alexseanchai | (no subject)

I've been steaming for a while about how we've been sold a big pile of BS with the concept that we can vote with our dollars: save the earth by using reusable shopping bags and recycling at home; save labor by shopping American and buying Union; prevent animal cruelty by purchasing eggs that are "cage-free" (TW: animal harm). The fact is we can't save the world through retail, and they've laid massive guilt on us until with the belief we can. Fight for $15 -- as a tiny system fighting a goliath of a system -- has way more ability to fix things than we ever will as shoppers.

I shop from Amazon a lot -- disability, can't drive or carry, the internet's amazing -- and I know how they treat their warehouse workers. And I wish I weren't supporting Amazon, but honestly, my boycott of Amazon would mean bupkis, whereas my doing anything I can to help those warehouse workers organize or fight for better conditions or even have access to better jobs would be a more fruitful use of the same stress.

I don't have any control over how Amazon treats their workers. AMAZON does, though. By shoving off the idea that "Amazon is following the demands of its customer base," it has, in fact, WRITTEN ITSELF out of any corporate responsibility at ALL.

Which is total BS. (In fifty-foot capital letters.)

Frankly, the idea of "corporate personhood" just burns my biscuits. Add the whole concatenation of sidesteps, manipulations, and Oooh, don't forget corporate lobbyists--- We're in a freaking corporate oligarchy with red-white-and-blue-window dressing.

Sigh. I'm sorry, I tend to avoid political topics for this reason. I'm extremely socially liberal, but I cannot find a political/economic framework that doesn't make my brain ITCH.

CORPORATION: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility. —attributed to Ambrose Bierce (but I tried in the past to source the quote, because if it really is by Bierce then it's public domain due to age, and I can't get farther back than one of those recent volumes of The Devil's Dictionary that attributes all its contents to Ambrose Bierce but adds a bunch of things he inadvertently left out of the original edition)

And Amazon can follow the demands of its customer base without making people like my sister and her husband (who work at one of the Amazon warehouses) walk ten miles a day to pick people's orders. They make such damn much profit they could double their employees in any given warehouse at any given time, make people walk only five miles a day (which is still upwards of reasonability) and alternate picking runs with paid sit-down breaks (because they have run their employees to death before, I saw the article on one of those deaths) and barely notice the jump in their labor expenses.

Make such a framework? Call it a creative exercise, if nothing else.

I'm a big fan of choices, whether in business, life, or dating. The problem I have with corporate "ethics" today is that it's PIRACY, in methodology. Take-what-they-want, no limits, the checks and balances are a JOKE at best.

But at the same time, I dread seeing the POLITICAL reactions during an election year...

No easy answer.

Ayup

First off: everything you have said about "voting with your dollars" I legit and totally agree with you.

I also obviously have FEELZ about this, and so:

My brother was in the Navy, and I was at first excited when he left to have more time with his kids (even when on shore leave, he still had to spend nights guarding the aircraft carrier and every fourth weekend or something). Plus I was never really a fan of my brother working directly for the military industrial complex and worried for the state of his soul or whatnot.

Then he got a job for Amazon at one of their warehouses as a manager which was pretty brutal (both in terms of what he had to do, the not-climate-controlled-part, and I don't think he ever treated employees that way in the Navy). Later he climbed into corporate in Seattle, and now he works 60+ hours a week, is on call most weekends, is sometimes still *in* Seattle at 9 pm dining clients or teleconferencing overseas or fixing a software bug. His kids are in daycare or school 12 hours a day during the school week (which he and his wife can afford with his Amazon job and her doctoring).

Plus at least with the Navy, any ethical violations could technically be held accountable to Congressional committee or military tribunal or whatnot. I feel this is more likely than Amazon going to court over most of the shit that they do.

Not that I pity my brother -- he has made his choices and has his fancy house and savings accounts for college for his kids -- but holy chickens, batman. The whole NYTimes article about how Amazon treats white collar workers is not something I doubt (nor do I doubt any of the reports I hear about any of their other workers.)

I recently read something about Amazon not selling devices in their store that don't read Kindle ebooks? So no Nooks or whatever. Which in my brain I was all, "Maybe now there will be an anti-Trust suit!" But so far nothing, and even then the fines would be a drop in Amazon's profit bucket.

Also my parents still subscribe to WaPo (Bezos' private propaganda machine!) and their coverage of both Amazon and other corporations is really...like, they throw some *serious* shade in the direction of competitors. I can't remember exact wording but it's things like, "Target, the struggling big-box behemoth, is redesigning their retail stores in big cities in an effort to stay relevant with millenial shoppers." Or "Gamestop announces sale of classic video games as shoppers move online." >.> Or anytime there's something negative with Amazon going on, it's covered deeeep in the A section in a tiny column next to something negative about a competitor. And they also ran a multi-part front page series on the dangers of drones which I think was a push to be all, "Look we need modern drone regulations they could land on your lawn because of hobbyists! Wouldn't it be better if a company like Amazon controlled drones? Why isn't the FCC issuing new regulations already!"

/rant

Oh joyous.

(My sister's career ambition is to get a job with Amazon corporate and move to Seattle environs. This is not implausible; they really like her at that warehouse, and—actually I had better not share her and my brother-in-law's current job problem without their permission, but part of the reason it's taking so long to resolve is they really like her, and that's sure to be part of the solution as well.)

nodnod.

they also really liked my brother and he gets a lot of perks! but he has officially been waiting for them to take over the second half of the two jobs he is working for...over five years? Sooooo I don't think that is ever happening because why pay two salaries! He also feels a lot of corporate loyalty because he had a lot of trouble getting a job out of the Navy and yeah. :(

(Amazon's corporate problems: also not something employees can fix by "working somewhere else")

Oh UGH. I hope he's at least getting time-and-a-half pay—wait, there's probably a rule against that for people who make as much salary as I presume he does. :(

Yeah, he's a salaried employee, soooo...no such thing as overtime. Holiday bonuses though and stock options. Those are nice? But. There is a PRICE.

Yup. :(

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"There is no ethical consumption under late capitalism." —someday I will find who said this first and give them a rousing round of applause. "late" is sometimes omitted, though, so I'm not sure which is the original version.

And the whole "save the world through retail" thing is, much as I try to do it myself, a smokescreen designed to obscure that capitalism is part of the problem we need to save the world from!

Even Goodwill -- which I love because I do actually get most of my clothes there and can get "good quality" clothes without directly adding to the piles and piles of discarded clothes -- has some pretty shitty labor practices. Especially for people with disabilities! But that is mostly a matter of outdated labor laws that need to be fixed more than "boycott Goodwill", because if I did that I would not be able to afford many things ever. (Goodwill's argument is, as far as I can tell, "we are providing job training/experience and this is totally legal!")

Precisely. And a large part of why, for

bitesizedorg, I am insisting that token compensation is unfairly low.

(no subject)

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