages do not wish to be extorted further. Employers in our current system always pay their employees less than what they produce for them, it’s called profit. Are you really claiming that tech workers extort Silicon Valley companies because they get paid a lot of money? Wow I didn’t expect that argument.
dalbasal 5y ago
I suppose the name of the magazine implies this, but the amount of "concept terms" loaded into each sentence sounds so old timey, or something, to me. "Such a relationship between the company and public goods like a high school is part of what it means to consider Amazon as “the major working-class space of suburban and exurban socialization.” The behemoth is here, producing not only profit but people, too. That entails corporate indoctrination, social estrangement, and profound alienation from one’s labor..." You kind of need to be steeped into the literary culture to "fluent." Reading it, it feels like I'm "looking up" the words in my memory to follow the meaning. I suppose it's not too different from the "tech talk" dialect we're more used to on HN: "disruptive potential of this novel user space paradigm" or whatnot.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  Or maybe it's because the education system you were provided with has significant incentives to avoid getting you too familiar with these words and concepts? "Old timey" in this context might translate into "written by someone who is aware of a century or three's thinking and writing about the relationships between labor and capital and how they impact social and economic structure".
  - dalbasal 5y ago
    My early education was, in fact, was quite steeped in such terms. I'm a apostate, not an infidel. Anyway, my point wasn't a criticism of the content, or anything really. Just pointing out that its clunky and verbose sounding, to my rusty old ears.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      Fair enough. But I haven't seen anyone describe these sorts of concepts in any other terms other than cloying cute folksy-funny stump speeches that tend to obfuscate things as much as they make them more accessible. The relationships between labor and capital are not obvious to the naked eye, and are subject to a lot of different kinds of analysis. Trying to describe them with language from outside the field can end up missing the critical points.
prytania 5y ago
Playa haters ball finalist
JCM9 5y ago
Like a lot of these stories there’s lots of ways to spin reality. Headline could read “Company turns up providing much needed high paying jobs to region left devastated by failed industries (steel, manufacturing, …”. Or you could say “Evil company moved in and sets up company town.” Honestly agnostic to this whole thing but it’s interesting to watch efforts to spin things one way or another.
- GoodJokes 5y ago
  Companies don’t provide jobs. People provide labor and companies exploit said labor for profit.
  - ativzzz 5y ago
    The comment you replied to predicted your comment: > it’s interesting to watch efforts to spin things one way or another
    - 0x262d 5y ago
      political and class ambivalence is also a way to spin things. which the original comment itself did. this is a navel-gazing, meaningless criticism. if you disagree substantively you should just say so.
      - friedman23 5y ago
        Class ambivalence? Who is upper class here? Jeff Bezos? He was born to single mother out of wedlock in highschool. Or is class something you can buy your way into now?
        true_religion 5y ago
        Yes. Social mobility is one of the hallmarks of a class system. If you can’t spend your entire life improving yourself from the circumstances of your birth then you don’t have a class system, you have a caste system.
CryptoPunk 5y ago
In defense of the company town: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/in-defense-of-the-company-town.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/in...
- GaryTang 5y ago
  > “In essence, these company towns were doing what Google does today, competing for workers with amenities.” This. These companies bring a greater level of prosperity to the locals as well. In my experience, far more exploitation occurs in cities.
Havoc 5y ago
Reminds me of the series "Incorporated". Corporations taking over more & more of the roles countries used to
- missedthecue 5y ago
  I think this is because of the massive pushback in recent decades to Milton Friedman's essay “The Social Responsibility of Business Is To Increase Its Profits,” where he put forth that the most net benefit would be provided to society if firms focused their efforts and resources onto their core competencies. Now, people think that is distasteful and that businesses should be doing all kinds of things like charity work and soup kitchens and funding housing developments and schools and so on so forth. This is called "stakeholder capitalism". It produces the result you describe.
dalbasal 5y ago
I suppose we'll see how this play out but... I think there are some serious chasms between 19th century manufacturing's take on mass employment and the tech industries'. Henry Ford's ideal for manufacturing workers was long term employment, high commitment. The modern tech industry's ideal for logistical work is a fluid, low commitment workforces, with "gig economy" at the extreme end. I don't think amazon want to arrive at a place where the average employee has been working in the warehouse for a decade.
sys_64738 5y ago
Not the first company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hershey,_Pennsylvania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hershey,_Pennsylvania
ilaksh 5y ago
The article ends with an idea like, "workers band together and fight Amazon". I'm all for workers getting a better deal and more humane conditions while these jobs last, but they won't. Th most common jobs in these places are being intensely researched by roboticists. As soon as it's feasible and economical to replace the people with robots they will. For some of the jobs, that could come in a matter of months, or only a few years. It will continue. I am going to tie this into something more controversial. Basic income. And I think even more controversial is that we may need to change how money fundamentally works in order to make basic income work.
- aww_dang 5y ago
  "Is Guaranteed Basic Income the Solution to Robots Taking Our Jobs?" https://mises.org/wire/guaranteed-basic-income-solution-robots-taking-our-jobs https://mises.org/wire/guaranteed-basic-income-solution-robo... >The UBI advocates are correct that some jobs are replaced when capital goods do the work that was done by labor. Robots are a capital good. If the same amount of output can be produced by a mix of more robots and fewer people, an industry will not offer as much employment as before. Does it follow that when one industry uses fewer workers there is no need for their services anywhere else? How would the advocates of this view explain the enormous growth in the labor force since the Industrial Revolution two centuries ago—a period characterized by increasing capital intensity?
  - 8note 5y ago
    There was another set of labourers before the industrial revolution - animals. They don't have much work nowadays since their jobs in all industries were replaced with automation.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nsporillo 5y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfp2O9ADwGk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfp2O9ADwGk
fallingfrog 5y ago
I’m going to make a prediction/wild guess as to what the future will look like. Edit: I do want to emphasize the “wild guess” aspect of this! Since capitalism is now international, nation states are losing the ability to regulate it. This would lead to collapse though, eventually, and the international capitalist class is recognizing that. Recently the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development proposed a minimum corporate tax of 15%. I foresee that most law and regulations governing the business and financial world will be decided by international NGOs and banking organizations, not nation states. However those organizations have no real interest in the well being of the working class, so I would predict that inequality will continue to increase and capitalism will become more and more authoritarian and the capitalist class will become more and more isolated from the workers, to the point that they will become unaware of the suffering of the mass of the people. Small businesses of any kind will be gone; only large institutions will survive and diverse competition will be replaced by a series of necrotic monopolies. At some point in the future this will either become unbearable and a global revolution will occur, leading to some unified government, maybe democratic, maybe not, or the corporate class will have good enough tools of control that a grinding dismal stability will be achieved.
nofinator 5y ago
A lot of people in this thread are caught up with the term "company town". I agree this headline is poorly chosen. The article itself lacks depth. For a better analysis of Amazon's entrenched relationship with the Inland Empire in California, check out Erika Hayasaki's writing for the NY Times Magazine: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/magazine/amazon-workers-employees-covid-19.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/magazine/amazon-workers-e...
- dalbasal 5y ago
  This article actually quotes her. It's the only part of this article that isn't just a string of abstract jargon. Without the quote, I would have no clue what it's even about.
GaryTang 5y ago
In small towns these employers usually provide a significant boost in prosperity for the constituents. It’s in cities where I see most exploitation. Anyone who has lived in both will agree.
anm89 5y ago
Jacobin finds the act of running a for profit business under any circumstances to be unethical so does it really matter what they have to say past that? Jacobin is left Breitbart.
- pinewurst 5y ago
  I think they're actually more left authoritarian than Breitbart (feh) is right authoritarian. I'm reminded of the old Soviet joke than under capitalism, man exploits man, but under socialism it's the other way around. In the ideal Jacobin world, all towns would be company towns ("owned by the people"). Please keep that in mind.
  - snypher 5y ago
    I think it would be less of a company town if the workers owned the entirety of the company.
say_it_as_it_is 5y ago
If Amazon were to pay its employees with company scrips, employees could shop at whole foods and buy at least a loaf of bread and some bananas with a week of pay. Banana sandwiches can go a long way. Buy some peanut butter on credit and work some O.T. to pay it off.
mud_dauber 5y ago
Both of my grandparents, and a couple of uncles, worked in Appalachia's coal mines. I've seen the last vestiges of coal camps (Amazon towns' predecessors) up close. This article is a real bummer.
Andy_G11 5y ago
There are two ways to approach the problem of deepening inequality: 1) With the perspective that this feature of how society operates can and should be changed; 2) With the perspective that this is simply how society works and you can adapt or die. Either can be viewed as more tractable than the other (probably quite correctly depending on one's circumstances). To adopt the former approach may mean that you are faced with the dilemma of whether or not to override the rights of detractors and those who disagree. Even if you adopt the second approach, you may encounter a similar dilemma, e.g. you will decide to order your shoes from a company with operations in a third world nation paying lower local wages, or buy via Amazon despite reservations about their practices. Whatever approach is adopted, awareness of what choices exist and what consequences they bring will be required. To develop the tools that will enable this awareness and measurement is a massive problem on its own because of the complexity of interrelated systems, events, consequences and disparate interests. It may not even be possible. But when there is no objective or even widely accepted 'true north' for decision making, the trend to deepening inequality is likely to continue.

234 points by samizdis 5y ago

Snowcrash - the full reality release. Coming soon to a town near you. Tickets available to purchase via your local Mayor.

codetrotter 5y ago

The United States of Amazon then?

m_ke 5y ago
United Corporations of America
iamacyborg 5y ago
> When deep space exploration ramps up, it'll be the corporations that name everything, the IBM Stellar Sphere, the Microsoft Galaxy, Planet Starbucks.

JeanMarcS 5y ago

So we are back to the 19th century ? Will they have their own money only usable there and pay their local employees with it too ? /s

FartyMcFarter 5y ago
Company towns aren't that rare. Here's an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_City,_Pennsylvania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_City,_Pennsylvania
- ZanyProgrammer 5y ago
  Though according to that article the actual Ford plants have been closed for years.
amelius 5y ago
19th century? This smells more of medieval style feudalism.
- Sharlin 5y ago
  From a peon^Wworker's point of view, there may not be much of a difference between a medieval fiefdom and a 19th century company town. The term "robber baron" is apt.
  - xyzzyz 5y ago
    There was enormous difference. For one thing, workers in company towns were free to quit and move somewhere else, while medieval peasants could not.
    - Sharlin 5y ago
      In theory, anyway. Being legally permitted to do something is a really low bar to clear. Even now, in the era of cheap transportation and free real-time information to base your decisions on, for the majority of working-class families the idea of packing up and trying again somewhere else is less than feasible. In the 1800s? Not a fscking chance, even if your employee was gracious enough to pay you with hard currency rather than Monopoly (heh) money. No cars. Trains were expensive and only an option in some places. No Internet, TV, or even radio. No formal education to speak of. Wages at subsistence levels, because why would they pay you a penny more?
      - xyzzyz 5y ago
        In 1800s, people packed up on oxen wagons, and crossed the continent on undeveloped trails. If you look at the actual statistics, in early 1900, people used to move around the country more, not less than today.
- samizdis 5y ago
  In the UK, there's a great example of a late-19C/early 20C "model village", called Bournville, created by the Cadbury family to house workers for its factory. It was quite visionary in its day, and remains highly desirable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bournville https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bournville
mysterydip 5y ago
They can use any money they want, but if they choose to use PrimeDollars (tm), they will earn a 5% discount and free shipping on all purchases!

alephnan 5y ago

I just went to Gunkanjima (“battleship”) island in Nagasaki, Japan. At one point it was the most densely populated area on earth. It was used at the villain backdrop in the 007 movie. The history of the island is that it was owned by Mitsubishi mining company during Japan’s industrial revolution thru World War II. There they mined coal from the seabed. Apparently, some 40% of miners died. There also used forced labor from prisoners of war. Japan is filled with UNESCO heritage sites, and this site is one of them, but it’s bid was met with criticism. In these small towns in Japan, the industrialists and barons have statues erected for them, but the story of the common worker is often lost and not presented during these tours.

ericmay 5y ago
I can’t wait to visit Japan once it’s safe. There is so much cool history.
- rcstank 5y ago
  Once it’s safe?
  - ericmay 5y ago
    COVID-19....

christkv 5y ago

They are doing that here in northern Spain as well with a giant logistics center being built. My YouTube is now full of ads on how great it would be to work in Amazon fulfillment

the-dude 5y ago
There is a browser extension for that.
- christkv 5y ago
  This is a common enough nuisance that someone wrote a plug-in to address it. Amazing
  - the-dude 5y ago
    uBlock origin, it is amazing.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

cblconfederate 5y ago

I 'll wait for Amazon Town Services

aga98mtl 5y ago

The article seems to contain nothing that would qualify for the words "Company Town". It appears to boil down "look amazon is big, surely it means that it must be evil!".

anshumankmr 5y ago
Of course, it's published on Jacobin.
eganist 5y ago
> The article seems to contain nothing that would qualify for the words "Company Town". It appears to boil down "look amazon is big, surely it means that it must be evil!". I guess this is the difference between a literal v. figurative interpretation of the title. The article itself is speaking to Amazon's efforts to sustain its hiring pipeline in the face of colossal churn, describing activities such as sponsoring secondary schools while installing their own branding as a condition of sponsorship. > > A dozen students sat clustered at work tables inside an air-conditioned classroom, which was designed to emulate the inside of an Amazon facility. On one wall, Amazon’s giant logo grinned across a yellow and green banner. The words “CUSTOMER OBSESSION” and “DELIVER RESULTS” were painted against a corporate-style yellow backdrop. On a whiteboard, a teacher had written the words “Logistics Final Project,” and the lesson of the day was on Amazon’s “14 Leadership Principles.” Each teenager wore a company golf shirt emblazoned with the Amazon logo. > > Students and staff members expressed pride in being associated with the company. Amazon partnered with the school as part of its five-year anniversary in the Inland Empire, donating $50,000 to start the pilot program, the giant sweepstakes-style Amazon check displayed prominently at the classroom entrance. The students had already taken field trips to tour the nearby Amazon warehouse. > A public high-school classroom designed to resemble an Amazon facility, with students wearing Amazon logos on their clothing as they memorize Amazon’s leadership principles (which, it is worth noting, also include “Ownership” and “Think Big,” injunctions that hold merit for readers of this magazine when imagining how we might solve the problems exemplified by Amazon). Such a relationship between the company and public goods like a high school is part of what it means to consider Amazon as “the major working-class space of suburban and exurban socialization.” Further (and quite interesting) reading on the concept of a company town: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town

beckman466 5y ago

> the warehouse worker is neither seen nor heard by the customer; at least at Walmart, you go to a store and you see the workers — you know they exist. This made me think of the movie 'The Island' where in one scene, somewhere in the beginning of the movie, they show us the work our protagonists do in their community. There are tubes coming out of the wall on one side of the room and out the other; tubes which have a flowing liquid inside which the protagonists and their friends are trained to perform an action on, which is essential for some kind of process. Only later do we find out the awful purpose of these tubes. There is an increasing level of alienation that is hard to describe to anyone who has been lucky enough to be a labor aristocrat for most of their lives. I honestly think everyone around us is capable of so much more. Our current system, through Intellectual Property types such as copyrights and trade secrets, has made it hard to ascend 'intellectual ladders' because the intellectual ladders used by those in power have kicked them away (after they were used by them). In other words: there is a lack of diversity of methods and approaches and opportunities due to the commodification and privatization of knowledge (i.e. technology and science overall). [1],[2] I believe the human needs for growth and play are foundational to a happy society, and in modern society, those needs go massively unmet, and the working class is being squeezed and squeezed like never before (not to mention the workers in the global south who I would argue are exploited to an even greater extent [3]). It's also ironic that Amazon calls their production facilities 'Fulfillment Centers', because the most important people they do not create 'fulfillment' for are their workers... you know, the people who are actually creating all the value: > If class is a social relation and the working class is made and remade daily, that formation is increasingly happening inside the massive structures that house Amazon’s warehouses, where workers face capital embodied in the whir of machinery and barking managers and the beeps of the scanner in their hands, prodding them to pick up the pace. It is happening in the parking lots outside, where people smoke and linger and chat and dread. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25753856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25753856 [2] https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/01/abolish-silicon-valley [3] https://anti-imperialism.org/2012/09/18/understanding-and-changing-an-interview-with-zak-cope-author-of-divided-world-divided-class/ https://anti-imperialism.org/2012/09/18/understanding-and-ch...

aww_dang 5y ago

jefftk 5y ago

A key aspect of company towns is that there's only one serious employer. This then gives that employer a very dangerous amount of power, which is why we don't like this structure. Possibly this is true in don't places with Amazon, but the article doesn't make the argument. The closest they get is saying that Amazon is a large employer in Seattle, but that's not enough -- the city is large enough that there are tons of non-Amazon options.

randomdata 5y ago
Historically, company town companies also paid in their own currency that was only spendable in the company stores. Amazon still appears to be paying in standard dollars.
- beckman466 5y ago
  Be careful what you wish for!
- kazen44 5y ago
  isn't this mainly because paying in anything other then the national currency is illegal in most western nations? For tax purposes, even things like free lunch are considered paymeny aswell.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    I am not an accountant but presumably any material issuance of some sort of scrip that could be exchanged for goods would be seen as tax evasion. Free meals are allowed under certain guidelines, which seem to be written in a way that generally lets companies like Google skate right up to the edge and not go over it (AFAIK). Things like loyalty points and rebates on business expenses are similarly ignored.
    - gruez 5y ago
      > I am not an accountant but presumably any material issuance of some sort of scrip that could be exchanged for goods would be seen as tax evasion. It's not. You just have to pay taxes on it.

aww_dang 5y ago

Is there an argument for not having Amazon as an employer in these towns? Is there an argument for not having Amazon support the local school system? I understand that working conditions are rarely ideal. Many would prefer to enjoy leisure and collect a paycheck as the ideal source of income. Jobs pay because workers need an incentive to provide labor. What exactly would JacobinMag.com's alternative to Amazon employment look like? Why aren't they providing this alternative? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy#Perfect_solution_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy#Perfect_soluti...

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
> Why aren't they providing this alternative? Because Bezos/Amazon spent years building barriers to entry? Because people's preference for shopping at Amazon, like their preference for shopping at malls 30-40 years earlier, began the disintegration of other forms of retail work? Because "fulfillment" centers (are you fulfilled yet?) benefit from being in locations that are not typically the ones where people are choosing to live. They need only space and transportation (typically highway) access, and there's no need for there to be other excellent reasons for vibrant human communities to be in the vicinity. Because employee-owned business (a Jacobin and personal favorite) face numerous obstacles in the US due to legal, political and cultural factors. Because it's the entire economy, not just Amazon, that is collapsing into "low wage jobs that we don't have robots for yet" and "high wage jobs that can be done from anywhere" (plus, well paid skilled manual labor). When the alternative to one low wage job that will eventually be automated is another low wage job that will eventually be automated, there's not a lot of motivation to create that alternative.
- gruez 5y ago
  >Because Bezos/Amazon spent years building barriers to entry? What barriers? Is amazon lobbying local governments to prevent competitor warehouses from being built? Or is they're just so ahead of everyone in terms of service/price? >Because people's preference for shopping at Amazon, like their preference for shopping at malls 30-40 years earlier, began the disintegration of other forms of retail work? People's preferences change. If something better comes along, you have to adapt as well, not complain that your competitor is "disintegrat[ing]" your business model. >Because "fulfillment" centers (are you fulfilled yet?) benefit from being in locations that are not typically the ones where people are choosing to live. From the rest of the argument it looks like you're trying to paint this as an advantage for amazon, but to me it seems more like a disadvantage. If amazon warehouses are located in "locations that are not typically the ones where people are choosing to live", doesn't that mean they'll have an harder time finding workers and you having an easier time finding workers? Also, I'm not sure how applicable your claim is across all of amazon. In a rural area your argument would make sense (ie. warehouse in the middle of nowhere rather than in a population center), but in metropolitan areas they're almost always surrounded by houses (eg. https://goo.gl/maps/bfT3ePP1dfupKnuo6 https://goo.gl/maps/bfT3ePP1dfupKnuo6) >Because employee-owned business (a Jacobin and personal favorite) face numerous obstacles in the US due to legal, political and cultural factors. I'm not sure why it has to be employee owned. It seems like you're repeating the nirvana fallacy that gp was talking about.

vortico 5y ago

>$15 an hour, Amazon’s starting wage, is below the average for the warehousing industry Where are they getting this information? The average wage in the US is lower, like $13-14. https://www.indeed.com/career/warehouse-worker/salaries https://www.indeed.com/career/warehouse-worker/salaries https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Warehouse_Worker/Hourly_Rate https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Warehouse_Worker/Ho...

fastball 5y ago
Presumably they're being disingenuous and comparing the average salary across the entire industry (including senior positions / management / etc) to Amazon's salary floor, while you are making the appropriate comparison to a warehouse worker. And even then comparing an average to a minimum would still be disingenuous.
- lrdswrk00 5y ago
  Disingenuous based upon math. Bezos’ wealth is disingenuous built on disingenuous narrative he did it himself and is somehow entitled to as much political scrip he can leverage. Fiat currency makes belief in a persons wealth not much different than belief in a holy mans connection to God. Decoupled from their actual output, coupled to their ability to maintain a social meme. Religion is effectively the same; belief decoupled from observable reality. We’re all playing a disingenuous semantic game, and it’s hurting all of us.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    Was it ever different? The saying "All that glitters is not gold" exists for a reason.
    - lrdswrk00 5y ago
      Exactly. All your warm fuzzies about yourself are not for me to bother with. I am as beholden to coddling all y’all’s self as you are to making sure people who need it today have cheap insulin. It’s a semantics free market not a financial one. If my efforts undo your wealth, zero fucks. See we get to pick and choose who figuratively exists. Doesn’t have to be Bezos or you. Or me. None of us are gold or glitter. As none of us are concepts. Just meat bags. I’m fine disabusing people of their importance so long as they are inclined to allow it to happen to others. You’re all on your way out. There is no Valhalla and your work will be forgotten. Why assign value to such unimportant things? Edit: oh no downvotes; all my influence! Good thing I was around to buy AAPL in the 90s at $6-9/share. Four letters are more valuable to me than your opinions. I know you all get that.

sergefaguet 5y ago

An extremely efficient and competent corporation doing everything it can to deliver goods cheaper and faster to hundreds of millions of people while creating value for tens of millions of shareholders? And now it has more and more impact running social services too? How dare they do this travesty without democratic oversight. Clearly the best way forward is to regulate them so that they are on a level playing field with other democratically overseen government services.

beckman466 5y ago
How dare workers ask to not be treated like shit! /s You do know Amazon has been caught union busting right? I'm not so sure what your definition of democracy is when workers can't voice their concerns.
- sergefaguet 5y ago
  Interesting. I must have missed the point when unions became about voicing concerns. Last I recall, creating unions is an attempt at monopolizing labor to extort the employer. When this tactic is applied to any other factor of production it is called a “cartel” and engaged in “market manipulation.” How surprising that employers who pay above-market wages do not wish to be extorted further. All the modern propaganda says they have to welcome this benevolent expression of democratic freedoms!
  - beckman466 5y ago
    > creating unions is an attempt at monopolizing labor to extort the employer. When this tactic is applied to any other factor of production it is called a “cartel” and engaged in “market manipulation.” Wow, I’m not even gonna comment on this first paragraph. I only have one question: do you live in the US? > How surprising that employers who pay above-market wages do not wish to be extorted further. Employers in our current system always pay their employees less than what they produce for them, it’s called profit. Are you really claiming that tech workers extort Silicon Valley companies because they get paid a lot of money? Wow I didn’t expect that argument.

dalbasal 5y ago

I suppose the name of the magazine implies this, but the amount of "concept terms" loaded into each sentence sounds so old timey, or something, to me. "Such a relationship between the company and public goods like a high school is part of what it means to consider Amazon as “the major working-class space of suburban and exurban socialization.” The behemoth is here, producing not only profit but people, too. That entails corporate indoctrination, social estrangement, and profound alienation from one’s labor..." You kind of need to be steeped into the literary culture to "fluent." Reading it, it feels like I'm "looking up" the words in my memory to follow the meaning. I suppose it's not too different from the "tech talk" dialect we're more used to on HN: "disruptive potential of this novel user space paradigm" or whatnot.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
Or maybe it's because the education system you were provided with has significant incentives to avoid getting you too familiar with these words and concepts? "Old timey" in this context might translate into "written by someone who is aware of a century or three's thinking and writing about the relationships between labor and capital and how they impact social and economic structure".
- dalbasal 5y ago
  My early education was, in fact, was quite steeped in such terms. I'm a apostate, not an infidel. Anyway, my point wasn't a criticism of the content, or anything really. Just pointing out that its clunky and verbose sounding, to my rusty old ears.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    Fair enough. But I haven't seen anyone describe these sorts of concepts in any other terms other than cloying cute folksy-funny stump speeches that tend to obfuscate things as much as they make them more accessible. The relationships between labor and capital are not obvious to the naked eye, and are subject to a lot of different kinds of analysis. Trying to describe them with language from outside the field can end up missing the critical points.

prytania 5y ago

Playa haters ball finalist

JCM9 5y ago

Like a lot of these stories there’s lots of ways to spin reality. Headline could read “Company turns up providing much needed high paying jobs to region left devastated by failed industries (steel, manufacturing, …”. Or you could say “Evil company moved in and sets up company town.” Honestly agnostic to this whole thing but it’s interesting to watch efforts to spin things one way or another.

GoodJokes 5y ago
Companies don’t provide jobs. People provide labor and companies exploit said labor for profit.
- ativzzz 5y ago
  The comment you replied to predicted your comment: > it’s interesting to watch efforts to spin things one way or another
  - 0x262d 5y ago
    political and class ambivalence is also a way to spin things. which the original comment itself did. this is a navel-gazing, meaningless criticism. if you disagree substantively you should just say so.
    - friedman23 5y ago
      Class ambivalence? Who is upper class here? Jeff Bezos? He was born to single mother out of wedlock in highschool. Or is class something you can buy your way into now?
      - true_religion 5y ago
        Yes. Social mobility is one of the hallmarks of a class system. If you can’t spend your entire life improving yourself from the circumstances of your birth then you don’t have a class system, you have a caste system.

CryptoPunk 5y ago

In defense of the company town: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/in-defense-of-the-company-town.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/in...

GaryTang 5y ago
> “In essence, these company towns were doing what Google does today, competing for workers with amenities.” This. These companies bring a greater level of prosperity to the locals as well. In my experience, far more exploitation occurs in cities.

Havoc 5y ago

Reminds me of the series "Incorporated". Corporations taking over more & more of the roles countries used to

missedthecue 5y ago
I think this is because of the massive pushback in recent decades to Milton Friedman's essay “The Social Responsibility of Business Is To Increase Its Profits,” where he put forth that the most net benefit would be provided to society if firms focused their efforts and resources onto their core competencies. Now, people think that is distasteful and that businesses should be doing all kinds of things like charity work and soup kitchens and funding housing developments and schools and so on so forth. This is called "stakeholder capitalism". It produces the result you describe.

dalbasal 5y ago

I suppose we'll see how this play out but... I think there are some serious chasms between 19th century manufacturing's take on mass employment and the tech industries'. Henry Ford's ideal for manufacturing workers was long term employment, high commitment. The modern tech industry's ideal for logistical work is a fluid, low commitment workforces, with "gig economy" at the extreme end. I don't think amazon want to arrive at a place where the average employee has been working in the warehouse for a decade.

sys_64738 5y ago

Not the first company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hershey,_Pennsylvania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hershey,_Pennsylvania

ilaksh 5y ago

The article ends with an idea like, "workers band together and fight Amazon". I'm all for workers getting a better deal and more humane conditions while these jobs last, but they won't. Th most common jobs in these places are being intensely researched by roboticists. As soon as it's feasible and economical to replace the people with robots they will. For some of the jobs, that could come in a matter of months, or only a few years. It will continue. I am going to tie this into something more controversial. Basic income. And I think even more controversial is that we may need to change how money fundamentally works in order to make basic income work.

aww_dang 5y ago
"Is Guaranteed Basic Income the Solution to Robots Taking Our Jobs?" https://mises.org/wire/guaranteed-basic-income-solution-robots-taking-our-jobs https://mises.org/wire/guaranteed-basic-income-solution-robo... >The UBI advocates are correct that some jobs are replaced when capital goods do the work that was done by labor. Robots are a capital good. If the same amount of output can be produced by a mix of more robots and fewer people, an industry will not offer as much employment as before. Does it follow that when one industry uses fewer workers there is no need for their services anywhere else? How would the advocates of this view explain the enormous growth in the labor force since the Industrial Revolution two centuries ago—a period characterized by increasing capital intensity?
- 8note 5y ago
  There was another set of labourers before the industrial revolution - animals. They don't have much work nowadays since their jobs in all industries were replaced with automation.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

nsporillo 5y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfp2O9ADwGk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfp2O9ADwGk

fallingfrog 5y ago

I’m going to make a prediction/wild guess as to what the future will look like. Edit: I do want to emphasize the “wild guess” aspect of this! Since capitalism is now international, nation states are losing the ability to regulate it. This would lead to collapse though, eventually, and the international capitalist class is recognizing that. Recently the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development proposed a minimum corporate tax of 15%. I foresee that most law and regulations governing the business and financial world will be decided by international NGOs and banking organizations, not nation states. However those organizations have no real interest in the well being of the working class, so I would predict that inequality will continue to increase and capitalism will become more and more authoritarian and the capitalist class will become more and more isolated from the workers, to the point that they will become unaware of the suffering of the mass of the people. Small businesses of any kind will be gone; only large institutions will survive and diverse competition will be replaced by a series of necrotic monopolies. At some point in the future this will either become unbearable and a global revolution will occur, leading to some unified government, maybe democratic, maybe not, or the corporate class will have good enough tools of control that a grinding dismal stability will be achieved.

nofinator 5y ago

A lot of people in this thread are caught up with the term "company town". I agree this headline is poorly chosen. The article itself lacks depth. For a better analysis of Amazon's entrenched relationship with the Inland Empire in California, check out Erika Hayasaki's writing for the NY Times Magazine: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/magazine/amazon-workers-employees-covid-19.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/magazine/amazon-workers-e...

dalbasal 5y ago
This article actually quotes her. It's the only part of this article that isn't just a string of abstract jargon. Without the quote, I would have no clue what it's even about.

GaryTang 5y ago

In small towns these employers usually provide a significant boost in prosperity for the constituents. It’s in cities where I see most exploitation. Anyone who has lived in both will agree.

anm89 5y ago

Jacobin finds the act of running a for profit business under any circumstances to be unethical so does it really matter what they have to say past that? Jacobin is left Breitbart.

pinewurst 5y ago
I think they're actually more left authoritarian than Breitbart (feh) is right authoritarian. I'm reminded of the old Soviet joke than under capitalism, man exploits man, but under socialism it's the other way around. In the ideal Jacobin world, all towns would be company towns ("owned by the people"). Please keep that in mind.
- snypher 5y ago
  I think it would be less of a company town if the workers owned the entirety of the company.

say_it_as_it_is 5y ago

If Amazon were to pay its employees with company scrips, employees could shop at whole foods and buy at least a loaf of bread and some bananas with a week of pay. Banana sandwiches can go a long way. Buy some peanut butter on credit and work some O.T. to pay it off.

mud_dauber 5y ago

Both of my grandparents, and a couple of uncles, worked in Appalachia's coal mines. I've seen the last vestiges of coal camps (Amazon towns' predecessors) up close. This article is a real bummer.

Andy_G11 5y ago

There are two ways to approach the problem of deepening inequality: 1) With the perspective that this feature of how society operates can and should be changed; 2) With the perspective that this is simply how society works and you can adapt or die. Either can be viewed as more tractable than the other (probably quite correctly depending on one's circumstances). To adopt the former approach may mean that you are faced with the dilemma of whether or not to override the rights of detractors and those who disagree. Even if you adopt the second approach, you may encounter a similar dilemma, e.g. you will decide to order your shoes from a company with operations in a third world nation paying lower local wages, or buy via Amazon despite reservations about their practices. Whatever approach is adopted, awareness of what choices exist and what consequences they bring will be required. To develop the tools that will enable this awareness and measurement is a massive problem on its own because of the complexity of interrelated systems, events, consequences and disparate interests. It may not even be possible. But when there is no objective or even widely accepted 'true north' for decision making, the trend to deepening inequality is likely to continue.