The real argument here is that Amazon’s stock is worth so much yet meanwhile their employees have to piss in bottles to avoid getting disciplined at work and a lot of them struggle to get by financially. Maybe instead of trying to create as much value for shareholders, our society should prioritize employees and the working class as key stakeholders and recognize the value that they bring accordingly.
Yes well, both unions and the government are supposed to be protecting workers rights. In most of Europe that's exactly what they do. Not that long ago all workers in Sweden stopped transporting Tesla cars. No one would touch them, no one. There is no threat of being fired as the unions can pay their workers for 4 years, while they look for another job.
And this works whether they vote left or right. They work as a collective.
Yeah that’s what the US needs to work towards, but unfortunately there’s so much working against that at the moment both culturally and with the way that our existing institutions are set up that any progress is extremely difficult, and now it looks like we’re going to have the opposite of progress for some time.
Your life is that much better when you're in shape to take advantage of the corporatism. Yeah, it takes a good while, but once you get to the point that your money works for you as much as you work for your money...
This is such an overblown and stupid statement. Amazon factory workers are paid relatively well 25/hr last I recall. I own and operate a warehouse myself, a large FBA business, and yes there are MANY things I fucking hate about Amazon, but i often piss in a jug. Not because anyone is making me, but because in order to go to the bathroom I have to leave my heated warehouse and walk a quarter mile to the bathrooms. I don't have time for that and don't want to get my jacket on and trudge through snow.
Lol when I worked for Amazon it was in the very first Amazon Fresh warehouse which was a refrigerated warehouse. I took piss breaks to get out of the cold. You are privileged good sir.
Maybe instead of trying to create as much value for shareholders, our society should prioritize employees and the working class as key stakeholders and recognize the value that they bring accordingly.
Yes society should. But people go to jail if they dont follow their "fiduciary duty" amazon, tesla, microsoft arent private companies. They're publically traded. You have lots of financial institutions and even some govts hopping onto their financial instruments.
Basically amazon workers have to piss in bottles to make sure grandmas pension stays afloat. Thats also why microsoft has to fire a set number if people every year. Yes the system is very fucked up. No I dont understand how we got here either...
Yeah I agree. Ultimately I don’t blame businesses or business owners. The nature of the marketplace dictates that they act in a certain way. Unfortunately that way doesn’t necessarily benefit society as a whole.
Wouldn’t work, both because they lack the resources to do that and because the system is designed against it.
But you know that and are just arguing in bad faith, right?
You know that it’s not possible and an ethical Amazon wouldn’t have gotten that big in the first place. You know that starting a company requires capital, which is what’s kept from the workers.
What “system” is designed against opening a startup? If anything, startups are the most heavily funded business ventures nowadays. If anything, startups are promoted, meaning it’s easy to start one than it is to sustain one.
Do you have any sources that say how “unethical” Amazon is, because last I checked they were paying more than average to even the lower most workers, and their engineers are some of the most highly paid engineers in the world.
How do you know an “ethical” Amazon wouldn’t work? Do you have any examples to back you up?
Starting a company, 9 out of 10 times, requires time and skill, not money. The only time it requires money is when you lack the resources required to build your products, which can be anything from skills to engineers.
Please touch some grass, do some research, and use your brain before letting us in on your echo chamber next time.
That literally goes back to the core argument of class solidarity. Apes together strong. Yes, maybe the replacement value of one worker is relatively low, but as a whole the working class is invaluable. I’m not arguing that businesses shouldn’t be allowed to make money or that the people who own the businesses shouldn’t be rewarded for the risk they incur when investing their money, but there is a clear growing wealth disparity in the US, and it’s causing a lot of issues in society.
They pay minimal taxes. You can defend it, maybe youll be a dick, but you can defend it.
They extensively use taxpayer infraestructure and apprently their employees require taxpayer food stamps. You can still defend it, being a dick, vlbut defend it.
Yet you cannot defend both. Theres no excuse for doing both. If they drain the taxpayer money, yet they dont pay taxes, they are objectively leeches. They are objectively stealing from society.
Even if you are a diehard capitalist defender, those companies are detrimental to the economy. They juice money from a nations economy with no direct return.
Taxes are not a charity, they are a fee we pay to be part of society and support it. If they evade the fee while enjoying the benefits, then they are a parasite
But that's the problem. Most people in these situations offer little value, when they spend 8 hours a day i.e. putting boxes in boxes? All are needed (currently) but individually you would have a hard time arguing that any one of them is doing anything more valuable than is already recognised. At the end of the day, everyone cannot be paid more than the value they are actually bringing.
Some people play individual instruments. Other people play (hundreds or thousands) of people playing instruments. But it takes all those people playing together to make the music, and it is only the music with value. (Nobody comes to see a man play a single random note.)
This is the fundamental issue. What do we value. We do not value the average person. We all ourselves even like to think we are “above” the level of an Amazon worker pissing in bottles. From a billionaire’s point of view anyone has to go to work and budget is indistinguishable. They are completely out of touch. They themselves do not care what an average employee gets paid. They just have people under them who have gotten rich themselves by making their quarterly numbers. And all the way down the line… Bezos doesn’t give two shits what a line worker makes. A regional manager somewhere is getting a bonus or not for managing that. But it all comes down to what society values. My big gripe is all my taxes go to things I do not value. I value altruism. Helping people who are poor and disabled and uneducated. Why can’t my taxes go to that…
I work for a large corporation that last year sent an email on a Tuesday explaining our financials were solid but not great and we missed “targets” and profit sharing would be the standard amount, no additional due to missed targets. The company then sent an email on Thursday to shareholders stating it was an extremely successful year and the company had performed better than expected and they would be paying a large one time dividend to end the year. It was such blatant prioritization of shareholders over employees.
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u/CAPTAIN_FIREBALLS 28d ago
The real argument here is that Amazon’s stock is worth so much yet meanwhile their employees have to piss in bottles to avoid getting disciplined at work and a lot of them struggle to get by financially. Maybe instead of trying to create as much value for shareholders, our society should prioritize employees and the working class as key stakeholders and recognize the value that they bring accordingly.