The lowest paid person at Amazon is earning well over the median wage in Bessemer, Alabama.

Amazon could probably have no problem staffing the center at $11/hr there, but they're paying $18-$22 instead. How on earth can you define that as 'exploitation'? It's borderline charity, given the observable labor market equilibrium there.

Paying someone more money does not make working conditions less exploitative.

Is the lowest Amazon job as easy and safe as the below median jobs in Bessemer?

Speedwalking an Amazon warehouse carrying objects, run by hyper-optimizing automation that times tasks to the second, is different from leaning on idle cash register at McDonalds, or slowly pushing a vacuum cleaner.

So your issue is specifically with the mindset of the company, not the actions themselves? Why would a company ever do anything out of the goodness of their hearts? Shouldn't we just be looking at the result of them following market incentives?

Of course companies don't do anything out of the goodness of their hearts. Companies will do as much evil as they are allowed to and as much good as they are forced to.

The society should act accordingly.

You're missing my point on purpose.

I am trying to say there is a contradiction in what you are saying. You claim to want companies to move into impoverished areas, but also say doing that is evil. No company has ever moved into an impoverished area to help people, they have always done so out of self interest.

So which do you want, companies to move into impoverished areas (acting evil), or not (acting good, according to you).

I want strong labor protection laws everywhere, so that poor regions don't have to compete on allowing companies to exploit the local workforce.

You've completely changed the direction of the argument.

Like a $15 minimum wage? The one Amazon is paying?

And paying for time spent in security checkpoints, and not counting "walking from workstation to break room" as break time, and compensation for workplace injuries.

This assumes that everything that is benefits a company is evil and everything that hurts a company is good.

Luckily, this isn't true. There are absolutely areas where companies can do good and profit. Moving good jobs into a blighted area is a classic example of a win-win. The company gets low wages, and residents get some of the best jobs they have access to.

So, I think I mostly agree with your stances here, but I take major issue with this:

> Why would a company ever do anything out of the goodness of their hearts?

Because a company is made of people. I won't fault a company for following market incentives, but questions like yours sometimes imply that a company shouldn't do anything out of the goodness of their heart. Then you get people saying stuff like the company's goal must be to maximize shareholder value and stuff, and getting angry when a company does something out of the goodness of their hearts, which I take issue with. <end rant>

You're right, I could have phrased it better.

Have you ever shopped around for lower pricing? The collective population of the world does this when we chose to purchase things for cheaper prices made in countries with more lax environmental and labor laws.

> Have you ever shopped around for lower pricing?

It's one thing to shop for a lower price, it's quite another to notice someone's desperate and take advantage.

> The collective population of the world does this when we chose to purchase things for cheaper prices made in countries with more lax environmental and labor laws.

An a lot of people object to that, too, and they often lack the power to make any other decision.

When you shop around for price you are shopping around for someone to exploit with the lower price. There is no difference, zero sum, if you get a product for less, somewhere in the world someone got less money.

The economy isn't zero sum (from a capitalist PoV) and reducing someone's profit margin isn't exploiting them (from a Marxist PoV). It's important to avoid thinking partial equilibrium effects are the actual effects of something.

This isn't about the total ecconomy, this is a single transaction.

The difference is plausible deniability, I guess.