The notion that a corporation's employees should have the same 'stakeholder' role as a corporation's shareholders might seem to be a radical notion. It would require re-imagining the corporate board's role: worker value and shareholder value would have to be balanced. This seems like a much fairer system of governance, and also has the benefit of partially democratizing corporations.

The Amazon warehouse business and Amazon Web Services having the same union is … odd.

My prediction - warehouses that unionize will get split off into separate companies and be contracted out to by Amazon.com, the store. But they rely on Amazon.com for so much of their tech that they'll be beholden to them and have no leverage in negotiations. Warehouse workers will be even worse off than they are today.

Unions do seem to be making a big comeback

Amazon can give more shifts to non striking workers, train new employees in a matter of hours, leverage labour hire companies, bus in workers from other facilities, lean on FBM and other 3PL providers, increase automation. They also have a massive network of fulfilment centers and can easily just ship in fulfilled orders from elsewhere using non union trucking and last mile.

Amazon also has deep pockets and a long time horizon, so worst case they'll just allow the facility to be shut down by strikes and let their customers know it'll take another day to deliver their order from elsewhere.

Like, just the game-theoretic analysis here suggests municipalities will want nothing to do with this.

Warehousing is massive industry and even at their size Amazon is less than 10% of it.

The most realistic solution is for workers to spend any spare time they have learning new skills to move into better industries. Trying to make pick pack roles not suck is not realistic.

On a general note ... life in general seems cyclical.

It paid well, and allowed me to go to college with no debt.

But it absolutely drained her. It was terrible toward the end.

She was a nurse. Nursing is a profession that can be greatly improved, but the unions don’t seem too interest in that.

They are much better at getting better pay and benefits.

Better pay? Yes. Better benefits? Yea. Less chaos? Yes.

Less toxicity? Unions give the workers a bigger say. That’s it.

How toxic are your coworkers? If they’re toxic … unionizing won’t help. If they’re not toxic … unionizing still probably won’t help.

Unions are about pooling together for a better negotiating position.

That doesn’t make anything less toxic.

For example, will the union support using H1B visa workers? Amazon had a lot of H1B tech workers. That could get very toxic very fast.

This isn't really true. Unions typically negotiate for baseline working conditions, which can include protection from abuse and such things. "Toxicity" could easily fall under that and does in many (if not most?) workplaces in Sweden.

In practice, the union can negotiate disciplinary rules. However they tend to focus on protecting workers from discipline.

There are some practices they can’t/won’t give much protection to, like misusing company funds.

Some unions have offered less protection when accusations of racism and sexism are involved, but employers have learned to abuse that.

Read about the firing of Donald McNeil by the New York Times to get an idea of how cowardly, social-justice focused unions can majorly screw up by not defending their members.

So if the person making your life miserable is a coworker who constantly denigrates you, unions might be more focused on helping them than you.

No, it doesn't because the rules are agreed to before the events, just like the rule of law in society in general. They don't negotiate rules during a conflict...

In Sweden, everything you're saying is irrelevant because it's neither the company nor the union which evaluates the contract and the specific case in question. There are special courts and authorities to handle this which are independent of both parties. The only way that unions and companies are involved are negotiating the contracts that are evaluated.

Even if what you said applied, which it doesn't, my response would be "perfect is the enemy of good." That system would be better for most people than one of total subjugation.

Imagine an app that holds all the forms for your jurisdiction and allows signing similar to docusign via text message. Would make union formation much more discreet and asynchronous.

I’m sure there’s applications for dues, collective agreements etc.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/11/podcasts/the-daily/new-yo...

https://youtu.be/SHed96HYC8I.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/marianne-williamson-po...

Just the threat of a strike would be enough to send your stock to the barbers chair for the week. Suppliers would be reluctant to extend long lines of credit to you during a threat, and your contract network of logistics would likely concentrate efforts to diversify from you in the nearterm.

the very real (and scary) outcome from the unionization of Amazon is that it will spill into other sectors that have spent the last four decades crushed under boot, namely trucking and logistics.

EDIT: the reason i believe unionization of the trucking industry is scary is that most logistics companies have operated for so long as bath-faith actors with impunity, they no longer have any experience or knowledge of how to properly negotiate a union contact in the face of a strike. In that they have become so divorced from the reality of fair labor practices, a strike is almost certain to occur and while labor demands may be reasonable, the response from entrenched corporate interest is likely to be petulant and childish.

If you have a large enough willing labor pool, and a job that can be trained in one day…strikes basically are just bad PR. Amazon can weather bad PR.

Strikes impact businesses that supply goods and services to consumers. They have impact, and it's this impact that gives them power.

If there wasn't an impact on businesses and consumers then they wouldn't be scary. If your political leanings are pro-worker then you probably agree and are happy that a strike is a scary prospect for consumers. Otherwise the strikes could be ignored.

This is exactly the point. Socio-economic groupings ARE political. You feel your interests are different from someone making 30k/year, because of the wedges driven into the working class, but in all likelihood you have much more in common with a warehouse worker than you do with someone whos income comes entirely from their ownership of amazon. Do you worry about losing your job? How many months unemployed before you lose your house? These are things that ownership class people don't have to worry about, but you and an amazon warehouse worker both do.

When I was working, I had none of those concerns.

You're really off base. Your points are just inaccurate as a matter of fact.

Your insinuation that my perspective has changed is simply wrong. Of course you can't know; all you have is baseless projections.

You're making a very basic error here in devaluing the past work of others. If you correct your error, your rather strident ideology will likely disintegrate.

Think about it, maybe take some time and build something useful that helps others. Get back to me later.

Having built a means, and let's be real here: You could have funded the labor that created whatever means we are discussing here. That's not the same as actually building a thing. Now, many who do fund things participate directly. That's great!! (and something I believe makes better "things.") You could have done that too, and or both!

Let's talk about past work:

Say we have someone who made a tool, a means to better or possible labor. The product of their labor is some degree of wealth, right?

And while we are on the topic, wealth in the most fundamental sense, is defined by time; namely, how much of a person's waking time is purposed for them. Wealthy people self-purpose most of their time, if not all of it. Poor people have most of their time purposed for them.

One product of labor is the wealth needed for people to address cost and risks associated with continuing to exist. A food store, as an example, created with tools is wealth in that a person having that food store can choose to spend their time differently, purpose it, because the demand for food is met in advance, reducing cost and risk, which makes them able to afford to purpose their time.

They could invest that in better tools, means, or pursue the arts, or just relax, play, whatever. That's what wealth actually does.

Now, having created wealth, this person frees time and or depending on the means created, may free many other people's time. That's worth something, right?

I think so.

Now, let's carry on and say this person creates more tools, means with their bounty of time. That's an investment in themselves as well as others and the benefits are reduced costs and risks for them and everyone around them. More people are more wealthy, which frees more time and with that time comes more creation, innovation, arts, culture, the works.

That society, as it develops, becomes wealthy and can advance.

Notice I don't have money in any of that?

The reason I don't, is to highlight what wealth is, how it's distributed, and what it all means for the people involved. The actual work, wealth created, wealth maintained (it comes with it's own costs and risks), are all centered on labor.

It's not about money at all. Money, in the sense that matters to us continuing to exist here as people, doesn't actually do anything meaningful at all!

(this is why many people have strong, negative feelings about people born into or marrying into money)

Money permits things like leverage, usury, and other exploitations as well as decisions about who gets what and why. It does not, in and of itself, actually create wealth. Gamblers and money changers deal in money to get more money and when that's all boiled down, it's trading favors and or committments.

Take our means, tool creator makes a lot of tools. They could just share them, and many benefit. They could loan them out in exchange for things they value, and or could require others do, say, or avoid things desirable to the creator of the tools. And if that were unjust, others would simply make their own tools.

'nuff said there.

Now, let me visit wealth and society one more time.

A great many people in our society today are poor. Very large amounts of their time remain purposed for them. No matter our station in life, we all must deal with the cost and risks associated with continuing to exist here. Ideally, one's labor yields enough wealth to fund continuing to live and even more ideally, free time to persue one's own interests.

Today, roughly half of labor in the US does not yield enough to fully fund continuing to exist and or show up for work!

That scenario, when viewed through the lens I put here, is unjust and not equitable, nor sustainable. Say our tool, means maker demands large amounts of the fruits of others laboring with the means and or tools. And say they keep it to themselves, leaving most others to labor and remain poor in that very little, if any, of their time is available for them to purpose, build their own wealth, live a little.

How does that make any sense?

The answer is it doesn't. Not in the basic, human sense we all are forced to recognize and deal with.

You are asking others to value your past work as justification for your current position in life, when the real question is more like why so many remain poor, despite arguably fantastic past works?

Money is why. Money does a lot of good, and a lot of bad too.

Funding the making of a thing is not making the thing. Labor is what makes the thing.

Funding the making of a thing is a decision to make the thing, and money is one way we make those decisions. Others might be use or threat of force (having the army make people make things), or divine right (god says others have to make things), nobility (we are more qualified to determine who makes the things), and so forth.

With me so far?

Whatever it is you have done, if you did it directly through labor, or had a hand in it as part of shared labor, does not matter. The fact that you labored does matter, and it all has value. And that's great!

Funding things also has value, but it's not the same thing, and it's not an act of creation in the basic sense of creating wealth, and this is a point the other person in this discussion made.

A point I am making is valuing past works too highly actually does harm to society overall, and I've explained why and how that can be.

You do, when you speak of value. Money is how we measure value. Your monologue is a bit like talking about how tall things are and saying you haven't mentioned a unit of measurement and therefore the meter somehow a separate concept.

Value exists independent of money. Money is a way to measure value.

> Today, roughly half of labor in the US does not yield enough to fully fund continuing to exist and or show up for work!

Or they've chosen to volunteer their labor, as I do, because they don't need more income. Or they're studying to increase the future value of their work.

> The actual work, wealth created, wealth maintained (it comes with it's own costs and risks), are all centered on labor.

This isn't true. Perhaps I'm an artist and I live through selling my inventory. Perhaps I'm living on income from a hit app I published. There's plenty of wealth that isn't centered on current labor at all, especially in the field of technology.

> You are asking others to value your past work as justification for your current position in life

No, I'm not. The valuation has already occurred, voluntarily. I haven't asked; rather others have offered and I accepted.

> Money is why. Money does a lot of good, and a lot of bad too.

Money is a measure of value which exists independent of any currency system. Money isn't a why, it's just how we measure, and an intermediary form to allow value to be fungible. Instead of trading my hammer for my living expenses, I can trade my hammer for money. Money doesn't create the value of my hammer, it just measures it.

> Funding things also has value, but it's not the same thing,

I don't agree. Investment is a type of work like any other. Funding is, at its core, a value exchange. If what you say is true, and wealth is always a measure of labor (and I don't think it is) then it is exactly the same thing -- using money as an intermediate measurement.

> A point I am making is valuing past works too highly actually does harm to society overall, and I've explained why and how that can be.

I don't think you've made this point at all, much less having explained it.

Labor is how we create wealth. It is the only way we create wealth.

Wealthy people get to purpose more of their time than poor people do.

Time is money, money is time, OK?

Wealth can be assigned a value in terms of money.

Now, those who created the means expect to be valued and for the means to have value.

The basis for that value is the additional wealth per labor unit the means makes possible. As for their value... let's just call that a promise or suggestion of mutual benefit in the future and leave it there.

A great creator, innovator will make others around them wealthy, unless they require too much for having done the work. This is not hard to see.

With that in mind, let us further assign a dollar amount to all of that. Once we do, then we also assign dollar amounts to labor so they may be traded with greater efficiency and or flexibility.

With me so far?

When the dollar amount of that past work output is valued high, it can be said the greater percentage of wealth created by labor goes to those who own the means, tools.

Value too high, and labor fails to deliver enough value for the laborers. It may cost them more to perform the labor than said labor delivers to them.

And there is the harm done.

It may make more sense for laborers to abandon that expensive, though productive means, and secure more value per unit of labor, despite being less productive, and or potentially non compliant. They may simply employ the means and pay less, or nothing too, creating conflict.

Regardless of what the law is, or any of us may say or feel, the human costs and risks always present themselves and must always be met, or the people cease to exist.

Given how undesirable ceasingbto exist is, society often makes up the difference via subsidy, assistance of various kinds. This mostly assures more compliance, and does cost everyone.

And there you have increased crime, black markets of various kinds driven by people whose labor fails to generate enough wealth relative to their costs and risks associated with their existence and or showing up for work.

Taking money out of all that would look the same, just without the dollars.

It might look like that owner of the means having a large food store, or requires too much compensatory labor for their benefit, leaving the others in town poor, in that their labor fails to meet their collective costs and risks, which leaves them time poor, and therefore not wealthy, despite a means of being more wealthy available.

No. As noted above, wealth is also generated from capital. Sometimes in conjunction with labor, sometimes not.

> Wealthy people get to purpose more of their time than poor people do.

No. Everyone has the same amount of time in a day. A better way to phrase this is that some people produce more wealth per unit of time than others.

> Now, those who created the means expect to be valued and for the means to have value.

No. I would say that the means are valuable, objectively, and independent of the desires of their creators. The focus on expectations here is irrelevant.

> And there is the harm done.

No. The value is not a subjective moral figure, it is actual. It represents actual utility, actual demand.

There is much greater harm done by ignoring these types of objective economic truths -- the kind of harm that reliably destroys societies and causes mass famine and death.

> or the people cease to exist.

This is why we have what's called "tax and spend capitalism," where we take a significant portion of gains and use them to provide a safety net.

I've paid roughly half of all of my life's production in taxes, and much of this goes to providing these safety nets. I've additionally written grants and made other large gifts to support others. The amount I have left to live on might be less than 10% of the value of my work product.

Your suggestion that we might need to ignore basic economic realities to provide for others simply doesn't follow. We don't need to do things that way and when we have, historically, it has never succeeded.

No, it is not ever created with capital.

Capital does not have agency. It is a vehicle for the product of labor. By itself, it is nothing.

This can be confusing and hard to see. Take it back to basic principles and it becomes much easier.

>Everyone has the same amount of time in a day. A better way to phrase this is that some people produce more wealth per unit of time than others.

I do not believe you understood.

Our lives are roughly divided into thirds. One to sleep, one to work, one to live.

When costs and risks are high, more time is required to meet them, and when unmet, people cease to exist.

Poor people's lives are basically two thirds work, one to sleep. Essentially, very little time not purposed for them. They work all the time and have no choice in the matter.

This can also be expressed as having little to no free agency.

Very wealthy people have almost none of their time purposed for them. This can be expressed as having almost entirely free agency. They may work all the time, or be at leisure. Their choice.

But of course it is. If I spend a year writing a book, ownership of the book is now capital. I may sell copies of the book (in digital form to keep things clear) for decades to come. The capital resource in this case generates income without additional labor on my part after its construction, and no labor on anyone else's part, ever.

> I do not believe you understood.

I do understand.

Your perspective stems from a measure of free agency. Mine stems from a measure of relative value.

Your perspective is useful when reasoning about moral issues related to overwork. For example, we should provide for those who cannot provide for themselves - so they do not cease to exist as you put it.

It is not so useful when reasoning about how to value the actual work output.

You spend a year writing a book.

Labor rendered ideas into a form others can use.

It is capital. It is also a means. And it is a book.

Now you sell copies, right?

Capital did not sell copies. You did, and you had to labor to do that.

In the digital case, literally thousands of people and their labor copy, distribute and take payment for your book. It takes a lot of people to maintain that network your book is on.

Capital can amplify labor. That is a tool, device, mechanism.

Capital can compensate others for labor too.

What it does not do is create. That is what people do. That is what labor is.

How we value labor, other things matters.

Say we talk about the people who make our shit dissappear, cleaning up, etc...

Much of this work is done at a loss to those who labor to do it. They are poor, having to labor most all of their time.

Without them, the cost to us is much higher. Having to manage our own shit, where to store it, who takes it away, amd so forth. Doing that work would deny us our time, we would be less wealthy, and or need to pay more to have these things done, make arrangements, and forth.

Further, our current society is one that requires, does not even provide for people not doing that work. Essentially, no matter what any of us says, a large number of us will be doing that work.

How then is that work not valued well enough to provide for those doing it? We all have the same hours, and theirs very seriously improve our ability to make use of our time each day.

Which is it?

Do we value them enough to insure their labor is not performed at a loss?

Or, if we are to subsidize their labor, and any reason is fine, how come it must be so painful, looked down upon, seen as some crime or failure to obtain this subsidy?

You write about basic economic realities.

The fact is, how we value things, why we value them matters and those valuations are not physical laws. Economics is not an objective science either.

Perhaps we place too high a value on some things and people, while ignoring value on other things and people.

None of this says we need to work for others, but it does strongly suggest we could be valuing things a bit differently and arrive at a much better overall outcome for people than we see today.

Without specifics, and there is no need for them here to be clear, your emphasis on capital as means to create wealth speaks to your work product actually being compensation for a number of other people laboring to create wealth, in addition to whatever labor you contributed.

What really happened there is a lot of labor was performed, wealth created and the laborers compensated for your use of their time for something you then own.

At no time did capital create anything. Labor did.

As for paying for safety nets, of course! A lot of people labored on your behalf, and ideally their compensation for that labor was enough for them to meet their costs and risks and maybe have some left over for their own purposes.

A lot of people labor as much as they can, and that does not happen. This makes those safety nets quite expensive! And it can be objectionable. When the product of labor is high enough to accumulate capital, should hose actually creating it at least not be doing so for less compensation than it costs them to perform the labor?

Secondly, why should others subsidize all that? They have their own purposes to get after.

>Your suggestion that we might need to ignore basic economic realities to provide for others simply doesn't follow. We don't need to do things that way and when we have, historically, it has never succeeded.

I made no such suggestion. What I did do was clarify both the nature of wealth and how is is created.

I then spoke to value and potential harm, and benefit. One harm is mentioned above, and that is the overall increase in everyone's cost and risk due to underfunded labor.

There are others.

If you're unionized, collective bargaining. Unions that are stronger are able to better support each other. The better deal amazon's workers get, the better deal you can get.

If you're non-unionized, your wage is still impacted by the wages of other employers. Case in point, when amazon raised their minimum wage - other companies were forced to follow suit: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/05/business/economy/amazon-w...

Sure, if you're a high-payed tech worker, your own wage is pretty disconnected from the warehouse worker market - but not completely. And I bet you have friends and family who's wages are MUCH closer linked.

Highly unionized countries do not tend to have a higher per-capita income across all socioeconomic demographics when compared to the US. It's not clear that unionization is an overall net positive for higher income individuals.

I.e. maybe supporting unions leads to a smaller gap between your tech salary, and a warehouse worker. That’s still going to benefit you, in that the people around you are less desperate, and have more energy to put into their communities, etc.

It seems the area where you and I differ is that my commitment to telling the truth regarding the various economic ramifications is more important than my political ideology.

I encourage you to take a break and think about your perspective. If your points are worth making should be able to make them without these ad-hominem guessing games.

Nothing about me is relevant when it comes to objective facts such as the way unions impact economies.

>Your rhetoric is disgusting and regrettable

This you? Feels like a bit of 'projection'.

The poster you're replying to is making general commentary about class consciousness between the consumer/worker dichotomy. You view yourself as separate from this. Okay great. His points really aren't specific to you, even in statements like "That’s still going to benefit you, in that the people around you are less desperate"

Replace <you> with <higher income worker> if that helps engage with the content. I have a feeling, though, if you view his argument (a very basic 'a rising tide lifts all boats' one) as disgusting, you're probably not very interested in trying to understand his point of view in the first place.

This is objectively regrettable. It's fallacious argumentation and in fact is against the rules of this forum.

My response is addressing these disgusting tactics. In contrast, I've said nothing about who this person is as an individual -- because it's irrelevant.

The poster you're replying to has provided a synopsis of his argument; it has nothing to do with you. Part of the site's rules are that you should be charitable regarding how people phrase their arguments - just try to understand what he's trying to get at - it's very clear his argument isn't about you as a person. Focusing on this while ignoring the substance of his statements is obviously not going to generate a productive discussion.

Trying to use phrasing which allows people to relate to the discussion isn't 'objectively regrettable'.

Spinning this into a meta discussion about how the discussion should be framed is a waste of time, so I'll end my contribution here. I hope my notes help untangle the mess.

"Ah, well I wrongly assumed you worked ... Congrats, you’re now living off the efforts of others," https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31010666

"You feel your interests are different from someone making 30k/year, ... you have much more in common with a warehouse worker ..." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31010143

The entire comment thread centers around ad-hominem appeals rather than substantive analysis.

You seem dead set on doing anything other than actually engaging with the substance of the post. I didn't say the term 'you' wasn't used. I said the argument has nothing to do with you, or perhaps more accurately, it doesn't rely on any lived experience you've had - you're irrelevant to the point being made.

Let's look at a sample argument: My eyes generally see things well, I see that the sky is blue, therefore, since I trust my eyes, the sky is blue.

In this argument, we have 1) A premise, 2) Evidence, 3) Rationale, and 4) A conclusion.

Let's modify the argument a bit. My eyes generally see things well, I see that the sky is blue - and so does everyone including you, therefore, since I trust my eyes, the sky is blue.

The element we've added here, that everyone sees that the sky is blue, is not evidence in support of my conclusion, because my rationale depends on my trust in my eyes, not my trust in everyone else's. Disagreeing by stating "Blind people don't see that the sky is blue, so your evidence is faulty and your conclusion doesn't stand - the sky isn't blue because of blind people" is a poor critique; there ARE weaknesses in the argument, to be sure, but that isn't one of them.

To return to this thread, you're attacking elements of the post which aren't the core of the argument; they're attempts to make the argument cogent to you (which obviously failed), but aren't elements upon which the argument relies upon.

Anyways, you're clearly not arguing in good faith - there's no attempt to interface with ANY of the content being posted. I'm done here.

This is also trivially disproved, for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31008817

> they're attempts to make the argument cogent to you (which obviously failed)

I'm really uninterested in the justifications for introducing ad-hominem argumentation -- which, to be clear, rapidly devolved into attacks.

You spoke specifically about me, and then continued to adjust your rhetoric as you learned more about me.

This is gross.

So what we have again is a situation where a consumer like me is not in the position of a unionizing Amazon worker so we can’t identify with their labor situation. I don’t have a dogmatic political stance on them unionizing. In their current non-unionized work situation, I’m content to be a customer. In a unionized situation, I’m content to be a customer as long as the product they provide meets my needs. I don’t have a dog in their fight, so there is zero need to me to stop using a product I want to be in solidarity with them.

Without the labour of their workers, facebook does not exist. From the people who serve lunch to the accountants to the coders. Yet that 9bil did not go to them, it went to the shareholders. That’s exploitation, pure and simple. You can support it, if you think it’s a good system, but it is exploitation.

Tech companies know that their workers are underpaid for their value - they wouldn’t have had to collude to fix wages if it wasn’t the case. Just because you think you’re very well paid, doesn’t mean you’re not being exploited.

All that is setting aside the very obvious reason you should have solidarity with amazon warehouse workers: they are human beings and they provide a service you enjoy, you should not want them to suffer.

so what happened to the providers of the capital that facebook was built with? How come they don't get anything from those profits?

I think your ideology is clouding your judgement on what counts as "fair", and this is making you think that workers who don't get 100% of the profit of the work they produce, must be underpaid or somehow is being exploited. The idea that capital provided upfront (to pay those workers, as well as plant and equipment) isn't in your line of argument at all.

> Without the labour of their workers, facebook does not exist.

without the upfront capital paid by the shareholders, facebook would not exist as well. It's both, together, that makes it work. The deal the workers accepted was to be paid upfront, at a fixed amount, for a fixed amount of work (counted by time, usually). Then, the shareholders gets the profit from the difference in sale price of the work. They take on the risk that the work is worthless in a changing world, a risk that the workers do not take (unless the worker chooses to accept payments in shares). I don't see this as exploitation.

It’s pretty debatable how much of the money they raised was critical. They needed a bit of seed money, no question - and without regular injections of cash they would have had a much slower growth curve, for sure. They might not have been able to buy out instagram and whatsapp - but that didn’t create much value - those things existed without facebook. We might even need to account for the value that facebook’s rise took away from other firms, if we’re trying to calculate how much net value facebook’s investors have created - rather than just how much value has been enveloped into the firm - but let’s stay on point.

Overall, giving money to someone starting a business, well that sounds like you’re describing a loan. A loan entitles you to get paid back, with interest. The interest is there to cover the risk that you might not get paid back.

What we have instead is “ownership”, which seems to entitle you to the profits of a company’s workers in perpetuity.

Numbers are a little thin, but it seems like facebook took on something like $1bil in various investments before their ipo, and raised about 16bil with their ipo (tho unclear if that 16bil went to the company, or investors + the company).

Facebook has posted profits in the billions for years now. If you only count earnings since their ipo, about $173bil cumulative going to investors.

At what point is the loan paid back? How much interest are they entitled to? At 9 years post investment they’ve paid back 10x what was given to them - that’s well over a 100% interest rate - and that is set to never end.

There are many ways to obtain capital - loans being one. A loan is guaranteed, often having a need for collateral. I highly doubt anyone would loan Facebook money without collateral at the early stage.

Equity ownership is not a loan, and it is indeed a perpetual entitlement to all profits. It's pretty much the only form of "loan" for a new business.

You still have not made any arguments as to why ownership is wrong, other than merely asserting it.

The idea that startup workers aren’t already taking on risk is weird. There’s clearly direct risk, and opportunity cost style risk already baked into jobs at new companies. A fee bad turns and late paychecks and you could end up homeless.

Investors risk… Not homelessness. Not poverty. They risk losing money they never earned in the first place.

Wow. Good luck with…all that.

Accordingly the question isn't if you're exploited. It's how much. A firm is going to need to get SOME margin off you - that's fine. But how much is too much? What factors systemically result in them taking too much margin, etc. Having the discussion in those terms allows you to actually interface with the reality of worker/corporate transactions.

The intersection of labor and capital is enormously mutually beneficial.

Regarding fair allocations of proceeds, one could just as easily argue that labor is exploiting capital, and that capital should take a greater share of profits. In fact, both outcomes are certainly, demonstrably true in different scenarios. In a chapter 11 bankruptcy, capital is lost while wages remain protected.

Your argument is in regard to the average outcome, and as such it glosses over the inherent give and take, risk and reward, present in a variable and chaotic -- but undeniably mutually beneficial -- system.

There's a lot of literature on 'the analysis', which happens to not be mine. It's actually one of the core elements of neoclassical economics.

>one could just as easily argue that labor is exploiting capital

No, one couldn't.

>In a chapter 11 bankruptcy, capital is lost while wages remain protected.

Depending on the jurisdiction, wages are provided a super-priority status. Other super-priority stakeholders are afforded equal protection amongst themselves. Priority stakeholders, such as lenders with security, are provided more protection than unsecured lenders, etc. Protection for missing wages exists solely due to rectifying legislation attempting to address of how disadvantaged a worker is when a business's assets are encumbered and they have no priority.

However, when it comes to managing risk, workers have to hope they'll get paid, while a secured lender can request assurances that potential super-priority stakeholders have been paid to determine the amount of exposure they're willing to entertain, and call their loans due in the event covenants and other monitoring systems indicate financial duress. Workers have no equivalent protective system.

Honestly most of these points feel like they're relatively uninformed and don't hold up to much scrutiny.

> Depending on the jurisdiction,

Cutting through the unnecessary explanation, it appears you agree with me. In general, sometimes capital operates a wage paying business without providing a return to investors.

This point is observably true (otherwise a market wouldn't have losers) and I don't think you need to respond to it further.

If you stopped reading after hearing that super priorities exist, and believed that their existence was proof that labour regularly defrauds capital, you'd have very much not understood anything.

Honestly, almost all of your posts here feel like they're exercises in ignoring content. I'm done.

Willing to bet they aren’t…or you don’t know if they are or not, had no idea if they were unionizing or not, and didn’t think to even care before my comment.

Thanks for the honesty points.

As for your hypocrisy accusation - we both know that’s not a valid argument. If you’re anything less than perfect you can't criticize? Nope.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/capitalism-made-your-iphone

The idea that the phone I own invalidates any efforts to improve things is a parody of an argument. If I had the ability to buy a phone that wasn’t made in terrible conditions, I would. If I had the luxury of being able to live without a phone, I would. I don’t, so the idea that now any criticism I have of workers conditions anywhere are invalid is laughable and ignores the numerous and very real ways I vote with my dollars for better working conditions

You opted to overlook something you might disagree with to get a product you wanted or needed. You chose not to sacrifice.

Good for you.

>I don’t have any options

Sounds like a justification for that action all day long to me.

It's probably scary for Amazon, but I don't see why it would be scary for consumers. I use Amazon regularly, but if they had to shut down deliveries for a few weeks I would just order from eBay, Walmart or other sources. I can't think of many things that I can order only from Amazon.

Plenty of people here are legitimately not part of the working class even in a technical sense. eg they do not sell their labor, but are supported by exploiting surplus labor of workers.

It's entirely possible the person you're responding to is an asset owner, and is correct and sincere. If you depend on exploiting workers then worker power must be scary as hell!

Amazon can train these workers very quickly (i.e. 1 day) so it should not be very hard to restaff a whole warehouse.

But anyway these warehouses are near a lot of people (because otherwise… why have the warehouse?)

Assuming the list posted here [1] is accurate, they tend to be located on the outskirts of cities. Looking at Virginia (where I live), the only one that I'd really consider rural is Clear Brook, but these days, that's effectively a DC suburb, with plenty of potential workers in nearby Winchester VA, Hagerstown MD, and the I-81 corridor.

1 - https://fba.help/list-of-amazon-fulfillment-centers

I've seen good unions and I've seen bad ones, I don't know which this is yet.

The common portrayal (at least in the US) is that unions are evil.

That's why American unions and union activity have been almost completely squashed in the US for decades now.

This sentiment is starting to change a bit as people are finally starting to wake up to the massive inequality in this country and the enormous wealth and power of corporations and the oligarchs who control them vs the barely subsistence existence of the ever growing lower classes.

The main place I see them presented as backwards and unproductive is by common folk dealing with them and some business owners who also resent a lot of the inefficiency.

But ‘portrayed as evil’ seems to try to say that in the media and cinema, etc., they are portrayed as evil … that’s not my experience. My experience is on the ground common folk talk smack about them.

That said, if we get Unions to do the job of the Feds (FTC) and contribute to dragging them down via inefficiency a couple of notches allowing competition to viably compete, I'm all for it.

Higher wages tend to be ignored as it is vague. Harder to fire is tainted by police unions protecting cops from their own actions.

You end up with the benefits being vague and the problems being obvious. Dues are frustrating and any bad union leaders get tons of attention.

For better or worse everyone tends to assume the things unions work for are a given. So the only real talking points become the bad things. Not that this is unique to unions lol.

Some time in the past I had a mildly critical system in a remote office go down. A technician would have to simply replace a part. However, because it required a Union guy to go in there to remove a screw first, it had to wait over the weekend --meaning the company now had to take modest losses over the weekend.

The guy couldn't sneak in a screw driver as that could potentially end up costing the company more money.

This is where unions earn some of their great reputation among stiffs.

Or the company didn't want to pay OT for it?

I'll leave it to the reader to decide which is more likely.

Talk about waste of resources, fuel, etc., etc.

Oh, Oh, Oh! I know, if they let this one time slip HERE in THIS INSTANCE is where the SLIPPERY SLOPE applies, but, obviously no where else, especially in politics.

That attitude pervades the public sector an infuriates the people they are supposedly serving.

I put in the request and about 3 weeks later, two people came to move the desk. I'd already unplugged any wiring, so one guy simply picked it up and rotated it. At that point, I found out my network cable (this is in the days before WiFi) for my PC was too short to reach the new desk location. I had to put in another request for wiring, and had to wait a week and a half for someone to come with a longer cable. During that time, I sat on the floor, with my monitor sitting on my chair. While installing the new cable, he asked if I'd unplugged the previous cable before the desk move. When I told him yes, he told me not to worry and that he wouldn't note that, but that I shouldn't do it again.

While I totally understand work rules that exist to ensure that workers aren't being made to perform duties that they're not contracted for AND to prevent companies from simply doing end-runs around them, when things reach this level of absurdity, it really sours things. Of course, the nature of "contract" is that common sense is hard to dictate and it does open the slippery slope. "I was just moving the desk in my cube" becomes "I was just moving the desk to the cube next door" to "I was just moving it on the same floor" etc.

Also, the library is open during school hours, so does the teacher not teach during that time? The school has replaced the lost librarian but is effectively short a teacher now.

And who makes the hiring and firing decisions at this library anyway? The union is to blame for management not hiring a replacement?

Both categories of unions have problems and benefits, but they don't overlap 100%.

Private sector unions really depend on the industry and the union itself. they can be good, they can be bad. the only time inreally have a problem with them is when they arent voluntary.

https://dismantlemag.com/2018/12/03/sorry-bother-you-pro-uni...

They're not portrayed a ton in pop culture to begin with, and when they are it's often bad.

Or the desire to coddle vs steering kids in the right direction. Schools completely drive what kids find acceptable and not acceptable socially. It changes over time depending on what the school district finds appropriate.

Even US presidents, 10 years ago Washington, Lincoln were unblemished, today they are complicated figures with defects. But I think you can look to the USSR as well. One day someone is a hero, the next they are counterrevolutionaries and schools follow the dictum.

The higher paying jobs I was pursuing didn't have a union at all and I wouldn't have to pay that supposed 10% either (or whatever the union dues really are), and I didn't plan on being in any particular high paying job for more than 1-2 years before hopping for an even higher paying job, and there is no such thing as pensions or long term benefits from being married to a job, so the association for me was blue collar worker unnecessarily milking a system. It wasn't relatable to me at all, and not relatable or relevant to my perception of the tools available to me in the world, or my ambitions. "Ambitions" only when looking through the lens of the comfortable-enough lifelong 9-5'ers that were surrounding me at the time, until I could finally switch up my surroundings. So far thats been an accurate assessment of unions as well as how my career would go, even though my view is much more pro-union now.

The correlation of who joins unions is still heavily there, but I recognize it doesn't have to be and can include even highly paid software engineers given the size of the organizations they work for now (multiple multi-trillion dollar company, really?), although even these new union pushes are just on the blue collar side. Thats just how its panned out, for now.

Regardless that was just on the seemingly desperate-than-other worker side, on the "evil union" side, it was also reinforced by examples where the union tried something that didn't benefit employees at all. Like when the union tried to get wages raised at some cereal company but it was too much and the company just declared bankruptcy, firing 30,000+ people. It was like how out of touch was the union on the health of the company, and all the employees were also this out of touch too? Or maybe all 30,000 weren't out of touch but just had to toe the party line? But even the non-union workers were effected in this mass layoff because now nobody is employed! Sure, even if it was some vulture private equity firm playing all the fiddles, it just reinforced how powerless the unions actually were. All perceptions leading to the conclusion of "irrelevance of an annoying gang".

Anyway, my view has evolved substantially on this. I'm in favor of some future form of collective organization and collective bargaining of even highly-paid, job-hopping, white collar personnel. I feel like there was a time period where I wouldn't even need that distinction. I want this collective organization to have a board seat or two with some forms of employer, by law. But I've basically gone from one extreme to another extreme (unless my view catches on, of course).

It fomented nepotism and all sorts of other "land grabs" where people would be on a wait list and their plan was to get in, stay in and coast the rest of the time like the other senior Union members.

This does not deny that they may be a necessary inefficiency in some industries and that in the past they did contribute to better labor conditions and are part of labor's patrimony, but are in many sectors of the economy anachronistic.

The average ANNUAL union dues are $400, or 2 hours of pay per month. [1]

1. https://anh.com/the-cost-of-unions/#:~:text=The%20average%20....

That said, it begs the question, why is the 'grass roots' discourse so consistently negative in America, while European and Canadian discourse on the issue seems significantly different? Would you believe there's no intentional messaging?

Oh wait it's not. The very idea that 'the grass roots hates unions' is itself a false portrayal: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/09/03/majorities-...

The States has a VERY long history of union busting, and media is very much involved. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02685662

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-p...

And so on.

Canadians largely consume the same media as the US --so it looks like it's not coming from there.

Grass roots is the actual vox populi and people just don't have a good experience when they interact with Union folk, so they talk bad about them. If people talk smack about WalMart, do you go ahead and then claim, "oh, well, that's a PORTRAYAL, it may be distributed but it's still a negative portrayal perpetuated by the grass roots and the media"?

People have a right to opinions based on experience --too bad if those opinions go against a particular vested interest.

To address your second point; If Walmart was consistently discussed negatively in conversation, on social media, in the news, etc. I'd say that they were portrayed negatively, yes.

That said, my second link is explicitly about media portrayals, indicating that corporate media intentionally over-represents negative elements of unions, so even excluding the semantics regarding whether or not 'word of mouth' portrayals count as portrayals, the point stands.

We could discuss this within for example the restaurant industry, and that could be interesting but AMZ does not fit the 'no generational wealth, just some business owners' rhetoric.

For restaurants what we find is incredibly thin margins being covered up by exploitation of the lowest rung rather than adjusting of prices, efficiencies in supply chain, focused menus, etc.

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/559028-msnbc-says-it-wont...

A local non-profit, partisan, progressive newspaper fought its staff on unionizing just as hard as it’s for profit peers. This is a paper that exists to promote progressivism.

Doesn’t make their content any less progressive.

MSNBC and others look after their own interests. That interest can be at odds with their ideology. They do not have to be internally consistent.

Bernie Sanders wants millionaires (and billionaires) to pay very high taxes after certain cutoff --all well and good. He's a millionaire, the IRS allows you to overpay or donate to the treasury, but despite his beliefs, he personally does not overpay his taxes.

The Soviet Union believed in workers' rights, except when it came to strategic state enterprises. Same with regard to luxury --yes, they frowned upon luxuries for the masses, but they did have dedicated "department stores" for the elites.

This is something folks love to bring up as if it's hypocrisy (see also: Warren Buffet, also literally any other prominent rich person who's called for higher taxes), but it can be completely consistent to think that a net benefit can be achieved by a policy or law that causes you (and others) a little harm, but to see voluntarily causing oneself that same harm without the collective action to go along with it, as not doing enough good to be worth the harm.

This behavior could be some kind of indication that a person's view is performative and they're in fact hypocrites who aren't serious about it—or it can indicate that they've actually thought this through and came to a reasonable position, or that they simply took the right class or two in college so they know to look out for these kinds of dynamics (where individual action does so little it's basically pointless self-sacrifice, but collective action with the exact same personal cost can be very effective).

They may believe in Unionism at large, for others to observe, like a parent steering their child from drugs, but they may see unions as antithetical to their own business. Lots of elite progressives are like this. Down with cops, defund the police, but then turn around and hire private security -see the mayor of Chicago, for example.

Probably next to none.

FOX News is the most successful news network in the US.

It's very much in the mainstream.

Tallest dwarf.

> between the final quarters of 2014 and 2020, paid subscribers to The New York Times’ digital only news product increased from 910 thousand to over five million.

Sympathy / Support strikes by neighboring unions are not legal for example. This was what allowed unions to prevail at McDonalds in Denmark.

Yes, flipping burgers at McD is a union job Denmark. The BigMac index of Denmark is 4.4, compared to 5.67 in America.

I don't understand why union members just don't break the law and strike anyway.

A lot of the protests during the Civil Rights struggle in America were illegal (and were met with lethal force, dogs, firehoses, etc..) yet the people still protested... and prevailed.

[1] https://libraries.uta.edu/news-events/blog/1981-patco-strike

Unions themselves and the reality that so much work is no longer well suited to unionization are responsible for the decline.

Unions served a purpose and in somce cases still should but their long history of corruption and their own oppressive tendencies are what drive people away from them. Nevermind that few people want to pay for the priviledge of having less say about, and in most cases less power over, their own futures and employment.

The only place unions thrive are in the public sector whoch itself is an obscene abuse.

>That's why American unions and union activity have been almost completely squashed in the US for decades now.

But the public favourability hasn't declined (at-least as per this poll)

https://news.gallup.com/poll/241679/labor-union-approval-ste...

I'm confused by this. There are many notable large workgroups in the US with powerful unions. Police, for example. Pilots, Teachers, etc.

So yes historically unions have been a mixed bag, but it is worth considering how much of the negative aspects of unions were created through changes to laws that ultimately destroyed unions (in the USA).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft%E2%80%93Hartley_Act

Is this an established trend? How might I go about observing this?

> I've seen good unions and I've seen bad ones, I don't know which this is yet.

I've seen good FUD and bad FUD. I don't know which one this is yet.

A lot of the "bad" reputation with private sector unions likely originated with the corruption associated with the pension funds investing in shady deals. And we all have horror stories about bad teachers protected by the union or "lazy" workers.

But, without unions the employer has a near-monopoly on the power in the relationship. I think it's generally an improvement to have two sources of power competing with each other - even if both are imperfect - instead of one source of power that's unilateral and unchecked.

It's an American thing because of lax labour laws missing protections from being fired and missing social security.

The company wants to close an unprofitable branch? The union prevents it, because the workers will fall into a hole when their job gets taken away.

Currently in Germany Nordex is closing down a plant and the union is demanding that the plant is sold faster, so there will be new jobs for the workers.

I don't know how to get that. So, I'm more likely to support unions. But I fear it moves further from the better answer.

How about corporations damaging unions?

> The common portrayal of unions as good and corporations as evil is over simplistic and often backwards

One has the workers who created the wealth keep the wealth they created, the other expropriates surplus labor time from workers, sending it off to the idle class heirs who inherited shares in the corporation.

But yes, they can go awry quickly enough.

But even if they screw it up, and even if they are dissolved, they may very well have succeeded in moving the needle on a bunch of critical things.

It'd be great to see them take on Walmart.

One thing tho: according to many comments in this thread, unions are obviously and without any doubt bad. I wonder why so much money goes to union busting agencies then

There’s also a Moloch problem here, in that social-media-berating the latest baddie into better behavior, as we did with Walmart 10 years ago, doesn’t solve the problem scalably. We need laws or regulations that ensure a minimum level of decency in a job.

For instance, during my stint, mandatory 11-hour extra days could be added to your schedule up to just 18 hours before the surprise shift, which, if you missed it, would get you fired. I lifted 6 tons of boxes a day with my bare hands at Amazon’s flagship warehouse, BFI4. No one had to pee in bottles, but the work was in other ways inhumane at times.

Full details at https://peaksalvation.com, or the Peak Salvation podcast.

I’m not sure classic unions are _the_ solution, though. Many unions seem to bind worker protections to non-meritocratic compensation, which can kill motivation. At least it did in BFI4, in very obvious ways. But more basic protections are needed.

But where there are 'new games', with no historical labour power, they are often desperately needed.

Amazon, Walmart and the entire 'gig economy', fast food / service workers need unions.

In 20 years, when regulatory issues have caught up around the 'gig economy' they may be less needed.

A lot of the food / service economy issues could be resolved just with a good minimum wage and some basic regulations around scheduling, healthcare etc. but the US isn't there yet. So 'unions'.

What if they moved towards a more incentive based system. Workers who do 60% efficiency targets get minimum wage. 70% gets minimum wage + $X.YY and hour. 100% gets typical wage rate.

Adjust hourly wages up and down for the next day, based on the previous days productivity. Then nobody has to get fired for only being at 96% productivity that day.

Perhaps the increased job security would offset the somewhat dystopian productivity tracking this would result in. Workers might prefer to work a day at 85% wages to get back up to 100%, than to be fired?

Though, I suspect treating their workers better and giving them more benefits, security, and humanity would be about cost neutral compared to their intense current system of treating workers like cogs. You can only squeeze someone for so long.

Often at Amazon you have the "Frugality" principal taking the wheel for short term savings, even with long term massive costs. They're notoriously cheap, think like no free coffee cheap.

One of Jeff's guiding principals that he infused the company with, is that workers are lazy and will take advantage of any moment to not be productive if you let them. If you're nice to your workforce they'll take advantage of your kindness to do nothing. This happens on the corporate side too with all the PIP stuff.

In the long term I don't think this is going to work at all, either they need to change their policy and attitude or literally no-one will work there given the choice lol. (This is more on the SWE/Corporate side and less on the warehouse side, often Amazon is the only/best game in town on the warehouse side which makes things more tricky.)

E.g. At their current attrition rate they will run out of workers in the whole country in a couple of years assuming they keep it up.

The guy sounds like a total jerk.

Zuckerberg seems like a complete jerk too.

Bill Gates was reportedly a real jerk while at Microsoft too.

Steve Jobs was supposedly a huge asshole.

What is it about assholes running the world? Do nice guys really finish last? How many truly nice people ever make it very far in business (not to mention politics)? Do you really have to walk over a mountain of other people's backs to make it to the top?

Couple this with the well documented negative bias of the news, and it's not surprising that most corporate public figures have bleak reputations.

Note that I'm not actually defending these men. I'm simply pointing out that there are some structural reasons for the strong negative perceptions of these executives.

I know this is extremely simplistic and insufficient as a complete explanation, but I truly think it's a major component.

Of course many do genuinely just want that $400 million yacht and won't get there unless they make a few billion first.

They understand how to exploit the existing system for profit and power (which in some cases are synonymous).

> Do nice guys really finish last? How many truly nice people ever make it very far in business (not to mention politics)? Do you really have to walk over a mountain of other people's backs to make it to the top?

Consider your perspective if you’re unhappy coming in last in the same competition where these folks succeed. If these people are “winning”, do you really want to win?

On a personal level everyone here (outside of Steve Jobs lol) might be great. I remember when Jeff left senior people who knew him from Amazon seemed genuinely upset, and also left. Tons of photos of people having a good time, drinking and hanging out etc. For all of Zuck's problems he seems more awkward than actively malicious, and lots of his worst quotes come from when he was much younger and immature. So on a personal basis I don't think it's required to be an asshole in order to be successful at this level.

From a leadership perspective someone who is "nice" to the point of being a doormat isn't going to last long in any leadership position. Needing to reach a consensus on every decision or defaulting to the decision that causes the least amount of short term pain just means you're not going to be a leader for very long.

Businesses are dictatorships at the end of the day, and they're constantly in a state of conflict. I think at a CEO level you're going to end up with people who are at the very least willing to be disagreeable, because you need to put your foot down and tell everyone no at some point. "nice" CEOs probably get filtered out b/c they're unwilling to do things like layoff people.

I don't think nice guys finish last per se, because this level of wealth comes with it's own problems. (e.g. How many of these dudes have been divorced...)

Politics are a whole different animal, I'd argue it's much more zero sum than business. Only so many seats after all.

There are plenty of other mountains to climb.

It's just not very sexy to write articles about people who run a 10 person plumbing company and treat everyone fairly. There are millions of those types of mountains people have been climbing for a long time.

> Do nice guys really finish last?

Generally, yes.

civilization is advanced largely through the discoveries of scientists and inventors, not by businessmen, who are like the pack animals that provide motive force to implement these advances.

it can be depressing to see the competitive Bronze Age genes at work ruining everything, but given the way humans are wired, we won't escape this cycle of aggression very easily.

if all of society were peaceful cooperative scientists they would be easily murdered by the first vikings to happen along. how can we pacify the global human population (and I dont mean subjugate)?

its a riddle. greed is not good, but without greed how can we fill the vacuum created by everyone having enough? how intelligent does everyone have to be, on average, for people to get up in the morning and create things instead of playing video games?

I am not pretending to rigorously outline these issues, but I feel strongly that humanity needs to take charge of its evolution soon, and also find a away to reach detente between competing AI systems - I fear that AI favors scale so much that anyone who falls behind in marshaling the most complex AI will be at a permanent disadvantage and this will create an incentive to preemptive war.

I wanna see what happens when they cross this threshold. I don't think any company in modern US history has had to deal with this scenario?

I suspect they know this and are running out the clock before they are forced to raise wages to compensate. Essentially squeeze as much margin as they can now until they are force to dispense a few more crumbs.

Its insane how crazy they are getting with the recruiters. I am a loser who spends too much time on HN. A terrible mediocre dev with no really outstanding roles, yet these people are now finding my internal company email and reaching out. They somehow found my private phone number and are texting me. Who knows what will happen next? Maybe they will knock on my window in the dead of night lol.

> The recruiter who contacted me last week (John Doe, jdoe [not the actual name, obviously]) said he would do that, and that is clearly not the case. I'm finding these persistent emails rather obnoxious.

It's now been almost 3 months, and I'm very glad for the reduced spam.

How many times can that happen before we end up in a situation where there's no work capable of being done lol.

Some times I think the biggest villain of the Twentieth Century (ok, 19th-20th) was actually Fredrick Winslow Taylor.

I was working with a senior engineer who was shocked we had one of those big machines when we came in to the office.

Other warehouses have higher wages, better hours, many are unionized, etc.