As an example - historically agricultural productivity was not a question of labor organization, or labor efficiency. A farmer could only grow but so much food with the land aloted, available water, and crop/fertilizer technology of the time. This amount was relatively close to subsistence.
The sowing of crops could be made more efficient in terms of person hours. But, without a production surplus, and no additional land to cultivate - there wasn’t much else for the individuals to do with the surplus hours.
Similarly, in a modern society labor productivity can be decoupled with economic output. Google search will be the dominant search engine regardless if it’s engineering team is efficient or inefficient.
This is true of some key areas, such as farming. But industry and at least some service sectors tend to benefit a lot from scaling up. Walmart is incredibly efficient, and Amazon only more so.
Just because they are exploited profitably, does not mean thats their best contribution to the economy. Its just that their more efficiebt aopkication camkot be easilly privatised
How does that work? Did Walmart shut a medical school?
You may not like Amazon or Walmart, but people work at Walmart because it's better than their alternatives at the time.
Walmart/Amazon didn't make their alternatives bad.
The point was, these people COULD do more than move boxes from A to B, could have been more productive, and could contribute more to the economy, if they were provided training.
Why they didn't get training is irrelevant - you can debate all day if Wallmart or Obama is at fault. But you don't get any credit for making humans move boxes A to B like monkeys. If they took a bunch of homeless people and made them into engineers, then yes, that would be noteworthy.
As to your starman - you could find a homeless person and cruely exploit them, by offering them dangerous work or getting them into prostitution. It could make you a lot of money if done at scale, and most people would call you a terrible person.
You did not make them homeless to begin with, but I think most people would not buy that as something that vindicates you.
But suddenly if your name is Amazon then it has a veneer of a respectable business.
Yes, they could, but what does that have to do with Walmart or Amazon?
And, at least for now, boxes need moving.
You persist in your belief that offering someone an "opportunity" that you don't like is exploiting them. It isn't, no matter how bad that opportunity is.
As to people with no good alternatives, that's on you as much as it is Walmart and Amazon.
Two reasons:
1 - More egalitarian societies are more efficiient - they produce more because exploited peasants are not peoductive 2 - Who wans to die to protect their tyrant?