The Secret Lives of Amazon's Elves 202
theodp writes "If Amazon is Santa, says Gizmodo's Joel Johnson, then the 400 folks living in RVs outside the Coffeyville, KS fulfillment center at Christmas time are the elves. Amazon didn't always lure in 'workcampers' from the RV community with the promise of free campgrounds and $10.50-$11 an hour seasonal jobs. 'Amazon had a bad experience busing in people from Tulsa,' explained tech nomad Chris Dunphy. 'There was a lot of theft and a lot of people who weren't really serious.' Workers from Tulsa were adding a 4-hour round-trip commute to a grueling 10-to-12 hour shift, Cherie Ve Ard added. 'They'd get there exhausted.' The work wasn't exactly what Cherie had envisioned."
eh, I'm not crying too hard (Score:5, Insightful)
They accepted terms of employment. A willing employer got a willing employee. I see absolutely nothing wrong with this, if the employees are unhappy they can always get another job, no shortages of those!
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$11 an hour shouldn't even be legal.
Re:eh, I'm not crying too hard (Score:5, Interesting)
He's being ironic with the plenty of jobs. His point is that morality and workers' rights should be set to whatever the market will bear. Since jobs are in demand, it is possible (and ethical) for companies to offer less desirable jobs.
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He's being ironic with the plenty of jobs. His point is that morality and workers' rights should be set to whatever the market will bear. Since jobs are in demand, it is possible (and ethical) for companies to offer less desirable jobs.
So you are saying if the economy was better - amazon wouldn't have people packing boxes and picking out items from the shelves?
I think what you meant to say might have been to offer less desirable pay.
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I'm only trying to interpret his comment. Consider the middle ground of Amazon finding its jobs less in demand (due to more jobs due to better economy) and needing to increase demand by making more lenient policies, paying more, or both.
Personally I think it's disgusting and thought we had laws against that sort of thing (the 12+ hour days, getting fired for sick leave, overtime at normal rate, excessive quotas, etc) after the Walmart case, but don't know enough to comment fully.
Re:eh, I'm not crying too hard (Score:5, Insightful)
"Personally I think it's disgusting and thought we had laws against that sort of thing (the 12+ hour days, getting fired for sick leave, overtime at normal rate, excessive quotas, etc) after the Walmart case, but don't know enough to comment fully."
But that doesn't seem to stop you from commenting anyway....
On the positive side at least you express your ignorance.
In general employers have to legally do the following:
Pay overtime for hours worked over 40 hours (non-exempt).
Pay minimum wage.
Provide a lunch period (probably at least 20 minutes) if you work over a set number of hours (probably 5 or so hours).
Provide a break of at least 10 minutes per so many hours (generally per four hours). If you have breaks in your work time that add up to this time, you do NOT have to be provided any specific break time.
A safe work place free from known hazards. No discrimination due to sex, race, etc. See basic work posters.
Various states have greater requirements. The best place to look for those requirements is on the state web page of the appropriate enforcement agency.
The following is not required:
Sick leave
Vacation
Holiday
Time off of any kind (outside of legally mandated FMLA, worker compensation, etc.) Yes, this means they can work you seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.
Insurance
Pleasant work environment
Reasonable quotas
Etc.
Except where required by law, as noted above.
All of those nice things that people THINK they are entitled to are just that, ENTITLEMENTS. They were negotiated via (union) contract and became standard in the industry or are used to attract superior talent or are done because employers WANT to.
In any case, the working conditions described at Amazon are not bad. Pay is roughly twice minimum wage. Twelve hour shifts, six days a week at peak times would not be unusual-the positions exist to ship the product for Christmas. The attendance/break policy is somewhat petty but considering the typical warehouse/temp employee, not surprising. In any case, having worked in environments like these, these policies are often rather flexible (or ignored). And people whining about heaving lifting in a warehouse, well, DUH!
Basically people are whining that they have to work their asses off for $11 an hour. Most of the crappy stuff that employers do to employees is perfectly legal (and vice versa). Welcome to the real world.
Entitlements= unemployment= lower quality of life (Score:2, Interesting)
Superior talent for moving boxes ? You're kidding right ? And not just in this specific instance ... The large majority of jobs are low-skilled, low-productivity and very low margin jobs, even in IT.
You want better conditions for these people ? Lower the cost of labor so this work can be done with more people, without increasing costs too much. Obviously if you increase costs per employee like you suggest (and force people to accept conditions they may or may not care about, e.g. Any student I know would mu
Robots (Score:2, Interesting)
Aren't industrial robots able to do most of the packaging tasks Amazon needs done? Given the enormous size of Amazon in terms of books sent, even just one plant catering to the US automated with robots could well make a significant impact on costs/delivery times/etc. Restricting automation to just ordinary books could be a great way to demonstrate methods to calculate the optimal packaging/arrangement per order.
Re:Robots (Score:5, Informative)
Robots cost too much when compared to low-paid human labor. Also, robotics in such plants are still mostly experimental. I worked at several plants similar as described in the article. They were trying to introduce robots in one of them.
One robot was designated as "beer master". Its sole purpose was to pick beer crates. It usually jammed up at least twice a day. Most of the time it stood idle as the guy on forklift duty couldn't keep up with it.
The second robot (if you want to call it that) was extremely large. It was designed to handle (store, pick, sort and package) anything box-shaped. In the 6 months I was working there I never saw that machine running, aside from a few test runs.
Those very computers that decide the most optimal packing tend to screw up royally when one of the white collars upstairs feeds it the wrong dimensions. I remember my load being considerably oversized on more that one occasion due to someone missing a digit. Nor can they decide if the "this side up" marker can be safely ignored in order to make the load more compact and/or stable.
Robotics (for now) can only operate efficiently when their task contains few variables. Unless designers stop thinking up weird-sized packages and consumers stop mixing products around, the human factor will most likely remain.
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At the end of a conveyor belt, a worker took castings, turned, and removed the sprue with a punch press.
A salesman came in and said that there were neat advantages with a robot : It would never come in late, organize the shop, chase your wife, or sue. They bought one.
What was not mentioned was that the robot was perfectly willing to have its hand in the way of the press.
Now the worker takes castings and walks around the robot.
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If robots worked as well as humans, we would not be using humans. Robots fuck up all the time. They are not nearly good enough to perform anything but strict sequential instructions. You need more than that in warehouses etc, and the thing that is killing warehouse jobs in the west is not new world efficiency, it's new world low wages. Manufacturing is a lot simpler than distribution, but it is still not simple robotically, nor cheap. Put simply : Robots do not increase efficiency in 99% of the applica
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Even if a robot worked 100%, it doesn't mean all humans are useless. Moving parts wear out, metal expands and contracts out of calibration, heavily loaded parts get fatigued, screws work loose, lubricants degrade. So, no matter how good the robots are, they need to be put offline to be recalibrated, replacement parts installed, bearings repacked and regreased.
Of course, minor adjustments may require major software modifications. I'll use the common tape robot as an example. Say one is made to take AIT c
Re:Robots (Score:4, Insightful)
Robots might make sense to handle their routine volume, but the holiday rush is probably cheaper to handle with humans which don't require the large capital expense.
Re:Robots (Score:4, Interesting)
Robots might make sense to handle their routine volume,
I think not. From what I know of industrial robots, they can do repetitive tasks, but have no adaptability. Good on assembly lines [youtube.com], but useless when even the most basic decision-making is required.
I have to wonder what Amazon was thinking, building such a labor-intensive operation four hours from the nearest major labor pool.
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Taxes?
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I would think it is a little bit more than that. Building a major distribution centre away from a city gives you better traffic access and egress. You can place it where it is central to several major towns and cities. Land cost will be significantly reduced. The most subtle one is of course leverage, when you a by far the major employer in a small town it gives you a lot of leverage, no taxes, priority on all services, local government priority including police and fire and the community will myopically d
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I think not. From what I know of industrial robots, they can do repetitive tasks, but have no adaptability. Good on assembly lines, but useless when even the most basic decision-making is required.
I don't think that's true anymore, if you can make a reasonable parametrization of the task then robots do it. Like they can handle any x*y*z package within reasonable bounds but not oddly shaped stuff and things like that. We might be far away from the general household robot, but they do have a lot more sensors and rely more on those than the old "blind" robots who'd to the same operation no matter what was happening.
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but useless when even the most basic decision-making is required.
So don't let them make any decisions. Stick a bar code on everything as it comes in and weigh it. Let the robots do the multi-mile treks around the factory, and all they have to be smart enough to do is scan a bar code and double-check the weight.
Robots are used at Newegg [anandtech.com], for instance. It's just that sizing the costly capital equipment for the peaks probably would increase the payback period by quite a bit! Better to use seasonal workers.
I have to wonder what Amazon was thinking, building such a labor-intensive operation four hours from the nearest major labor pool.
It looks like they took over a former Golden Books warehouse. I have
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OK, I stand corrected on the robots. Though "robot" is probably the wrong word.
I have no insight, but a glance at the map shows that it is smack in the middle of a bunch of area population centers - kind of the center of mass of Wichita, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and Springfield.
Did you miss the part about workers not being able to handle the 2-hour commute from Tulsa? According to Google Maps, Wichita and Springfield are 3 hours, and OC is 4. They may be in a part of the country with a lot of population centers, but they're not close to a single one of them.
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LOL, out in farm country a two-hour drive is "close"! :)
No I just meant that they picked a regional distribution center that seems to be roughly in the middle of where they are likely to ship. They are probably far more concerned about where the trucks have to go than where the people have to come from. I suspect their shipping fees far outstrip their wages, considering that the article said that a worker is expected to pack 150 X-Boxes an hour! Only 1 of those X-Boxes probably costs more to ship than the w
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Back in the 30s, lots of guys had toothbrush mustaches. My grandfather had one. Der Fuhrer made them unfashionable, along with racism.
My family used to have this big photo of him hanging in the front entry. Once somebody asked me why we had a picture of Hitler. Which was sort of funny, because the photo was his official portrait as the head of a Jewish fraternal organization.
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Der Fuhrer made them unfashionable, along with racism. My family used to have this big photo of him hanging in the front entry. Once somebody asked me why we had a picture of Hitler. Which was sort of funny, because the photo was his official portrait as the head of a Jewish fraternal organization.
I don't see why this question is funny - after all, it would be unusual to hang a large picture of Hitler near the entry of a Jewish family's home. I also don't remember Hitler being the head of a Jewish fraternal organization.
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I also don't remember Hitler being the head of a Jewish fraternal organization.
He was Camp Director for a few years, as I recall.
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Being a grammar nazi doesn't make you an expert on Hitler!
What is the point of this article? (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously, wtf is the point of this article?
Re:What is the point of this article? (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to work for Amazon. Their fulfillment centers are pretty impressive. Before I started working there I would have never realized that so much though, planning and technology went into packing the right stuff into the right boxes. If you would have RTFA you should have gotten to the point where that little bit was discussed.
The other interesting thing is to use RVers to handle some of the seasonal demand. In some ways it is a little offensive though. RVers typically aren't looking for a steady paying job, but end up doing a little work at Amazon "for the experience" (ie they thought it might be fun). While there are lots of people out there that have no job, and have real bills to pay, and mouths to feed. But if they are offering $10/hr and people without jobs don't want to commute 4 hours a day for it, I guess that's just the free market being fair about it.
How it's done, and has been done for a century. (Score:4, Informative)
Their fulfillment centers are pretty impressive. Before I started working there I would have never realized that so much though, planning and technology went into packing the right stuff into the right boxes.
The basic system is a century old and was invented at Sears, Roebuck and Company, the first really big mail order operation. They had several city blocks in Chicago for what they called "The Works", their fulfillment center.
In the "schedule system" at Sears, orders came in, and each order was assigned a assembly bin for a 15-minute window. Picking tickets were generated for the various departments, each with the bin number and 15-minute window. The stock pickers in each department started on a new batch of tickets every 15 minutes, and as they picked items in their department, they attached the pick ticket to the item or a basket containing it, and sent it to the order assembly area by chute, conveyor, or pneumatic tube. At the order assembly area, incoming items were routed to the appropriate bin. At the end of each 15 minute window, each assembly bin was dumped to a basket, which went on a conveyor to the checking and accounting section. There, the items in the bin were matched against the order and the bill totaled up. The baskets then went to the packaging and shipping section and out of the Works.
Amazon's plant works about the same way, except that their computers know what's in inventory, so they don't have many "fails", where an item can't be found. They don't have to work to such a rigid clock-driven timetable, because the computers know when an order is fully assembled, and can allow more or less time depending on the complexity of the order. The basic concept, that a set of orders is being picked at any one time, picking orders fan out to departments, and items come back to an assigned bin for checking and packaging, remains the same.
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Neat. Where can I read a bit more about this?
TIA
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What else do you want from a Huff Post article? That's where you go for this sort of thing. Complaining about the Huff Post being whiny is like pointing out factual errors in a Michael Moore movie or pointing out that rushlimbaugh.com seems to have a bias.
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How about reading it?
There's hard work, then there's doing this. But when you're talking about 10 hour days, with ludicrous packing quotas, limited breaks, low pay, and grueling intensive labor, we're talking about abuse. Sometimes, some jobs take 20 hour work days, but usually the pay is much better. While on one hand, this is what they're willing to work for, on the other hand, they don't have many options and that's pretty fucked up that they're abusing this situation like this.
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How about reading it?
I did. I often read the Huff Post... it's good to keep up to date on perspectives of other people, even when it's not always in agreement with your own. People are hardly ever evil or crazy - they just don't see the world in the same way.
But when you're talking about 10 hour days, with ludicrous packing quotas, limited breaks, low pay, and grueling intensive labor, we're talking about abuse.
Oh, please. I'm afraid I'll disappoint you now and just fall back on a Libertarian yarn... if it is such a bad job, then why were people driving to it 4 hours a day? Why are people camping out in their RVs for a month to take this horrible, temporary job? They aren't abusin
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Listen you heartless Paulite, they are abusing captive sources of labour. Yes, my computer was probably put together with, or uses components that were assembled with worse working conditions than this but that doesn't make this any better.
The job isn't particularly glamorous, the job isn't very well paying. My guess is, given the economic conditions, THEY CAN'T FIND BETTER JOBS. And after the new year, they're going to be out on their asses.
10 hour days with 2 bathroom breaks? Insane, unattainable goal
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Listen you heartless Paulite
Heartless? No. I fancy myself pragmatic, though.
they are abusing captive sources of labour
Nonsense. This isn't China, where people are forbidden from moving to more prosperous areas. They plopped down in a practically uninhabited hinterland. If cheap labor was their goal, then a city would have been much more appealing to them. You can still find minimum wage workers - and plenty of them. Minimum wage in the US ranges from a low of $5 to as high as $8, depending on state - so they aren't exactly bottom-dragging.
My guess is, given the economic conditions, THEY CAN'T FIND BETTER JOBS.
And this is where we have different w
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The job isn't very well paying?
Do the math. Even if the part about not paying 1.5x for overtime is true, these people are making the equiv of $40k per year doing life-size Tetris (ie, moving boxes around and packaging them.) And they aren't paying rent - the pre-tax savings to them is another $500 per month (I will be generous and undervalue their monthly rent in a camper, including the associated bills like water and electricity, rent for the lot, etc, at $325 / month).
Take the $11 x 12 hours per day x 6
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It's the "Paulite" again.
I looked up Kansas minimum wage laws. It's $2.65 an hour, going up to $7.25 next year. Amazon is paying 4x minimum wage. Kansas also only starts overtime at 46 hours, so my calculations are off by $120 or so.
Also, I'm not a fan of Ron Paul. Do you really think anyone who reads the Huffington Post would follow Ron Paul for anything other than amusement?
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$2.65? Woah...
Some other countries have a minimum wage of around $10-15, and a maximum amount of time you can work in any day or week. Amazon would probably need to employ 3 people in these countries for every 2 people in the USA facility, and it might increase their costs to do so.
It is, of course, for the citizens of each country to decide what they want for their people and businesses.
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I work 9 1/2 hour days, with 1/2hr lunch, manual labour and driving, every day for 48 weeks a year. I get paid very little over minimum wage (must be about 10$ an hour, I've not checked the exchange rate recently). I used to code for a living, but I got bored of that. I enjoy my job now.
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"There's hard work, then there's doing this. But when you're talking about 10 hour days, with ludicrous packing quotas, limited breaks, low pay, and grueling intensive labor, we're talking about abuse."
I've read the article. And I have worked in busy distribution warehouses in peak seasons.
This is: long days, high quotas, limited breaks, intensive labor, good pay for the work and area.
This is not: ludicrous quotas, low pay, grueling labor, abuse.
I've worked harder, longer and for less pay in worse conditi
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140 X-Box 360s in an hour is a bit over 2 a minute. I'm assuming the packing people are in one place. That would not be very hard. Just do 5-10 at a time or so.
I'm in a good place with Amazon..... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm making more money than I ever have before (I'm 43), the work is steady, benefits are nice (including the exercise I get working), and everyone has a good sense of professionalism. As for firing you for taking off sick (Huff. Post article), um, sorry, no. Not here. (See, someone does read the articles before posting!) Cheating on overtime? I'm going over my financial records right now, and the occasional mistake does get corrected. And I take off for the Men's room whenever I need to.
Fascinating article, though. Always wondered about our other operations. Sorry some of the campgrounds aren't so nice, hopefully that will improve.
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If you can hack getting off work at that hour, good for you. I never could.
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Re:I'm in a good place with Amazon..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm in a good place with Amazon..... (Score:5, Insightful)
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A girl(I presume teenager) rang in and she won. Her father made sacks. He sewed the bottom of them. I was about 14 at the time, and at first I laughed. As she mocked her father more I stopped laughing. I'll never forget it, and I Iearned a lot about humanity in 2 minutes that day.
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What did you learn? I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.
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I'm not the poster you replied to, but that girl was mocking the work that provided her sustenance and the man who did it. It is extremely bad form to mock those you depend upon as inferior. I've seen a poster here mock welders, for example. That poster almost certainly was dependent on some of those welders, at least for their transportation to their so-called superior work.
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OK, that's what I thought, I was just sleepy and unsure if I wasn't misinterpreting it.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm in a good place with Amazon..... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the middle of an argument criticizing capitalism you say:
I am not one to advocate socialism in any form
This illogical undercurrent of anti-socialism is a big reason why America is where it is.
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Not all of us believe in strong, top-down "obey us, citizen!"-style governing, which socialism depends upon. Capitalism, with informed and active consumers, should (or at least, could) do anything socialists want as an emergent byproduct of consumer collective action, without the "might-makes-right" and "I'm morally superior to you" leftist chestbeating.
If large groups of individuals cannot collectively gather and mutually agree to provide each other with healthcare, protection, etc, then they do not, as a
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Voluntary unions are quite capitalist. I have no problem with them, and they are in essence a worker's cartel. We definitely ought to have good, non-corrupt union action.
In the end corporations can only give what people accept, otherwise they crumble. A government will jail you for noncompliance.
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Voluntary unions are quite capitalist.
What? Worker's unions are extremely socialist. Plenty of European socialist political parties have their roots in worker's unions.
Socialism is where the workers control the means of production, i.e. their labour. That's exactly what trade unions are for.
Political science in 8-bits (Score:3, Interesting)
I am not one to advocate socialism in any form, but capitalism only works when those who benefit from the system perform their social responsibility towards their employees and treat them right.
That IS socialism. --And anybody against it deserves to be treated like a slave because slavery is *exactly* what they're asking for. The primary argument against socialism always boils down to this: "Mine! I don't want to share!"
Great. When all the little capitalists are starving because somebody greedier has won
Re:Political science in 8-bits (Score:5, Insightful)
And the argumenets against socialsm aren't about not sharing, they are about others not pulling thier own weight in society. after all why should i work hard only to have the benefits of that hardwork given to someone who works less?
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Socialised capitalism (Various European nations, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, etc) has had far more positive benefit to the standard of living than the raw, unfettered capitalism of the USA, which has been stagnating for the last 50 years or more (unless you happen to be in the top 1% economically, then you're laughing). Sure, a lot of these nations don't have their middle class all living in McMansions mortgaged up until their eyeballs bleed, but the overall standard of living accross all levels of soci
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When people say the USA is unfettered capitalism, it is a demonstration that "capitalism" no longer means anything.
Capitalism, or rather, the free market, is hated by schemers because it does not provide a top-down mechanism for social control to inflict one's personal preferences and beliefs on the general population.
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...which is only enabled by customers and employees that accept what is offered to them; individuals can avoid doing business with a corporation, but cannot escape the grasp of a government.
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Sure they can escape - move to a place where the grasp of government is practically null. I recommend Somalia; pure capitalism, plenty of opportunities for the gifted.
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That's just like the argument, "if you like socialism, you should move to Cuba."
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....and, not to mention, you might as well excuse any act of government at all that way. "Don't like the DMCA? Well, move to Somalia, they don't have the DMCA... they don't have a government!"
"Don't like the Patriot Act? Somalia doesn't have the Patriot Act!"
Wipe the smug off your face.
"You want free healthcare? Cuba has free healthcare!"
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Contrary to what Cuba itself or "anti-socialism" made you believe, Cuba is far from model country for socialist, it's more of an totalitarian oligarchy. In Somalia OTOH...you have quite pure capitalism.
Also, moving is always a valid option. If the society where you live is at odds with you, it's hardly your place anyway.
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And it's perfectly fine.
Look, whether you like to admit it or not, the governments are ultimately a reflection of society; nothing more. If you don't see a place for yourself in it in the future...hey, that's how US started. Carry on.
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Capitalism results in an improved standard of living for those with money. However, "standard of living" does not imply happiness, once you hit a certain threshold. The happiest societies are the ones with the least disparity in wealth. The trend is very very obvious - larger disparity, more unhappiness.
So what to do? Aim for money, or aim for happiness? Capitalism works, it creates wealth, but unbounded it does create unhappiness. Capitalism has always been bounded anyway, otherwise we'd have a shed
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Each side of this debate (socialism vs. capitalism) really only gets half of the picture.
Higher living standards are achieved by only two methods: resource conservation and technological progress.
The way capitalism encourages higher living standards is via hoarding. Hoarding is not necessarily beneficial. Resource conservation and technological progress are beneficial. But hoarding is the means to the end. Allowing capitalists to hoard tends to encourage conservation and, in theory, technological progre
Re:Political science in 8-bits (Score:5, Insightful)
Enslaving your fellow man is not the point of capitalism. The point of capitalism is merely to reward people investing in capital (like factories, or post-secondary education, or server farms, or hog farms, or orchards, or houses, or wheelbarrows, or telecommunications networks) by allowing them to profit from the use of that capital. When you allow this, then people invest in that capital, and you get a lot of stuff done - more so than you would from mere labor, the other component of getting things done. But anything else in excess of this isn't really about capitalism anymore: it's just selfish materialism taken to extremes. That is destructive, and abusive, and wrong.
And anyone who says that "greed is good" needs to be bonked upside the head. No, greed is not good. Greed is useful. That's different. It's useful for this: it drives people to go out and make worthwhile things happen, so that they can make money satisfy their greedy impulses. It drives people to invest in capital, in loans and and bonds and equities in companies which will ultimately pay them back and make their investment as worthwhile as possible. These companies bring new things to people, or bring old things to people better, and everybody wins. (Except when they don't, because the market is imperfect, and some people definitely win more than others, like our favorite people in the world: CEOs.... and they get away with it because of market inefficiencies, and we should probably consider how to actually effectively deal with the situation rather than just assert partisan rhetoric about the matter one way or another).
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I think most people that say "greed is good" is precisely because "greed is useful" in the way you say it is.
Nonetheless, it is a stupid term, because "greed" usually implies theft and unethical means of acquiring property, which is not really what the Ayn Randers advocate...
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And when all the little socialists are dying of disease because no one wanted to spend 12 years becoming a doctor only to get as much reward as the guy who became a janitor I'll be sure to come around and laugh at them.
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And when all the little socialists are dying of disease because no one wanted to spend 12 years becoming a doctor only to get as much reward as the guy who became a janitor I'll be sure to come around and laugh at them.
Uh huh. Yes, greed is the only reason anybody would ever want to become a doctor. That is sick.
--I know excellent healers of all different stripes who became healers because that is what they love. I also know greedy shits who became dentists because they wanted to make a lot of money. In
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Self-interest IS human nature. A species that does not have self interest does not survive, it's genes die off and are replaced by those that do have self-interest. Welcome to life. Deny it all you want but that's the truth.
Becoming a doctor is an unpleasant, grueling process that sucks 10 years of your life into essentially hell. The money makes up for all the time you couldn't spend enjoying life or being with your family. Most people wouldn't become doctors without the money because the sacrifice simply
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Ah. You appear to be using the American definition of socialism: "See communism".
You may as well start with Wikipedia [wikipedia.org].
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And the primary argument for socialism is a gun to someone else's head telling them this: "Yes you will."
Next time you find someone else sleeping in your bed, you better let them stay there, because "it's mine!" is no longer a valid argument for you to ever use.
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You're displaying your ignorance. Socialism is when the state controls the distribution of resources. If an employer decides to treat their employees right and pay them well, that's still capitalism because it is a private individual and not the government making the decision. You don't even seem to understand the basic thing that define socialism vs capitalism, that being state vs private ownership.
Nah. That's a bullshit definition of Socialism. Why use it? --Let's redefine it to the one everybody unders
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WOW, just WOW
Ugh. What's up with, "wow, just wow" guys? I'm sorry, but if you want to express personal surprise, maybe try to come up with a personal way of doing it. Regurgitating common expressions of surprise indicates zero thought, which calls into suspicion the force making your knee jerk in the first place. Are YOU reacting or are you just acting out some canned bit of crap you saw on TV?
But that's just a personal gripe.
The comments regarding balance you offer are spot-on and I actually agree with
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let me tell you a little story about regulation. once there was a company that was looking at giving it's employee's an extra perk, it was worth quiet a bit to the employee's in return for an extra hours work per day. And then in comes the guberment, stamping it's feet and stating in no uncertain terms that is wasn't allowed, and no you can't run your own business or work on your own terms, because it's regulated.
i can't say too much more because i was actually
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There are also places where a 1-bedroom apartment is $200-$400/mo instead of $2000. It's relative.
I don't know about that, but a number of CEOs need to take a back seat to their shareholders and not give themse
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CEOs aren't responsible to the shareholders. They are responsible to the board. And the requirement to be on the board? You have to be a CEO and invite the CEO you want to be on the board for to be on your board. So boards are full of CEOs and ex-CEOs for the same companies that have that CEO and ex-CEOs from that company on their boards.
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What the hell is your point? The median income has GONE UP over the past 40 years, inflation adjusted. In other words thing are BETTER now than they were 40 years ago by your metric. And before you say anything, this holds true even if you include more workers.
As for bubbles, trying to stop them with regulation is like killing your wife because she might one day cheat on you. Long term, the economy comes off much worse than otherwise since you need insane regulations to stop them. After all, is it actual ec
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Corporations have abdicated their moral responsibilities for their employees.
In all honesty, if our best hope is to rely on corporations to live up to their 'moral responsibility,' then we are in trouble. The truth is, companies have no more moral responsibility to provide jobs than I have moral responsibility to buy 'red' aids-awareness merchandise. I agree we should all try to take care of each other, but we should do it in a way that works: primarily focus on trying to help people rather than trying to force our morality onto others.
Every industry that has been allowed to function without regulatory oversight has found a way to bubble.
This one is definitely a misdiagnosis, are you
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That's a completely subjective judgment and the whole point of a capitalist system is that worker/employer come to a mutual agreement. Fair is whatever both sides agree is fair.
The real problem is consumer (and worker) complac
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That's because a great many people live in areas with extremely high cost of living, and can't fathom that other areas are very different...
The US remains the #1 manufacturer in the world, and the #1
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The US remains the #1 manufacturer in the world, and the #1 economy, by a big margin.
Hate (well, not really...) to burst your bubble, but the EU is #1.
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Not a single economy? From where did you get that fairytale?
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That assumes only one individual per household is earning income.
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I don't "sell myself" well at interviews, but Amazon (and partners) have the web presence (and logistics) to sell stuff efficiently. I'm happy to be here.
If I get more confidence, and the right opening comes along, well....
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I made more as a plastic extruder operator on shift work than my brother in law was making with a degree in software engineering and 5+ years experience in the field. If you factor in the years I was earning money while he was a full time student, it will be a long time before his education pays off economically compared to the two day forklift course my job required. Having now purchased some of my own equipment so I can work for myself, it is unlikely that he can ever match my hourly rate working for a co
Thankful for a couple of things (Score:3, Interesting)
- I'm thankful Amazon has this system down pretty much pat. There were a few toys my nieces and nephews REALLY REALLY wanted, and I was coming up dry on in the brick-and-mortar stores around here. Amazon listed them as "in stock", and I was able to order them on the 22nd with standard shipping - they shipped within a few hours and arrived on the 24th.
- Having read the article... I'm thankful Amazon had the policy of "employees can't carry anything in that is an item we sell". The idiot featured in this story talked about wanting to "tweet" about stupid crap (my description, not his) that he saw. Any policy - even a draconian one - that prevents some dullard from tweeting is okay in my book!
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I was rather amazed too, and I'd certainly love to thank all of these people that work on the floor at Amazon for making it possible, I ordered a Wii and a few games for my family on the 23rd, and had overnight shipping for the 24th. And thanks to Amazon and UPS the package got there on time, and we got it wrapped up for Christmas. All I had to do was click a button, it's rather amazing.
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Heh. Now I feel kinda bad for ordering mundane things for myself right before XMas and using 2-day shipping. (Prime is a God-send.)
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I think its fascinating. Its a mix of the itinerant fruit pickers here in southern Australia and the RV borne populations popular in cyberpunk books by Bruce Stirling and Neal Stephenson.
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Its a mix of the itinerant fruit pickers here in southern Australia
Ah, you mean the backpackers.
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Its a mix of the itinerant fruit pickers here in southern Australia
Ah, you mean the backpackers.
And a lot of itinerant country people who won't identify as backpackers. I met a few of them travelling around years ago.
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"Any competitive advantage which relies on the silence of thousands of employees earning nearly-minimum wage with no benefits, isn't."
Those amazon employees make more than most retail and warehouse employees in the US. Certainly more than the small retailers. They do not have benefits because they are TEMPORARY employees. And if they could get benefits, they would actually be able to afford them, unlike the others.
Amazon's treatment of its employees is a step up in the US.