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Re:The Overview Effect – William Shatner's Words After Retur... by tablespoon on Wednesday October 13, 2021 @04:32PM (#28857308)
> For the crime of making tens of thousands of people millionaires, providing people with what they want the world over, living the American dream, and hurling Shatner's body into the void?

Among other things, you forgot the part about scheduling people like machines to the point where they feel like their only option is to pee in bottles.

It's pretty easy to make any powerful person look good if you're willing to be shamelessly selective.

Re:The Overview Effect – William Shatner's Words After Retur... by nickpp on Wednesday October 13, 2021 @04:41PM (#28857416)
Are you by any chance talking about the job they voluntarily applied to and can freely leave at any time?!
Re:The Overview Effect – William Shatner's Words After Retur... by ipaddr on Wednesday October 13, 2021 @05:54PM (#28858165)
The only job left after Amazon put the other local stores out of business makes it an involuntarily choice unless you consider that crime is an acceptable career choice.
Re:The Overview Effect – William Shatner's Words After Retur... by nickpp on Thursday October 14, 2021 @09:16AM (#28863833)
Amazon did not put local stores out of business, customers choosing the advantages of shopping on Amazon did.

Are you saying customers should've been denied this choice in order to subsidize those local store jobs?

Re:The Overview Effect – William Shatner's Words After Retur... by tablespoon on Wednesday October 13, 2021 @04:46PM (#28857501)
> Are you by any chance talking about the job they voluntarily applied to and they can freely leave at any time?!

Do you realize that doesn't excuse anything? A rather extreme example to make the point: slave-holding is still wrong even if you can find someone desperate enough to voluntarily sell themselves into it to you.

Re:The Overview Effect – William Shatner's Words After Retur... by rufus_foreman on Wednesday October 13, 2021 @06:52PM (#28858579)
>> slave-holding is still wrong even if you can find someone desperate enough to voluntarily sell themselves into it to you

You left out the "and they can freely leave at any time" part. Your analogy doesn't make sense once you add it back in.

Re:The Overview Effect – William Shatner's Words After Retur... by tablespoon on Thursday October 14, 2021 @12:30AM (#28860534)
> You left out the "and they can freely leave at any time" part.

So? That doesn't excuse anything either. If my plane crashes next Jeff Bezos's Antarctic base, and he lets me in on the condition that I submit to daily sadistic beatings for his own pleasure. Does the idea that I could leave at any time (and freeze to death) make his beatings OK? Of course it doesn't.

Re:The Overview Effect – William Shatner's Words After Retur... by rufus_foreman on Thursday October 14, 2021 @06:37PM (#28871118)
I don't know that an Antarctic plane crash survivor and a warehouse worker are good comparisons. I'm beginning to think that you're kind of not great at analogies. But let's run with it.

Assuming Base Bezos is the only one around, without it you would have had one choice, death. Now you have an additional choice, survival with daily beatings. He has made you unequivocally better off, despite being a sadistic evil billionaire. Capitalism can be weird that way.

Now - in a scenario closer to the reality of an Amazon warehouse worker - let's assume there are hundreds of other bases around, each with their own terms, with little barriers to entry keeping other bases from being built, and Base Bezos is the one with the best terms. Then again, it's existence makes you better off. If it didn't exist, your choices would be worse.

All the workers at those warehouse jobs (a job far better in every way than the factory jobs I had) are better off because those jobs exist. And people at comparable jobs are better off too, because their employers now have to compete with someone providing what is in reality good pay, benefits, and working conditions for entry level manual labor jobs.

Re:The Overview Effect – William Shatner's Words After Retur... by nickpp on Wednesday October 13, 2021 @05:03PM (#28857699)
If you had to compare modern-day at will employment - the social construct through we are all earning our living - with slavery - something quite illegal in the entire world - your argument doesn’t hold much water.
Re:The Overview Effect – William Shatner's Words After Retur... by tablespoon on Wednesday October 13, 2021 @05:26PM (#28857922)
> If you had to compare modern-day at will employment - the social construct through we are all earning our living - with slavery - something quite illegal in the entire world - your argument doesn’t hold much water.

You should note that's a straw man, since I did not make a comparison, rather I used a different example to illustrate a concept. To spell it out in the simplest way I can think of: voluntarily agreement to a contract does not make the terms of that contract right. That's true for all wrongs, including slavery and bad working conditions.

Re:The Overview Effect – William Shatner's Words After Retur... by nickpp on Thursday October 14, 2021 @09:08AM (#28863753)
> voluntarily agreement to a contract does not make the terms of that contract right

Then why should I bother paying the mortgage to my house or car because that APR sure ain't right in them terms. Dam' bank found me desperate for a new BMW and is slaving my balls off!

Re:The Overview Effect – William Shatner's Words After Retur... by tablespoon on Thursday October 14, 2021 @10:28AM (#28864735)
> Then why should I bother paying the mortgage to my house or car because that APR sure ain't right in them terms. Dam' bank found me desperate for a new BMW and is slaving my balls off!

You're being obtuse.

And no, I'm not comparing you to an angle.

Re:The Overview Effect – William Shatner's Words After Retur... by BurningFrog on Wednesday October 13, 2021 @07:41PM (#28858892)
Can we agree that if Amazon fires these people they will be worse off?