>the infamous Victorian workhouse, an institution that the editor of the medical journal the Lancet claimed could kill 145,000 people every year
I'm pretty sure the workhouse was significantly worse than being employed at Amazon.
>gave you lodging for your slavery-like labor that you were basically born into.
this was in Poland, a country that being in Europe I suppose has a functioning welfare system. The workhouse was in effect the Victorian welfare system.
conditions in Amazon's warehouses are bad enough that hyperbole does not help in the fight against it.
Rich people have gotten a lot of mileage out of convincing everyone that they’re a temporarily impoverished millionaire. The body politic is starting to get wise to this hustle (again) and the last bastion of dumbass Ayn Rand “socialism for me, but not for thee” tripe seems to be the temporarily impoverished tech billionaires on HN.
What was worse about that poorly-lit box perfumed by long-chain polymers where you have to hold it until your assigned bathroom break and you’re timed down to the minute on repetitive, physically stressful tasks?
The fucking WiFi?
“a total institution where those unable to support themselves financially were offered accommodation and employment.”
is not the direct superclass of an Amazon fulfillment center?
One click off the one you provided is Wikipedia’s take on a “total institution”:
“A total institution is a place of work and residence where a great number of similarly situated people, cut off from the wider community for a considerable time, together lead an enclosed, formally administered round of life.”
So as Futurama’s writers would say you are technically correct, the best kind of correct: even the fucking villains who ran Edwardian and Victorian Britain at least gave you lodging for your slavery-like labor that you were basically born into.
Retro is perpetual, what’s old is new again at all times. Bell bottoms here, feeding the poor to each other there. Pretty soon we’re vacationing on Mars.