[HN Gopher] Amazon Keeps Getting Sued for Paying Drivers Less Th... ___________________________________________________________________ Amazon Keeps Getting Sued for Paying Drivers Less Than Minimum Wage Author : elsewhen Score : 249 points Date : 2021-03-21 12:15 UTC (10 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.vice.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com) | legulere wrote: | What holds true for software also holds true for companies: there | is no problem that can't be solved with indirection. You want to | profit from illegal stuff but not be responsible? Let an | intermediary do it for you. | | If I buy a product extremely cheap, I also will be liable if it | was a stolen product. Why is the same not true for Amazon? | Klwohu wrote: | When I read a story like this about some huge company "getting | sued" I have to laugh. Does anybody think that Amazon and their | killer attack attorneys are scared of small time civil suits? | Legislators won't do anything to harm Amazon and the odd minor | fine is just part of the ongoing expense of running a monopoly. | SMAAART wrote: | That's interesting because: | | > What is the pay rate at Amazon?: $15 an hour is the Amazon | minimum wage--although you can make more based on your location | and the shift you choose. | | Source: https://www.amazondelivers.jobs/faqs | dfhjgkljhf44 wrote: | Plausible deniability will work fine for Bezos until he's less | popular than a republican president. | c3534l wrote: | > Amazon does not tolerate violations of labor laws," Leah Seay, | an Amazon spokesperson told Motherboard. "Where we find repeated | violations, or an inability to correct labor violations, we | terminate contracts with DSP program participants. | | That is NOT a no-tolerance policy. They're literally saying they | tolerate some violations so long as its not so bad. Amazon is | responsible for this and I'm guessing it stems from a work | culture that sees some abuse as inevitable or okay in small | amounts. Its not okay. You can't violate worker rights just some | of the time and think you're being responsible. This is well | outside acceptable business norms in the US. The fact that the | official spokesperson thought it was okay that to publicly admit | they sweep violations under the rug so long as it doesn't become | too bad speaks volumes to Amazon's toxic and amoral work culture. | AdrianB1 wrote: | I had some doubts that this is Amazon's problem, but the fact | that they drive vans with Amazon logo, wear Amazon uniforms and | are trained by Amazon employees convinced me this is just a | pathetic attempt by Amazon to hide these practices, push the risk | and move the blame on contractor companies. This is as bad as it | goes. | [deleted] | barbazoo wrote: | It's a bit more subtle where I live but rest assured, even the | unmarked van, the yellow vest, it's pretty obvious even without | the Amazon logo. | AdrianB1 wrote: | Well, at some point you cannot blame a store for the postal | services abuse on their own workers, but in Amazon's case | this is their service, not an completely independent external | service. These are the 2 sides of the problem and this tells | who is responsible. | [deleted] | pharmakom wrote: | Amazon needs to pay more for their use of public infrastructure. | The amount of traffic from delivery vehicles has dramatically | increased in the past 10 years, and the ludicrous performance | targets that they set for their drivers encourages dangerous | driving. Congestion and accidents are a predictable consequence. | AdrianB1 wrote: | I think they actually reduce the traffic, a single van can | deliver what 20 SUVs used to do for 20 families. | ceejayoz wrote: | Those 20 families tended to keep a list and get a bunch of | items at once. Now they get a daily dribble of packages - | I've had three different Amazon deliveries in a day. | | I'm not sure it reduces traffic as much as it initially | seems. | URSpider94 wrote: | Yes, but if each of your neighbors is also getting a | package each day, then the effect is still the same. | Additionally, that fleet will eventually be electrified, | much sooner than all of those family SUV's will. | mc32 wrote: | They add traffic but reduce your traffic. | | The other complaint is valid. | lotsofpulp wrote: | Everyone should pay for road usage and congestion. Variable | rate tolling and license plate readers are the solution. | robert_foss wrote: | Or taxes. Common infrastructure surely is a gold use for | them. | lotsofpulp wrote: | Tolls are taxes. | pessimizer wrote: | Tolls are fees. | dylan604 wrote: | depends on what dictionary you use. Merriam-Webster says | it is a tax. macOS dictionary does not define toll as | tax, but says it is a synonym. | dylan604 wrote: | Depends on where you on how "toll" is being used. In | Texas, the "tolls" are most definitely not taxes. Taxes | mean the government is the recepient of that money. In | Texas, the toll roads are owned by private companies. | When the gov't ran the tollways, the tolling was removed | when enough money from tolls was raised to cover the cost | of building the road. Now, they are privatized, and the | toll will never be removed. | Rule35 wrote: | Do you have evidence (or even a reason to believe) that | the costs are misrepresented such that the government | allowed a higher ongoing toll than is appropriate? | | Because otherwise ... yeah? Private toll roads can be a | good solution. | lotsofpulp wrote: | The fact that an unnecessary middleman is in the equation | is evidence that the costs will be higher, since the | middleman wouldn't be interested otherwise. | Rule35 wrote: | That doesn't follow - I save money by hiring a plumber, | who makes money from being hired. | | The city simply made an analysis of the number of roads | they'd build over the years and the cost of being a | capable engineering organization versus the premium of | getting existing experts to build it. They probably don't | generate their own electricity either, for the same | reasons. | lotsofpulp wrote: | Hiring contractors to build roads and having staff to do | routine maintenance of roads is part of every | city/state/federal government's core competencies that | I've ever lived in. | | The only reason they sell it off is to make cash now for | whatever political reason at the expense of future | taxpayers. | | The delivery of electricity is also handled by | governments, or companies that are basically government | since they have to run everything by governments first | like price increases. Just like water lines and sewer | lines. Electricity generation does not need to be | government operated since it can come from multiple | sources, but the delivery is just like roads since you | can't have multiple options to each destination. | dylan604 wrote: | Before they were private, once enough tolls were | collected to offset the cost of construction, the tool | booths were removed. Those roads are now free to drive, | ex: I-30 through DFW. The current roads under NTTA will | never be free to drive, ex: George Bush Turn Pike, | N.Dallas Tollway, Sam Rayburn Tollway,etc | pfortuny wrote: | A large part of that is included in the tax on oil, though. | gruez wrote: | License plate reader are needed because tax on gasoline | isn't exactly fair. A hybrid/electric car uses the same | amount of road as an ICE car, but pays far less tax. | Variable rate tolling is beneficial because it encourages | people to take alternatives during rush hour, preventing | everyone from piling on (because the road is free) and | causing gridlock. | lukeschlather wrote: | Gasoline taxes should be far higher than they are to | cover the negative externalities of fossil fuels. | Karunamon wrote: | Gasoline taxes are, like most other use taxes based on | things everyone uses, extremely regressive. | darksaints wrote: | In the US, it would probably be more accurately labeled a | tiny part. | | A look at first world countries whose use taxes completely | cover road investments and maintenance shows that we're | about $4-6/gallon shy of actually covering our costs. | novia wrote: | I had to make a long distance move right after the DST change. | I knew that the drivers on the road would be at higher risk of | fatal accidents than at other times of the year, so I was extra | cautious. I would speed up to pass the trucks which were | serving out of their lane. One truck was consistently swerving | and speeding past me after I had already passed, and they even | road rage honked their horn at me one time. Guess which | company's smile logo was plastered across the truck? | | I know truck drivers in general are pressured to meet deadlines | at the expense of sleep, but this driver seemed like they were | more sleep deprived and stressed than the normal truck driver. | They seriously need to treat their employees better, for the | sake of public safety. And America needs to get rid of this | contractor loophole. They're employees, even if Amazon likes to | pretend that they aren't. | rdudek wrote: | Most of that is paid through taxes on vehicle | registration/renewals and fuel. | blackoil wrote: | As much as it is a problem of Amazon and its algorithm. It also | shows how dysfunctional is USA despite being richest nation. I | believe that the fact that they find people to do this job at the | price, is a fundamental problem. | sthnblllII wrote: | In the 1970's (before outsourcing and immigration became | significant) tgere wasnt anyone in the country who would work | in those conditions because there were so many better jobs and | so few other workers. | astrange wrote: | Immigration improves job prospects because immigrants are | customers. If you're making supply and demand arguments you | need to consider both supply and demand not just supply. | | And in the 70s I think the poor population (esp. the black | one) was much poorer and possibly not employed at all. | bopbeepboop wrote: | I really want to see how the US being the richest is | calculated. | | Not that I doubt it, but simple metrics like GDP per capita | have obvious problems. | | For one, if two women instead of taking care of their own | families take care of the others for pay, GDP has increased | (and the government took money from both). | | Those two families, however, just lost money (taxes on income) | while having inferior care and losing 1-2 hours of care a day | (travel time). | | Maximizing GDP can be negative to well-being and it's possible | that untracked labor such as traditional wives in other | countries could actually be a gain for their populace over a | higher GDP nation. | | I think how to measure _wealth_ in real terms is difficult. | | (This is all setting aside that Wall St is cooked book stew at | this point and much of US wealth depends on that fabrication.) | [deleted] | Rule35 wrote: | It's not some one-for-one trade where Mom A shows up at | Family B's home for her shift as nanny, while Mom B does the | reverse. | | In reality Mom A is a nurse, and cares for 20+ people in a | day, and Mom B is a school administrator, both provide more | than one-day-of-mothering value per day worked, so it's | actually in everyone best interest that they leave their kids | at daycare, consuming 1/6th of a less-talented person's day, | enabling their professional output. Even the daycare worker | multiplies their output by watching multiple children. | RobAtticus wrote: | >I really want to see how the US being the richest is | calculated. | | I don't think it's really a mystery. When people say this, | they are referring to the fact that the US has the largest | GDP (total, not per capita) in the world. Of course there are | pros/cons to this measure. That said, while your hypothetical | is true, I'm not sure it's realistic for all the reasons you | said; it wouldn't make any sense for the parties involved. | bopbeepboop wrote: | I didn't know that -- I knew it was a measure, but not | necessarily that it's _the_ measure most people mean. | | > I'm not sure it's realistic for all the reasons you said; | it wouldn't make any sense for the parties involved. | | I would argue that a major economic viewpoint is exactly | this has happened -- women entered the workforce to do jobs | that replaced the role they traditionally did at home, | which boosted GDP but crashed a bunch of untracked value. | | I've had several economists explain that to me as the | source of growing worker discontentment: they give more | labor for less value delivered to them, but it makes the | number bigger on the books. You say it doesn't make sense | for the parties involved, but that's only true of the two | families: the government gets extra tax revenue if the | families make that exchange. People outside those families | have an incentive to force them into that position because | those people benefit from the families loss. | | I think if you added a couple steps to my scenario (and | some information fuzziness), you could see it happening in | the real world. | | I overly distilled the point to highlight the absurdity. | Synaesthesia wrote: | There's a lot wrong with the way GDP is measured. | Economist Michael Hudson writes about this. | | Nevertheless the US is a very wealthy country by any | measure. | drpgq wrote: | Is this indicative of demand for jobs below the minimum wage? | klyrs wrote: | There's demand for murder-for-hire, too. So what? | rcoveson wrote: | So, with murder-for-hire, the contract stipulates that | somebody gets murdered. In paying somebody $6/hour to deliver | packages, the contract requires that people's package get | delivered. | | I think we can agree that the negative side-effects of the | sub-minimum-wage-package-delivery arrangement are subtler. | klyrs wrote: | I met a guy just the other day selling cigarettes by a bus | stop for half price, no tax. There's clearly demand for | cigarettes at those prices, right? Does it matter that they | were stolen from a small business a few blocks away? | | The common theme here is that the enterprise is _against | the law_ , and "there's demand for that" is no excuse to | break the law. The reason for the law is more "subtle" but | theft is theft. | | Of course, the dude selling cigarettes will probably be | lucky to make $100 a day, but he's risking jail time. The | folks stealing wages from delivery drivers are stealing way | more than that, but they'll pay some fines and settle some | lawsuits which almost certainly won't overwhelm their | profits. | | Or -- let's say it's more subtle. So what? | rcoveson wrote: | I think that bringing up the fact that "there is demand" | is not necessarily an argument that it's okay to break | the law. I think it's the start of a proposal that the | law should be changed. Whether or not we agree, that's | the thing to address. Not "is breaking the law, in | general, okay", which is silly. | | I also think it's wrong to equate the proposal that | minimum wage law should be changed because there is | demand for jobs at a certain wage with the proposal that | murder-for-hire should be allowed because there is demand | for it. Minimum wage laws are barely 100 years old in the | US, while laws against murder are as old as law itself. | | I'd venture to say that you could describe punishments | for murder to any civilization in history and they would | _at least_ understand why you would propose such a thing. | Minimum wage law, not so much. If some newcomer to my | 18th century town is willing to work on my farm for a | season for nothing but room and board, and you tell me | that that relationship is exploitative and should be | illegal, I 'd call you insane. | | I think a better comparison we could make is the sale of | heroin. That's another instance where two consenting | adults enter into an agreement that is currently, but not | historically, illegal. It's also an instance where many | argue that the relationship is exploitative, despite | being voluntary. The similarities with minimum wage law | are, from my perspective, deeper and more resonant. | salawat wrote: | I'll pay you 25 cents to solve all my problems. Just because | demand is there doesn't mean it is either | | A) practical B ) economical C) moral D) All of the above | | Learning to differentiate between the lunacy of market signal | theory from which reality is abstracted out of and the next big | thing is a bit of a learned skill. | Frost1x wrote: | >"Amazon does not tolerate violations of labor laws," Leah Seay, | an Amazon spokesperson told Motherboard. "Where we find repeated | violations, or an inability to correct labor violations, we | terminate contracts with DSP program participants." | | At some point you can't pass blame for repeated violations | through contract vehicles. The general population are becoming | aware of these practices. Amazon may not have directly committed | the violation but they've created and shaped an environment ripe | for rampantly abusive labor practices. | | If Amazon is serious about fixing the problem and committed to | good labor practices, stop contracting out services and take | control of the issue. Set policies in place with teeth that | remove managers and middle managers caught pushing such work | conditions. Don't just leverage cheaper labor from labor abuse | until it gets public attention and then terminate a contract set | in place to pass blame and responsibility. | | Are you really outsourcing labor or are you outsourcing the risks | associated with abuses of labor needed to meet your demands? | chha wrote: | The problem here as seen from Amazon's point of view isn't that | someone broke the rules, it's that they were busted for doing | so. Same with Apple and any other corp where a contractor | violates the rules; you punish them for being discovered, not | for breaking the rules in the first place. | lotsofpulp wrote: | > Are you really outsourcing labor or are you outsourcing the | risks associated with abuses of labor needed to meet your | demands? | | The same thing companies do when they go to a different state | within the US with weaker labor and environmental laws. And the | same thing individuals do when choosing to purchase products at | cheaper prices from places with weaker labor/environmental | laws. | | Blaming individual companies for regulatory arbitrage is a | fruitless endeavor. | kkielhofner wrote: | It's amazing to me that people often accept these kinds of | "explanations" from corporations; as though it was some | unintended eventuality, mistake, etc. | | Not to mention the sheer gall of repeated corporate responses | when caught like these that are ridiculous even at face value. | | Most people don't seem to notice these "mistakes" are always to | the benefit of the corporation. NEVER to the benefit of the | customer, employee, etc. | Qwertious wrote: | It's rude to call someone incompetent at their job. Unless | they overlooked corruption, in which case it's rude to call | them competent at their job. How odd. | pessimizer wrote: | > At some point you can't pass blame for repeated violations | through contract vehicles. | | At what hypothetical point is this? I'm pretty sure you can do | this indefinitely, which is why they do it. | adamcstephens wrote: | The latter, and this is the accepted practice in modern | corporations. How many times have the Gap or Apple been caught | using child labor, only to terminate the contract and move on? | If they don't push these boundaries they're considered | irresponsible fiduciaries and may be replaced. | | Amazon is just playing in the same broken system. | syshum wrote: | They "terminate" the contract with a "supplier" who often it | just a holding company or "contractor" in a 5 level deep | shell game, and the "new" contractor is a name on a form but | the same factory is making the same product with the same | labor inside a week... | salawat wrote: | The greatest lie ever perpetuated in the United States | corporate system is that a company's fiduciary duty justifies | or excuses malbehavior. | | You do not get to formulate sketchy ways of doing business | because you must make shareholders money. They invested, and | took a risk. They don't always get to win. Losses are not | something that should be unfathomable. The fact that people | haven't done that great a job at rooting this stuff out | sooner is a bit on the mystifying side only up until you | realize the folks we'd count on to do it are having their | checks paid by the people getting investigated. | ModernMech wrote: | At some point we have to admit that the richest corporations | and people in the world, with the most power to change the | system, are not just playing in the system but are a part of | what makes it broken. From their perspective the system is | not broken at all -- it's doing exactly what it was designed | to do, which is to make shareholders (themselves) fabulously | rich at the expense of laborers. | | On one side of the equation we have people being paid poverty | wages, on the other side we have the richest man in the world | with the power to change that. This isn't a coincidence or | just a strange, second-order, unintended byproduct of the | system. It's cause and effect. It's what the system was | designed explicitly to do. The system is in fact working to | spec. | SpicyLemonZest wrote: | But on the Amazon side of the fence, they _are_ using their | power to change that; they pay all employees at least $15, | and are lobbying to get the federal minimum wage raised to | that level from $7.25. So this can 't just be a simple | story of a company paying as little as they can get away | with. Something's gone wrong to make them not care about | (or not think they're responsible for) these delivery | drivers. | Jochim wrote: | I've seen this argument around quite often, but it feels | more and more like the product of the Amazon PR machine. | It appears that in at least some cases wages for | warehouse workers fell 30%[0] once Amazon opened it's | warehouses. Amazon seems to be dragging warehouse wages | _down_ to $15 rather than up. | | [0] https://www.economist.com/united- | states/2018/01/20/what-amaz... | AnthonyMouse wrote: | The Amazon jobs aren't forklift drivers. The wages of | forklift drivers go down because Amazon automates a lot | of that work, which means there is less demand for | forklift drivers. It's the classic automation story and | has basically nothing to do with what they pay to | pickers. | Jochim wrote: | The data in the economist article is for both forklift | drivers and pickers. It seems fairly clear that even | lower skilled warehouse workers are being paid less than | they were before Amazon entered their market. | | The fact that automation is both reducing the number and | quality of jobs probably merits discussion as well. We | simply don't have anything in place to ensure automation | doesn't ruin people's standard of living. | AniseAbyss wrote: | Building an economy on unskilled labour is a pretty bad | idea. Anything that can be automated or outsourced WILL- | capitalism demands it. | [deleted] | arrosenberg wrote: | They enacted the minimum wage when Bernie Sanders | threatened them, years after they started outsourcing | labor abuses. | astrange wrote: | That was just theater. Bernie's argument here made no | sense and he knew it, but it sounded good. | | He was arguing that society "has to pay people welfare" | because Amazon doesn't pay enough. In other words he's | arguing that paying welfare is bad, which is not true and | goes against the rest of his platform. Actually it's | good, and the reason it's good is that it raises your | wages because it gives you more freedom! | | In other words, without welfare the employees would be | getting paid even less. | | (This can change depending on work requirement rules, | which are mostly bad, but not enough of a problem to | change the dynamic here.) | DangitBobby wrote: | My guess is that most of the labor cost is due to | delivery and not the warehouse. If they advocate for | higher wages in the warehouse, regulators and the general | public will be less suspicious of the policies that drive | the lion's share of their labor costs. | | I'm sure if they thought they could get away with | "subcontracting (wink wink)" all of their labor positions | so that they are not liable for the wage theft that must | occur to meet the contracts, they would do so. | oceanghost wrote: | I think you're correct. I used to get advertisements all | the time for "logistics.amazon.com". | | Which if you were to believe it, Amazon wants to "help" | you start a delivery business, with as little as $10k to | invest. | | Think about that for a second. | | Instead of paying delivery drivers and providing capital | (trucks, gasoline, insurance, etc). Amazon wants YOU to | pay them for the privilege. They've turned what should be | a job into a contracting business with one, predatory | customer. Amazon. | astrange wrote: | Is Chik-Fil-A preying on people by letting them start | franchises? The investment requirement is actually the | same and they're probably more onerous. | syshum wrote: | >>>and are lobbying to get the federal minimum wage | raised to that level from $7.25. | | What you fell for the Con... | | Amazon wants $15 in order to put the final nail in the | coffin of small business hiring that teen for their first | job stocking the small local store... | | No they want those positions gone, they want those | business shuttered. | | This idea that Amazon is "fighting for the worker" in | their drive for $15/hr minimum wage is moronic. | | $15/hr min wage is also not based on any economic reality | and as a basis for a "living wage" it would be far to low | in some reasons, and far too high in many others. | | Minimum Wage should be a LOCAL, or state level policy not | a national one. | astrange wrote: | > Amazon wants $15 in order to put the final nail in the | coffin of small business hiring that teen for their first | job stocking the small local store... | | This is correct but it's a good thing because small | businesses are unironically bad. Small business owners | are the most reactionary demographic in the US, less | productive than large businesses, the most abusive | towards employees, and exempt from discrimination laws. | | They also don't have negotiation power and can't improve | anything with their suppliers (e.g. Chinese restaurants | may all be family-owned, but they're all buying | ingredients from the same place). | syshum wrote: | >> small businesses are unironically bad. | | I did not think I would see the day that HN was pro | corporation and Big business. | | Aside from the fact your completely wrong, most people | are employed by small or medium businessed, and SMB's are | often more agile and able to respond faster to market | demands than larger companies | | This is why you do not see large companies innovating, | instead they buy out small companies that have innovated | in an effort to grab and/or hold the market share they | lose to upstarts. | | Also it is ironic that in a post dedicated to talking | about how terrible Amazon treats its retail employee's | and with provable evidence of employment abuse by other | large companies on the world stage you stake a claim that | small businesses are more abusive, that is laughably | absurd | | Small and medium business are the backbone of the | economy, and in large part treat their employee's better | than large companies. Sure some very small micro business | with less than 25 employee's might but SMB is generally | companies 25 - 1000 employees and under 1 billion in | revenue. Companies this bracket often have some of the | highest employee satisfaction scores, and lowest turn | over it is absurd to to think that SMB's are worse than | the Large Global Corporations. | pnutjam wrote: | Have you seen what $15 buys nowadays? Nobody is worth | less then $15 an hour. Nobody. | syshum wrote: | Yes, and a single person in may area can easily survive | on that, a couple with no kids could likely afford to buy | home with no problems. I have a feeling you live in one | of deep blue cities where rent for a small apartment is | $2,000 a month. | | That said however, you have made a common mistake the | people advocating for artificial increased in minimum | wage make. It is not about what the person is "worth", it | is about how much revenue a business can make off that | labor | | if a business has to pay $15 for labor, but can only | resell that labor for $10, there is no job. hell even if | a business can resell the labor for $15 there is no job. | | This is economic reality, I know using emotion to talk | about a persons "worth" may seem like a valid argument | but it is not. | | If the economic reality was just as simple as declearing | labor is worth $15 by fiat, then why stop at $15, why not | $20 or $50, hell let just demand everyone make $1,000,000 | a year we will all be millionaries. | | You likely easily see why this reducto absurdum I am sure | you will reject it as a fallacy but the economic reality | does not change | | If you want to see wages increase you have to increase | the value of labor, and government regulation can not | simply demand the value of labor increase. Attempts to do | so often have very bad unintended consequences | aboringusername wrote: | They don't care. The only reason they have an | interest/stake at $15 min wage is so they can crush | anyone who might challenge them. Essentially solidify | their position. | | A rival might not be able to afford that so they let | everyone go, or Amazon gobbles them up for dinner. | | There's _always_ an ulterior motive when lobbying is | involved. | SpicyLemonZest wrote: | I'm not really sure how to engage with this. Surely | you're not saying that it's _bad_ to pay $15, or that | Amazon ought to cut everyone 's wages to make room for | their competitors. | AnthonyMouse wrote: | It's bad to require competitors to pay $15. | | This is the thing that regularly gets lost in the minimum | wage debates. Some jobs suck more than others. Amazon | warehouse jobs suck kind of a lot. You spend all day | standing up and doing manual labor. Because that's what | it takes to make unskilled work produce $15/hour in | value. | | You pass a law requiring competitors to do the same and | the ones who were paying $10/hour but workers had more | down time, will have to make them more like Amazon jobs. | In other words, will have to make them suck more. | | There are a lot of people for whom that is not a good | trade off. For a 20 year old who can physically do the | Amazon job, it might be a good choice in order to make | more money. For a 60 year old who _can 't_ physically do | the Amazon job, taking away the less demanding job they | _can_ do is really screwing them over. | dcow wrote: | Amazon aside, I see the $15 argument more about making | minimum wage, a concept we're already engaged at a policy | level, reflect reality. IMO if we're going to have | minimum wage in the US then we need to make it work for | its intended purpose of requiring companies to pay people | a living wage for their labor. If that were the goal we'd | adjust minimum wage for inflation and cost of living | since its inception and then require it to adjust every | year as the value of the dollar does. In its current form | it is more of an excuse for companies pay below a living | wage. | ctdonath wrote: | _pay people a living wage for their labor_ | | I truly don't understand why so many think that someone | doing less than what it takes to live (alone, | independently) should be paid a living wage. Food, | housing, energy, care, ... all take productivity; if | someone can't produce enough to cover their own needs, | they need be recognized as a dependent and treated as | such. It's not your obligation to pay me a living wage | just because you need floors swept or burgers flipped. | astrange wrote: | You don't really need that service performed that badly | if you can't pay that much for it either. Offering crappy | jobs is bad because people might actually take them; now | they don't have the free time needed to find better ones. | It reduces economic productivity and it might be cheaper | to just pay them unemployment. Makes traffic better too | since they're not commuting. | ctdonath wrote: | What of those unable to produce more than some value less | than minimum wage? Not everyone is capable of $15/hr | productivity, why would you deny them work? nobody is | expecting them to achieve independence (say, bc Down's | Syndrome) but they can still produce some value and have | a right to earn what they can. | | There are tasks I'd hire people to do, but it's not worth | enough to pay housing/food/care/heat/etc for. | astrange wrote: | Those people are already exempted. Group homes for people | who can't live independently do have work placement | programs, although I don't know how you prevent them from | displacing "real" workers - presumably it's not that much | of a problem. | | Besides that, just paying people to do nothing works fine | because they can do non-economic work | (childcare/caretaking) or speculative things (write a | book, go back to school) and US policy is heading back in | this direction. We stopped with Reagan because voters | tend to turn against welfare policies when you point out | that black people are getting them. | edoceo wrote: | Amazon says one thing, behaves "responsibly" internally | but still works with known bad actors till caught. Greed | has gone wrong. | 34679 wrote: | The whole thing seems to be a corporatized version of a carny | game. Amazon is behind the counter, promising gullible | passersby top prizes if they can toss a ring over a bottle. | | "Watch me, I'll show you how easy it is!" | | But instead of young couples on dates being taken for $20 a pop | on promises of large stuffed animals, they're luring in new | business owners with promises of riches. The problem is, it's a | rigged game. Amazon know it, otherwise they'd do this work | themselves. | taf2 wrote: | I prefer to think if it as "The house always wins" | stonecraftwolf wrote: | Reminds me of Terry Pratchett's Going Postal. _spoiler | warning_ | | The MC is a conman, given new life and a job resuscitating | the postal service after a corporation has taken over and | gutted the Clacks (in-world version of the Telegraph). The MC | meets the financial architect who masterminded the takeover | of the Clacks and is struck with immediate recognition: this | guy is just like him, only infinitely better at it. He plays | three card Monty with entire companies, and the trail of | destruction he leaves in his wake is massive. | | If you do it with enough money, it's not a crime anymore, | it's just business. | artificial wrote: | The Moist von Lipwig trilogy is fantastic. Have you seen | the TV movie? | stonecraftwolf wrote: | Holy sh*t there's a movie?? | | Thank you for making my day! | throwaway2048 wrote: | Yep, and if the punishment is typically fines that take a | small percentage of your profit, why wouldn't you turn | around and keep doing it. | dcow wrote: | What is different about a salaried setup (yearly rate) and a | daily rate position? If we are willing to ban daily pay because | of its clear potential to result in abusive situations where | employees are over worked and under paid, then why are we willing | to allow salaried positions? I would sure love remittance for all | the overtime I've worked as a salaryman. | [deleted] | koolba wrote: | > Though Amazon's delivery drivers operate Amazon-emblazoned | vans, wear Amazon uniforms, and are trained by Amazon employees, | they are technically not employed directly by Amazon but by small | contractors, known as "delivery service partners," that operate | out of Amazon warehouses around the country. | | After a certain point you have to call it a duck. | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: | Could I open an online business, not sell on Amazon, and | contract my deliveries to these contractors? | [deleted] | Animats wrote: | Wage theft needs to be treated as theft. Jail. | | It's easy to detect "time-shaving", what with everyone having a | trackable cell phone today. If time at work exceeds time on the | clock for multiple employees, that shows wage theft. | | The Wage and Hour Division of the US Department of Labor should | be able to demand triple damages for wage theft. 2/3 goes to the | employee, and 1/3 goes to enforcement efforts. | | This _never_ happens in union shops, by the way. | missedthecue wrote: | Should the reverse be treated the same way? That is, being on | the clock but not working? I work a low wage job and have seen | co-workers go to pretty extreme lengths to avoid having to | actually work. | | Time theft is estimated at $400 billion per year, much higher | than unpaid wages. | standardUser wrote: | No, it should not. If an employer has an issue with the way | an employee conducts themselves during working hours they can | discuss it with the employee and take disciplinary action if | needed. That discipline can include reduction in wages, | withholding wage increases or bonuses or firing. Plenty of | options for an employer to deal with the situation. | | If an employer denies legal wages they are thieves and should | be held accountable by law enforcement for theft, just like | any mugger or burglar would. | syshum wrote: | >>This never happens in union shops, by the way. | | While that exact problem many never happen (and I have by | doubts about even that statement) | | unions are not the panacea of all virtue nor are they the | solution to all labor problems | Rule35 wrote: | No, it's just that in a union the crime flows the other way. | klyrs wrote: | Not "never", but when it does happen, they've got vastly more | resources to hold their employer accountable. Moreover, if a | single employee notices it happening, they can report it to | their steward, and then word gets out to _all_ employees to | double-check their paychecks. Source: this happened to folks in | a union I belonged to. | blfr wrote: | It's such a horrible company. Starting with the ugly website full | of counterfeits and fake reviews all the way to grinding humans | down in their warehouses, delivery service, while bilking | subcontractors[1]. Somehow they managed to deliver the highlight | reel of all the flaws of capitalism while never turning a profit. | | Complete with the faint defence offered by fans. "B-b-but their | massively overpriced cloud service that looks good on my resume." | Sad. | | "And I can save three minutes buying toiler paper that I then | spend watching crap on their complimentary video service!" | Pathetic. | | [1] | https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/amazon... | 0goel0 wrote: | Counterfeits is what pushed me over the edge. I just could not | trust that the product I'll get is what I paid for. | | Ended up cancelling my account and never looked back. Been | shopping locally as much as possible since last summer | djbebs wrote: | Ive actually been doing the opposite and moving away from | local/small suppliers into the amazon eco system. | | I had a terrible experience with small businesses and i will | not be going back. | | I never had any trouble canceling or refunding any order on | Amazon. I literally sent back for a replacement a drone 3 | times, and not once did they ever cause me any grief. | | But the first time i try to cancel an order that hadnt even | been paid or shipped yet i get pushback? | | No. Bad customer service has to have consequences. | leetcrew wrote: | I agree. I understand that a small business can't compete | with amazon on price _and_ service at the same time, and I | don 't expect this. but it seems that most of them choose | to match the price and make up the difference with terrible | service/shipping. I would be happy to pay a bit more to | support a small business, but I'm not gonna pay the same | amount of money for an online retail experience that's | worse in every other way. | 0goel0 wrote: | Exactly. I have never had issues with small businesses | (not large chains). I bought a DAC from an audio store | that was the wrong one and the other replaced it for free | for me and gave me a free mini-lesson on it. | leetcrew wrote: | amazon has had a positive net profit for the last five years in | a row. | | as for the shopping experience, I guess ymmv? amazon doesn't | always have the cheapest price on things, but I've never | received anything counterfeit. with one or two exceptions, | everything I've bought there has met my expectations. and when | it didn't, the refund hit my account the second the shipping | label got scanned. | | especially this past year, AMZL has been the real killer | feature for me. it's the only shipping service that | consistently delivers my packages on time, which really | shouldn't be hard when I live in an apartment building in a | major city. sometimes they even deliver early! when ups/fedex | moves my packages faster than expected, they just let them sit | in the local distribution center until the guaranteed delivery | date. I've given up on usps entirely, unless "soon" is an | acceptable delivery date. | | most of their streaming stuff is crap, I'll give you that. but | they picked up my all-time favorite TV show, the expanse. tbh, | I'd pay $120/year just to keep that show running. | hertzrat wrote: | For 2-3 years or more, the reviews on Amazon for windows 10 | have said things like the below, despite the description | saying "by Microsoft." One of these is an "Amazon's choice" | | > Did not activate. Microsoft support confirmed the key was | already used multiple times. | | > THIS IS NOT FOR RESALE! single use. This is an OEM Copy | that is given alongside existing systems so that way a user | can upgrade their motherboard / hardware and still use the | same code. it violates the TOS for the user to install / use | it. | | > Bought this for a brand new computer build. Activation | could not be performed as number is blocked by Microsoft. I | contacted Microsoft customer support, my product key has been | activated OVER 20 times and has been flagged for abuse!!?? I | also have a "NEW" Windows 7 pro that will not activate that I | bought off Amazon... guess what Microsoft said about it.... | not happy. | jsilence wrote: | While agreeing here on a wide basis it is also the company that | helps me find and conveniently buy a lot of products I simply | can not find at local brick and mortar shops and oftentimes | also not online in any web shops. So yeah, I hate and use | Amazon at the same time. | throway-amzn555 wrote: | Throwaway because I have written some of the software behind this | program. | | The problem is that Amazon has set up a system where labor abuses | are the only way to succeed, while keeping their hands clean. | | Amazon hires Delivery Service Providers (DSPs) on contracts. | These contracts are for a specific number of 'routes' on a given | day. They have a handful of DSPs for each delivery station, and | they even help people start DSP companies by giving them loans | for vans, access to better deals, etc. But the DSP is an | independent company that can operate however it wants to, on | paper. | | The DSPs then hire delivery drivers, each an independent | contractor themselves typically. The drivers get a route of | 200-ish packages and follow the step-by-step navigation Amazon's | provided app tells them[0] to do. The drivers are supposed to | work for up to 10 hours then bring back whatever is leftover. | | Problem: Amazon rewards the DSPs that have the fewest missed | deliveries, pay them more per route. The DSPs that get the most | pay are the ones who have learned how to get their drivers to | work longer without complaint, take no breaks, keep driving, keep | delivering. The ones who abuse. | | Amazon does not reward the abuses, they just reward the effects | of the abuses. Amazon can say "We don't tolerate that", but they | absolutely do. What they actually don't tolerate is DSPs whose | drivers complain. Every DSP operator out there is telling their | drivers: you keep your mouths shut or you're out. | | This isn't an accidental design. The people in charge of this | program are sociopaths. And Amazon's senior leadership has | rewarded these sociopaths for building this very low-cost | delivery system. There's a Leadership Principle called "Deliver | Results", but there isn't one called "Be Ethical". | | [0](And let's set aside the part about 'workers following step- | by-step instructions Amazon gives them are somehow not actually | employees', which is bullshit.) | edoceo wrote: | You are part of the problem | Jochim wrote: | This feels a bit flippant. There's nothing inherent to the | software managing the process that leads to the exploitation | of these workers. It's the unattainable metrics being set by | management/business that's causing the issue. | edoceo wrote: | And heres a person that could act against exploitation and | instead chooses to just follow orders. | | If you're not part of the solution then what are you? | Jochim wrote: | They aren't being ordered to do anything though. The | system that was built isn't the thing setting the | targets, the users are. We wouldn't argue that the | creators of email are responsible for any exploitation | that email has enabled and I don't think it's reasonable | to argue that a developer for a delivery routing system | is responsible for the incentive structure set up around | that system after it has been built. | edoceo wrote: | That's a crap analogy and you know it. Email started as a | federated, open system. This Amazon is closed, for | profit. | | Everyone there is part of the problem and excuses their | behavior with bullshit like "I'm only working on a small | percentage of the exploitation". Is everyone so bad a | maths now you've forgotten that 10 tenths makes a one? | gameman144 wrote: | That's definitely one world view, that people are | responsible for how people use the things they create. | Nothing wrong with it. | | I'd hold a different world view, in which individuals who | have good intentions shouldn't be blamed for their work | getting bastardized or leveraged in unethical ways. | | In this case, it seems totally reasonable that an | engineer on this project would assume that their work | would reward efficiency (which it does), and not be gamed | to reward exploitation (which it apparently also does). | | Different strokes for different folks, I guess. | MAGZine wrote: | blaming the hammer manufacturer for $dastardlyConstruction. | | put another way, is the person who built tipping into | instacart a bad person? or is it the person who decided to | calculate pay as (baseRate - incomingTips) = actualWage the | bad person? | edoceo wrote: | It's possible for both. We know amazon mistreats low wage | workers. Then high wage workers build more on those | exploitive systems and say "oh, it wasn't me". | | But, I also think folks who excuse this kind of thing are | bad actors too. | | Or like down thread, trying to shift the blame to "the | users" who are intentionally misled by advertising and the | known information-imbalance that makes exploitive- | capitalism work. | yrgulation wrote: | Thanks for sharing. | | "And Amazon's senior leadership has rewarded these sociopaths" | | I'm too small to make a dent, but rest assured, I am | "rewarding" them back with my wallet. Never again shopping on | Amazon. I simply can't justify saving a few PS knowing that the | people delivering / manipulating what I buy are abused. I read | quite frequently about the issue and unless we protest with our | wallets this abuse will continue. | superflit wrote: | I saw myself buying more and more from EBAY. | | It is not perfect but mostly shipping is done by postal | service that is ok for me and As Amazon there is no guarantee | about products being genuine then E-bay is as good or more | than amazon. | mnd999 wrote: | The trouble with that is the eBay sellers that are listing | directly off Amazon (with a mark up obviously) and | essentially ordering the goods from Amazon as gifts. They | keep this quiet as it's cheaper to buy it yourself on | Amazon directly. It's becoming harder and harder to avoid | the de-facto monopoly that is Amazon on ethical grounds. | hertzrat wrote: | It turns out you can buy most things from nearby retail | stores. Not everything, but I haven't needed to buy | something online that often this year except niche or | small publisher items | juanani wrote: | I had the same thing in mind when I ordered a gift | recently, thought I'd see how Newegg matches up. I got my | package 2 days later, the whole order had Amazon shipping | slips/boxes, delivered by Amazon. | ruined wrote: | you should talk to a journalist | throwaway13337 wrote: | Interesting here. | | If I go to a market and look for the best quality for the best | price, I suppose I'm encouraging sociopaths, too. | | There may be some argument for the scale of Amazon needing to | take a deeper look. But requiring that a buyer of a good or | service must know how the sausage is made would break our | system. | | Instead, the vendors do need to be held accountable. | | For the record, I think these tech monopolies are a bad thing | as a whole for the overall market but not because they're | trying find the best deals on goods and services. More because | they monopolize, and set the rules for the largest marketplaces | which only governments should do. | Const-me wrote: | > requiring that a buyer of a good or service must know how | the sausage is made would break our system | | In that particular case Amazon knows what's going on because | they have engineered the system, buys services anyway. | | For purchases of some illegally obtained goods U.S. Code | SS2315 is there since 1948, has not broken the system: | https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2315 | crazygringo wrote: | Yup. I have no knowledge of Amazon specifically, but I've seen | this pattern repeatedly in companies that use contractors: | | "We don't tolerate any lawbreaking, but you need to fulfill | these performance metrics (which can't be achieved except by | lawbreaking)." | | I'm of the opinion that, as a general practice, this needs to | be addressed by legislation. I don't know what the specific | workable solution looks like, but essentially: if a company | contracts work out that any reasonable person could determine | would require violating laws or regulations to accomplish, that | the company is held directly legally responsible for those | violations. | | Whether it's delivery drivers speeding or illegally parking or | not making minimum wage or _whatever_. | URSpider94 wrote: | I think part of the problem is that it's hard to quantify | what a reasonable person can do in an hour. My fellow cross- | country running teammates and I could form a delivery company | and jog to and from every house. Or I might figure out that | it's actually more effective to put two people in every truck | and have one of them be sorting and dropping while the other | one drives. The companies that make these kinds of | innovations SHOULD be rewarded. It's not immediately obvious | how to sort those from the ones who push their employees to | just work longer shifts. | crazygringo wrote: | It's definitely not easy, but it's what companies _do_ all | the time, and courts are pretty used to getting access to | internal documents that model cost structures, as well as | bringing in expert witnesses from the industry. | | But basically, any company (like Amazon) does cost modeling | of every step involved in a process long before they decide | whether to hire employees to do it, or contract it out. In | fact, that's precisely how they can determine how much | they're willing to pay to contract something out. | | So it's not really that hard for a court to demand that a | company produce its modeling estimates, and then compare | with the actual service provided, and show that the company | either a) knew that corners would need to be cut illegally, | or b) made negligent assumptions. | | Remember, I'm not talking about mom and pop shops who are | all sharing a single huge contractor like UPS or FedEx. I'm | talking about huge companies like Amazon or Uber who use a | large number of subcontractors. They have entire teams of | people who model this stuff. They know _exactly_ what they | 're doing. | marktangotango wrote: | I looked into participating in the DSP program when it was | announced; it was obvious at the time that it was a "buy | yourself a job" type of situation, where an individual DSP | provider would require a lot of volume/trucks/routes/employees | to even make a living for themselves. What you describe makes | complete sense. | toast0 wrote: | > The drivers get a route of 200-ish packages and follow the | step-by-step navigation Amazon's provided app tells them[0] to | do. The drivers are supposed to work for up to 10 hours then | bring back whatever is leftover. | | I've heard that FedEx Express's system will forcibly go blank | for the 30 minute mandated lunch break. Can't scan any | packages, etc. Seems like something software that tells you | what to do (and demands input) could also do. Might need | followup effort to avoid gaming by spending some of lunch | driving to the next stop, but still allowing driving to a | restaurant. | salawat wrote: | Enter software optimizing routes chaining together restaurant | stops for that extra competitive edge. | | At the end of the day, you've got to accept that just because | you can write software to do $thing, doesn't mean you should. | If you're going that far into the tails to innovate, there's | probably something more fundamental you've missed. | nolite wrote: | From Fight Club: | | "A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 | mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns | with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? | Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the | probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court | settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the | cost of a recall, we don't do one." | ike0790 wrote: | one of many great quotes from Fight Club. | londons_explore wrote: | People criticize this logic... But it's absolutely correct. | | If it doesn't come out with results you like, then the inputs | are wrong. Specifically, settlement amounts are probably too | low. | | People who claim all safety related issues should get a recall | are just wrong. If there is a 1 in a billion chance my car | explodes and kills me, then a recall should _not_ be done, | because my chances of dying on the way to the dealer to have | the repair done are higher. | aeturnum wrote: | I don't think it's correct and I don't think its correctness | is objectively decidable. | | It's one thing when companies have unforeseen flaws that end | up causing injury or death. No one is perfect and, while they | should pay reasonable restitution in line with the level of | their mistake, it seems fine overall. | | Other the other hand, knowingly producing a product that you | are reasonably sure will unexpectedly[1] kill or hurt | sometime should have _severe_ penalties. Those penalties | should be imposed not through individual lawsuits (which are | a poor tool for assuring the rights of whole classes of | people - class action lawsuits not withstanding), but through | prevailing regulatory action. To be honest I don 't think it | would be going too far to, as a standard action, nationalize | a company in that situation. | | We really, really do not want a situation where companies are | choosing to kill their customers because they think they will | come out ahead in the end. Think about it - are we happy that | the leadership teams of the tobacco industry, or the oil | industry, or the fiberglass industry were kept in place? How | much better of a world would we be in if tobacco companies | were at existential threat from their behavior? Where they | needed to sell cigarettes like the USA sells guns (with the | understanding they may kill)? I think we should seriously | consider that standard of product safety. | | [1] Products like guns, which are intended to injure or | destroy, are their own thing imo. | hypersoar wrote: | We shouldn't expect corporations to be so recklessly amoral. | I'm all in favor of higher costs for doing shit like this, | but the humans making the decisions bear moral responsibility | for them. When they bury critical safety issues, they should | be held accountable whether or not this particular financial | calculus went their way. | | Are there serious "people who claim all safety-related issues | should get a recall"? That's not the only other available | position. Not every safety incident needs to lead to a | recall, but that doesn't prevent good-faith judgements on | whether or not one is necessary. The fact that we assume this | won't happen demonstrates how catastrophically awry we've | allowed the artificial construct of a corporation to run. | guerrilla wrote: | Imagine if we had the "Nutrition Facts" equivalent for | failure rates (and supply chain while we're at it.) That'd | be an interesting world. | gruez wrote: | 1. people will eventually tune them out, like with prop | 65 warnings or the existing nutrition facts/calorie | labeling | | 2. while it's easy to calculate what's the nutritional | content in a food, estimating future failure rates isn't | trivial and there's a lot of subjectivity involved. | Companies will definitely be fudging the reliability | numbers to get an edge. See for instance, the failure | rates for hard drives. The annual failure rate on the | spec sheets are around 0.3%, but empirical data by | backblaze puts them anywhere from 0.3% to 12%. Therefore | I'd expect these nutritional fact labels to be totally | useless at best, and a waste of time/resources at worst. | jfim wrote: | Prop 65 warnings are pretty useless though, since they | have very limited information that does not allow one to | evaluate the risk incurred. | | Case in point, my first internship in California was in a | building with a sign that said "This building contains | chemicals known to the state of California to cause | cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm." | What's in the building? Who knows. Could be really bad | chemicals, or just someone who has a beer on their desk | [0]. | | It would be much better to have some information about | the chemicals contained, how bad are the chemicals, and | what is the expected effect of the chemicals at the | concentration at which they're encountered. | | [0] https://oehha.ca.gov/chemicals/alcoholic-beverages-0 | ficklepickle wrote: | Yes, they need some actionable information. I remember | seeing my first one as 15 year old Canadian on vacation. | My first thought was good thing I'm in Hawaii. My second | thought was I can't do anything with this vague | information. | | It was some green slime you put in your bike tires to | prevent puncture leaks. I had never seen that before. I | bought it and took it home with me, skillfully avoiding | California so it didn't become carcinogenic. | Qwertious wrote: | >We shouldn't expect corporations to be so recklessly | amoral. | | Either that, or we treat them like any other animal | incapable of civility - we cage/muzzle them and don't | provide them with any opportunity for responsibility. | pnutjam wrote: | His argument is pure straw, made up by him; not what is | actually being argued by anyone. | pnutjam wrote: | Nice, you built a good argument against a nonsense issue. Now | try the actual issue instead of a straw man. | syshum wrote: | Modern society has become incapable of proper Risk Analysis | | COVID has really highlighted this rather well. People do | believe there should be zero risk, they will only accept risk | when it has already been assimilated into their lives, but as | a society we seem incapable of assimilating of new risk. | | I use to think we would get fully autonomous cars, but now I | am pretty sure we will never see this technology on the | public roadways, not because it is infeasible, but because it | can never ELIMINATE all risk to human life, as such it will | be rejected by society. | | Just like the "2 weeks to flatten the curve" transformed to | "everyone self isolate until covid is no more" Automated | driving is no longer about being "safer" in an objective way, | it has to preventing all death, and if an automated car even | causes one death then we must continue with human drivers, at | least that is the view of many in society. We can not allow | an algorithm to resolve a trolley problem, it is better a | human do that. | | As a society, we have become very very very risk adverse. | altcognito wrote: | It was a specific US administration that said two weeks, | whom employed the "right" experts to get this conclusion. | They argued with him that it wasn't long enough, | furthermore, without widespread PPE and compliance from the | population, it was bound to fail. The curve did flatten | even in spite of these difficulties. | | All that being said, you're absolutely right, we could have | just accepted that life comes with risk and allowed | millions within the US to die within a couple months. | syshum wrote: | >>The curve did flatten even in spite of these | difficulties. | | yes it did, then the goal posts were moved, it was no | longer about hospital resources it became about death | rates, then when death rates did not support the lock | down narrative it become about infection rates | | In reality (for many regions) it was always about | political and economic control not public health | | >>we could have just accepted that life comes with risk | and allowed millions within the US to die within a couple | months. | | There are hundreds of different ways the pandemic could | have been handled to believe the only 2 options where | complete economic shutdown or death is moronic is in no | way supported by the evidence, it sounds like you want | have a fact based discussion but are leading off with | emotional rhetoric, I am happy to debate facts, but I | have no time or need for emotional responses or red | herring fallacies | AnthonyMouse wrote: | It's not even a question of risk. Every risk is a trade off | against another one. Losing one life to an autonomous | vehicle is unacceptable but losing ten to drunk drivers is | fine? That's not a risk assessment at all. It's really | politics masquerading as risk. | | As soon as autonomous vehicles are approved you're going to | have driverless Amazon delivery trucks ejecting packages in | your driveway and emailing you that they've arrived. | | All the truck drivers and their unions know that, so they | do everything they can to inject fear mongering stories | into the media every time there is a driverless car | accident, because politics. | | And the media eats it up because it's clickbait. If they | provided a reasoned risk assessment then the conclusion | wouldn't be "fear for your lives" which wouldn't drive as | much traffic. | syshum wrote: | >>As soon as autonomous vehicles are approved you're | going to have driverless Amazon delivery trucks ejecting | packages in your driveway and emailing you that they've | arrived. | | That is unlikely, the population has a huge problem right | now with package theft, even if it does not "cost" the | customer anything when i order something I need the | product it if stolen from me even if I get another one a | few days later it makes me less likely to buy online for | things. Amazon's market dominance is directly tied to 1-2 | days delivery times. | | Having a bunch of robots just toss packages 5 feet from | the road might seem like a good idea to an MBA, but in | reality it will make package delivery less reliable if I | have to have 30% of my amazon packages redelivered | because of theft, damange etc, amazon will lose its | market share. | | Already they are losing in many way in price, i am often | times finding things for lower prices than on amazon, | largely because of their INSANE platform charges (i.e the | 30% "fulfilled by amazon" surcharge) | | Amazon Retail business is still either break even or | losing money, AWS supports the company. I am not sure | they can withstand the hit that would come from fully | autonomous package delivery. | | >All the truck drivers and their unions know that, | | I can assure you it is not Truck Drivers or the Truck | Driver unions (which really have almost no power these | days) that are at the heart of anti-automation reporting. | | Insurance and Local governments have alot more at stake, | hell most local governments have huge amounts of revenue | that come from parking and other road related fines that | would disappear entirely with fully automated cars. | AnthonyMouse wrote: | > That is unlikely, the population has a huge problem | right now with package theft | | You're making the case that it won't matter because the | problem is already present. | | The human drivers already do this. How strong a case can | you make that they won't be able to get away with | something they already get away with? | | > Already they are losing in many way in price, i am | often times finding things for lower prices than on | amazon, largely because of their INSANE platform charges | (i.e the 30% "fulfilled by amazon" surcharge) | | Complaint unrelated to driverless trucks. | | > Insurance and Local governments have alot more at | stake, hell most local governments have huge amounts of | revenue that come from parking and other road related | fines that would disappear entirely with fully automated | cars. | | By most accounts self-driving cars are going to reduce | insurance liability because they don't drive drunk or | text and drive or get tired or angry or distracted. But | also, insurance companies don't really care about claims | when they're predictable except to the extent that the | corresponding premiums are so high they discourage people | from buying insurance, which is a high bar when car | insurance is required by law. | | And listing additional groups who have the incentive to | throw shade on self-driving cars for underhanded | political reasons rather than legitimate risks is just | more to the point. | pnutjam wrote: | I've seen how software is developed. If we have automated | systems doing the same thing, they will all make the same | mistake. It will be astounding to see it happen, and | disastrous. | AnthonyMouse wrote: | The existing non-driverless cars are already full of | software. | zeroonetwothree wrote: | Doesn't take into account costs like bad publicity, effects on | employee morale, etc | davidgay wrote: | In an analogous situation: how do you think a universal | healthcare system should make spending and prioritisation | decisions? | iso1210 wrote: | How does it in the US for those covered by universal | healthcare? | bonchicbongenre wrote: | About this: I have a relation who works for a relatively large | upstream auto part supplier. I asked him somewhat jokingly | about this fight club scene, and he immediately and unabashedly | told me he'd been involved in a number of such conversations. | In retrospect, I can't understand why I was at all surprised: | how else would the conversations go in a corporation (whose | sole or primary incentive is by default monetary)? | | (To be clear, I'm not saying that I find this morally correct | -- I'm not sure how I feel about that aspect, honestly, except | icky at the surface level. I more means that it seems | retrospectively to me that, well, of course that's how it would | go, given the incentive structure) | neilparikh wrote: | > how else would the conversations go in a corporation (whose | sole or primary incentive is by default monetary) | | This isn't really a corporate issue at all though. Given | scarce resources (whether physical or human), we need to be | able to allocate resources efficiently. A conversation along | these lines happens in public health systems all the time: | how much money should be spent on medical interventions? | There, the concept of a QALY (Quality-adjusted life year) is | used, and typically, a price limit is set per QALY. Then, | only interventions below that threshold will be funded. The | idea is that since the healthcare system has limited funds, | it doesn't make sense to spend exorbitant amounts delivering | marginal results for one patient. | | Now, one could argue this is simply a monetary issue, and if | we didn't use money to measure these things, the issue would | go away. The thing is, even if money isn't an issue | (somehow), scarcity is still something we need to deal with. | Developing and administrating medical interventions takes | human labour, and spending a disproportionate amount of | person hours on small gains is still an issue. | | This comment is probably a little rambling, but the TL;DR is | that given scarce resources (whether that's money in a | corporation, or chemists and doctors in a health system), | doing calculations on human lives is necessary if we want to | make sure we allocate resources effectively. | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-03-21 23:01 UTC)