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"In the 19th century, the maturation and standardization of weaving technology finally brought long-overdue raises to textile workers." Wow. Way to completely
by al2o3cr 13y ago
"In the 19th century, the maturation and standardization of weaving technology finally brought long-overdue raises to textile workers."
Wow. Way to completely write out of the story the PEOPLE who fought tooth-and-nail to get those raises, WaPo....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell_Mill_Girls http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell_Mill_Girls
Of course, acknowledging the real struggle might seriously impact the whole "things will get better by themselves, just keep sleeping" argument of the piece...
- FD3SA 13y agoKeep in mind that The Washington Post was recently acquired by Jeff Bezos. This article makes much more sense when viewed in the light of Amazon's current PR problems due to their treatment of poorly paid warehouse workers. They are desperately trying to automate as fast as possible, and this piece tries its best to spin it as a win-win for everyone.
- TDL 13y agoYou of course have evidence that Bezos is interfering in the editorial operations of the Post, right?
- sliverstorm 13y agoIt's happened enough with other figures & papers that some people take it as good practice to assume, proof or no, and simply disregard the paper on suspect topics. Certainly nothing you can take anyone to court over, but perhaps prudent.
- minouye 13y agoThe idea that Bezos has already turned the WaPo into Amazon's personal PR factory seems highly unlikely. Esp. when you see articles like this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/01/16/amazon-is-a-hornets-nest-of-malware/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/01/16...
- erikpukinskis 13y agoBezos wouldn't need to "turn the WaPo into Amazon's personal PR factory" in order to get this published though. You don't have to have a massive conspiracy to get a story published. Everyone in PR knows that. All he'd have to do is mention the research to a few writers. If you're a writer and the owner of the company mentions a story that sounds interesting to you, you might be just a little etra inclined to cover it. The first season of House of Cards is a nice illustration of how the combination of powerful people and ambitous writers can lead to a "journalistic" PR campaign without any mass conspiracy. Granted, it's fictional. But it's a plausible mechanism.
- WalterBright 13y agoConsider Fred, who is paid $1 and produces $10 in value. Every employer would love to have Fred come and work for them. In fact, another employer would likely offer Fred $2 to come and generate $10. Fred, not being an idiot, takes the offer. Another employer offers Fred $3, and so on, until Fred is making ($10 - opportunitycost). In other words, Fred being way underpaid according to the value he produces is an unstable situation.
- gerbal 13y agoUnless of course there are 10,000 Freds and only 1000 jobs like Fred's.
- WalterBright 13y agoThere's no reason to suspect it's a static system. People have a history of rushing to start new businesses where there's lots of value being created at little cost. For a couple examples: the 1849 gold rush, and the current internet startup rush.
- eli_gottlieb 13y agoThought experiments cannot be used to prove real points.