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A comment on Bye, Amazon. Parent comment

Re:Bye, Amazon by enitihas on Monday May 04, 2020 @07:42AM (#23066812)
Off course, you don't have to provide any standard to criticize whatever you deem fit. The point of my comment is not to ask you to provide a benchmark, but more to point out the flaw in your arguments to future readers. I admit I could have done this in a better way. But my point is without a relative benchmark, one can criticize anything and everything, even though the criticism encodes very less information. To brand something evil, it has to be compared to it's peers in it's time frame. Or else I can brand every single company and human being on the planet evil for n number of reasons, e.g, for not paying their lowest paid workers enough, or for not doing enough to combat climate change. These will apply to every single company for some definition of "enough", and if I don't have to provide a benchmark, I can set enough at any point.
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Re:Bye, Amazon by lidHanteyk on Monday May 04, 2020 @11:55AM (#23069526)
You may be interested in the Repugnant Conclusion [0]: At large-enough scale, every tiny movement of massive actors is consequential to those around them. This is not merely a utilitarian curiosity, but highly relevant to how states treat their subjects and how corporations treat their employees.

I will set a basic standard: Our employers ought not to knowingly violate human rights. Here's a list of some of Amazon's more notorious violations [1]; among the ones that concern us in today's thread are labor rights like the rights to organize, take breaks, be well- and fairly-paid, and work in safe environments.

The point of my comment is not to ask you to defend Amazon, but more to point out the flaw in your worldview to future readers. I admit that I could have dropped many more citations explaining Amazon's poor behavior, but again, that's not the point.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_addition_paradox

[1] https://www.greenamerica.org/blog/10-ways-amazon-violates-hu...

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Re:Bye, Amazon by jeromegv on Monday May 04, 2020 @11:10AM (#23068964)
This is one of the largest company in the world, it is normal that they get criticized more than smaller companies. They have more resources and abilities to make changes than most companies. And I disagree, we can criticize a company regardless if we provide the example of a better company or not. When it comes to workers abuse in the middle of a pandemic, "everyone else is bad" is not a good answer, i'm sorry. That's just a recipe for never changing anything. One can hope for better worker treatment regardless, this is how progress is made.
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Re:Bye, Amazon by fastball on Monday May 04, 2020 @02:33PM (#23071599)
Does AMZN in fact have more resources to make changes?

I would generally argue that your ability to change your org is somewhat limited by your profit margins. It is hard to pay warehouse workers more, for instance, if your margins are razor thin. While AMZN's profit margin is not quite the 0 it used to be, it is certainly not stellar by any means. And it is certainly not as good as many, many other companies.

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