
Not an Amazon Problem - ciprian_craciun
https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/07/23/Not-an-Amazon-Problem
======
jariel
It's maybe worth considering that the surpluses generated from globalism are
not being distributed evenly. It doesn't mean that the standard of living of
any group is going down.

I rarely go to Walmart, but every few years I do in the USA, and it constantly
blows my mind. The quantity, price and quality of 'stuff' in there ... you can
live extremely well compared to anyone in 1970 just off Walmart.

I submit that the surpluses are going to consumers, but because we don't price
them (i.e. the added value to you in savings or quality doesn't go on the
books), it's not part of the equation.

At least in most material ways, the Western World's 'cup runneth over with
stuff' ... a lot of which we do not need and is therefore luxury.

The financial profits stack up in the top 10%.

It's unsustainable, but it's not all bad news.

The other 'Elephant in the Room' nobody will talk about are the surpluses to
middle class yielded form undocumented workers. The US has 10-20M people 'off
the books' working for crap wages, no health insurance. That is a _huge_ part
of why everything is so cheap in America. Particularly food and restaurants
(the whole value chain is migrant workers it seems).

The #1 thing America could do to reduce inequality would be to force companies
to pay a real minimum wage. 1/2 the undocumented workers would be out of a
job, the others would see pay increases.

All jobs have to come with healthcare, or at least pay enough such that the
income can cover a basic healthcare.gov package or else - what's the point?
Collect taxes and redistribute via medicare?

Taxation at the high end could be increased somewhat.

Pushing some of those surpluses into the hands of working people would be a
massive boon for the economy.

~~~
blinkingled
> The US has 10-20M people 'off the books' working for crap wages, no health
> insurance. That is a huge part of why everything is so cheap in America.

You assume that middle class Americans are willing, available and able to do
those jobs when paid higher wages and benefits. In my many years I have yet to
find “Americans” doing roofing jobs for example.

~~~
pgrote
>In my many years I have yet to find “Americans” doing roofing jobs for
example.

Landscaping, too.

I never understood this from an economic perspective. The USA has rules in
place for hiring non-citizens to come the country and fill jobs in
landscaping. There are X slots a year.

Locally, the landscaping companies were complaining they couldn't do the work
without those slots since they couldn't find workers due to the administration
cutting the available non-citizen slots. They would come on the radio,
complain to a host about hiring college kids to work, but they would leave
after a few days.

The landscaping companies weren't raising the wage paid to attract and keep
the people who would stay, though. They did raise the wage slightly, but not
enough to move the needle.

Shouldn't the wage raise until you attract those people willing to do the work
and stay? In turn, the cost of landscaping would rise to the customers.

~~~
newacct583
> I never understood this from an economic perspective. The USA has rules in
> place for hiring non-citizens to come the country and fill jobs in
> landscaping. There are X slots a year.

"X" is effectively zero. A few people get in legally via refugee status or
family relationships, but in practice the number of green cards issued is a
tiny, tiny fraction the number of jobs that are actually done by immigrant
workers.

And it seems like covid isn't adjusting this much. Newly-unemployed legal
workers are not rushing into fill gaps in, say, farm worker employment that
were previously held by undocumented people. The "Americans won't do these
jobs" theory seems to be holding.

~~~
rdtwo
Why would they? The wages are shit and the living conditions are terrible.
It’s way worse than working on the oil rigs but the pay is like 1/4\. Of
course legal workers arent running towards these jobs. Like literally any
other job will pay better and cause less damage to you body and health.

If farm workers payed fair wages and provided good living conditions and
proper safety and ergonomic tools then sure more workers work be citizens but
the disconnect is so large farms would have to double or triple wage costs so
it’s easy to claim that they raised wages a buck or 2 and there were still no
takers.

------
Animats
_In fact, life for the US working class these days is shitty, and it’s not by
accident, it’s by design. It was called the Reagan-Thatcher neoliberal
consensus, and it was wrapped up with lots of high-flying rhetoric about this
freedom and that dynamism and those flexibilities, but you don’t have to be
that cynical to see it as good old-fashioned class war. It’s obvious who’s
winning._

Yes. Back in the 1970s, the working class was winning. Working class wages
were going up 3x faster than CEO wages. The average employee at an auto
factory could afford a house, a car, a non-working wife, a college education
for his kids, and a good retirement.

That had to stop. So a plan was put together by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
and Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell.[1] This is the actual memo.[2] It's
worth reading. Before this, businesses did not lobby much, except over narrow
issues. This got the U.S. Chamber of Commmerce into lobbying for business vs
labor on a broad front, with funding from big companies.

It worked. Near total victory over union power in the private sector has been
achieved in the US. The 8 hour day, the 40 hour week, and the minimum wage
have been made ineffective. Funded retirement plans are history. "If you want
a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."
became national policy. Marketed as "individual rights" and "opportunity", of
course.

[1] [https://billmoyers.com/content/the-powell-memo-a-call-to-
arm...](https://billmoyers.com/content/the-powell-memo-a-call-to-arms-for-
corporations/)

[2] [https://d1uu3oy1fdfoio.cloudfront.net/wp-
content/uploads/201...](https://d1uu3oy1fdfoio.cloudfront.net/wp-
content/uploads/2012/09/Lewis-Powell-Memo.pdf)

~~~
shuckles
You are making extremely strong claims with fairly weak evidence. The memo is
a call to action for businesses to _catch up_ to the large lobbying influence
created and wielded by unions in the 60s. As someone who moved to America to
flee a totally barren economy run by labor unions, I am glad the business
groups were able to rise to the challenge here. I simply don’t read the same
vast conspiracy in the memo that you imply. In the early 70s, left-affiliated
groups like SDS and Weathermen were probably producing internal organizing
notes that read as equally self interested and myopic.

Another weakness in your grand theory is that across housing, cars, single
incomes, and retirement, many of the affordability concerns have just as much
to do with non-corporate organizing as corporate organizing. Since when did
the Fortune 500 coordinate to jack up tuition? Which S&P companies run local
planning boards? Low income households in other countries can afford decent
housing stock and higher education. Corporations aren’t the reason our low
income residents can’t. As a quick point, this isn’t a mere matter of a
shrunken state either, since our government spending as a % of GDP has
steadily risen:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending_in_the_Uni...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending_in_the_United_States)

~~~
elygre
Out of curiosity, which “barren economy run by labor unions” do you speak of?

~~~
shuckles
I would rather not say because it'll spur an entire subthread arguing over
whether the root cause was unions, state corruption, foreign intervention, or
any other host of plausible (or not) theories.

I will concede that other people may explain that country's economic failures
differently than I do. However, my view is not a fringe one, and since I have
left, decreasing worker power has been correlated with a period of relative
growth for the middle class.

~~~
ido
I've made the jump in the other direction: from an almost-US-style hyper-
capitalist country to relatively social democratic countries (first Austria
then Germany) & my life here is astonishingly better than in my country of
origin (level of economic development is similar, in fact I'd probably be
earning more in the country I was born in while paying lower taxes).

So whose anecdotal evidence do we take, yours or mine?

~~~
meyerxcv
I suggest that you work two 400 Euro "jobs" in two different bakeries
simultaneously in Germany and report back after a year.

~~~
knowhy
That wouldn't be legal. There is a minimum wage of 9,35 Euro per hour in
Germany. You cannot legally work more than 48,13 hours per month on a 450 Euro
mini job in Germany.

~~~
throwaway0a5e
I used to speed every day on my way to my under the table construction job.
What's legal and what happens are different things.

------
silvestrov
> the Google/Facebook ad cartel is rapidly destroying publishing business
> models that have been essential to civilized human dicourse

and

> every reporter I’ve talked to has tried to get me to say awful things about
> Amazon and in particular about Jeff Bezos. But at my last job they taught me
> to think big and, with all his billions, Jeff is rounding error in the big
> picture.

This sounds like the media business needs a reboot and that we only ascribe
such a high value to it because we didn't get a look into the sausage factory
before. We belived the nice stories the journalists told about themselves.

Today we can read what Tim Bray thinks about his interaction with journalists.
Before the internet he would never had been able to communicate this to people
in the rest of the world.

------
deanCommie
I admire Tim Bray's contributions to our industry, his tireless pursuit to use
his privilige and status to advocate for improvements to diversity and
inclusion.

I also believe in his genuine reasons and motivations for resigning, and the
integrity it showed. (Obligatory: yes, he's in his 60s who's made millions, at
some point you gotta retire, and it's easy to show integrity when you clearly
don't need to work again)

Having said that, I'm kind of surprised he's surprised by the overall reaction
that he got when he quit, and in interviews since then.

It's popular, easy, and desirable to dunk on Amazon. It's the best form of
mainstream journalistic clickbait because it brings in and unites the left
(who want improved worker rights, and Jeff B is a poster child for wealth
imbalance) and the right (who are mad at Jeff's perceived left-leaning
politics and criticism of Donald Trump via the Washington Post).

It is NOT popular to question the very fabric of our western capitalism.
Overtures about unsustainable wealth inequality do not resonate well in the
mainstream. At the fringes, the right blames the rest of the world, and looks
to isolate; the left is readying the guillotines.

I think Tim should have known that his message would be misconstrued by both
other Amazonians who remained and wrote defensive blog posts, and the rest of
the world who's holding him up as some Anti-Amazon Crusader.

I believe his mistake was to immediately start talking about worker's rights
when his actual ethical qualm was about the chilling effect of silencing
whistleblowers. But...then he wouldn't have had the NYTimes writing follow ups
months later.

~~~
pm90
The ability to not be punished for speaking out as a worker is precisely one
of the worker rights that he is seeking to protect.

~~~
deanCommie
Technically the fired whistleblowers were cushy whitecollar office workers.

Yes, i know i just said "worker" but that's not really what we all imagine
when we think about Amazon workers that need more protections.

~~~
kennywinker
I think the idea that "cushy" tech workers don't need protection is really
insidious. It seems to me like it helps keep the white-collar workers on the
side of management, rather than realizing that they actually have a bunch in
common with the less well-paid worker. Yes, there are MUCH MUCH more
vulnerable people working at amazon, but that doesn't mean the better-off
workers don't also need protection e.g. against wage fixing
[https://time.com/76655/google-apple-settle-wage-fixing-
lawsu...](https://time.com/76655/google-apple-settle-wage-fixing-lawsuit/) or
the normalizing of 50-60hour work weeks. And specifically, that forming some
kind of a protective structure where workers of all levels band together to
advocate for their shared interests could be a good idea. Still brainstorming
names for that structure... combination? group? unitement? unification? idk
anybody with a good idea shoot me a dm

~~~
ShroudedNight
> It seems to me like it helps keep the white-collar workers on the side of
> management, rather than realizing that they actually have a bunch in common
> with the less well-paid worker.

This is especially pernicious given that fundamental facility and process
design decisions are made by the 'white-collar workers'. I wonder, for
example, how bathroom or break-room access in Amazon fulfillment centres would
change if the tech people shared a coffee or equivalent with people that work
in pick+pack on a frequent and regular basis.

~~~
Apocryphon
White collar workers are not a monolithic class. The MBAs making those process
decisions are different from minimum-wage contractors doing content moderation
at Facebook, for instance.

------
woodhull
Tim in this piece cites the climate pledge as being an admirable Amazon
policy.

Unfortunately, it's all lofty language and Amazon lags behind its peers on
real action.

For the AWS cloud business Amazon lags far behind its peers at Microsoft and
Google. Of the three main public clouds AWS is the only one still using coal
power (coal is a big part of the power mix for the grid used by their largest
point of presence in Northern Virgina). Microsoft and Google have run their
data centers completely on renewables and have done so for _years_.

We're stuck on us-east-1 in Northern Virginia for legacy reasons and to make
up for the dirty way that Amazon runs its cloud we buy feed-in RECs for the
grid where our AWS instances run. AWS could be doing this themselves (there
are RECs available! we're buying them!) to help jumpstart the transition to
renewables in the energy markets where they operate but they're simply
choosing not to spend the money.

Microsoft and Google deserve credit for their work in this area and they're
doing a much better job. It's just too bad that AWS is a better technical
product for our workload.

~~~
somethingwitty1
This feels a bit misleading. Both Microsoft and Google still use fossil fuels
for their data centers. I understand the "value" of RECs, but it definitely
doesn't mean your data center is _actually_ powered by renewable or "clean"
energy, despite it allowing you to claim that. I really wish these companies
had to publish the real numbers. That would demotivate them to buy RECs
though...so here we are.

The climate pledge has started to make an impact:
[https://climatepledgearena.com/](https://climatepledgearena.com/). And there
are plenty of articles that seem to indicate the climate pledge is doing
things:
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/moorinsights/2020/06/30/amazons...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/moorinsights/2020/06/30/amazons-
climate-pledge-gains-crucial-momentum/#30ff9ef82c82)

These might be puff pieces, but at least from reading them, it seems like
Amazon is actually moving towards doing things. Not only that, but they are
getting other companies to sign the pledge and take action.

~~~
woodhull
what?

Google has been running on 100% renewable electricity since 2017. Microsoft
has reached that milestone as well, but I can not find a date for when they
achieved it.

AWS aspires to eventually reach that goal by 2025. One of the clouds is
dirtier than the others.

~~~
somethingwitty1
They don't run 100% on renewable electricity. They offset their non-renewable
by buying RECs, which allows them to _claim_ they are 100% renewable. RECs
work by allowing you to use non-renewable energy (from the coal power plant
that is local to your data center/business). Then, you buy an equivalent
number of RECs from somewhere else (could be an entirely different state) and
you are allowed to claim you run on 100% renewable energy.

See:
[https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/renewable/](https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/renewable/)
"In 2019, for the third year in a row, Google purchased enough renewable
energy to match 100 percent of our annual global electricity consumption".
They are not _running_ on renewable energy, they are simply buying RECs.
Albeit, one can argue that is better than not buying RECs, but it is
misleading to claim they are "running on 100% renewable energy"

------
simonebrunozzi
I am so relieved, and happy, to see Tim Bray (of famed XML) tackle this
problem with such wisdom and long term view.

Yes, Amazon is a problem, and no, it's by far not the only one.

I am quite not sure that breaking up big businesses like Amazon and Google
will change things much, by the way. And I am not sure that unionizing Amazon
would solve much, either.

To be honest, I am quite pessimistic about our ability, as a society / human
specie, to really solve the inequality problem Tim is mentioning. Sorry I
don't have better words to say.

------
hypertexthero
> Every single person in America could be lifted above the poverty line with a
> one-time cash subsidy of around $10,000 per impoverished family (and about
> $7,000 for impoverished individuals). The total cost would be $170 billion,
> a little under 5% of the wealth currently controlled by 400 individuals.

From [Wealth, shown to scale]([https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-
wealth/](https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/))

~~~
john-shaffer
Although I think UBI might be a good idea, I feel like this talk about
"lifting above the poverty line" is meaningless in practice. The poverty line
is constantly moving. If everyone got a $10,000 check, the poverty line would
be quickly redefined, and not many people "lifted above it" would actually
stay above it.

------
ghostcluster
Breaking up US tech companies will cede power to their Chinese competitors.
Alibaba will have the advantage.

And breaking up the phone company didn't improve anything. We just got AT&T
again from their well-performing Texas shard. Companies need to be regulated
to provide the services the author is looking for.

~~~
WalterBright
Every country in the world would do a great deal to get a FAANG company native
to their turf. But here in America we want to wreck them. Sigh.

Now that fractional shares can be bought with no commission, essentially
everyone who wants to can invest in those FAANG companies and get returns on
capital. They're better than lottery tickets (a popular "investment" for the
poor).

~~~
TMWNN
> Every country in the world would do a great deal to get a FAANG company
> native to their turf. But here in America we want to wreck them. Sigh.

Harry Truman said in 1945 about the atomic bomb, "We thank God that it has
come to us, instead of to our enemies". I feel the same way about FAANG and
Silicon Valley as a whole (and Wall Street, and Hollywood, and SpaceX/Tesla,
and the Ivy League), that they are in the United States.

That doesn't mean I approve of everything they do. That doesn't mean I can't
or won't decry their putting thumbs on scales toward a certain type of _bien-
pensant_ ideology. That does mean that, overall, I am very, very glad that
they are American instead of Russian, Chinese, or even British, French, or
German.

~~~
nickpp
It’s not a coincidence that all those are American: prosperity comes from
innovation and innovation requires freedom, including economical freedom.

------
emptyparadise
The promise of capitalism for the average person (as opposed to an economist
or a business proprietor) was the ability to vote with your wallet, be it
through deciding what to buy or who to work for. You still often hear that
message from people who are less aware of the dark clouds up above: "just buy
a different product" or "just quit and get a new job" \- but centralization
and monopolization make either impossible.

Monopolies have an unfair amount of leverage in this game that must be dealt
with. Bring in corporate breakups, bring in increased leverage for the workers
(it's time to say the u-word), and maybe, just maybe, we can salvage this
system yet.

I don't know about you, but it was the dream of making the world better for
everyone and not just a handful of CEOs that sold me on the tech industry. I
sure would like for that dream to come true, no matter how many zeroes in
valuation it costs.

~~~
luckylion
And when everyone is fed, housed, clothed and given a smart phone, somebody
will still stay "but is the world actually _better_? Look, inequality is still
a thing, that guy has a much better smartphone."

You can't remove capitalism from the last few centuries of _massive_ progress
and just say "it would have happened without it as well".

~~~
emptyparadise
I think having everyone be healthy, fed, housed and clothed is a good
baseline. Inequality in the shape of "this person has a better phone than me"
is much, much more preferable to "this person can afford to feed their family
and I can't." I'd certainly like to believe that we can achieve that.

~~~
roenxi
It is impossible, in a literal and practical sense, for everyone to be
healthy. That is a baseline that cannot be achieved, even in theory.

This isn't a minor nitpick. You've articulating an impossible thing as a
target. There is no sane path forward from that starting point.

Fed, housed and clothed is a great baseline, but it has nearly nothing to do
with inequality. If everyone in the world was fed, housed and clothed I expect
all the inequality measures would be about the same as they are now.

~~~
emptyparadise
Access to health care is the path forward. That's also the practical meaning
of my words - thanks for providing the opportunity to clarify that.

And I think removing the main problem caused by inequality has everything to
do with inequality. It's not the end all, but like I said, it's a great
baseline.

~~~
luckylion
Done & done. We've got all of that covered in most parts of Europe, free
health care, free housing, free food, free clothes, free TV. And yet:
inequality is the number one issue and there's no hint of it ever being
enough, and we're still looking at more redistribution, because, in the end,
everybody could have _better_ free health care, _more spacious_ free housing,
_exotic_ free food etc.

~~~
emptyparadise
So let's focus on parts of the world where the baseline is not yet a reality.
Arriving at an earth where everyone is longing for more spacious housing,
rather than any housing at all is a win. What comes after that should be a
different debate.

------
thomasmeeks
So I agree with Tim, and in a way he’d probably find too radical.

But for the hacker news crowd, I’d point to this:
[https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/11/the-real-class-
wa...](https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/11/the-real-class-war/)

TL;DR the income growth of the 0.1% is having a chilling effect on mid-level
executives at Amazon and Google, too.

~~~
082349872349872
Interesting breakdown:

    
    
         1% eponymous class
         9% professional elite
        90% working class
    

That's actually _more_ skewed than the society described in _1984_ [1]:

    
    
         2% inner party
        13% outer party
        85% proletariat
    

Note that the 2% keeps the 13% toeing the party line (they don't have to
amongst themselves, and proles are explicitly said to be free) to avoid any
sort of Manor Farm pigs[2] getting funny ideas. IngSoc only had one party, but
if one allows two outer parties, nominally opposed to each other, one may
discover they each spontaneously self-police their own thought criminals.

[1] I've always thought of _1984_ as being a very anglophone sort of dystopia,
but now I believe Orwell was writing therapeutically, cathartically imagining
a world in which the social constructs of his second-rate english boarding
school applied to the whole of society.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23825457](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23825457)

[2] if Orwell had channelled PG, his labels would be:

    
    
          dogs     pigs    aggressive
          sheep   donkeys  passive
        orthodox heterodox

------
ridaj
> [With] all his billions, Jeff is rounding error in the big picture. He’s not
> the problem; the legal/regulatory power structures that enable him and his
> peers is.

> Amazon is a perfectly OK company, to the extent that planetary-scale
> sprawling corporate behemoths can be perfectly OK in 2020. Which is to say,
> not OK at all.

Very well put - if Amazon wasn't around, the system all but guarantees that
some other company would play the same kind of role. "Hate the game, don't
hate the player"

~~~
scollet
Or multiple players. That's empty.

------
nuker
> .. what well-done cloud computing is like. The IT world likes it.

Yep, to the extent that its a deal breaker for new jobs. AWS API is awesome.
10yrs cloud engineer here.

------
peterwwillis
This focus on business and capitalism is just one part of a larger jigsaw
puzzle, which is an economy based on American exceptionalism and the American
dream. The former states that we must be unique and the best, and the latter
states that everyone is able to have a castle, a good job, leisure time,
retirement, etc. But they don't explicitly state _how_ we get those things.

At no point in the American story does it say that wealth is to be distributed
fairly. The past century has shown that as popular revolts upended the old
ideas of aristocracy and monarchy, the US elite became extremely fearful of
the idea of a more equal society. Communism was the worst specter of this
potential loss of personal wealth for the elites, but its modern forms are
also increased taxation, universal health care, increased public
education/transporation/housing, etc. The more you distribute wealth to the
rabble, the less wealth you can have as an individual, and Americanism is all
about personal wealth (personal freedom comes largely from personal wealth;
you can't even be the king of a puddle if you don't own the land it sits on).

It's similar to ancient Rome. The citizens can live quite comfortably as long
as they have soldiers, slaves, and foreign riches. The big corporations of
today are a modern-day Roman army: roving the world to capture and bring home
cheap goods. The generals, senators, and merchants get the majority of the
loot, and the citizens get fresh bread and garum, fruit, and the occasional
exotic spice.

And much like the circuses of Empire, as long as the rabble are kept in bread
and games, they'll put up with anything. No health care, no education, 3 jobs?
Keep them in bread and games and they'll be satisfied. Netflix provides the
circus, Wal-Mart provides the bread. Why would the rabble want them broken up
when they're getting exactly what they want?

So this notion of fighting the status quo is really anti-American. You can't
get far with the argument without butting heads against the fact that people
would have to give up their cheap t-shirts, and that some would always have to
work hard and live poor their whole lives. There's no way around it:
_somebody_ has to pay for our wealth, surplus, and convenience. If it's not
us, it'll have to be someone else.

------
nurettin
> The company is working hard on Diversity & Inclusion

As a foreigner, I am trying to understand this statement.

You've got a bag with 100 marbles. 50 blue, 40 red, 10 white. HR needs to pick
15 marbles. Does the HR try to pick all marbles equally? So 50% of whites, 10%
of blues, 12.5% of reds is chosen. Doesn't seem fair to blues and reds.

~~~
erulabs
It's important to remember if the goal is to undo "unfairness" that the
prescription _cannot_ be "fair". If a scale is weighed down with 5lb on one
side and 10lb on the other, adding equal weights to both sides does not create
equilibrium. It's ironic and potentially hypocritical (if not acknowledged)
that the solution to unfairness is by creating an _explicitly_ unfair system,
just with the underdogs on top for once.

Note no value judgement on any of this, it's just a paradox that has been
amusing my brain a bit re: social justice. Righting wrongness almost by
definition involves more wrongness. "Killing a killer" might be a good summary
of the paradox.

~~~
jonathanstrange
It's important to emphasize that this unfairness is only temporary, and it
temporarily disadvantages mostly only people who have an advantage by sheer
coincidence and not because of their abilities or achievements.

There is a similar issue in the theory of just resource distribution, where it
can be shown that a more egalitarian resource distribution can sometimes only
be achieved by temporarily allowing transfers that are not Pareto optimal. In
other words, to make a society juster in terms of overall resource
distribution you might sometimes have to make everyone worse off for some
time. (If you don't allow such transfers, you'll be forced to call a society
with a Gini index close to 1 "just", which would be absurd.)

On a side note, since that was mentioned by others, there is no such thing as
"personal justice". Justice always concerns society as a whole, since it
concerns the effects that the actions of members of society have on each
other.

~~~
haihaibye
It was supposed to be temporary in the 60s. Care to predict when it will end?
Do you really see diversity and inclusion departments, speakers and writers
declaring success and dissolving their departments and jobs?

Do you have any proof that unfairness against a group mostly harms those with
advantage?

For instance if white men are over represented as professors, it may seem fair
to discriminate until the numbers are equal. But if you broke the group of
white men up into young and old, you'd find it's the young who are being
punished for the success of the old.

Suddenly by redrawing the groups it's gone from being fair to unfair. Who
divides up the groups?

Is it even possible to be fair to groups without being unfair to individuals?

~~~
jonathanstrange
> _It was supposed to be temporary in the 60s. Care to predict when it will
> end?_

When fair participation has been reached among equally skilled and trained
participants. A lot of progress has been made. Women and black people are
allowed to vote now, for example. People in wheelchairs can to some extent
travel on their own and even enter their workplace. That used to be impossible
in the 60s.

More members of disadvantaged groups are in better positions in society than
in the past. There was even one black president in the US among 45. It still
seems impossible for a woman to become president, though.

By "temporary" I meant 50-100 years or so. It also depends on the willingness
of people like you.

> _Do you really see diversity and inclusion departments, speakers and writers
> declaring success and dissolving their departments and jobs?_

Let's just say they will have almost nothing to do any more, similar to the
fact there is no longer a need for meetings of the suffragette movement
nowadays.

> _For instance if white men are over represented as professors, it may seem
> fair to discriminate until the numbers are equal._

Yes. That seems fair.

> _But if you broke the group of white men up into young and old, you 'd find
> it's the young who are being punished for the success of the old._

Nobody is punished for anything. The goal is to help people who are at a
systematic disadvantage due to sheer bad luck when they otherwise have the
same skills and qualifications.

I'm not saying that relative quotas are the solution to all problems of
society, but I do argue they sometimes make sense - within reasonable limits,
of course, which are always contestable.

> _Suddenly by redrawing the groups it 's gone from being fair to unfair._

Yes, there can be cases of trading a local optimum for a better global
optimum, and these can create temporary local unfairness. That was the point
of my analogy to the role of Pareto optimality in theories of resource
distribution. None of these problems are unsolvable. There are only finitely
many disadvantaged groups anyway, and the goal is not to create perfect
justice, but to improve society a little bit step by step.

> _Is it even possible to be fair to groups without being unfair to
> individuals?_

Fairness primarily concerns the state of society.

I believe that what is going on in reality is that the people who attempt to
find arguments against fairer treatment of under-represented groups do that
very often based on selfish motives. For example, some privileged white male
might think he's treated unfairly if an equally qualified woman is hired
instead of him because there are not enough female professors in the
department. As a white male academic, I understand the personal feeling. I
just don't think it's justified upon sincere reflection.

If a group is privileged and at a systematic advantage, members of the group
will tend to consciously or subconsciously resist giving up that advantage.
But reaching a fairer state of society is not unfair, even if it may feel like
that for individuals.

~~~
haihaibye
>> no longer a need for meetings of the suffragette movement

Suffrage is clearly defined, "fair participation has been reached among
equally skilled and trained participants" is extremely fuzzy.

Given blank slatism and any difference in outcome, there's an infinite retreat
using a "God of the gaps" argument saying any difference must be due to
systematic racism.

Even with blank slates it'll never work. If innate ability was equally
distributed, but preference is given to a group in university entry, or job
opportunities, then that group will have lower innate ability for a level of
training or job position. The non-preferenced group would then do better on
average!

>> Nobody is punished for anything

In a zero sum game (like competing for a job) giving some an advantage is the
same as giving others a disadvantage.

You are suggesting giving someone a penalty, not for something they have done,
but because of what group they belong to.

>> privileged white male

Are all advantages unearned privilege?

I chose my mate carefully, worked hard, spent less than I earn and spend time
educating my kids. If I give them an advantage in life, should they be
handicapped back down to average?

I'm a piece of replicating DNA, and I work hard, delaying gratification so my
DNA does well in the future. Society is an artifact built on top of this
reality.

Similarly, my ancestors sacrificed for me. They picked mates with care,
followed laws, built societies... They both built a society for themselves,
and were shaped by that society. All that work to make me do well, and you
want to make us all equal? Why bother working hard or sacrificing for the
future?

>> members of the group ... resist giving up that advantage

You admit above it can "create temporary local unfairness".

Then you wonder why people resist it! Especially when they disagree that it's
temporary!

~~~
jonathanstrange
No disagreement with most of your arguments. Just for the record, I did not
wonder why people resist, I offered an explanation.

------
lvs
Capitalism is just an algorithm. It's only an ideology if you make it one.
It's just a system of allocation and ownership that has clear tendencies and
side-effects, well understood for many decades.

The experiment has shown that, as the system evolves, it doesn't have a stable
state. One needs to bolt on additional controls to try to keep it in a stable
state, or else one gets concentration of wealth and power. All the symptoms of
that are pretty obvious with endless spilled ink. I really don't think this
stuff should be controversial to people who are normally thinking about the
behavior of complex systems.

~~~
pm90
Most people aren’t thinking about the behavior of complex systems and to those
this presents a good perspective. Anti Government propaganda is pretty
widespread today and one of the ways to counter it is by espousing the
benefits of the principles which a healthy, functioning Government provides to
society.

~~~
kennywinker
Anti-gov sentiment is also there in part because at this point the government
is usually in the position of siding with and protecting corporate interests,
rather than serving the people.

------
wayanon
People won’t pay more if there’s a choice.

------
tracer4201
Page doesn’t load for me. Can anyone summarize?

~~~
thomasmeeks
Basically Amazon is a symptom of global wealth inequality. He’s making the
point that no company the size of Amazon, and no person as rich as Bezos,
should exist.

The bulk of the article laments the reality that the media, writ large, wants
to report on “Tim vs Jeff”, not on “wealth inequality is out of control and we
need to at least break up tech darlings, maybe much more.”

------
bawolff
I feel like this isn't terribly compelling. I have heard the whole
corporations are evil and primarily look out for their own best interest
before. I think people have been talking about this for over a century now. I
don't even disagree (at most, i might say the truth is more complicated, but
it always is).

I guess the article leaves me thinking, so what do you want to do instead?
Communist revolution? Anarchist utopia? The article posits that we should
break up some specificly named corporations, but doesn't even give a criteria
as to why those corps, other than i suppose the author dislikes them. Why them
and not others? What's the objective criteria?

~~~
kuu
You know that between the capitalism now working in the US and the "Communist
revolution? Anarchist utopia?" there is a wide range of options, right?

Based not only in your comments, I feel that you in the US are really afraid
of the socialism and communism that you're not going to progress at all in the
direction of such ideologies which care more of the people in general than the
specific individual. You have the example of Europe, with several countries
with social democratic parties that are doing much better than you in social
justice and well being, and still you're with the US cold war mentality. You
still think the 'commies' are coming...

With that attitude/mentality I feel you cannot change much.

~~~
bawolff
I am not in the usa.

I agree there are lots of options. The article would be compelling if the
author picked an option and argued for it. Vauge negative statements about the
status quo that nobody disagrees with are not compelling. Positions that can
be defended and argued for/against are.

Anyone can preach to the choir.

~~~
082349872349872
The author is in the US, where (if the online world can be trusted) there are
many, if not a majority of, people who disagree with his position.

I recently got a letter from a centre-right party president reminding everyone
about the part of our constitution which says a society is judged by how it
treats its weakest members. I believe that'd be considered pinko-commie talk
in the states.

Bray left AMZN on 1 May. I gather that date is significant to US people,
because he's calling for potential legal reforms:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_Day_(United_States)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_Day_\(United_States\))

~~~
pseudalopex
Bray is Canadian. I doubt most Americans know Law Day exists.

~~~
082349872349872
Guess it doesn't mean anything then. According to:

[https://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/canada/](https://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/canada/)

there's nothing between Yom Ha’Atzmaut and Mothers' Day.

(TIL about "Loyalty Day", but that's also US, now deprecated.)

------
jjsdflkjsdkkk
"It was called the Reagan-Thatcher neoliberal consensus, and it was wrapped up
with lots of high-flying rhetoric about this freedom and that dynamism and
those flexibilities, but you don’t have to be that cynical to see it as good
old-fashioned class war. It’s obvious who’s winning."

Since Reagon was president, the US population has grown by 82 Million people
(32% increase). At the same time, jobs went to China and so on.

Is it certain that Reagan is to blame, and how? What if poor people just
stopped having kids? Why is it assumed that there are good paying jobs for
everybody, no matter how many people there are? Where do they come from?

~~~
malka
People like having kids. Unemployment, especially future one is not a concern
with this.

~~~
nine_k
People who like having kids usually plan well ahead, because they care about
the kids' future life.

But some people can't help but have kids, because contraception is either not
uniformly applied / accessible, or due to religion prohibiting contraception.

I bet that the lower is one's socioeconomic status, the harder it is to
control childbirth, just because it's expensive. So even if having (one more)
child would make life obviously hard(er) for the parent(s) and the child
alike, there can just be not enough money to prevent it.

~~~
sdfsdsddsddssd
Some contraception is free, like not having sex to begin with. I think that
"poor people can't afford contraception" is not very convincing. Contraception
is not that expensive, either.

~~~
devchix
Poor people should stop having sex. Got it.

------
WalterBright
> carbon-vomiting oil extractors

Language like that discredits the whole article as a hysterical piece.

In any case, oil extractors are in business only because ordinary people want
gasoline to drive their cars.

~~~
blub
A single phrase does not justify dismissing an entire article, unless one is
looking for excuses for doing so.

~~~
WalterBright
That isn't the only such phrase in it.

As a general rule, people use such phrases to cover for a weak, poorly argued
case. It's a tell.

It's like what a lawyer told me once:

1\. If the law is on your side, argue the law.

2\. If justice is on your side, argue for justice.

3\. If neither the law nor justice is on your side, call the other party
names.

Yet I did read the whole article, and found it weak and poorly argued. His
specific point about vomit was also weak and poorly argued, as I pointed out.

A word to the wise - if you want thoughtful people to read an article, don't
use such phrases. I'm hardly the only person to point this out.

~~~
java_script
OTOH all he had to do was throw in a quick throw away phrase and it was like a
tarpit for you. You were so hung up on it you never got to explaining why his
post was poorly argued.

~~~
WalterBright
> OTOH all he had to do was throw in a quick throw away phrase

He did it repeatedly in the article.

> why his post was poorly argued

I pointed out that he neglected to account for why the oil companies existed -
because people want gasoline. It isn't the oil companies emitting CO2, it's
the gas consumers.

------
netsectoday
What did I just read? An ex-Amazon employee 'lashing out' by saying that
regulators should break up Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, then leave Amazon
alone because they will probably 'do the right thing' by spinning-off AWS?
That Big Tech shouldn't exist, however, Jeff Bezos is a rounding error? It
really sounds like he got paid to write this.

~~~
mcherm
What you just read is an ex-Amazon employee who quite under protest over a
principle and has since been hounded by reporters all trying to get him to say
that Amazon or Jeff Bezos are the problem (and printing that even if he won't
say it) when he actually believes that the entire system is the problem and
that Amazon and Jeff Bezos are just symptoms. This essay was written in
response to yet another reporter characterizing him as an "Amazon critic".

~~~
Ghostt8117
He is an Amazon critic. He left the company due to issues with the company but
also wants everyone to know that this is not an issue solely with Amazon. To
be upset that you are called a critic of a company you criticized is strange.
The reporters were writing a story on his criticism of Amazon - not on his
views of society. And they included his statement that it is the entire
industry to be clear of his opinion. I liked his essay and agree with it as an
additional statement of clarifying in his own words, but I do not think the
reporters have done anything wrong here.

~~~
netsectoday
This whole situation seems off. I have quit and been fired in my tech career
when taking a strong moral stance against my employers behaviors. To me; this
piece was written in an attempt to get his job back. I'd put him closer to the
realm of a film critic who only gave the movie one thumb up.

------
TedDoesntTalk
> the fabric of society is in danger of breaking

Really? That is hyperbolic to me, and I was not as interested in reading the
rest of his article after that.

~~~
bonestormii_
This is a pervasive perspective on HN. Everyone here is so erudite in their
mindset, yet they can't observe that a trend of exponential wealth inequality
ends with many people being crushed and a few undeserving winners.

The language "is in danger of breaking" is frankly dialed down because he is
obviously self-conscious about sounding like some wild-eyed radical. The fact
is, if this trend isn't checked, there certainly will be a violent break down,
which is a corresponding trend that is also growing before our very eyes in
the form of BLM protests and the corresponding government response.

Violence is not condoned in our society. Therefore, it follows that
manifestations of violence are a form of breakage. If such manifestations
erupt directly from power/wealth/legal disparities, I'd say Bray's language is
a rather mild flavor of perfectly accurate.

~~~
sdfsdsddsddssd
"crushed", "undeserving winners" \- people can still be better off than people
in the past, despite there being more richer people than them. And what makes
you think the winner's wins are "undeserved"?

PG literally wrote an essay about it.
[http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html)
(not sure if it is the one I meant, but it touches on many of the subjects
here. Including the "pie fallacy")

In that light, it is more surprising that so many people on HN are in favor of
socialism.

~~~
cycomanic
Well there is sufficient evidence that the pie is not getting bigger for
everyone (see e.g. Thomas Piketty's research amongst others). Inequality is
increasing and that is dangerous to society. To give you another example, in
the 1920s 1930s economists (Keynes amongst others) made projects that by 2020
we would only work 15h a week or less and there was discussion if this would
become a problem for society (because people typically want to work). However,
this did not happen, why? Because the benefits of improved efficiency etc.
flowed to fewer and fewer people.

Regarding the winners being undeserved: 1\. It can be shown that just using
chance (or slightly unequal starting conditions) simple economic systems
develop into a state where there is one player who essentially owns all (I
linked to the article earlier [1]). So yes it can be just chance. 2\. Once the
winners have sufficient power they will game the system in their favour.
There's lots of evidence for this, just look at the Panama papers for example.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21465446](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21465446)

~~~
TedDoesntTalk
> only work 15h a week or less and there was discussion if this would become a
> problem for society (because people typically want to work). However, this
> did not happen, why? Because the benefits of improved efficiency etc. flowed
> to fewer and fewer people.

That’s one possibility, the other is that productivity has no bounds and
increased efficiency just means further productivity, not a lessening of work
to achieve the same productivity as before.

------
toohotatopic
How do you create planetary structures but with super-companies and rich
people?

People don't innovate by themselves. The workers and/or engineers of the US or
the world could have pooled their money and built AWS or space rockets, or
electric cars. But they haven't. It takes money and actions from few people to
get stuff done.

~~~
praptak
They have, in the form of government programs. Moon exploration or the
internet didn't need super-companies or ultra rich people.

~~~
function_seven
And private programs can still succeed without extracting every last bit of
margin for the owners.

Governments can create and fund programs to do these large-scale projects.
They can also leave it to private industry to do so as well, but with strong
protections for workers, the unions they may want to form, and the living
conditions of all participants (employee, supplier, miner, etc.), domestic and
foreign.

