The closer (figuratively speaking) to the big money and political power someone is the more comfortable they are.
And we all want to believe it’s a meritocracy. We’re just temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
Labor is subject to markets like many things, and shouldn’t be exploited. But there’s some work that’s hard and doesn’t require specialized training (eg, hauling stuff around warehouses all day). Some people are willing to do this and they do, if they don’t want to they can do other things.
This is an oversimplification, of course, but having the ability to provide more jobs with more options is the solution I think.
I grew up in a small town and it sucks for work. If you think working for Amazon sucks, you should try working in the warehouse of the only grocery store in town. The one run by a racist jerk who knows you have no options.
Secondly, what is low skill exactly? Can these people not read, write, use Excel and email, could they not do secretarial and other jobs? I bet quite a few of them have degrees. Some countries have free education / upskilling specifically to avoid people getting trapped in this situation, and to improve overall productivity of the economy.
By unskilled I mean that you can be trained on the job in less than a day. It doesn’t mean that the workers don’t have degrees and skills, it just means the job doesn’t require anything. By all means, they can certainly take other jobs but good luck finding a secretarial job for $15/hour.
The Bureau of Labor and Statistics has a lot of info on how they classify “low skill” jobs [0] and even tracks overqualified workers who have more skills but work in jobs that require fewer skills.
[0] https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2017/article/wage-and-job-skill...
The current state is optimal for Amazon only. It's far from optimal for society.
It’s easy for you to theorize what Amazon can do and what they can’t. Amazon has competitors with warehouses. People can work there.
As consumers we can also demand more. But Amazon is probably the best for workers when compared to their competitors.
Amazing. Surely because “that’s how it worked in the past” isn’t the only option for social organization?
Why not stop believing in Bezos and solve our human problems generally?
Why not a mandate to provide education and healthcare and we provide THOSE jobs?
Because Bezos and Musk are able to get real access to politicians, resulting in the rubes being fed fiscal economic policy that continues to protect them.
The circular logic is mesmerizing.
Misesean analysis showed that unions cannot benefit everyone, they always benefit the sr workers at the expense of the jr workers.
"helps insiders and hurts everyone else" sounds bad, but if the insiders are being exploited by everyone else, it could be a good thing.
In general I'm sympathetic to your point. However I think Amazon is perhaps a special case, or at least occupies a different point on the than most companies.
Amazon is an Aggregator[1], which spins up its flywheel by providing a great experience for consumers, and commoditizing its suppliers. This naturally drives towards a monopoly.
Aggregator monopolies have an interesting property in that unlike historical non-Aggregator monopolies, they are great for consumers, rather than resulting in consumer harm through higher prices (like Comcast, say). US antitrust law is focused on preventing consumer harm, not just preserving competition for its own sake (as the EU laws are). So US antitrust is somewhat less well-equipped to deal with Aggregator monopolies.
If the corporation, consumers, and legal system are all pointing towards exploiting a group of workers, it's hard to see how anyone is going to vote to make things better. So unions could be more appropriate specifically in the case of Aggregators.
(Worth mentioning that you could perhaps just mandate higher minimum wages, and avoid the need for unions; I'd prefer to make the minimum viable change that prevents exploitation, and leave the market free to optimize everything else. But if not unions, who drives the political fight for minimum wages?)
All this mess devalues the manufacturers willing to produce quality items, they are lost in the noise and never make money.
The meme "Amazon is a dumpster fire of counterfeit goods and fake reviews" is popular around here, but I don't think it has much impact/traction with John/Jane MainStreet.
Maybe it would if it was better-known? But I think if folks found counterfeit goods or fake reviews to be a huge problem they would go back to Debenhams/Walmart. But by revealed preferences, we can tell they prefer the value prop of Amazon.
This is my fundamental problem with unions—it helps the insiders and hurts everyone else.
Amazon’s working condition are rough (and I really hope that changes), but there are plenty of jobs out there that are much worse and don’t pay nearly as well. They just get all the attention because of their size and impact.