To clarify, I think this is an optimal state for low/no-skill labor. So not so much “it could be worse” as “this is the best of a shitty situation.”

firstly, why is being abused and peeing in a bottle inevitable? Your post basically reads like how someone in 1500 would look at serfs and peasants in mud huts and say "that's as good as life of a common man is gonna be". Same goes for Victorian workhouses and children in coalmines.

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.

We’re talking about warehouse workers, not delivery drivers so I’m not sure if peeing in a bottle is the right argument here. Warehouse workers get breaks and can presumably use them to pee, etc. That being said, I’ve done some delivery and work where it was a pain to get to bathrooms and peeing in a bottle was pretty common and not the end of the world. I maybe did it a few times a week but there wasn’t an easy solution as I was driving for long stretches and there wasn’t a bathroom near. Or I’d rather just get there sooner.

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...

There's nothing optimal about the level of pressure being applied to these human beings. The same job could exist for the same pay, with the same overall tasks, with 10% less robotically-enforced (literally) pressure, and Amazon would take a tiny hit to productivity in exchange for a workforce that gets to live relatively sustainable and healthy lives instead of burning out after 6 months.

The current state is optimal for Amazon only. It's far from optimal for society.

I think it’s optimal for society in that society benefits from efficient warehouses.

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.