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I'm pretty sure that commodity retail has always, for my living memory at least, been a pretty stressful, insecure, and low-wage position. Amazon's scale bring

• mchem 5y ago
  Exactly this. Having worked such jobs in my youth; you don’t do it for the prospects… As you say, it’s a matter of scale. Shitty jobs have always existed, they will continue to do so. Is a job in home removals - a gruelling, backbreaking task - truly better than that of an Amazon courier, engineer, or warehouse employee? If we want to be particularly extreme, we can swap removals for mining, farm work, or heavy manufacturing. In the long run, damaged joints n’all, I expect that the average ‘shitty job’ of today - in developed nations - is still an improvement on what came before. Yes, a lot of this comes down to outsourcing risk and danger (e.g. from manufacturing). I’m interested in hearing opinions on this - it’s a working idea.