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sociopolitical meh
Mar. 5th, 2012 11:45 pmConditions suck for workers in Amazon warehouses (and other online retailers). Link to a Mother Jones article, 2012 March/April issue.
Sooo... I feel feelings about this, and I'm going to take advantage of being in my own journal to be incoherent about them.
1) Those conditions undeniably suck, man. Ugh.
2) But does that affect my patronage of Amazon? I'm pretty sure agricultural work sucks and I still eat vegetables.
3) If I go to a physical store to "buy local", I suspect the things on their shelves showed up in some kind of box and someone still had to put them in there, unless I'm at like a local artisans' cooperative or something. But you can't buy everything at a local artisans' cooperative, or at least, I would find it awfully limiting to try.
4) Plus I hate "buying local", you never have any idea if a physical store is actually going to have the things you're looking for, and now you're running around burning time and gas (and in my present case, limited mobility) with no guarantee of success.
5) I would kind of like to be part of a society that is accelerating as fast as possible towards things not sucking so much for people. I mean, as grand goals for humanity go, trying to get as many people as much dignity and bodily comfort as possible seems like an appealing one. I guess this makes me a crazy socialist. But, like, hey, we've got all this prosperity, we could *do* this!
6) Except I'm skeptical about the efficacy and legitimacy of regulatory solutions. For one thing, leaving aside whether the government should be empowered to make you put anti-static mats in your warehouse, the industry might be changing quickly enough that by the time some sort of rule can be formulated, it's obsolete, or codifies something that isn't the best practice any more for the new situation.
7) I would love to be able to tip my Amazon box packer. Like, "ding! the order you just fulfilled comes with this little bonus!". Not that I think that would solve the underlying problem, it would just be a nice gesture and maybe give someone a brief moment of something not-awful happening. Although I suppose they'd just lower average wages to compensate if it caught on.
8) So... meh.
Sooo... I feel feelings about this, and I'm going to take advantage of being in my own journal to be incoherent about them.
1) Those conditions undeniably suck, man. Ugh.
2) But does that affect my patronage of Amazon? I'm pretty sure agricultural work sucks and I still eat vegetables.
3) If I go to a physical store to "buy local", I suspect the things on their shelves showed up in some kind of box and someone still had to put them in there, unless I'm at like a local artisans' cooperative or something. But you can't buy everything at a local artisans' cooperative, or at least, I would find it awfully limiting to try.
4) Plus I hate "buying local", you never have any idea if a physical store is actually going to have the things you're looking for, and now you're running around burning time and gas (and in my present case, limited mobility) with no guarantee of success.
5) I would kind of like to be part of a society that is accelerating as fast as possible towards things not sucking so much for people. I mean, as grand goals for humanity go, trying to get as many people as much dignity and bodily comfort as possible seems like an appealing one. I guess this makes me a crazy socialist. But, like, hey, we've got all this prosperity, we could *do* this!
6) Except I'm skeptical about the efficacy and legitimacy of regulatory solutions. For one thing, leaving aside whether the government should be empowered to make you put anti-static mats in your warehouse, the industry might be changing quickly enough that by the time some sort of rule can be formulated, it's obsolete, or codifies something that isn't the best practice any more for the new situation.
7) I would love to be able to tip my Amazon box packer. Like, "ding! the order you just fulfilled comes with this little bonus!". Not that I think that would solve the underlying problem, it would just be a nice gesture and maybe give someone a brief moment of something not-awful happening. Although I suppose they'd just lower average wages to compensate if it caught on.
8) So... meh.
