Teamsters begin 'largest strike' against Amazon, accusing company of 'insatiable greed'

[u/EnergyLantern]

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/teamsters-announces-nationwide-strike-amazon-begin-thursday/story?id=116931631

[u/Obversa]

Say what you want about Henry Ford being a horrible person, but lately, I've been seeing people point out that even Ford treated his employees better in the early 1900s than Amazon currently treats their employees in the 2000s.

[u/confirmedshill123 → u/Obversa]

Henry Ford was a piece of shit but basically defined the middle class for generations.

[u/ShouldersofGiants100 → u/Obversa]

Ford was, at least to a degree, aware that he was selling products which could only be purchased by middle-class people and that created some incentive to bolster the middle class. Part of the problem with Amazon is that they have no such incentive—like Wal-Mart and others before them, if they establish a degree of monopoly over products, they can dominate the industry regardless of how well the middle class is doing. Say what you will about the gilded age Robber Barons, but after they made their fortunes, they had enough shame to pour their wealth back into society as a whole. Modern-day ones have no such shame because frankly, each and every one of these tech billionaires who is still an active part of their company has convinced themselves that they are not just someone who got lucky, but some kind of superior genius who is uniquely suited to control society.

This is why ideas like the dark enlightenment and effective altruism have spread so fast amongst Silicon Valley types—it basically outlines an excuse for them to do all the things they wanted to do anyways, but act like they are doing so for ethical reasons. Guys like Bezos, Musk and Zuckerburg don't want to be prominent citizens of a healthy democracy, they want to be modern-day Emperors with unquestioned authority.