The Real Price of Amazon's Free Shipping

"A couple of weeks ago, my best friend sent me an email. She just got this new expensive makeup she'd ordered on the internet. It had arrived! But then she remembered that story I wrote about a warehouse in Ohio that ships products from online retailers and how miserable everyone who works there is and how ****** they're treated by their employers, and then she felt really sad. So, hey, she said, thanks a lot.

I'm not going to tell her, but now, via the Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call, there's more confirmation that products are often shipped from the internets to your house by very demoralized workers operating in very depressing conditions because they have no other job options. Specifically, at the Amazon warehouse in the story, an employee got in touch with OSHA when the heat inside hit 102 degrees. Fifteen workers collapsed, and those that went home to beat the heat got negative marks put on their records.

The Ohio warehouse I visited in June was the same kind of benefitless sweat-box. (It also sounds a lot like the sweltering warehouse described to my colleague Josh Harkinson here.) The Pennsylvania warehouse mentioned in the Morning Call article was not actually run by Amazon, just like the warehouse I was in wasn't run by the retailers whose product they shipped; both are staffed by temporary workers from a contract agency. Amazon responded by saying, "The safety and well-being of our associates is our number one priority." Hmm, no statement yet on whether they're going to make their contractors treat their employees like human beings. In the meantime, every one of Amazon's millions of customers should write them a really angry letter demanding change. Except we won't. Because then our shipping wouldn't be free." ~ Source

As one of the commenters said, this has long been a practice of corporations the world over, Wal-Mart being one of the leading ones along with Coca-Cola. It is hard to deny the relevance of wage slavery in our society. How could we fix the problem and make sure that it does not happen again? More regulation will not change anything, it will only make the monopolies more one-sided. Take out one company and another will rise higher in its place. Make a minimum wage law and they will create contract laws to combat it, only making it seem like they are doing something. Because only corporations can use these contract laws to their advantage, the minimum wage law will actually increase their profits, because lower-tier companies will be forced to sell things at higher rates to pay their employees the minimum fee. In a free market, how would you combat this kind of oppression, or would you at all?

 

Immediately, I would say work programs would be good. This is similar to supply and demand. The companies want to give the lowest salries, benifits, working conditions, etc. that the employees will put up with. So in order to raise that bar we would need competative work. The biggest immediate issues are the premise of unskilled labor since there is only so much need for it these days, and getting funding for it since many people would be against a tax increase to pull it off.

However with the tools that are eliminating the unskilled laborer position, more and more people are able to start busniesses themselves. If certain legislation were passed to encourage these small busniesses, then we could increase the demand of at least low-skill labor and thus make a more competitive job market.

 

Boycott. The one thing i've seen businesses take notice is when their products aren't selling, especially because of the customers purposefully doing so.
If all the consumers of the businesses goods or services stop buying from them, or all their employees and future employees not working until their demands were met, then the business may start to listen to the lower end of the food chain.
At that point, negotiating can begin, where a likely equal proposal can be put in place, benefiting both parties.
However, boycotts aren't that common, and it takes an universally united front in order for it to work, but that's a rare occurence seeing as how people are deseperate enough to get a job that pays just above slave labour.

I'll admit, I wondered how the FREE SUPER SAVER DELIVERY worked because posting anything isn't free but I didn't know it got as bad as this. Employees in that particular sector need to be taken care of better, though the chances of that happening easily are not likely.

 

I fail to see how this will help anyone. Take more money so that people can earn more money. Even at that level, it is a profitless argument. Instead of actually raising living standards, it makes them all equally bad. It is more important to increase the living standards of everyone than to make everyone into their own business. If you do not take down the monopolies, then you will be pouring money into lost causes. More, you will be stealing from people in order to give the money back to them in the form of a job. There will never be a balance as long as the bigger companies can do things like this; you will simply be recycling the same problems.

If you need me to illustrate this, then let me explain. Let us say that you take money from A, B, C and D in order to create more jobs for the three that are not rich enough to get away with paying people pennies. Assume that A is the richest, and you are trying to create jobs for B, C and D. You have effectively recycled the money and handed them their own shirts, either with a little extra because the richest of them payed more, or a little less because some of the money was lost in the creation of the job. Either way, the poorer three still cannot compete with the prices of the bigger company, because if they are selling a product to people, then they have to sell it for more than it costs to make it. If the jobs pay more than it costs to buy A's product, then in order to compete with him, they will have to take losses. A's methods are not changed, no matter how many smaller companies you create or how much money you pour into them. Working on giving people jobs without taking care of the reason why they do not have jobs is like trying to increase the property value of a collapsed house by mowing the lawn.

This makes more sense. Boycott is and always has been the greatest proponent of change. If you do not like the rules they make, refuse to play their game. They will change their rules to fit your standards, and the living standards of all will be increased without stealing money from anyone, or pouring money into lost causes. The question is, how to get people to challenge it enough to boycott it...

 

Propaganda has shown to be effective. If we villify the corporation, make them seem inhumae and degrading human life (like most news stations do...) we gain public support, we rally together and demand change otherwise we boycott, either change occurs or we boycott, and if that happens we pressure them till eventually we or they give up.

Appropriate propaganda can do wonders, and I've read and written a few propaganda pieces for creative writing purposes and it works. You start to hate whoever the propaganda is against, it's just so easy to change minds that way, especially if it's shown to you over and over again, it starts to sink its teeth into you.

 

Unfortunately is it not effective enough. Protests and things of that sort get shut down, and people tend to prefer that over boycotting a company. As far as I have seen.

 

[color=6b23e]Sorry, but I don't see a problem here. They don't have to work there if they don't want to. They have bad working conditions because the workers put up with it.[/color]

 

I agree here. Even Hitler noted to several of the humans working with him that although they were in control of the greatest army in the world (which took many armies to take down), propaganda was the greatest weapon in their arsenal. After all, if it could get someone as horrible as him into a position of that much power, it's certainly more powerful than any gun or nuke.

That said, boycott is still the most ethical way to go. Propaganda, while powerful, is highly likely to turn into outright lies which, if discovered, would prove more counter-intuitive to the cause.

 

How pragmatic of you. They have to put up with it to survive, because they do not make up a majority. Do you know what wage slavery is?

 

This is an issue that cannot only be put on the consumer - It must also be expected that the workers "man up" (so to speak) and react to this. I know they work there because they have to, but I fail to see there not being a law broken in these cases.

 

Loopholes are made for corporations. They always have been. You might have heard of the term corporatism before.

 

It sucks. But you are right.

The only way to truly change this is through communism and or socialist idealogy.

Economic philosophies state there needs to be a lower class, a middle class, and an upper class. The people you refer to are Working class. Working class is that obscure grey area between middle and lower class. If they didn't work, they'd be lower class. I'm working class too, but I waslucky enough to work for a decent company. Bu if we force the economy to eliminate the lower class entirey, the economy will collapse.

The less extream solution is t have gvernment sponsored care programs at the expense of the upper class.

 

Have you ever heard of the Austrian School of Economics? I think it solves most of these problems by itself, but it is too extensive to expand on here, so I will leave you to read it or comment on its ability to solve this problem before continuing.

I will say that state socialism creates classes as well, and that it does not solve the problems that we are speaking of. Anarcho-communism would solve them, but based on your personality I doubt that you were thinking of that. Because there is a ruling class, there will inevitable be an upper class. Given enough time, it enhances them into polar extremes as our society does, and one day people will again say, "If there was hope, it must lie in the proles."

 

Is the basis of Social Darwinism, which I advocate strongly. Someone who dislikes their working conditions can either

A) Deal with it
B) Protest
C) Get an education and then get a real job
D) Starve and die

No matter what the pick, they will advance the social order accordingly. Our job is to let these things happen on their own. By intervening we only hinder our economic progress.

It's harsh, but it's life.

 

Actually... I was thinking just that. Don't assume I dont know my stuff. I was a business and economics major before. Were you thinking I was thinking Soviet Russia? No... theres a reason capitalism "won" the cold war. They didn't actually do anything to win. They let Soviet Russias flawed economic philosophy play out.

Also, I never said it was bad. I simply said it would require it. Personally, I believe both economic philosphies are greatly flawed.

Capitalism because it is designed to benefit a few, whilst hurting others. Communism, will fail, simply because its too logistically difficult to impliment, and is vulnrable to curruption.

I believe the best would be a hybrid economic structure. Such words and ideas however are not very popular in western culture, and are doomed to fail. Heck, Obama had some reasonable and conservative ideas, and people were comparing him to Hitler. I don't quite understand the corralation between facism and communism but ok.

Bottom line, western society is trained to hate communism. It will take generations for any such idea to be implimented.

The Above Poster Advocates True Capitalism.

 

Your notion of intervention seems slightly flawed to me, as all interaction could be called 'intervention'. There is no such thing as a natural course of human events. If I 'intervene' by spreading mass boycott, or if a company 'intervenes' by gaining a monopoly, neither is more natural than the other. And a notion of economic progress that favors monopolies does not promote true progress through innovation, it only defends a status quo and gathers money into one area or group rather than promoting general commerce.

You failed to acknowledge the Austrian school of economics; it is neither capitalist nor socialist, as I understand it. Depending on your definition of capitalism, and that is taken several ways in political debate. One implies monopolies, and another is strictly against them...

 

E) Realise that the system will abuse you, exploit you and dispose of you, and act accordingly. Step outside of the system, and cease to play by the rules. Since you cannot get an education and protesting will do you no good, you are left with the choices of working, or dying. That's not a favourable system to work under. So instead, reject it and become an outlaw. Rob, steal and murder your way to success. Lead a life of crime, taking what you deserve from the middle and upper classes. Become a drug or human trafficker, act as a thug, be a common thief. Why should you care about a system that doesn't care about you?

 

They speak truth.

Just because the West has a capitalist ideal we employ many communist type laws and regulations. Our economies would not be accepted by the majority if we were purely capitalist, the majority would be poor and exploited, they would not accept such inconsiderate wealthy people ruling over them, and rebellions would tak eplace. I imagine it to be like the English monarchy in Medieval times.
So you can't justify exploitation of staff as just something our capitalist society does, because it's something we can't jusstify by human rights and our laws.

 

I think of intervention as interaction that is not between companies and workers, i.e. from the government or private social programs. I didn't say I favored monopolies, but if one were to happen it would only be economic progress by way of Social Darwinism- just like it would be when said monopoly inevitably ends.

That's a pretty weak argument. We live in a world that doesn't care about us, working for people that don't care about us, under a government that doesn't care about us, every single day-no matter where you live. How we choose to deal with that is our choice. And the weak, the stupid, pick E.

 

I thought it was called desperate? I would never go as far as to judge people who choose that path knowing that they sank so low without even wanting to in the first place. I don't think theft or drug trafficking is "right" per se, though.

Not to sound naive, but as individuals, we can choose to care about the other person; who lives and breathes and has feelings and needs just like us.

I'm pretty sure what I've just said sort of goes against Social Darwinism, but well...I really don't like it.