Slavery, Amazon Version

I can’t wait for their Healthcare Solution!!

That should be fun!!

Nurses will get paid $10/hr. — a fortune and certainly plenty enough to pay back all those student loans because the requirements to become a nurse are more rigorous & onerous year over year and thus far more expensive.

Amazon Drones will deliver hearts & kidneys & lungs & pancreases & livers & prostate glands & fertilized embryos & limbs & insulin & chemo drugs directly to your door without ever having to see a doctor in person.

Woo Hoo!!

What a Grand Future it will be with Tesla & Google & Amazon & Twitter & Facebook leading the way to that Eternal Bliss just ahead.

Twenty years from now these STUPID F*CKING Conservatives are going to beg for illegal immigration but it will be too late. The Wall allegedly designed to keep the dirty brown ones out was intended to keep the fat & lazy Meat Sacks in so they can ultimately work off all the decades of disease-inducing lethargy & apathy.

We’ve been groomed since kindergarden to become wage slaves; it’s part of public education.
Oh? You thought public education was to educate you? Silly goose; NO! Anything but!
Your universities are just a very slightly more advanced more of the same. With few exceptions (some private universities being an exception) it’s just more of the same old shit.
The government does not want an “educated” population; they’re far too troublesome.
The success of that system should be obvious in today’s, apathetic population, laying down in front of a repressive government bent on forever war, ahead of a compliant citizenry.
You bought it; you paid for it; you now live with it.

The purpose of public schooling was originally a project by the prussians to produce obedient factory workers and soldiers for the military. There was a time when the germanic people would refuse to die on command and despised the voluntary slavery of a corporate job. From there it was brought to the US to produce an obedient workforce.

I know this, yet have no solutions. The decade of imprisonment during which I should have learned the skills to make an independent person have left me unable to survive outside the structures provided for me. Even in the military, I was provided food, shelter etc. So things might get worse, but I am still incredibly rich as long as hot water comes from the shower and the stores sell me food. As long as that is true, I won’t grab a book and live under the moonlit sky, cradling a rifle.

And I am a young man, military trained, not rich. Women, the fat, the unhealthy, the purely urban who can not even plant a tent would have even less willingness to do it. The only threat the workforce can make is to mess with profits. The state can kill almost everyone in a city by cutting supply chains, and an attempted revolution certainly would cut supplies to cities. You would see cannibalism in less than three weeks, and people would welcome right wing Safety Squads to make sure their city won’t be destroyed.

The french, the russians etc. could have a revolution because they produced their own food, and had communities of mutual obligation and support.

tony
February 2, 2018

You are correct:
The purpose of public schooling was originally a project by the prussians to produce obedient factory workers and soldiers for the military. There was a time when the germanic people would refuse to die on command and despised the voluntary slavery of a corporate job. From there it was brought to the US to produce an obedient workforce.
Have you read The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto? I think maybe you have.

So, are you really that helpless? Knowing what you do, I find that hard to believe.
I rebelled from an early age; never accepted their bullshit. I paid a heavy price; but worth every bit of it.
I got out, late in life, but I got out. The world is far more than we’re led to believe; time to take the jump…

I can imagine it must be a bitch for those with OAB and IBS who would need to take more frequent bathroom breaks.
…as well as those who are hypoglycemic needing to take frequent snack breaks.

So long as these workers can take off their shock collars after work and earn $13/hr calling this slavery is a bit of commie hyperbole.

A commie like Putin? He’s a commie, isn’t he? Just as a pedophile is always a pedophile, a commie is always a commie, right?

I’ve worked in digital sweatshops. Even if you are at the top of productivity, there’s no guarantee of job security.

The mob rules everything, but the problem is that the mob is made of sheep. It’s only when it appears to be safe to run in a particular direction, usually with many others, do the sheep figure there’s safety in numbers against getting picked off by wolves (or their surrogates the shepherd dogs). Yet theoretically any three sheep could disable a shepherd dog, probably any two an unarmed shepherd. I’m not sure if continuously shaming the sheep will change their thinking. But there may be other ways.

Well, it can now be seen that the FBI and the DOJ were Gruber-fied during the Obama years.

Who will be angry at whom?

RC

You would then be surprised at the number of ex-special operations and regular military vets amongst the leftists and progressives. Not to mention that numbers of the non-military from those orientations are buying assault rifles and other weapons and learning how to use them. There are also leftist oriented mixed martial arts businesses providing free training in such fighting techniques for the cause.

Historically leftists have not been lacking in commitment nor the willingness to use violence any more than rightists. Expect no less today when the time comes.

@ Name Withheld

Gee, nobody’s gotten mad enough to do anything yet.

Maybe they can’t leave their safe spaces until they can all find their Pussy Hats?

Nobody in history ever had to deal with this surveillance state and its weapon capabilities.

Standing up to today’s behemoth would take incredible courage.

My experience is that those on the left are afraid to even discuss revolution as a hypothetical or scholarly discussion. People who are afraid to talk about their freedom don’t deserve to have any, IMO.

“Revolution is the only sane response to the extension of such technologies. “

True, however, revolution in US? Not likely.

Even the ‘amazon camper force’ (mainly retirees) are GRATEFUL to have that job for a few months.

The problems are ‘mainly’ the baby boomers, from the low end to the mid and the higher ends. They are behaving like a very spoiled child. Spoiled with a generous society that for the most part provided them with safety and prosperity. Looking thru the lens of their grand parents and parents generations of the 1910s, 20s and the 1930s, 40s. The boomers came along after their G. parents suffered thru the previous generation of robber barons and then their wars. By then, life and society had settled down. The economy was booming, the family and the home was there with dad working and mom looking after boomers. The public school was functioning, the partying, drugs, music was aplenty. College was affordable and readily available and much more.

Perhaps the “only” bright moment could be considered the Vietnam war demonstrations. And that was simply due to their understanding of serving in a loosing war, they are likely to come back in body bags. After that, they had their jobs, careers, the house, dogs, two cars, etc.. and now, they are retiring to their motorhomes (those who can afford it) and traveling and enjoying their pensions, 401k, etc..

Generally, They have no interest to change anything! Regardless of their worth status. They are the ones who neglected to do their bidding to keep their government in check (excepting folks like Nader, etc, and Nader is shunned by most of them!). Just showing up at the booth and voting mindlessly will not do.

not much will change while they are around. The next generation who ,to some extend had been living with parents or of parents, have no motivation. Hell will likely freeze before there is any prospect of revolution in US. It is sad, as there are a whole lot more of us than the less of 1%. no need for guns if folks were willing to wake up from their slumber of acid trips and highs..

btw, some of those necons and the establishments too would be part of these boomers. They too, are not willing to change despite continued failed FP practices that are very damaging to the empire. Perhaps, dollar failure or financial bust for the country, ‘may’ wake up folks. Such is life and deaf of societies, not the first, nor the last one.. if you can figure out how to get thru average folk, then change will be fairly easy to follow.

@ Rd

Not sure what you expect the crippled old Boomers to do at this point.

Regardless, why wouldn’t you look to the young, who will be the only ones who will be here to experience the future, to be doing more to fight for that future?

Hey, maybe the women can fight this one . . .

I don’t like … or agree with … the generational blame game. First of all, it is not like all people from a generation act in concert, but this sort of bs lays it on every one of them. And beyond that, it further divides us, and muddies up the true battle lines: the one between the economic classes, the one between the extremely rich that control way too much, including our freedom, and the rest of us. That’s where the schism is at, not between entire generations.

Z

@ Z

I don’t like it either, but the truth is the Boomer generation allowed this situation to develop.

My generation.

It’s never the “entire” anything lol.

Well, if it’s not an “entire” thing, then why entirely group them all together?

Z

“I don’t like it either, but the truth is the Boomer generation allowed this situation to develop.
My generation.”

yes, that was the premise of the argument. If this is to be the government of the people, by the people, for the people, the boomers, left for good and the government became hi-jacked. Yes, ultimately, it is a class war fare. However, this generation had all the comforts of the society in general. They did not suffer like those in the early 20th, no comparison. So it seems, they in “general” behaved as the “spoiled” child and did not take the responsibility to “govern” regardless of being heart bleeding this or that.

And yes it is a good portion of them. They have been and continue to be a significant portion of the society, culturally, economically and politically. 70% of the disposable income is in the hands of the boomers. And yes, some of them will suffer thru the loss of SS and medicare. There is already the Amazon Camper Force. Look ’em up. there will be more of them.

Those are the behaviors associated to a spoiled child who has no compass. They have no reason to see things differently. Regardless of being demo, or republican, atheist v religious, poor or rich. They had all the comfort of the society, unlike what many people experience in most other parts of this world. By comfort, I don’t mean wealth. They had a society that had some level of checks and balances. It had the freedom, privacy, some of level guarantee for personal property , etc….

As an immigrant of some 40 yrs, I’ve seen this song and dance before, when the barons and the establishment goes rogue, there will be suffering. However, change will only come thru, when there is awareness. That simply, is not just lacking, it is non-existing, for a great majority here. This is not an issue of guns as some presume. If there was a mass movement, thing could change here literally, over night.

How do you change the behavior, or perspective of an spoiled child? They have no reason to do so. Thats why, not much will change here, except, there will be more poor. Some 50% make less than 27k/yr, while some 48% feel the economy is doing good. In 5 yrs, there will be more of the 50% and less of the 48%, not much will change. Perhaps some more violence and more of the extremists here and there. There is still way too much comfort here for most.

The failure of the occupy movement in GENERAL is one example. Neither the left over boomers, nor their off-springs felt the need to endanger their status quo. So no resistance. It folded when the party became stale.

Such are the stories of human societies past and present. how do you get the masses to wake up? when there is pain and suffering, they’ll pay attention. Seems like we have yet to leave the caveman’s mentality.

Seems like we have yet to leave the caveman’s mentality.

and the establishment knows that, so they will always exploit it to the hilt. or when the rope, guillotine or accountability shows up.

Hell isn’t when they track you, Hell is when paying to track you do bring in enough payment. This is happening soon – but not soon enough.

should read: slightly off from 2016’s 176,000
and
compared to 2016’s 192,000
I was juggling a cat who wanted to sit on the keyboard while writing the original comment.

Mongo
February 2, 2018

English:
Left, left, left, left!
The drums are beating!
Left, left, left, left!
The working class is marching!
We’re not concerned with your party allegiance.
Only that your honestly in the fight.
Against injustice and reaction!
We are united by poverty and hunger,
By our fallen in the fight against the enemy.
And by our songs of revolution!

Red Wedding, greets you comrades,
Be ready with your fists!
Keep the red ranks close together,
Our day will come soon.
Fighting as Socialists
United to the end.
Brothers of labor, communists.
Red Front! Red Front!

It would’ve been nice to post it in English, all of it.
Interesting and no appology necessary.
I doubt the U.S. is ready for that; but then; Usian’s aren’t ready for anything that tout’s action over words.
By all means, go for it. I certainly wouldn’t object.

@ Z

“Well, if it’s not an “entire” thing, then why entirely group them all together?”

Appropriate deference to the shortness of life lol?

I respect you, so not looking for a fight here, but that was kind of a rhetorical trick question.

Grouping for better efficiency is necessary, and OK as long as it is used honestly, which I think I did.

The Boomers did some good things on the sexual and political awareness fronts, but the vast majority of us went to sleep after Kent State and Nixon.

That set the stage for the following generations to stay asleep as applied to any concepts higher than identity politics.

I predicted fascism in America in 1975, so I’ve been pushing back against the tide since the 80’s, but many friends won’t even discuss anything serious with me anymore.

Looks like somebody won, and it isn’t decent regular folks. But we all played our parts in the tragedy.

Yeah. Only commies actually get dressed up just to go shop at a bunch of little loser businesses anymore. In a proper capitalism apex corporations get to say: “Look at all the empty streets and vacant storefronts. We’re the only job creators now. We win!”

@rc, I have quote for you from Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. The whole chapter is worth reading, but the below part treats of revolution. The modern left is like a clown-world parody of what he’s criticizing here …

In case the point is not clear, an historic example may illustrate it. The French Revolution was really an heroic and decisive thing, because the Jacobins willed something definite and limited. They desired the freedoms of democracy, but also all the vetoes of democracy. They wished to have votes and not to have titles. Republicanism had an ascetic side in Franklin or Robespierre as well as an expansive side in Danton or Wilkes. Therefore they have created something with a solid substance and shape, the square social equality and peasant wealth of France. But since then the revolutionary or speculative mind of Europe has been weakened by shrinking from any proposal because of the limits of that proposal. Liberalism has been degraded into liberality. Men have tried to turn “revolutionise” from a transitive to an intransitive verb. The Jacobin could tell you not only the system he would rebel against, but (what was more important) the system he would not rebel against, the system he would trust. But the new rebel is a Sceptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then he writes another book (about the sex problem) in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie, and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie. He calls a flag a bauble, and then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble. The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite sceptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.

@Hugh,

Thanks for posting your deconstruction of the employment reports here. I find it hard to make sense of these things in light of the media cheerleading, and appreciate that you continue to cast a critical eye upon it.

Ann, thank you. Most of the economic analysis I see is so off that it reminds me of the Upton Sinclair quote that “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” It’s not just sloppy and lazy. Or lots and lots of magical thinking. Or cynical to the nth degree. It’s all of the above.

The only avenue for the American people to substantially gain more control of their economic destiny is to gain control of the money supply creation aka the Federal Reserve. The stock market is a rigged for the rich looting mechanism. It is our ruler’s self-driven vehicle to maintain and expand their power over us. It is our enemy.

Z

That fuel line has to be broken.

Z

” The bed you make for Amazon workers is the bed you lie in when you work at Amazon.”

Let those who buy from Amazon end up working there, as they deserve.

Let the rest of us buy from the not-Amazons of our choice, in hopes of keeping them alive.

@V. Arnold,

I assume by “stop being a consumer altogether”, you mean “stop being a consumer” in a relative sense. Because if you mean it at an absolutist level, then your comment is saying that to attain personal empowerment, you need to stop eating (consuming) food , stop drinking ( consuming) water, and stop breathing ( consuming) air until you die.

Are you sure that is really what you meant to say? Because “stop being a consumer” very specifically means ” stop consuming food, stop consuming water, and stop consuming air . . . until you die”. But that would leave you very dead, not very empowered.

Please note that I am being dead serious and not the least bit funny at all. And in that spirit, I hope you will clarify what you actually mean for me to stop being or doing in order to gain personal empowerment. And then the discussion can move forward on specific WAYS to stop being one thing and start being another. But that can’t happen till the meaning of “stop being a consumer” is clarified with extreme and total precision.

^ sufficiency

Climate disruptions to agricultural production have increased in the past 40 years and are projected to increase over the next 25 years. By mid-century and beyond, these impacts will be increasingly negative on most crops and livestock.

Many agricultural regions will experience declines in crop and livestock production from increased stress due to weeds, diseases, insect pests, and other climate change induced stresses.

Current loss and degradation of critical agricultural soil and water assets due to increasing extremes in precipitation will continue to challenge both rainfed and irrigated agriculture unless innovative conservation methods are implemented.

The rising incidence of weather extremes will have increasingly negative impacts on crop and livestock productivity because critical thresholds are already being exceeded.

Agriculture has been able to adapt to recent changes in climate; however, increased innovation will be needed to ensure the rate of adaptation of agriculture and the associated socioeconomic system can keep pace with climate change over the next 25 years.

Climate change effects on agriculture will have consequences for food security, both in the U.S. and globally, through changes in crop yields and food prices and effects on food processing, storage, transportation, and retailing. Adaptation measures can help delay and reduce some of these impacts.

if there’s a working class revolution any time soon, you can bet it won’t start here, but will be some sort of concerted (if not planned) global one. but in addition to this diary plus the hilarious tweets i’d stuck in comments, ‘‘Apple and Amazon in talks to set up in Saudi Arabia’ is everywhere, plus the WSJ had reported that microsoft an google are as well. yanno, w/ our ‘partners in peace-bombing yemen back to the stone age, etc….

‘everything i needed to know about Amazon’s dark arts i learned from the wsws’, cafe-babylon, although this pre-dated the wristwatches.

http://bit.ly/2nFkgd9

Yep, Amazon is a creature of Wall Street. In a sane economy it would never have been able to get the capital and leverage it needed to get to its current size, and hence it leverage over American labor.

This Whole Foods situation is going to blow up in Bezos’ face though. This will be their first high profile f’up. Take some shine off his shit.

Z

Would reminding people of these glaring contradictions, in a single list for all to see, be of any use?

I think people don’t revolt because their (not mine) cost-benefit analysis doesn’t point them that way. Do we need to be better at persuading them that it’s in their own best interest to overcome PTB cult and culture manipulations? Do we need to be better at persuading them that bread and circuses as carrot, police brutality as stick, controlled by an unelected few, isn’t the “American Way”?

@WD

The sign outside the commie version of Amazon would be We Gurantee Late Delivery. Now that Bezos is approaching owning everything he may realize he has a real asset in his 500,000 employees.

He could easily turn these robot directed slaves into a well regulated counter-revolutionary milita force. Most of the military people he hires are high payed management so he already has an officer/NCO corps. The grunts are young, healthy and already used to complaining about their military commanders who drive them to perform their jobs with a regimented military precision.

The Bezos’ brigades would flow out of their warehouse armories to round up, package and ship the pinkos and poputchiks and deliver them to Jade Helm camps.

Joe McCarthy was a drunk and nuts but he wasn’t wrong about the commies in government. There were thousands of card carring party members in FDR’s administrations. Their assignment was to make certain that the Depression became worse even with all the uncontutional mandates spending of the New Deal.

Even though much of the New Deal looked like the communist manefesto many observers of FDR didn’t think he was bright enough to be an actiual commie but he said and did many things to show his support for their cause.

@V. Arnold,

Thank you for the clarification. Your comment plus clarification make more sense now.

Someone on a Naked Capitalism thread noted that people in his/hers area are referring to their Whole Foods as AssWhole Foods now. Perhaps one could expand that further into AssWhole Bezos Foods.

Since Whole Foods only ever set up stores in places where a market was already proven to exist thanks to the hard work of others, perhaps disenchanted customers can switch to other decent food stores in their area fast enough and hard enough to crash and bankrupt AssWhole Bezos Foods and force it into liquidation. Then the captive workers at AssWhole Bezos Foods can break free and follow their customers to the other fast-growing no-Bezos stores and get work there.

And perhaps the community can organize an extended extermicott in place and ready to go against any and every future Beznos which Amazon puts into those buildings.

@Hugh

You are confusing NASA’s work observing and reporting what is happening today on earth with what their quasi-religous propaganda division is predicting based on models that have been shown to be inaccurate alarmist hot-air time and again.

Agriculture is thriving partly because of more CO2 and mild warming and just as the neo-Maltusians were wrong a few decades ago the CAGW alarmists can’t stop the bumper grain crops that continue to be produced. The Russians are having trouble moving their huge grain harvest to market but they had no trouble producing it.

I read an Ag stat that negated the idea I had about more farm land being needed to feed the peak world population. US corn farmers produce five times the yields they did 100 years ago and they do it on less land than was farmed at that time. This is true worldwide where steady yield increases reduces the need for more farmland.

We still have a Corps of Engineers and all the remediation and preparedness programs, national and local, to adapt to the real challenges of the future. Trump is having a sea-wall built at his Ireland golf course to protect it from slow steady SLR so he knows what remedies are needed to protect the US coastline.

Forcing our energy industry and consumers to adopt unconstitutional foreign mandated, by an unelected body, energy policy is unwise as is letting this group redistribute our wealth. That madness was rejected and even the Clintonites are avoiding talking about GW.

Just to underline my last point. Amazon has a market cap of 689 billion dollars and a price to earnings ratio of 231.92. In no world with even the remotest tether to reality do either of those numbers make any sense.

I wish that old crowd was here. There is a creaky air, and anchor stores are leading the way.

Most of the posters here know that anythings Peter posts is just a buncha BM. For anyone who thinks his Amazon bj has a point, just Google

amazon site:nakedcapitalism.com

to get the real scoop.

@ Blizzard

One of my oldest and best buddies died last October. We lived 2 houses apart from each other since we were 8 years old.

I always give him major credit for the way I developed my intellectual side. Even as young as 9 or 10, his constant refrain was, “Don’t you have your own mind?”

My own mind is good enough to look at the freshest data, and do a pretty damn good job of discerning and differentiating the truth from the falsity. I think a lot of other people could be at the same level of analysis, if they would just use their own mind, instead of relying on someone else’s mind and words which may or may not still be as brilliant today as when they were originally uttered.

Of course, none of this is intended to reflect on you at all, just general observations about the world and humanity.

@different clue
Not food but all sorts of other stuff, shoes to polytunnels, we try to shop local but if they don’t have what you want… ?

It is all those millions of customers who put the beer in the beer can. Let them stop putting beer in Bezos’s beer can by stopping from buying anything at Amazon. If they don’t do that, then let them be the people who lose their jobs to Amazon’s “bonfire of the bricks and mortar”. Let them have no other choice left in life but to work at Amazon, as they deserve.

Since THEY OWN EVERYTHING these days, not just Amazon, your Boycott Activism is Dead on Arrival. You will boycott yourself to death since they ultimately OWn what you need to survive in this System. The key is to remove THEM from ownership and to “Own” and “Manage” it OURSELVES.

@TheStephenMillerBand,

Well . . . . that certainly is a theory. I continue to have my theory. If I buy something for “more” at Floyd’s House of Hardware instead of for “less” on Amazon, I am doing my part to keep Floyd’s House of Hardware alive in the teeth of Amazon’s effort to exterminate Floyd’s House of Hardware through predatory underpricing. Since Floyd’s House of Hardware neither owns me nor wants to own me the way Amazon does or wants to, I feel no need to own Floyd’s House of Hardware. Floyd knows hardware and Floyd knows retail service bussiness, and I don’t know either one. So it is in my interest to keep Floyd in bussiness to keep serving my needs and to keep Amazon from ruling the world.

That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it.

@johnm33,

I see the problem. Amazon may already be the sole source of supply for some things. But not yet for all things. I don’t know about mail order shoes in detail, though I remember when LL Bean used to sell mail order shoes. You drew an outline of your feet and mailed it in, and they sold you the pair of shoes in the size indicated by your drawn foot outlines. If that still happens, that is one source.

About polytunnels, here off the top of my head is a no-Bezos source for polytunnels. I will offer the link.
http://www.johnnyseeds.com/tools-supplies/greenhouse-and-tunnel-supplies/
There may be other seed companies who will also sell you polytunnels and polytunnel systems.

Here is another place which I suspect will offer polytunnels.
http://www.growersupply.com/
It has lots of searchable sub-categories, at least one of which should offer polytunnels.

These people may well charge more for polytunnels than Amazon will. But that is because they have to live off of earnings in the form of viable survival profits. Whereas Amazon receives the Deep Pockets backing of the Wall Street financiers and their bundled investors both large and small who are all subsidizing Amazon’s below-profit and maybe even below-cost predatory pricing in hopes of sharing Amazon’s future profits in the future when Amazon gets Johnny’s Selected Seeds and Growers Supply well and truly exterminated.

If you buy from Amazon because of lower price and/or greater convenience of one-stop digital shopping, you are sharpening the ax for your own neck in the long run. If you decide to see it that way, then I suspect you will accept the greater tax on your time and the higher prices for no-Bezos items as part of the price of survival.

Costco is the Anti-Amazon. They were started by old Labor activists to beat the Corporate sector at its own game. They have FIXED profit margins of about 15% on all their products. Their employees all claim its the best job they’ve ever had, not just because the pay is good but because they’re treated decently, they get good benefits and a pension. There truck drivers are Teamsters. You have to physically go to the local store and load your own stuff but they have a pharmacy, optometrist, hearing aid center, tire store and some of them even sell gas. In most states, you can use the pharmacy without being a member and when I was paying for my own meds, this was a BIG savings(like a third of what I would have paid elsewhere). Its like $60 a year for a standard membership because it’s a wholesale “cash & carry” kind of deal but if you live in any kind of multi-person arrangement, its cheap at the price. And you get better stuff, as they just don’t carry a lot of eye-wash crap like the regular big box stores. The food’s all up to food service quality. The Kirkland store brand merchandise is all first rate. Short of forming your own local buying co-op, shopping at Costco is about the most revolutionary thing you can do on the consumer front.

Technology companies like Amazon file a huge number of patents each year. It just makes sense for them to do so, because they have patent lawyers on permanent retainer. Even if the application is rejected, this is a net positive for the filer because this means no other competing firms can file for the same idea either. In the event that a patent application is accepted, most of them are never implemented in any meaningful way by the filer – especially in the case of technology companies.

The optics of this story do conjure up the bleak possibilities my mind tends to drift towards, however after doing a very minimal amount of reading on these patents, I don’t think there’s much merit to that assessment in this case.

These patents don’t appear to have anything to do with “nudging” workers as you described, Mr. Welsh. One patent describes a bracelet which can be tracked on a 2d plane to assess the accuracy of their employees’ hand movements – presumably to use the data to improve workflows and operational procedures. The other patent describes a way to trigger haptic feedback via RFID signals. In summation these patents appear to be nothing more than a high-tech beeper, worn on the wrist, which can be used to notify an employee when they make a mistake, in a much less invasive manner than today’s of computer screens and bulky scanning devices. If I had to work a warehouse stocking job like this, I’d want my hands free and my eyes not staring at computer screens. This makes sense.

There’s no language used suggesting Amazon wants to use these patents to, for example, shock workers out of momentary daydreaming or lulls in productivity. This seems to be about preventing errors – some of which could result in dangerous/fatal consequences for other workers in the facility – via both real-time and long-term analysis.

When you’re too careless to read the patents themselves and to get the facts straight, it lessens the impact and usefulness of your core arguments. These are not technicalities I am pointing out, but substantive differences between your assessment and the facts. I’m all about calling out Amazon whenever they engage in unethical workforce practices – but only when the facts substantiate the claims.