Because taking advantage of desperate people isn't an honorable thing to do. People are willing to put up with all sorts of abuse in order to keep their family afloat, but that doesn't justify anything.

They're not. They're offering them a decent job for a decent wage knowing that these people are totally unskilled. The alternative would be living on welfare. The fact that most of the workers are not on strike proves that they're satisfied with their jobs. Plus, nobody forced them to accept those jobs. And again, what would be the alternative for people with no skills? Unemployment, no opportunity to learn skills etc. No thanks.

Actually Verdi (the union) is also complaining about some of the working conditions as well, which they consider inhumane. It is mainly, but not exclusively about the wages.

> for a decent wage

Amazon is not paying according to the Branchentarifvertrag (industry sector collective agreement) and refuses to even sit down with the union and talk about collective bargaining. They are also actively trying to keep their employees from unionizing. If you consider the current wages "decent" is up to your point of view, but the union and I'd guess most of the affected workers disagree.

> The fact that most of the workers are not on strike proves that they're satisfied with their jobs

This proves nothing, in particular not job satisfaction, and is actually also not how things work in Germany and therefore just wrong. First a union will usually selectively shut down just a few facilities instead of all at once. This is called "Warnstreiks" (warning strikes), and this is what is happening right now. Only later and and only in accordance with German strike/bargaining law - e.g. you have to be unionized and are prohibited to violate the "Friedenspflicht", which regulates when and under what circumstances a unionized strike may happen - it is possible to enter the actual "Streik" where all (unionized) employees stop working. Plus, amazon employees where often not unionized before this started, so it might take some time and convincing for the union to get employees to join before they enter the "Warnstreiks".

> Plus, nobody forced them to accept those jobs

Well, the "Arbeitsagentur" (job center) can cut either your unemployment pay or later social welfare (Hartz 4) if you refuse to accept the jobs that are offered to you. If you also happen to have a family, and IIRC amazon employs quite a few single mothers for example, then you're "forced" to take the job in a way.

Some people, in particular union folks of course, even accuse amazon of predatory behavior, especially seeking out the weakest members of society for their work force because they are the least likely to fight against inhumane conditions and low wages. I used to think this predatory characterization was sensationalist and unfair, but by now, from what I read about amazon so far in the press and even in their own press statements, I think there might be something to it. But then again, I'm also just one of these Euro-socialists who thinks that everybody should have health insurance and should earn a living wage if working full time. Amazon more or less takes the same stance as you seem to take: They claim that they are just helping the weakest people. Treating your low-paid work force as if they were industrial robots (one of the complaints by workers and the union, and more or less admitted by amazon to happen as a result of their workplace rules and "processes") and keeping them from effectively complaining about it by keeping them from organizing suggests otherwise.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/08/us-germany-jobs-id...

They're essentially forced to take them, and there's a low threshold for the cheap pay recouping the training cost on how to move things around the warehouse.

High turnover doesn't matter if there's a steady supply of people coerced in to accepting and training takes at most 2 days.

That was neither a decent job, nor a decent wage. It was just a job and a wage they were forced to do in order to feed themselves, and under very bad conditions.

If a "totally unskilled" jobless person comes to me for money, I can offer him the chance dance, call me "master" and crawl at my feet and then give him $10.

Something which he might be forced to accept (hunger trumps pride).

That doesn't make my offer "decent" -- even if nobody else was willing to give him $10 anyway.

So nobody forced them to accept those jobs, yet their only other option is unemployment, no opportunity to learn skills, and other reasons that you yourself find unacceptable?

How would you define "force"? It seems to me that victims of sexual harassment suffer the same choices. I'm assuming you think sexual harassment should be illegal. Is that not "force"?

EDIT: changed "laughable" to "significantly harder to prove" because I'm not in the mood for a fight today.

If a moral dilemma vanishes when you look at it from a different viewpoint, the most likely scenario is that the new viewpoint is obscuring the crux of the problem rather than miraculously simplifying it.

My neighbor calls up a local employment firm and hires 50 people to harvest his fields with sickles. He pays them minimum wage for this backbreaking work. They go home with blistered hands, crinks in their backs, and barely enough money to afford groceries for the week.

I instead pay another local farmer, one with deeper pockets, to harvest my field with his swanky combine harvester. He sits in his air-conditioned cabin sipping on a bottle of coke, and gets the job done in two days. For his time and machinery, I pay him a few thousand dollars.

How do these two situations compare? My neighbor is arguably "exploiting" workers who are down on their luck. I am paying a single guy with some entrepreneur spirit arguably too much money to get the same job done. On the other hand, I have failed to provide jobs for 50 workers. Had I forsaken mechanization, the increased demand for labor that my farm would have created could have improved the working conditions, or at least pay, for those bottom-tier farm hands. Instead I eliminated those jobs and the money stayed with me and the wealthier farmer.

Is my neighbor abusing the manual laborers? Am I abusing the wealthy combine owning farmer? Am I abusing the manual laborers? Is the wealthy combine owning farmer abusing me? Surely the manual laborers are not abusing the combine owner, but is the combine owner abusing the manual laborers?

Nothing is being obscured here, it is an extraordinary simple situation that actually plays out every day.

The big problem with the market is that it forces us to choose between the two. It snatches defeat from the jaws of victory by coupling the "workers starve" outcome to the "workers don't have jobs" outcome. There is no fundamental reason why they need to be coupled. Just because only 80% of people have to work to meet demand doesn't mean the other 20% deserve to starve.

Many systems are possible in which marginal incentives are maintained (the farmer and tractor driver get significantly more money than the out-of-work laborers) but the laborers don't go hungry. I search for my favorite solution among these (I'm a big fan of basic income / negative income tax).

As you note, we are automating away more and more of our economy every day. If we keep our current course, such automation becomes a club used by those who have enabled the automation (or otherwise accumulated capital) to beat down those who have not. I think that's a terrifying idea that at best leads to terrible injustice and at worst leads to violent overthrow of its perpetrators (including myself). We need an economic model that maintains the dignity of the labor force even in the face of shrinking demand for labor.

I ask this because I think you are actually getting at the point I was trying to make.

You asked "The current system gives choices X,Y. Isn't X>Y?" and I ignored the "Isn't X>Y?" part because I assumed it was mostly a rhetorical device designed to make concrete the first part ("The current system gives choices X,Y") which was more relevant to the philosophical issue being discussed.

My answer was "Yeah, it sucks that X,Y are our choices, because I think that one of M,N,O, or P might be better."

That artificially low interest rate makes it possible for this mechanization/automation battle to play out in many sectors of industry that it normally wouldn't.

$1mm for 10 years at 2% interest is $9200 a month, give or take.

$1mm for 10 years and 10% interest is $13200 a month, roughly.

$13200 a month is enough to provide a job, fully loaded including salary, benefits, space, etc for at least a $60k/year job, maybe $80k per year or more depending on fixed vs variable overhead, etc.

$9200 per month would, given the same assumptions, perhaps pay only $30k-$50k again depending on the mix of variable and fixed costs.

So what we've seen is that the automation "horizon" has been pushed lower by the low interest rates. And it's displaced jobs that normally would have been done by low skilled labor that while not fun were at least employment. As the pool of jobs available to low skilled folks shrinks competition gets more fierce and wages drop.

The central banks are massively more damaging than they are generally understood to be.

For the sake of argument, let's agree that those who do not have their basic needs satisfied are suffering under the collective force of everybody else who could satisfy the need. What makes Amazon so special? Aren't you also exerting force on those who are less fortunate than you?

Everybody is exerting "force" on everyone else, sometimes indirectly. The contract between Amazon and the laborer was signed under the duress of threatened homelessness / lack of healthcare / starvation. Amazon signed the contract under duress because it needs people to ship its boxes. Amazon is not special and neither is the worker.

Any deal we make must exert force on someone (a restatement of "the world isn't perfect" within our framework). So who should be favored? Put quantitatively, there's a scale between the minimum price at which a person will sell their labor and the maximum price Amazon can pay for the labor and still turn a profit -- where should the actual price lie? Market economics looks to supply/demand balance for unskilled labor and slides the "final price" all the way over to the minimum. A libertarian would claim that this is just (both parties "consented") and reject attempts by the government to meddle on the grounds that the market knows best. A philosophy that rejects the notion that both parties "consented" (both were under duress) opens the door to policy adjustments that push prices away from one extreme end of the spectrum, because it sees these as less just. Since Amazon has all the power under the current system, such policy adjustments would favor the worker.

I would prefer that this be implemented IRL using a basic income or negative income tax scheme (ameliorate (!=eliminate) the source of labor's duress at the source) rather than by implementing a minimum wage, but that's beside the point.

Amazon isn't making anyone's live's worse off. They are better off than they would be if Amazon didn't hire anyone at all and they became unemployed. If Amazon is wrong for hiring them at too low a wage, then every other company in the world is also wrong for not offering them to hire them at all.

Can we please just admit that a weak point of exterme libertarianism is what happens to the weakest members of society ?

Bottom line: if everyone is responsible, then no one is responsible. No amount of pithy sound bites or quotes from Austrians will change that. If anything it's a wonder charities have been as successful as they have.

At least with a liberal government system, there is a single point of ultimate responsibility for issues like this: the government itself, as the legal embodiment of "the people" at large.

But which way of obtaining resources is the best?

1. Trade (a voluntary interaction from which both parties expect to benefit from)

2. Charity (a voluntary interaction from which one party expects to other to benefit from)

3. Extortion (an involuntary interaction achieved through force or threats)

To which I say, if you're willing to allow the government to deport someone who doesn't pay taxes I'd tend to agree with you, but as it stands the balance is actually tipped the other way: Government (usually local) is forced to figure out clean water, last-resort healthcare, schools, etc. simply by people being present, whether they pay taxes or not, yet government has no ability to simply "get rid" of people

I say the libertarians go find a nice area somewhere with a failed state, take it over, prove its supremacy and be a big shining beacon on the hill for libertarians everywhere to finally prove once and for all that it's better, and then I'll care about "taxes as extortion".

Also, not sure about Germany but it's not uncommon for employment offices to start withholding benefits if you refuse jobs "you're fit for". That would likely include warehouse grunt.

Or alternatively, that most of the workers on a wage low enough that missing a day of work isn't a viable option for them.

One could use that argument, and the rest of the argumentation, to praise slavery. I mean it provided food, shelter and hardly anyone went on strike, right?

EDIT: I don't mean to downplay slavery. Capitalism with all it's faults is far better than slavery or even just feudalism in most or all aspects. I just think that the argument I responded to is severely flawed: Not going on strike might be a sign of satisfaction but it might as well be a sign of fear and/or a lack of alternatives.

The bad thing about "[literally] Hitler!" is that, most of the time, trivializes the Holocaust. In my "labour dispute version" of it that would have meant a trivialization of slavery which I tried to avoid in the sentence prefixed with "EDIT:". If you think I still did it please write it and add some argumentation.

What about: they are scared of being fired and their families losing roof over their head and food to eat ? Most people aren't willing to go on strike or take any risks if already bad situation. I mean, the slaves weren't on constant strike either.

Nor were they free to leave. The situations are not comparable.

In all seriousness, this line of reasoning can be used to rationalize the actions of anyone who takes advantage of the destitute and marginalized to make a profit: pimps, crime lords, sweatshop managers, etc. etc.

Forgive me for not patting Amazon on the back for giving THE WORKERS THEY BASE THEIR ENTIRE ENTERPRISE ON a tiny percentage of the profits. After all, nobody applauds the trash who taunt the homeless with crumbs, even though they are technically feeding them.

Edit: I'm a terrible multi-tasker, edited to clarify some points

Or desperate not to get sacked just before Christmas.

A job can be a stepping stone to a better future. Perhaps that is true here?

If I were to offer a single mother a large lump sum for one of her kidneys so she could feed her children, without any kind of threat, implied or otherwise, that would still be at the very least ethically problematic, don't you think?

And what is your proposed solution? Amazon raise prices on the goods they sell to their workers and the rest of the population? The government step in and coerce different forms of contracts?

If you do care about this I have a suggestion - create a fund where people who feel as you do can give the money they save from shopping at Amazon (or other earnings) to these people. If you believe they are undervaluing themselves invest in them. Or place blame on companies that through voluntary exchanges are changing the world.

Simplistic solutions like "just move elsewhere" ignore both the inherent difficulties that moving poses when you are living in poverty, and the situations encountered by many people who take that option. As a new arrival you face the prospect of high initial costs trying to find a place to live and trying to find work, on top of the living costs you would have faced anyway, coupled to the fact that you are likely to have a reduced support network to help you deal with any problems you might face, and help you get on your feet. This is all after the initial expense of actually moving.

You asked your parent for a proposed solution, mine is simply for Amazon to more equitably distribute revenue within the company, to spend more on low-level wages, less on high-level wages, and less on other projects if there is a shortfall. In general I suspect that some kind of employee ownership goes quite far to alleviating many problems of this nature.

As a footnote, the only sense in which a market exchange is voluntary is that all parties agreed to it, which follows from the definition, and is therefore useless: "market exchange" will suffice. It is simply a disingenuous attempt to make the idea of a market exchange sound more humane, and to suggest an absence of coercion, without ever providing evidence that this is the case.

I agree moving is difficult - but so is creating efficiencies like Bezos has done. If your social views include the view that life should be easy for everyone, no matter their contribution, then we have a fundamental difference in what is realistic. If that is your view though maybe a better solution would be for those with money who share your view to support those without jobs or working with Amazon (or pay them to not work for Amazon). It is very easy to ask Amazon to change their policies, but that's because it isn't your money. (It's also worth noting that Amazon is not even profitable and runs in incredibly competitive industries. And, for every dollar they have to raise in costs they need to raise in profits.)

Your solution might work but has some concerns. Although the market for unskilled work is very heavily weighted towards companies the market for skilled leadership is very competitive. There is a reason top executives at Apple, Google and Amazon are paid well. Paying 10,000 workers $1 an hour more means $20,000,000 less yearly to spend on upper level talent in a highly competitive marketplace for that talent.

I am pointing out the human respecting nature of the market exchange - that it respects human choice (no matter how bad or good an individuals choice may be) rather than implying the idea that someone else knows what is best. Coercion is "the practice of persuading someone to do something by using force or threats". I have never heard a story of Amazon threatening someone to work for them or using physical force to entice them to take a job. Taxes, military drafts and certain types of crime are coercion - posting on a job board is not.

That is a gross mis-characterization of the liberal worldview. The social contract in most modern capitalistic states is that we allow a winner-takes-all economic model as long as we ensure equal opportunity and social mobility. However, wealth and income inequality are at all time highs, and many people on the lower economic and social rungs are stuck in a poverty trap. This isn't about giving people a free lunch, it's about reforming the system to provide more opportunity to those in dire circumstances.

Regarding your craigslist exchange, you took advantage of someone's dire economic situation in order to improve your own. While not illegal, I would argue it is immoral, and this is happening on a much larger scale with Amazon. It is immoral to employ an individual for less than a living wage, regardless of what the market dictates should be the prevailing wage. It might not be Amazon's fault that poverty exists, and no one can blame them for exploiting it to their advantage, but they are benefiting enormously from our capitalistic economic system, and it is entirely reasonable to impose regulations and reforms on the winners in order to restore mobility and opportunity.

I was coercive of you: you used the fact that he essentially had no bargaining power to extract value in your favor. Whether or not you want to call that immoral is your business.

> I have never heard a story of Amazon threatening someone to work for them or using physical force to entice them to take a job

Amazon makes job offers which wouldn't be accepted without coercion, and uses the fact that benefits from social programs will be cut if the person uses the job to co-opt government coercion. They effectively threaten your current social program income to get you to accept a job you otherwise wouldn't.

Is that entirely Amazon's fault? No. Is Amazon using a messed up government policy to coerce people to take jobs they otherwise wouldn't? Yes.

Because they're friends with the board of directors which sets their salaries, which are paid for not out of the directors' pockets but from shareholder profits?

Or maybe it's because the board wants the company to look like it's in the big leagues, and gee whiz, we're not in the big leagues unless we pay like we are, regardless of how the executives actually perform.

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/20...

I don't think either reason holds - and if it does then those companies will fall to the wayside. If you think Google, Amazon and Apple are wasting millions of dollars of year overpaying for talented leaders then share your plan with the world to do better and take them out of business.

I think it's actually because within 10 years a company can be absolutely destroyed if they don't get the right leaders. Look at Blackberry, Nokia and Microsoft. All were leaders in their fields ten years ago and now have competitors that are outpacing them (in the case of the two latter ones) or simply erasing them (in the case of Blackberry). If Blackberry discovers multitouch first and puts out an iPhone or if Microsoft makes tablets work in a consumer friendly way by hiring Jony Ive - then the whole landscape changes.

Also in large companies workers making $200k+ aren't usually buddies with the board but there is a highly competitive market for them which allows those salaries to be the norm. It's a skills economy and for people without skills a comfortable, not flashy, life is a good and available option.

If the market does operate correctly, as you suggest, then someone could, indeed, start a company, and "take them (Google) out of business", unless of course their hypothesis about overpaying top earners was faulty, in which case they would be outcompeted. If, instead, the market does not operate correctly, then such an attempt might fail because of other unspecified market failures. There is no way of determining whether a challenger's failure to displace the market leader is caused by (in this case) their false belief that companies are overpaying their top earners, or whether the failure is caused by the market not operating correctly. Unless you can devise a way of distinguishing the two, then this type of argument is inherently uninformative.

On a slightly different note, I agree narrowly with your point that companies need talented leaders, though I am not as convinced that the leaders of the companies you list determined their fate as much as you appear (to me) to suggest. For example, Blackberry couldn't simply "switch" to producing iPhones, for a whole variety of reasons.

Eric Schmidt - $7,628,620

Patrick Pichette - $38,741,100

Nikesh Arora - $51,145,900

David Drummond - $31,301,900

http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/companyOfficers?symbol...

The wider point is that structure matters: an organisation that is run dictatorially by a small central group is, by my estimation, fundamentally more illiberal than an organisation that is run cooperatively by its members. I fail to understand why those people who are enamoured with free market principles are such staunch defenders of organisations that internally suppress those principles almost absolutely.

I am skeptical of the limited definition of coercion as only persuasion that takes place by force or threat; in my opinion there are many other, more 'polite' ways of influencing people that are just as pernicious. Indeed, I agree with both pyoung and DerpDerpDerp that your craigslist exchange was coercive in the sense that you exploited that person's situation to your own advantage. A basic test for whether or not an exchange is non-coercive is whether or not both parties would happily reverse the exchange. If not, then there was probably some element of coercion involved, even if it was simply an unaddressed asymmetry of information. Remember that perfect market information is one of the assumptions necessary for market Pareto optimality.

"Bargaining power" is misleading because that is not how a market works. It's not two party's haggling over what they think a "fair price" is, it's a lot of parties and prices tend towards supply and demand. Unlike the bargaining model, supply and demand still works even if one party doesn't have a choice.

For example, you have no choice but to buy food. But farmers can't force you to pay extreme prices because you have no choice. They have to compete amongst each other and the price of food falls towards what it costs to produce.

Messing with the supply and demand price can create problems like unemployment. It's too expensive to hire new workers at the minimum wage, or there is a much higher incentive to outsource and automate work, or just not do it at all. To continue the food analogy, if you set a maximum food price, farmers would just stop producing if it cost more than the maximum price.

The second problem is that your analogy is imperfect, because it switches round to the demand side rather than the supply side. A better analogy, I think, would be if you were a farmer who had produced a sufficient supply of food, but you had to sell it because it was going to spoil. In this case buyers, assuming that they don't strictly need your food, could apply pressure to you to lower your price fairly indiscriminately. This is a much better analogy to the original case: companies (often, and in the case we are talking about) don't need your labour, they will simply be less productive without it, but you do need a wage, or you will starve to death.

And this is the root of the problem I am trying to get at. The demand for labor is pretty low. Blaming the few companies that are hiring workers isn't fair, and forcing them to raise wages doesn't fix the problem.

>The second problem is that your analogy is imperfect, because it switches round to the demand side rather than the supply side.

I think that people thinking of supply and demand sides separately is where a lot of people get confused, especially when discussing labor markets. There really isn't any difference and the same economic principles apply to both sides.

>companies (often, and in the case we are talking about) don't need your labour, they will simply be less productive without it, but you do need a wage, or you will starve to death.

Another good point and what I am trying to get at. The problem I think is that people depend on the value of their labor for their income. That's hardly fair to begin with (some people are simply worth more economically than others), but it's especially problematic if some people's labor becomes almost worthless due to automation or whatever. A basic income would be an ideal solution.

I essentially agree with that.

> I think that people thinking of supply and demand sides separately is where a lot of people get confused, especially when discussing labor markets. There really isn't any difference and the same economic principles apply to both sides.

I think that there genuinely is an asymmetry between supply and demand, indeed especially when discussing labour markets. If labour demand is higher than labour supply, then very crudely we can say that wages will go up to the maximum that the wage-payers can afford - but it won't go higher than that, because if it did they would run out of money, go out of business, and demand would go down. For the converse case, when labour demand is lower than labour supply, then, again very crudely, we can say that wages will fall, but there is essentially no lower limit, because there is no feedback (in pricing terms) until so many people have died of starvation that supply starts going down. Obviously both of those 'end game' scenarios are ridiculous, but it demonstrates the asymmetry - excess demand provides a rapid natural cap on price, whereas excess supply doesn't.

> Another good point and what I am trying to get at. The problem I think is that people depend on the value of their labor for their income. That's hardly fair to begin with (some people are simply worth more economically than others), but it's especially problematic if some people's labor becomes almost worthless due to automation or whatever. A basic income would be an ideal solution.

I absolutely agree with this part, and your proposed solution.

Well the same logic applies when the "gun" is not physically a gun: If your set of viable choices has a size of 1 then you cannot be honestly said to have any "voluntary" choice.

Does that mean that in supply surplus, the consumer is exploiting the farmer?

Phrasing world in the terms of zero sum game is really not the best idea.

The problem with the person holding a gun to your head scenario, is that they are abusing your rights in the first place by putting a gun to your head. We don't want people to do that for various reasons. But in this scenario it isn't the employer or farmer holding the gun, it's mother nature. They are just offering assistance from that.

Why does the existence of a contract automatically rule out the possibility of taking advantage?

Take this trade off. I create a system whereby I can make $100 for every hour someone works. I tell you I'll pay you $10 an hour to work. If you are better off working those hours you will take it and I will receive $90 and you $10. If you won't I'm out a lot of money, so I will probably revise my offer upwards.

These workers are individuals capable of making decisions. If they decide working for Amazon for $13 an hour is better than alternatives they should take it - if not they should pursue a more valuable alternative.

There is an implicit assumption in your thinking that I'm trying to tease out.

Frank took advantage of Amazon's 2-day shipping to do his last-minute Christmas shopping

The only assumption is that people will make the decision that is in their best interest. Amazon can only attract workers if it is the best option those workers have.

You have a nice life. Someone comes up to you and holds a gun to your head. You are now about to die. They say "I won't shoot you if you give me all your money".

Suddenly, giving away all your money is in your best interest. Therefore it's voluntary, and by your argument, fair and reasonable and nobody is being taken advantage of because it's all by choice and in best interests. Right?

Amazon is not initiating force against anyone. If they provide higher than market wages for the workers, they will be violating the rights of their shareholders who will lose money and will be worse off due to the deal. In an industry with as tight margins as Amazon, it can result in flight of capital, loss of shareholder value and layoffs.

This isn't literally "initiating force" but if it is true then it is very similar in effect to the mugging scenario, and having the mugger use unseen but still present power to "make an offer you can't refuse" is still not a fair and ethical way to egg people to voluntarily enter into contracts.

So we both gain an advantage.

Jack gets a job with Amazon - he is able to afford a color TV and internet at home. Amazon hires Jack - they get their orders shipped to homes on time for Christmas.

Everyone is getting an advantage in all of these situations. No one would ever make an agreement that doesn't provide an advantage.

I assume you're asserting there is a power difference between Amazon and Jack that makes Amazon get more advantage from Jack. This may be true. Amazon, however, has a power difference with customers who ultimately decide whether the billions of dollars worth of infrastructure they are building is worth it or whether competitors will win.

Is it wrong if I decide to not buy from Amazon? Am I taking advantage of them by buying if their product is $10 but not buying if their product is $12?

By "choosing" not to be employed by Amazon, if that's offered to the worker and happens to be their only choice, they "choose" to lose unemployment benefits.

Sounds like a faustian bargain.

If your grandfather gave all of his money willingly and right away to his physician, don't you feel the physician acted unethically? And don't you feel your grandfather might be impacted negatively by that decision?

I think the fundamental disconnect here, is the people you are debating with believe that Amazon should have made it more advantageous for the workers, because as the workers have no other options it would be the nice thing to do.

Just because the contract is voluntary does not mean it's not exploitative. See: sex workers.

If the equilibrium wage is $9/hour, so be it, but that doesn't justify not treating people like human beings. Telling them to show up early but not paying them for that time, micromanagement of bathroom breaks, unsafe or uncomfortable work conditions, not paying for being on call, etc. These aren't justified by labor market dynamics--it's indecent treatment of workers just because they have no other options.

From the linked article: "Though out of work, Rodriguez is surprisingly upbeat. 'The warehouses aren’t bad,' he tells me. 'If they treat people better and pay us what we’re owed, the work could be very good. It is honest work.'"

Or what about some tighter regulation of their working conditions? Sounds uncomfortable - might be cheaper to just improve the situation of the workers ...

The unions are just doing their work with Amazon, and they are doing it very well.

So I guess it does impact their brand but unfortunately sometimes there is no where else to go.

You can't just complain that homeopathy doesn't cure cancer well enough without explaining how you would cure cancer.

Most people complaining here would happily pay 10 cents more on their $10 Blu-ray if it meant that the workers were treated better.

When an employer doesn't pay an employee a fair wage, they're being subsidized, either by the government (Walmart is an excellent example; their literature specifically instructs their associates on how to collect government benefits due to them not paying a living wage) or by society as a whole.

From an economics perspective, would you not prefer consumers be responsible for the full cost of the good/services they're receiving?

No one's blaming Amazon for the particular facts you mention. They're blaming them for exploiting their advantage as the only employer offering such jobs.

And even if they weren't being exploitative, why on earth would a company hiring people deserve praise? It's not like they're doing it out of charity - they need work done, they hire people.

The very reason they are hiring unskilled people is because they don't have to pay them a lot. Don't you understand? If Amazon was forced to pay them a lot, they'd prefer better skilled people and those very people you're trying to help would be unemployed thanks to you. I think they're doing fine without your unhelpful concerns.

> It's not like they're doing it out of charity - they need work done, they hire people.

By that logic, why blame them either even if they were exploiting the workers. They're just hiring people because they need work done and to be profitable like any other companies.

Oh, they're fine? Is that why they're fucking striking? I assure you I did not force them to strike, my learnëd friend. This might be shocking to you, but even poor people can think for themselves.

> why blame them either even if they were exploiting the workers.

............because they're fucking exploiting them? Did you think "exploit" means "pat on the back" or something?

They are also not primarily striking because of the working conditions as you apparently seem to think.

They are striking for more money. Plain and simple.

And here comes the kicker you also apparently don't seem to know/grasp. They are being paid what they currently earn not because Amazon willingly pays them slave wages just because, they are being paid what is normal in the logistics industry! The union says the workers are working in the retail industry and should therefore earn more. THAT'S why they are striking.

They are in disagreement over what industry the workers should belong to which will directly affect their pay. Amazon does not choose how much or how little they pay their workers. They pay what the tariff dictates. The current question right now is what tariff shall be used.

And that is the outrageous thing about this whole deal. That has not been the first strike about this very topic nor will it apparently have been the last. Instead of finally getting a judge to answer the question, once and for all, to what industry the workers belong to, they pull one strike after another with the customer getting the short end.

Both sides should finally quit their antics and get the official ruling and then all this hoopla about pay can stop. And once they stage their next strike solely because of working conditions, then you are allowed to come back and white knight for the workers all you want.

exploit (v) - make full use of and derive benefit from (a resource)

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/exploit?r=75&src=ref&...

Dictionary.com unabridged:

> 2. to use selfishly for one's own ends: employers who exploit their workers.

Collins English Dictionary:

> 2. to take advantage of (a person, situation, etc), esp unethically or unjustly for one's own ends

There are various reasons for Amazon to pay the wages they do and keep the conditions they do, there are also reasons for the workers to want better wages/conditions.

There isn't one universal morality you can judge the situation with, and you shouldn't try to. In the end it's a financial transaction between the employees and their employer. It makes great economic sense for the employer to try to maximize it's income, and it has the side effect of worsening the lives of the employees, who, in good sense, come to the conclusion they need more than they currently have, and proceed to negotiate with Amazon. Amazon doesn't want to pay them more because it would cut into their income, so they try to dismiss it. The workers proceed to strike to force Amazon into a bad position. I would say neither are at fault.

There is no morality to be shone upon the situation, different parties have different interests to protect.

My argument doesn't come down to semantics. @lsaferite brought up definitions and so I responded to that.

Weird how you use words like "force" when talking about the workers' actions, but not Amazon's. Funny how it's "great economic sense" for Amazon to maximize their income, but not for the workers to maximize theirs.

Also:

> There isn't one universal morality you can judge the situation with

I have no idea what the fuck you could mean by this. Also pretty sure you're making moral judgments anyway after lecturing us all against it. There's a word for that.

The workers are forcing Amazon to change the contract, it has negative connotations but that is what's happening

> have no idea what the fuck you could mean by this. Also pretty sure you're making moral judgments anyway after lecturing us all against it. There's a word for that.

There is no one "right" party in the situation, and trying to determine one is foolish. And I suppose it could be called a moral judgement, in regards to discourse regarding morals, but that isn't the "situation".

You can't "disprove" a definition for a word. "Exploit" can mean simply "make productive use of", or it can have sinister connotations. Since I was the one to first use it (in this thread at least), I was merely pointing out that my usage was valid. @lsaferite made the semantic point and I responded to it, but your implication that the word's definition is the crux of my argument is inane.

> trying to determine one is foolish

You can go ahead and keep saying this over and over and over (and, if you wish, over), but that doesn't make it true. You think you're above the responsibility of moral judgment, but what you're actually doing is placing your moral judgment somewhere in between the two parties. This is still a moral judgment. Just because your determination is that both parties are somewhat aggrieved doesn't mean you're being fair or above it all. You think your judgment is special and enlightened because it's centrist? It's not. You're just a schmuck with an opinion like the rest of us.

Do you think Foxconn are great for the same reasons?

Not at all. I wrote that the alternative would be living on welfare with no prospects and no opportunities to learn skills. Amazon is offering a real job instead.

> Do you think Foxconn are great for the same reasons?

Yes, they are. They offer wages way higher than the medium salary in China. Why do you think everybody wants to work for them? Nobody is being forced to work there. The alternative would be having no jobs at all. Socialists want to impose very high minimum wages, but the reality is that very high minimum wages imposed by law just creates more unemployment and more misery, the very thing socialists are supposed to oppose but keep creating everywhere they get power.

Amazon is a great business but a shitty employer. Not to mention it's almost impossible for a unskilled worker to learn some skills that would make him a more valuable employee. They are reluctant to even hire them permanently not to mention giving them a chance to progress.

It's easy to say that in your position, you have options, not everybody does and may or may not have anything to do with the skill that person has.

I come from a place where it's impossible to get a decent wage whatever your skill level the only way to survive is to do shady stuff or open your own business which more likely then not will have to do some shady accounting in order to survive.

Any job experience is a step up from none. By keeping your eyes and ears open you can learn a lot and if you can demonstrate that by having a coherent conversation about warehouse operations or shipping logistics with another employer you might find yourself with better job prospects eventually.

They don't give a st about the people.

The government doesn't need to be socialist either it can be a perfectly democratic government that doesn't do anything for its citizens interest and the result would be the same.

With a government, there is no alternative choice. And typically socialist governments tend to swing towards totalitarianism as well, depriving their citizens of many other rights and freedoms.

That might not be entirely in accord with actual facts. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/technology/foxconn-said-to... http://kotaku.com/report-college-students-forced-to-make-pla... http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/10/15/forced-student-labor-i...

Sounds pretty good.

Amazon is offering a real job instead.

As compared to what, a fake job? What does "real" add in this context, except dragging in a needless comparison to posturing sentences like "a real man never calls an ambulance". "Real" translating to hard work for low pay?

They applied for these jobs and Amazon hired them. No one forced Amazon to take on these unskilled workers.

Please, remind me why these workers should be blamed for this and not praised?

Then hear it now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com#Poor_working_conditi...

Yeah, people have been saying that for years, yet somehow the salaries for programmers in the U.S. keep going up.

The fact that they would have been left to starve does not make the person who, exploting their need, had them work like shit for shitty money in exchange any better.

Similarly, the fact that a person gives $20 for a crack addicted woman to do him "favors", does not make him a benefactor compared to those who had nothing to offer her.

When I first moved to London 10 years ago I watched as Starbucks moved aggressively into the area of London in which I was working. They decimated smaller outlets and put people out of work. I literally saw people who had previously worked at other establishments working at Starbucks - almost certainly for for less pay.

As a thought experiment, imagine that it's taken to it's full conclusion. Amazon is all that is left, all other shops and distributors are shut down. Now you have a large mass of incredibly unhappy people who have been forced into the position of working for minimum wage by power structures outside of their control. People with barely the means to survive. They don't enjoy any of the luxuries many of us have today. There's no way out for them, and there's probably no way out for their children. What happens when something triggers that group of individuals to revolt? It wouldn't be the first time that's happened in England [0].

Don't get me wrong, I think Amazon are an incredible operation. Possibly the finest logistics organisation that's ever existed - physically and increasingly virtually too.

The question is, what is the cost to society, especially in lower socio-economic areas? I think we need to look very critically on anything that clearly widens the wealth divide. Even more so when unethical means are used to shift money from broader society to those organisations in the first place [1].

In a world without Amazon maybe many of these "people who tend to be rejected everywhere else" would have gainful employment and the rest of us would just have to pay and extra few quid for the tat that we don't even need in the first place.

    [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peasants%27_Revolt
    [1] http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/may/15/amazon-uk-tax-3m

What is stopping the workers from learning some useful skill and bringing more economic worth to their jobs as opposed to a skill that will be automated 5 years down the line?

Well it's a nice hypothetical, but has very little support historically. In fact the trend is completely opposite; Amazon swoops in and other businesses fold.

The theoretical thing stopping it is simply the initial capital costs and (more importantly) the embodied body of knowledge, gained over a long period of time of "how best to win at logistics".

One does not simply hang their tile and beat Amazon at <price, service, convenience>, there's a lot of effort that goes into making Amazon as efficient as it is that cannot be simply duplicated by a random VC-backed startup. It is for that reason that the old libertarian trope about "just wait for some entrepreneur to start a better competitor" is so out-of-touch... people are going to be waiting a long time, but they need to eat today.

But then, the "competitor" or "job provider" need not be in the same space as Amazon. They can be restaurents, transportation companies, anything.

However, you will quickly realize that running a business of any sort is hard, full of unpredictable variables and very risky. The people who do it, as well as the people who invest in such companies should not be penalized by legislating a solution that would transfer wealth.

Eventually, if the cost of the employee is more than the value that the employee is providing, then the economy will move towards automating such jobs. And Amazon-type jobs are going to be very easy to automate.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesinnungsethik

and then there is

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verantwortungsethik

... and the later Amazon seams not to care very much about when setting up their working places/conditions and contracts, all of which when embedded in the real world right now "try" to establish new standards which ignore the damages. Other parts of the society have quite different ideas about the future of work even if it is low-skill-work.

If you sincerely believe this I think you are morally bankrupt. Since this is HN also have a think about the value of human labour and the current wealth of nations.