I ordered two things from Amazon Prime the last couple of days. Yesterday’s package was delivered by a guy driving a four door Chevy Malibu with the back seat crammed full of a jumbled bunch of Amazon packages. After extracting my box from the mess in his back seat, he logged the delivery on an app on his personal cell phone (I could tell because he was talking on it the whole time). This was about 3:30 PM yesterday – I’m sure he was driving until the sun set, given that he had at least 100 packages left (there were a bunch of envelopes on the front seat).
Today’s package will be delivered by an insured, unionized UPS driver in a real delivery van.
I’m just going to shoot in the dark and guess that the first driver doesn’t have good health insurance, that he won’t have a retirement that looks anything like the UPS driver’s, and that his hourly pay, after deducting wear and tear on his vehicle, is probably below minimum wage. But, god damn, did my cheap Chinese shit get delivered to my door quickly.
On the Road and In Your Backyard
lee
Honestly I have dramatically reduced the amount of stuff I order on Amazon for just this reason.
If there was an option on Amazon for delivery only by a full time worker, I’d pick it. Even with an additional cost.
Does that make me a communist now? I never can tell.
pinacacci
Noticed recently that Amazon deliveries in my neighborhood are being done by people with rental U-Haul vans.
Betty Cracker
Does anyone know if gig economy workers like Task Rabbits, Uber drivers, Amazon delivery people using their personal cars, etc., are 1099 contractors? If so, not only do they not have benefits, they’re responsible for paying estimated taxes quarterly and will pay a self-employment tax to make up the share an employer would contribute to Social Security/Medicare on their behalf.
I ask because my college student kiddo had a 1099 job, and this was all news to her. Luckily, she had me to explain it so she didn’t get walloped with penalties for not paying quarterly taxes in lieu of employer withholding. But it made me wonder how many gig economy folks experience that as a nasty surprise.
Barbara
You don’t have to use Amazon. I don’t. My husband does. My daughters try not to.
cs
I guess that’s one small advantage to living in the middle of nowhere. My deliveries are 100% UPS.
carole
@Barbara: Well, sure. I could drive 90 miles to get the materials I need from the nearest brick and mortar retailer. Or, I suppose I could have your husband or daughters order it for me and ship it to me through UPS. They’re probably used to your condescending bullshit by now.
wenchacha
@pinacacci: Same here. I saw an Enterprise rental van make the delivery.
MattF
I use Amazon for things not found in local retail, like, um, most dead tree booksâ but not for ebooks or music. And certainly not for in-home microphones attached to Amazon servers. Also, one has to be wary of scams, counterfeits, and just plain junk when you venture off in search of something unusual.
hells littlest angel
I live out in the sticks, so all of my deliveries come either by USPS or one of the two big carriers. When I lived in the city, I very occasionally got items delivered by some poor schlub in his own car — it made me feel ashamed.
MrSnrub
Last summer I was at a local ice cream joint at about 10pm, and this older guy, I’m guessing in his 70s asked me to help him figure out his mapping app.
In the process of helping him figure it out, I learned that he was driving for DoorDash or UberEats or something, and this was his first delivery ever, 2 milkshakes to someone 4-5 miles away.
I have no idea what the guy’s story was, and if he needed money, that’s not the fault of the gig economy, but it sure did leave me with a sour feeling.
Yarrow
I’ve seen all sorts of vehicles and people make Amazon deliveries–FedEx trucks, UPS, USPS, Amazon-logo vans, people in regular cars, people driving golf carts… No drones so far.
different-church-lady
Uhhhh… stop giving your money to Bezos and company?
different-church-lady
Can I just ask here… WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF ECONOMY ARE WE RUNNING WHERE HALF THE POPULATION CAN AFFORD TO HAVE MILKSHAKES DELIVERED AND THE OTHER HALF HAS TO DELIVER GODDAMED MILKSHAKES TO MAKE END MEET??2?
MagdaInBlack
@Betty Cracker:
Ubers site offers tax tips for “partner drivers” and explains they’ll get a 1099.
lee
@MrSnrub:
I live in an upscale suburb. Most of the deliveries are with a U-Haul truck and even a Mercedes van.
Occassionally I still see the randomcar/truck making the deliveries.
@MrSnrub: I chatted with an older fellow that did DoorDash and Uber. He did it to get out of the house. Obviously YMMV
JR
In the big cities Amazon has full time delivery drivers in branded vehicles. Doubt they get the deal UPS guys do, though.
Leto
Bit OT here: stage 19 of the Tour de France has just been canceled because of snow/hail on the course. And now flood waters on the road. During summer. When todayâs temps are supposed to be around 107. I hope one of the three American riders takes a snowball to the senate floor to chunk it and laugh. Check mate, libtards! #fossilfuelsdidnothingwrong
Also Iâm glad Amazon is the new Wal-Mart. =|
Betty Cracker
@cs: Same. Only the USPS, UPS or FedEx will brave the swamp. There’s no such thing as Uber, Instacart, etc., here.
@different-church-lady: Great question and one of the very few for which an all-caps query is justified.
Gin & Tonic
@MrSnrub: All of these “gig economy” delivery drivers using their personal vehicles will be facing a very unpleasant surprise if they have an accident. If they hit you, you will be facing a very unpleasant surprise as well.
Walker
Where I live, Amazon’s attempts to avoid UPS always mean that my promised-in-two-days shipment always takes 5+ days. I have learned to never order anything from Amazon if I actually care when it will be delivered.
Keith P.
My Amazon drivers have gray Prime vans. I love Prime. I get one to two day delivery, Sunday included, they stock EVERYTHING, and they saved “The Expanse.”
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
My wife said something a few years back that stuck with me. It was one of the widest things I ever heard. It was something along the lines of how everything that helps make our lives better, we get it all on the backs of weaker, more vulnerable people who, at all odds, we’ll never meet.
You need some cheap office supplies? Some slave in China makes it. How âbout some nice, new clothes? Odds are, somebody earning 8¢ an hour made it in Honduras or Haiti or Bangladesh. You want to go out for a nice meal? Thank the waiters, who depend on their customers to be decent people to earn a living, as well as overworked, underpaid, often undocumented dishwashers and busboys.
And this doesn’t even begin to take in things like environmental degradation or the effects of climate change.
Everything we have, it came at the expense of somebody else. I don’t know how to change this, but if there’s going to be stability and justice in the world over the long haul, we need to find an answer to this.
different-church-lady
@Betty Cracker: SHOUTY MOODS ARE BECOMING A REGULAR THING, AREN’T THEY??2?
Gin & Tonic
@Leto: Thanks for the spoiler.
chris
@different-church-lady: Um, the kind of economy where 20% of the people own 90% of the s… stuff?
different-church-lady
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): The food chain ain’t pretty.
Soprano2
@Gin & Tonic: I wondered about that when Uber first started to be a thing. I doubt many of those people had the correct kind of (more expensive) insurance on their vehicles. I think Uber and some of the others have corrected that, but I bet a lot of these delivery services haven’t.
MattF
@Walker: Iâve had the opposite experienceâ most of the time Amazon deliveries are a day or two sooner than the original estimate. Mysteries of logistics, I suppose.
lgerard
Congratulations to our tech overlords for updating the sharecropping model to the 21st Century!
Mike in NC
Front page article in the local rag about the Federal government resuming execution of prisoners on Death Row for the first time since 2003. (Remember that Dubya enjoyed killing people.) Seems to be part of Fat Bastard’s reelection pitch to the MAGAts. Didn’t say whether tickets will be sold or if the executions will be televised. He and Barr are a couple of sick, twisted degenerates.
Another Scott
Dunno.
A couple of times when I was young, in the early 1980s, I delivered phone books. Was paid something like $0.25 each. We (my mom and I) just used our car, there were others that had huge delivery vans. It was a way to make some quick money for us, something approaching a living for others.
Sometimes even seeming crap jobs are a decent way to make some money. It’s not necessarily intended to be a career.
https://flex.amazon.com/ :
.
I think part of Amazon’s MO is to eventually move to the ability to deliver almost anything the same day. The USPS will not be able to do that. That means they have to build up their own delivery infrastructure. And that, unfortunately, means that they’re going to depend on “independent contractors” to a large extent.
I’m not making an excuse for any of Amazon’s bad practices. Of course, everyone should have a safety net no matter how crappy the job is.
tl;dr – People make a choice to take these jobs because they’re quite often better than anything else available. Governments have a big role to play here.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Leto
I think weâre at point, regarding the economy, where itâs like the Good Place: the tally will forever be against you. Shop via the internet and youâre supporting evil corporations that peddle slave labor from creation to delivery of product. Shop locally? Still run the risk that your profits are going to a mega conglomerate that supports an evil agenda. Are you sure your product isnât tested on kittens? Use a ton of fossil fuels/fertilizers that do a ton of harm to the environment? Does that mom and pop shop take their profits and funnel it back to your local RWNJ? We laughed at Idiocracy, much like we do with the Good Place. Both are wholly prescient.
MomSense
@different-church-lady:
Ha! Right there with you. I already went through the transformation of education into gigs for some. Itâs happening to me again and Iâm furious. I could always work for the state – but that would fuck up my social security.
So Iâm applying for stupid jobs again. I hope thereâs a section in hell for the people who write job descriptions. I just read one three times and I have no fucking clue what the job is. Itâs all lingo like âimplement the vision roadmapâ. It also had something about inspiring team members and visa versa. Do you think they would appreciate getting this job description back redlined as my fuck you cover letter?
If I read âmust be able to multi-task in a fast-paced busy officeâ one more time I may burn it all down.
ruemara
@different-church-lady: The natural outcome of FYIGM and too woke to vote philosophies.
Part of what depressed me the last time I was stuck in Vegas for a conference was the amount of people 50s and up working as waitresses and other tip economy jobs. Older people are forced into gig economy work. My housemate has had to do Lyft while he waits for archeology paychecks that can take 45 to 60 days to come in. So he drives from 8pm to 2 am, focusing on red eye flights. It’s hard, but he made enough to pay his bills and back fees. I’m not cut out for the gig economy myself, as I burn myself out with 20-30 vocal auditions a day for 1 job every 130 auditions on average, but people are hiring folks they like. Labor need is reduced due to automation and all that’s left is very low pay service jobs and gig jobs to make ends meet. Billionaires could stop taking checks and start boosting worker pay, giving folks the option to be full time or 3/4 time, pay for health benefits, etc. but they won’t. And not using Amazon isn’t an option. For technical equipment, it’s a godsend. All my gear is Amazon or Ebay – mostly Amazon. Prime day and open box discounts mean I have a studio for less than $400 with equipment worth $700. It’s not a huge margin, but for me, it is. For actual Jamaican food, I use Amazon, because there’s nothing near me that has Caribbean items besides hot sauce. And I’ve asked my parents for over a decade for things like send me a can of ackee or bulla, but well, that’s not their style. The tech companies themselves are hotbeds of technosnobbery libertarianism where folks believe they’re so smart and deserve high pay, but everyone not in their field is obviously lesser, so why should they get the same level of pay, stability and benefits? With appropriate lip service to equality and diversity, so they’re not actually racist.
Some people have made delivering work for them. Building a whole side industry of van delivery for Amazon but for many, it’s a survival thing. And my heart goes out to grandpa having to do Doordash and deal with apps. It might be he just wants to do something and have his money, or like me as I transfer my last gig payment, he’s thinking ok, I made next week’s groceries and medications. Poverty sucks, but the poverty of foresight & utopian beliefs makes poverty inevitable. We could have regulated pay, benefits, CEO compensation caps and social media regulation, but hey, they weren’t going to be evil and they were gonna disrupt the system. Everyone will be free! Turns out it was “free to be delivery people”.
Leto
@Gin & Tonic: Yes, but who takes the stage? Oooohhhhh, suspense!!!!
MomSense
@MomSense:
And the bold is all fucked up. I intended to highlight that this company put visa versa in an employment listing.
Betty Cracker
@Gin & Tonic: What’s the etiquette on spoilers these days? I try to do the right thing, but I guess I just don’t understand the rules.
Ruviana
I tried to link on my phone and it’s just a pain so here’s a good article on delivery-driving for Amazon. About a year old.
https://amp-theatlantic-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/563444/?amp_js_v=a2&_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQEKAFwAQ%3D%3D#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Ftechnology%2Farchive%2F2018%2F06%2Famazon-flex-workers%2F563444%2F
JR
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): the golden age of US economic growth occurred in significant part because most of the production capacity of the northern hemisphere was destroyed by WWII
A Ghost To Most
It’s not just Amazon. Our Chewy deliveries are made by a Somali guy in a rental van.
M31
@ruemara:
I read this as “CEO concentration camps” and thought “sounds good to me”
Patricia Kayden
This is so true.
https://twitter.com/EricBoehlert/status/1154765487659786247
Canât stand the fricking MSM.
Leto
@MomSense: I had this pleasant experience about two years ago when, after doing the military thing for twenty years, I attempted to head back to the civilian economy. The amount of word salad, MBA jargon, totally devoid of any meaning job descriptions that I found was crazy. Agreed: burn it all down!
MJS
@different-church-lady: Don’t discount the number of not rich, but lazy 23 year olds who should save their money by not eating out so often, and certainly shouldn’t be paying to have their food delivered to them. I know they exist, because two of them live under my roof.
A Ghost To Most
@different-church-lady: It is Joel Osteen’s world now. And Jerry Falwell, and Franklin Graham, and Mike Pence, …
ruemara
@M31: I’m kinda pro those anyway.
@MJS: I visited a friend in LA and she had taco bell delivered. WTF? For taco bell? As I looked at the menu prices, I just thought I’d much rather go get some groceries for the cost of this.
Butch
I was forced into the gig economy last year because of a layoff. It sucks. Yeah, unemployment is low – as long as $8.50 an hour sounds like a living wage to you.
Another Scott
@A Ghost To Most: Chewy is PetSmart.
I understand the anger at Amazon and the like, but I think much of it is misplaced.
A lot of the stuff I buy on Amazon is sold by smaller companies – Amazon just acts as a storefront for them. (Somehow at least some of them can also do the Prime Shipping stuff even when it’s not coming from an Amazon warehouse.) Kinda like Etsy and scores of other places. Similarly with many other web companies – the stuff is “drop-shipped” from the original manufacturer. And a lot of the stuff I buy on Amazon isn’t stocked locally. I don’t buy potato chips and toilet paper from Amazon, but apparently many people do… :-/
Retail, logistics, distribution, is changing. Change is a constant in a dynamic economy. Governments have a big role in guiding that change and need to do much more so that the people who are actually doing the work see more of the benefits.
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
In the olden days, gig workers were called jobbers.
Patricia Kayden
Isnât it nice to know that our taxes are being turned over to White farmers to bribe them into continuing to vote for Trump?
https://twitter.com/dailykos/status/1154773575628402690
And all because of Trumpâs unnecessary tariffs against China.
Jager
A retired guy I know started driving for Uber in Santa Barbara, he was doing it a couple of days a week, wasn’t making much money. One day he picked up an old retired guy in Montecito and drove him to several doctors’ appointments and a couple of other stops. The guy handed him a 100 dollar tip. Then asked for his personal number. He called the next week, the same deal. The third week the guy called and while they were driving, asked what kind of money my friend was making. the old rich guy offered him at two day a week gig driving him around for $500 a week. And they now drive the rich guy’s old Mercedes S Class sedan. As Nick says, “shit I never thought I’d end up being a chauffeur.”
Leto
@Betty Cracker: I guess for any sporting/movie/tv/entertainment event (and thatâs subjective) we should it preface it with: **************SPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILER************
Iâll leave it with a Buzzfeed quote (as Iâm currently watching the F1 practice 1): OMG SOMETHING HAPPENED ON TRACK AND YOU WONT BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENED NEXT!
david
“Iâm just going to shoot in the dark and guess that the first driver doesnât have good health insurance, that he wonât have a retirement that looks anything like the UPS driverâs, and that his hourly pay, after deducting wear and tear on his vehicle, is probably below minimum wage. But, god damn, did my cheap Chinese shit get delivered to my door quickly.”
America in a nutshell. We know we’re all screwing each other; but, we’re getting our stuff.
Baud
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Was this ever not true?
lee
@A Ghost To Most: For us Chewy is delivered by FedEx. It is really interesting how different all these deliveries are across the country.
different-church-lady
@Another Scott: You know, it’s funny. I get close to anything I want the same day I want it.
But I’m one of these weird old-fashioned people who are willing to leave the house occasionally.
MJS
@ruemara: Yep. I was feeling lazy one day – didn’t want to cook, didn’t want to go anywhere. Downloaded Uber eats, saw the mark-up, decided rummaging through the kitchen was the wiser choice.
Leto
@Jager: Next thing you know, the chauffeur will marry the Earlâs youngest daughter and bring great shame to the house! /s (Downton Abbey reference. Shit! Shouldâve spoilered that for G&T!)
different-church-lady
@ruemara:
Let’s face it: there’s about three dozen sane people left in the country, and they all hang out here.
Yarrow
@ruemara: People don’t cook from scratch all that much anymore. They may get those food boxes delivered and follow the instructions to toss pre-cut and pre-measured things together but they don’t go to the grocery store, figure out what to cook, do their own slicing and chopping, and figure out a recipe.
There’s a Whole Foods I’ve gone to occasionally where half the store is prepared foods. A massive area with a salad bar, hot food bar, soup bar. Refrigerated case next to it with to-go meals and things like salads and sandwiches. Deli, pizza etc. on the other side of all that. An employee there told me they make most of their money from that part of the store.
Gin & Tonic
@Betty Cracker: Very few of us follow professional cycling. But with sports events, I think it’s appropriate to wait until the typical viewing period has passed. If the event is taking place in Europe, wait at least until prime-time US viewing is over.
artem1s
@Mike in NC:
Once again, Dolt is a poor mimic of W’s worst policies and practices. Alberto Gonzales was a truly sick individual. I’ve always suspected he provided torture porn video to W. First in the form of execution videos from TX death row and then CIA “interrogations”. Anyone who says they think Dolt is worse than W, has a very, very short memory. Fredo, Big Time,Turd Blossom, Rummy and Condi were just slightly better at covering up their odious crimes against humanity. And they had the advantage of hiding behind 9/11 fearmongering.
lee
@different-church-lady: I hope you are not counting on me for that dozen :)
different-church-lady
@MJS: Well, yeah, that’s the kind of thing I was talking about, but perhaps I should have said “willing to pay for delivered milkshakes” instead of “can afford to”
Honest to god, frugality is a completely forgotten concept.
Another Scott
In other, kinda related, news, DOJ approves T-Mobile – Sprint merger after Sprint spins off part of business to Dish.
Devil’s in the Details, but I generally think this is good. Verizon and AT&T are too fat and happy, and the big cable companies are doing too little to compete with them. TMoSprint has a chance to continue to drive down prices for all of us and speed the buildout of faster infrastructure for more people.
But we’ll see…
Cheers,
Scott.
The Moar You Know
@different-church-lady: I think you could call this economy “Dickensian” – you’ll know we’re there when the milkshake delivery people start fighting each other to the death for the privilege of delivering the milkshakes.
rikyrah
@Mike in NC:
This is who they are.
MomSense
@Leto:
Letâs start a B-J feature where we mock the worst job ads we come across. We can call it On the Road to Hell or something.
rikyrah
@Patricia Kayden:
glad you said WHITE farmers, cause you know that the Black farmers won’t be receiving shyt.
Nothing but phucking welfare.
Jager
@Leto:
Nick is too damn old to marry anybody. NIck is 73, a retired sales guy who can talk to anybody. The old rich guy is 82 and can’t drive anymore, he and Nick have become friends. The rich guy is a widower, all his friends are dead or dying and his kids live on the east coast. Old and lonely. They are a perfect match.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I was just reading a Guardian article about Adrian McKinty, who’s a novelist. Among other things, he writes the Sean Duffy series set in Belfast during the Troubles. His new book, The Chain, is a best-seller, but he’d been evicted from his house and was driving an Uber when he got a call from the publisher about that book. I couldn’t believe it. He’s multiply published and has won awards and he made so little, he couldn’t live on it. But he says that he was selling only a few thousand copies annually. You sure can’t live on that.
Betty Cracker
@Gin & Tonic: I got yelled at by my sister for crowing (via text) about a USWNT goal in the semifinals because she was taping it. She could have been watching it live but had other priorities. So, it made me wonder what the damned rules are. I’m one of probably 10 Americans who has never seen an episode of “Friends.” Next time someone mentions Joey or Rachel or whoever, I’m going to scream “OMFG, spoiler much!?!” at them. But thank you for your response, which makes more sense than my sister’s. ;-)
Booger
The delivery business has been a scam since its inception. “Independent Contractors” on bicycles or driving vans, dependent on the company for work, unofficially banned from working for more than one company, you’re ours until something bad goes down then ‘we’ve never seen you before, sorry about your vehicle being totalled/hospital bills/worker’s compensaywhat?”
Showcase the one driver making $200 a day (through kickbacks or some other sweetheart deal) and hide the ninety-nine not even covering their expenses. Toss them out when they need help, cuz there’s always a fresh sucker down enough on their luck to think they’ll be the guy making $200 a day.
Been on both sides of the desk, and left a nice gig when I couldn’t stomach the scam anymore. Felt dirty every time I walked into the office. Uber, Lyft, Doordash, whatever…SSDD. Everything with a 1099 attached should be burned down.
Another Scott
@Yarrow: I’m guilty of buying fancy pre-made salads at the local Balducci’s. I can tell you why:
I used to buy lots of fresh veggies to make our own salads for the 2 of us. A couple of kinds of lettuce, peppers, broccoli, etc., etc. The bottom of our fridge would be packed. Then I’d clean the fixins and chop them up and make enough for a week. It would often take over an hour. And invariably it would start to go bad before we ate all of it. :-(
For us, it makes more sense for me to stop in the store a couple of times a week (it’s practically on the way home), pick up a few assorted salads (be in and out in literally 10 minutes or less), than to make our own. We get greater variety of ingredients, it’s fresher, it takes less time, and it takes less space in our fridge.
Yes, they’re not cheap. But I think it’s a great thing.
YMMV.
Cheers,
Scott.
rikyrah
@ruemara:
I have a number of the delivery service apps. I’ve used it once. I’m still price averse to paying the delivery fee AND a tip.
I just can’t do it.
rikyrah
@Yarrow:
tried pricing out the food box places, and they were just too expensive for me to justify. I’d rather do my own shopping and save the money.
The Moar You Know
@Gin & Tonic: So, get this. Two years ago I buy a Forester on their 0% financing program. It says very clearly in the financing paperwork that if you use the vehicle for business purposes they can and will declare the contract invalid and they can take your car.
A few weeks later I get a letter from Uber congratulating me on my purchase of a new Subaru and letting me know that if I need extra cash for making my car payments I can deliver for them.
Subaru sent them my info – while awful, that happens with any major purchase these days. I get that. But it is utterly unconscionable for Subaru, Uber, and Chase (the bank involved) to sell people a car and then urge them to pursue a course of action that will lead to that vehicle being repossessed. That’s payday-loan level bullshit on steroids right there.
I’ve never used Uber and Chase will return to being a nonentity in my life as soon as this thing is paid off. But I tell you what: I won’t buy a car from Subaru ever again. “Unethical” doesn’t even begin to cover this.
evodevo
@wenchacha: FexEx uses the same system…”contractors”….no bennies, low pay, lease your own vehicle, etc. etc. These guys work 14-16 hour days during the Xmas season, just like us postal workers, but have NO union to look out for them and so no overtime or sick days…Corporations have been hellbent on returning to the days of yesteryear for awhile now, and I guess it’s gonna take another near Depression to wake people up…
evodevo
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Yes. This.
hitchhiker
When I worked for FedEx the mantra was to never, ever become unionized. Entire teams of top management spent their time figuring out exactly how much & what sort of goodies would make it unnecessary for drivers to ever even think about the possibility. High wages, tuition reimbursement, reasonable scheduling, benefits — all of that was in place BECAUSE the business model (guaranteed on time delivery or your money back!) depended on reliable drivers.
Just an example of how the existence of unions made life better for all kinds of people who never joined one. That seems to be over.
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: This morning, I saw the strategy behind it when Tom Cotton (the bobble-throated slap-dick from Arkansas, H/T C. Pierce!) accused Kamala Harris of coddling white supremacist murderers when she opposed resurrecting the federal death penalty.
On a related note, Cotton is one of the reasons I hope so fervently that the Dems nominate someone other than Biden in 2020. Cotton is every bit as evil as Trump, but he’s much smarter, younger and slicker. I can see him or someone like him mounting a successful generational, so-called anti-establishment challenge to a hapless old goof like Biden.
Patricia Kayden
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/07/26/ole-miss-emmitt-till-guns-kappa-alpha-fraternity/?utm_term=.f9da115e8280
I feel sorry for Black people who live in these very deeply red states. I couldnât do it,
evodevo
@Mike in NC: Hey! If Fat Tony says it’s alright to execute the innocent, then what’s yer problem? https://www.businessinsider.com/antonin-scalia-says-executing-the-innocent-is-constitutional-2014-9
frosty
@Barbara: I donât use Amazon. Spouse uses it exclusively. I figure the richest man in the world doesnât need any of my money.
Worker exploitation and data minibg is also a factor.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Same here. Plus all that boxed stuff will be devoid of spices and too insipid and tasteless for my palate.
Another Scott
Twitter:
Unpossible!!1
Cheers,
Scott.
The Moar You Know
@Booger: I spent my 20s and 30s doing nothing but 1099 work. Musician. I really was the “gig economy”.
It’s a great way to slowly starve. And after the early 1990s recession, when all the money started pouring into residential real estate as an investment vehicle, and rents started climbing way beyond the ability of a low-wage working stiff to afford, it also became a great way to be homeless.
I got lucky and got out of that life, but some of my friends didn’t. I know people, now in their fifties, who are living in literal treehouses in national forests because they can’t even afford a broken-down car to live in.
snoey
@hitchhiker: The old (pre PC) IBM was a great place to work because they followed the make them happy enough they’ll never want a union model. Doesn’t work if there aren’t any unions to be scared of.
frosty
@different-church-lady: A shitty, unequal economy, designed to be that way. QED.
ETA: I donât mind the caps. Like you said earlier, weâre living in shouty times.
Leto
@MomSense: On another site I used to frequent, we had a whole thread about those types of job descriptions plus what they would pay. Much laughing and anger were expressed. Let me go dig some of those up, if I can.
@Jager: Haha, well Iâm glad theyâre friends.
@Gin & Tonic: how long should that viewing period be extended now that DVRs have been invented? Your spoiler was, âStage 19 of the Tour de Franceâ. That was indication to stop reading. Also I didnât indicated at what point of the stage that happened or any of the rider positions. You still have plenty of reason to watch.
Another Scott
@hitchhiker: Yup.
Similarly (not to derail the discussion), rapid transit helps drivers because it gets a lot of cars off the road. (Wikipedia tells me that 215 M people rode Washington Metro in 2008.)
All these things – business decisions, transportation decisions, etc. – are systems. There are lots and lots of forces acting to make them the way they are. Forces that are created by human and governmental decisions. We can change these systems – they’re not immutable laws of nature.
Cheers,
Scott.
frosty
@Leto:
âDoes that mom and pop shop take their profits and funnel it back to your local RWNJ?â
Yes to this. Shop at the local bike shop with friendly owners and support my boroughâs tax base? The ones with RWNJ and Trump signs?
Fair Economist
@Another Scott: I mostly cook on my own, but I see and agree with the problem of kitchen food waste. I make a recipe that calls for 2 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley. Great, now what do I do with the rest of the bunch? So I make something else but it calls for half an onion and then I plan for something else but then my son makes something else for dinner and then the next night we have to go somewhere and then some of the ingredients are starting to spoil and… sigh. I am happy to adjust my eating to avoid waste but nobody else in my life is.
brantl
@carole: Dial back the attitude, dear, we wouldn’t want to mistake you for Trump.
Leto
@MomSense: Found the thread on the other site, will post some of the gems after therapy. The thread is a post about job listings with a bad requirements to pay ratio. Hilarious and infuriating.
Kelly
@frosty: Our excellent local hardware store is owned by and mostly staffed by RWNJ. Buy local, 10 miles away or Home Depot/Lowes 20 miles away?
Brachiator
And at the macroeconomic level
Trump takes credit even though his advisors promised stronger growth numbers and Trump’s amateurish and fumbling policies hurt the economy.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/26/us-gdp-second-quarter-2019.html
evodevo
@Ruviana: Yes…great article, and as a mail carrier with acquaintances in both fedex and ups, I can say every word is true….
schrodingers_cat
Big box stores and Amazon may be crap and treat their workers like crap but that does not mean that the local mom and pop stores are always wonderful.
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
All economies have this feature to some extent. In a fully functioning economy it would probably be younger people without a lot of experience who did the grunt work of an economy. Or didn’t have enough time, what with school to have a full time job. This was sort of the economy that we had 50-60 yrs ago. Unless of course if you weren’t white or male. But that’s not the economy that we have now. We have large corporations, and yes we had them then. But not for most of our basic needs. How many people have a local bakery? How many of you have ever seen inside a meat market? Some of this is the economy of scale, which in theory can make stuff cheaper. Amazon is one of those creatures. Couldn’t even exist without the internet – oh wait what about Sears? It moved slower but did basically what Amazon does today. Amazon has a wider range of crap to purchase – I was looking for a toaster, prices range from $19.95 to $349 on Amazon. I don’t use Amazon any longer, because their customer service is crap. But the do offer stuff for less, but at what cost? Authors here have stories about their books being sold a widely varying prices and what control do you have about that? None. Their people get paid crap for a lot of work and Jeff is one of the richer people in the world. This is the economy of scale, and not only does it give good prices it can make billions for some. And where is that money going, what is it doing in the economy? Is it being spread around effectively or is it being used to massively inflate the personal economy of a relative few? I’m going with B, relatively few. And of course there are always winners and losers in any economy. But we are getting back to the economy that helped lead us to the era of the depression. Where few were getting extremely wealthy and most were getting fucked. It even coined a phrase, nickel and dimed to death. BS is not all that wrong about the economy, he just has no concept of what that actually means or what to do about it. It’s almost like he’s rooting for it rather than against it.
Another Scott
@Kelly: Unfortunately, it’s probably simplest to assume that every business person is much farther right than we are. Local or on-line. It sorta goes with the territory and American folklore.
Penzey’s is special because it isn’t, but the family is split:
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Raven
@Jager: I’m thinking of becoming a dog walker when I retire (36 days!) but I’m a but worried I know too many doggie people and I won’t charge enough. I looked at the uber-type doggie gig thing but they get really shitty reviews.
Gin & Tonic
@Betty Cracker: The Tour de France is kind of in a different boat, because NBCSN shows it live, which is in the morning EDT, then rebroadcasts most of it between 8:00-11:00 in the evening EDT. There are a lot of parts where not much happens, so they can always cut a ~6-hour event down to 3 to fit that time slot, but you’re guaranteed to see the exciting stuff and the end results. If you’ve tried hard to avoid any news of it during the day so you can watch it in your leisure time at night, seeing reports from the people who can watch it live during the morning is annoying.
Barbara
@carole: I don’t know where you live. I live in Northern Virginia. Most things that I could get through Amazon I can actually walk to get. Other things that are obtained through Amazon can be obtained through other sites directly, that use USPS or UPS for shipping (which is what my daughter does). So your straw man response was not just unnecessary it basically assumed that (1) I expect people to forgo all convenience no matter what the circumstance or that (B) Amazon is totally the ONLY WAY ANYONE CAN EVER GET ANYTHING SHIPPED TO THEIR HOUSE HOW DARE YOU EXPECT ME TO BE INCONVIENCED! I don’t often feel like telling someone to grow up, but I am really working hard to restrain myself here.
But sure, of course, just keep telling yourself that you have no duty to your fellow human beings to try to figure out whether there is a more ethical way for you to get stuff. Stuff is just so important to one’s daily existence.
Martin
I’m really torn on this.
One of the great aspects of our economy is the concept of permissionless innovation. That is, you can invent a new business model without convincing some government agency to see your wisdom. That’s the space the gig economy lives in, but also is the origins of almost all of US industry – a couple of people in their garage building a computer. How do you break into a market that is so strongly dominated by players like UPS? Honestly, this is how.
The problem is that a lot of this isn’t scrappy entrepreneurship, it’s just getting by. So, tax Bezos’s billions and dump it into a guaranteed minimum income and let him do the math on how much to pay workers vs how much to let them ride on his largess.
Raven
@Barbara: So don’t use Amazon
Omnes Omnibus
@Booger: Over the years Iâve dealt with a lot of people who made good money as 1099-MISC contractors. People in construction, hair stylists, strippers can all do well being self-employed. And that also brings us to the legal question of whether someone is legitimately self-employed or the company is cheating them by calling them contractors in order to avoid the expense of carrying employees on their books.
Martin
@schrodingers_cat: Local mom and pop are almost always worse on that front. Retail jobs are almost uniformly shitty, unless you have some key skill that defines the job (knowing how to mark a suit for altering, etc.)
The tradeoff is Costco. Workers are paid well, get benefits, but Costco has fewer jobs than other retailers because of their format, and they increasingly rely on unique product offerings to attract customers, over price competition with others.
ruemara
@Yarrow: I adore WF cookie bar and breakfast bar, but hypertension like mine means I cook 99.9% of my meals.
zhena gogolia
@Barbara:
You don’t seem to understand what it’s like outside northern Virginia. In more remote locations, there’s nowhere to walk to buy what you need. There are no retail stores, and the ones that have survived have nothing in stock. Yes, probably Amazon caused this reality, but it is the reality.
WhatsMyNym
@Leto: The were coming down from the top of the Col de lâIseran, which at 9,068, is the highest paved pass in the Alps. There was a landslide also.
mrmoshpotato
@Leto: Do any of those 3 American riders dabble in baseball – specifically pitching? James Inhofe could use an icy fastball to the face.
Fair Economist
@Omnes Omnibus: Gig works if it a real market – many buyers of the gigger’s services and an easy way for a gigger to switch employers. This is the case basically never – there is an oligopoly or monopoly for almost all these internet organized gigging systems, so the corporations can exploit the giggers ruthlessly.
One way to tame the beast at present would be “public options” where local governments provide the service. They can resist a price war by the corps because it benefits their constituents, and in some cases legally assert a local monopoly. Austin has done this for ride services.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
Sears originally was the Amazon of its day, especially as they delivered a wide range of quality goods to people in rural communities far away from convenient shopping areas.
Supermarkets took off during the Depression, when people logically became extremely price sensitive. There was another postwar growth spurt, intensified by people with shiny new cars willing to drive to the store.
Few really want a return to the days of the small neighborhood grocer whose store you would walk to, and where you had to wait for the grocer to wrap meat and other items that you had to ask for or point out on shelves that were inaccessible to customers.
mrmoshpotato
@Mike in NC:
Remember The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror segment Hell Toupee with ‘World’s Deadliest Executions’?
cintibud
@Gin & Tonic: Uh, I don’t understand, what is the spoiler? That a leg of the race was cancelled? Sounds like he did folks a favor, that they didn’t need to rush home to watch or could make other plans. What’s the big deal with telling someone that a sports event (or part of an event) was cancelled?
Michael Cain
There was a short stretch here (west Denver suburb) when some small Prime deliveries were made by someone in their own car. Those seem to have been squeezed out by people in well-organized delivery vans. Some are plain; some have the Amazon arrow on them; some have a named delivery outfit logo on them. Some may be 1099 deals, but I suspect that they’re clearing more than the person with stuff piled in the back seat just on the basis of being part of something bigger.
Barbara
@zhena gogolia: No, I do get it. I would never expect someone to walk or drive a great distance. But there are on-line vendors other than Amazon that use USPS or UPS. My daughter does this because USPS is the only thing that as access to her apartment building, so Amazon is not convenient for her. It’s the idea that Amazon is the only way to get stuff on-line that I push back against, because it is a bad faith argument, at least for many products.
Barbara
@Raven: Gosh Raven, where do you think this started? That’s exactly what I said I do and I got a straw man, snide and insulting response.
Brachiator
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yep. The 1099M is just the method of paying self- employed people. It is not automatically an indicator that people are being exploited.
Another Scott
@zhena gogolia: I thought WalMart was destroying American retail (first copyright 1998) before Amazon went public (May 1997).
:-/
As huge as Amazon is, it’s still a relatively small part of retail. They make much/most/all of their profit from AWS and so forth (scroll down to 2. Operating Income).
WalMart’s revenue was $515B in FY19. Amazon’s revenue was $233B in 2018.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
(“Who doesn’t shop at WalMart.”)
Ruckus
@Baud:
Always true but it was somewhat different. When I was a teen we had the fast food, you could order out of a catalog/Sears, and people got paid shit for a crap job. If you had a job that took skill you could do OK. And the tax basis meant that the super wealthy, and there always were super wealthy, paid a fair share of the cost of being alive. But life was simpler. Not a lot of people drove cars that cost 3 to 5 times the average, they do around socal. Your wages roughly tracked your skill level – if your skills were useful. I was able to purchase a new car and motorcycle at 18, I had a useful manual skill. Today what is a useful manual skill, something that can pay a not totally useless wage? So much has changed in the last 50 yrs about work, what we do, how we do it, what we get paid for it. 50 yrs ago computers were mostly a dream, phones had a wire, TV was still mostly B&W. Today we carry all that around in our pockets. It isn’t the same world, yet it’s the same people, some do OK, many do not.
mrmoshpotato
@Gin & Tonic: Hopefully you don’t accidentally read who won the stage. ?
frosty
@Kelly: home depot is run by a RWNJ so you might as well stay local. I donât know about Loweâs.
Fair Economist
@zhena gogolia: For many things Amazon is far more efficient economically. It makes far more sense for a worker in a warehouse to spend a few minutes packaging something and for the delivery van to make one more stop on my street, which it is going to drive on anyway, than for me to spend the afternoon driving all over town to find and – maybe – get it. The problem is that Amazon can use its monopoly power to exploit workers. The solution, I think, is regulation of wages and socialization of benefits like health care, so we can get the efficiencies of a delivery economy without the injustice of a monopoly gig economy.
Duane
Hopefully the delivery driver can get a good size cardboard box out of the gig. I’m sure he can find a curtain rod and a few sparrows somewhere.
TenguPhule
@different-church-lady:
The one where Donald Trump is controlling America’s nuclear weapons instead of rotting in prison.
mrmoshpotato
@ruemara: I usually use GÂŽď¸ubhub to look at menus and then find the place’s real number and call directly for pickup.
Fun fact: GHub menu prices for a Chinese restaurant I got dinner from the other day were a dollar more per dish than in-store prices.
And they still had the delivery fee. ?
Haroldo
@different-church-lady: @Betty Cracker:
I can only reiterate Betty’s praise for your post – the most crystalline formulation of what’s wrong with the developed world these days (at least the US).
Elizabelle
@Fair Economist:
Agreed! The Dem candidates should take up the gig economy as a topic. If not themselves, a lot of voters have kids, relatives or friends who are in the gig economy, and likely have great concern about their long-term feasibility. It is not sustainable as currently practiced, and the companies are suffering through paying the drivers until they can do away with them entirely and go to driverless cars, drones, or some other delivery system.
(FWIW: I like the feature of picking up packages at a local drop site — like a convenience store. Amazon offers that, and it’s great for not wondering if your package is developing legs while you are out and about or at work.)
Senator Mark Warner (D-Virginia) has held some hearings on the gig economy. It’s on the radar.
Mai Naem mobile
@ruemara: eating restaurant is a big money suck. I know people who I know don’t make that much money but have no problem spending 7-12 bucks on outside food. That’s $300 a month . These are the same people I see using doordash or uber eats and not tip the driver. I guess I am an oldster because with my parents eating out was a bit of a treat not a daily event.
FelonyGovt
Friends of mine, a couple in their 50’s, tried delivering for Amazon, using their own vehicle. They had STRICT time requirements that kept them driving too fast, stressed out looking for addresses, and running up flights of stairs in apartment buildings. Even though they really needed the money, it was just too much for them and they never tried it again.
Raven
@Barbara: well good
Elizabelle
Had I heard that cardboard is becoming in short supply with all the Amazon and other shipped deliveries?
TenguPhule
@MomSense:
But can you burn it all down while ordering coffee to go and making some stapled copies on the way?
polyorchnid octopunch
@different-church-lady: That is highly dependent on where you live.
TenguPhule
@different-church-lady:
Am I the last person on earth who doesn’t use Amazon for anything?
ET
What is interesting is that i look like UPS announced that was moving to a 7 day a week delivery to keep up with packages and FedEx already does. USPS delivers in some cities on Sundays and they used a different employee type and sometimes they don’t necessarily were USPS uniforms. I think they may be the City Carrier Assistants (CCAs) which do seem to be unionized, but their starting salary is lower and the benefits are different. Though I think the CCA thing wasn’t working as well as USPS thought.
The WSJ articles said UPS negotiated with the union for a new type for worker that just works the weekend but at a lower pay scale.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@Leto: or murder someone, as the college-educated chauffeur did in the Raymond Chandler short story
TenguPhule
@different-church-lady:
Hey! I still clip coupons from actual newspapers to make ends meet.
Ruckus
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
You really have just described an economy.
People working for other people or even themselves, doing things that seemingly have a need, and getting paid for it.
There is a fast food industry because a lot of people either can’t cook, don’t want to cook, don’t have a place to cook, or any of dozens of other reasons. There are delivery services/driving services for the same reasons. We aren’t all self sufficient – and most never were. Because being self sufficient takes time, effort and skill. Not everyone has all three or any of the three all the time. We used to be more like that because we had to be. Now we don’t have to be to exist. Was just thinking that I do the same kind of work now that I learned to do 57 yrs ago when I started working. Similar or the same kinds of machines and hand tools. Some the same tools. And yet there are machines and tools that didn’t exist, weren’t even ideas then that get used every day to do the same type of work, but do it far better. And I’ve had 3 distinct careers, none like the other. It is for sure a different world today than it was decades ago. And the changes are far more in the last 100 yrs than in 1000 yrs before that. The change is different in the rate of change. Some are totally discouraged by that change and want to stop it. And are totally frustrated that they can’t.
TenguPhule
@Ruckus:
*Raise hand*
And this is in Hawaii, where everything has to be imported. It can be done if people are willing to be faithful customers and pay for value.
Jay
Thereâs a thread out there on DoorDash, noting that if you pay and tip via the app, the tip goes to DoorDash, not the delivery person.
Ruckus
@frosty:
Used to shop at WholePaycheck. If you are judicious you can do Ok price wise. But a cashier once asked me a question and I answered “I don’t think Jeff needs any more of my money than he’s already getting.” She just nodded her head in agreement, didn’t utter a sound. That said far more than any words.
opiejeanne
@Jager: It sounds like the intro to a caper movie.
bluefoot
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I have had this recurring fantasy that if only we could know the actual human cost of everything we consume, maybe we would do things – maybe the entire economy – differently What if every time I picked up my smartphone, I could feel what it took to mine the materials, to manufacture the phone, etc? Maybe then our supply chains and labor laws and health care would all be different. Incentives and taxes and trade laws would be different too.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ruckus: There is a real French bakery near where I live. It was started and is run by a baker from Normandy and his family. It is also one of the few places I can see French rugby on TV.
My parents buy meat for most special occasions from a local butcher who is the third or fourth generation running the place.
Both of these places are significantly more expensive that a supermarket. The quality is much better as well. They are selling luxury goods, and everyone is not able to shop there. One exception for the butcher shop is that they do a good trade in butchering deer for people after deer season.
germy
@Another Scott:
link
rikyrah
@Jay:
Is that just DoorDash, or all the other delivery apps too. I’m glad to know, just in case I ever use the app.
WhatsMyNym
Most of the large brick & mortar are getting into the expedited delivery game without making you pay any overpriced dues or have your deliveries made from the back of someone’s car. Which is great for folks like me who live an hour away from the closest. I found with Amazon Prime the shipping could be fast, but getting it out of their warehouses could take days.
My local stores are better than most, but they don’t carry everything and tend to specialize.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
What I’m saying is that was often how one used to get bread and meat. The only how.
For sure life is different and economy of scale is a real thing. And there are still independent stores who now have to work the upscale end because they have to compete for the overall sales dollar. One of those careers I talked about was a small, independent, retail store. It was a good gig, but fitting in with the requirements of the customer is always an issue, seemingly with the exception of huge corporations, where the customer is just the money delivery system. Not that every business really is just trying to be a money delivery system. They have to be or they cease to exist.
Leto
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: OMG, SPOILERS! /s
@MomSense: ok, hereâs a sample:
Unpaid internship at CondeNast in NYC to be a food writer. Editorial Assistant. Who needs to be paid in NYC? Obviously not CondeNast employees.
Wall of text (this was Sep 2014):
Ruckus
@germy:
Considering that I changed less than a year ago from T-Mobile to Sprint because the service is much better and now they are going to be the same…… Is my service/cost going to remain or am I going to revert to not as good at 25% higher cost? Wanna take bets?
Gin & Tonic
@Leto:
Harping on that over and over, even with the /s, isn’t a good look, IMO.
Omnes Omnibus
@Fair Economist: I am not defending the gig economy. I am saying not everyone who receives a 1099-MISC is a part of the gig economy or is being exploited. Self employed people can do very well.
MomSense
@Leto:
No fucking way! Do all that, make critical decisions and not get paid! GTFO
Leto
@Gin & Tonic: so is endless harping about sports spoilers, yet here we are.
raven
@Leto: That’s easy for you to say.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: Because you arenât allowed to add spices when you are cooking the food?
I know that when I have purchased frozen pizzas from Costco I have always added fresh toppings and seasoning.
Chris Johnson
@FelonyGovt:
The interesting thing about Amazon is, that is just built into the company DNA, all the way to the top. On the one hand, it’s kind of fairer than having struggling stressed workers and an army of wealthy, privileged managers: at Amazon no matter WHO you are your life sucks and you’re impossibly stressed out and want to die. It’s true for the upper brass too: they’re just maniacs. Sears tried to be like that on Randian principles and it went horribly wrong. Amazon does it because it’s driven by leadership, they’re not trying to do a ‘competitive market of business ideas’. At every level, you kill yourself trying to do what Bezos wants done.
I hang out online in some Silicon Valley havens, as I’m a programmer, and it’s interesting to see the attitudes towards Amazon. It’s a bit like New York New York: if you can make it there you can write your own ticket or get whatever investment you want, but it produces a culture of extreme brutality that pervades programming now. If you read about ‘crunch’ in the video game industry as a terrible thing ruining work conditions, making coders out to be psychologically abused galley slaves with keyboards? Very true and pervasive, the white collar coders walked right into it with their hostility to unions and their love of libertarianism, and this game industry crunch is exactly what Amazon is like, everywhere, at every level.
Late stage capitalism. If the only rule is win at all cost, there’s going to be some who will pay any cost just to win: and if the system massively rewards the biggest winner, well, here we are.
Very interesting thread, so much I might say is already being said. Hope the ‘game industry coder crunch laborer’ perspective is interesting. I promise, that’s the way Amazon works, quite famously. The higher ups at Amazon drive themselves to an inhuman extent. NOBODY there is living a civilized life, that’s how they win. (I daresay there are pockets of lazy manipulative people leaning on their underlings but I think Amazon is designed to root them out)
Gin & Tonic
@Leto: I made precisely one (1) comment, then answered one (1) direct question from Betty.
Another Scott
@germy: Meh.
Sprint is only still hanging on because SoftBank dumped a bunch of money in it. It couldn’t, and can’t, exist on its own for much longer.
So, there will be 3 major US wireless companies soon. The question is, how will Sprint’s customers be divided up, and will there be 3 strong players or two huge ones and a weaker one.
I don’t know enough about Dish to know how much impact they will have. I assume that Comcast or some other giant will eventually try to buy them, and TMobile is worried about that too.
The point about watching this merger carefully, especially under Donnie’s minions, is a good one. But at this point, I don’t see that there’s any real alternative to letting the merger go ahead if we want 3 fairly strong players in the wireless space.
We’ll see.
Cheers,
Scott.
MattF
@Chris Johnson: I guess this explains how Amazon can make bad corporate decisionsâ if itâs what Jeff wants, then itâs going to happen. Since Jeff is neither infallible nor immortal, the future looks a bit cloudy.
Fair Economist
@Omnes Omnibus: I wasn’t disagreeing with you. I was pointing out the conditions necessary to make a gig economy fair and workable, and the fact that they’re absent in these systems organize by huge internet monopolies. I know gig economies can and do work for some of the things you talk about, precisely because they do have the necessary requirements of a free market (which requires there’s no oligopoly) and low switching costs.
EthylEster
@Another Scott: I just finished reading Thinking in Systems. We are so screwed. I mean, REALLY SCREWED.
Fair Economist
@Chris Johnson: I don’t think Amazon is working because it’s got some clever system to squeeze lots of great work out of all its employees. I think it’s working because it’s in an industry with insane benefits to scale. *Some* company was going to win the online order and delivery business and Amazon managed to do it. If it weren’t Amazon, it would be somebody else with the same story.
If they are really squeezing lots of work from their top management they are probably getting garbage decisions and planning from them. That’s how people work – more than 40 hours and the quality goes to heck. They just have such an enormous monopoly advantage it doesn’t matter.
different-church-lady
@Fair Economist: We shouldn’t have a “gig economy”. What we should have is gig workers being a portion of a diverse economy.
Moncultures ALWAYS fail. Always.
Elizabelle
@Chris Johnson: Whoo. That makes me not want to use Amazon (except when there’s no alternative, like hunting for a specific used book).
I remember Jeff Bezos telling us all he only wanted A students for his company, no C’s. A few years back. That sounded kind of pretentious. I was a way late adopter of Amazon, and use them sparingly.
And who can forget the NY Times love letter to Jeff Bezos, from August 2015: Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace
Sounds like a digitized snake pit. They are “peculiar.”
different-church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus:
Framing is rather important to discussions of such. 100 years ago these were not luxury goods or quality goods; they were just “goods”. They only became luxury by dint of having everything else be cheapened as much as possible.
goblue72
@Barbara:
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different-church-lady
@Elizabelle: Yeah, “A students” are gonna do warehouse fulfillment.
Avalune
If a thing doesn’t happen because it is canceled – can it be spoiled?
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@Leto: Oh, for fuck’s sake. I recorded it and was looking forward to seeing it later today. I’ve been careful not to spoil myself by looking at news sites, and I know many people do that for many sports events. I really, REALLY wish commenters would stop shoving these “OT! Breaking news! Sports spoiler!” comments in here just for the fleeting pleasure of being first. It’s no better than shouting “Frist!” into the thread. So you know the score? Fine, just shut up.
ETA:, OK, now I’ve read the rest of the thread. You’re clearly just a dick who enjoys pissing on other people’s pleasures. Fuck off. Pied.
Elizabelle
More from that 2015 NY Times expose on Amazon:
Amholes. LOL.
Elizabelle
@different-church-lady: Well. Those aren’t really workers. They’re just drubs until the jobs can be completely automated.
(Not to mention customer service, etc. In the event Amazon actually has customer service…)
goblue72
@Chris Johnson: Conforms to everything I ever heard about working at Amazon when I lived in Seattle. As example, it was quite stark the degree to which Microsoft was heavily engaged in corporate philanthropy and civic leadership, while Amazon was strikingly absent. A few friends worked at Microsoft and jumped to Amazon for the chance for bigger riches. Few of them stayed very long at Amazon before casting off to do their own thing.
L85NJGT
Having actually worked for big brown…….
ROTFLMAO
different-church-lady
@Ruckus:
Not just economies of scale, but easy transportation (specifically automobile culture) changed it. One went to the local meat market because there was no easy way to get to a massive store 20 miles away.
I’m so pleasantly surprised by the Main Street revival. But not all thinking has been re-retooled. We still think of mom and pop shops as “boutique”, and half the time they’re marketed that way. It would be nice if the local butcher cost a bit more than the supermarket instead of twice a much, but I’m not smart enough to know if that’s possible. But I do know most people wouldn’t even think it conceivable, because it runs so hard against the conventional wisdom.
different-church-lady
@Elizabelle:
Amazon to Facebook: a labor conveyor belt from hell.
L85NJGT
@Chris Johnson:
Modern corporate structure is flat, there isn’t any management track (or training), and the executives are dug in like ticks…
Avalune
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: I would argue that the initial statement was less about “first” or even about “spoiler” than it was about climate issues and how kind of amazing it is that it’s haling and snowing and whatnot on that stretch and fire inferno on another in which a race was the setting. /shrug
different-church-lady
@Elizabelle:
A friend had a rookie manager at (to remain nameless medical technology company) who was bragging at a company party about how many late hours his team put in.
Fortunately for my friend, he was quickly informed by the other managers in the company that all the overtime wasn’t something to be proud of; it was instead a sign that his department was in chaos.
Our corporate culture has a deeply warped understanding of what “work ethic” is.
WhatsMyNym
@different-church-lady: The only reason to work for the big companies is to get a few years on your resume right out of school. Not going to make a big money or have enjoyable work situation. Folks I’ve known move on to one of the many startups we have in the NW.
Eolirin
@Fair Economist: Amazon is doing great not because of their retail business but because of their cloud computing business. AWS is a huge source of revenue and their biggest source of margin.
And yes, that’s also about scale too, but it’s important to understand about them. They’re not just a retail service. They’re involved in several scale driven markets, and they’re able to subsidize the parts that they need to run under cost or that need costly investment in infrastructure to gain a competitive advantage because of it.
That means it’s not just about scale, it’s also about their ability to leverage that scale into other unrelated or semi related markets to gain further market power.
Miss Bianca
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I feel for him. Read his first book will definitely look for his next ones!
Doug R
WHY DO Y’ALL KEEP GIVING AMAZON BUSINESS?
JR
@frosty: yeah, I mean, small business owners in my experience have been skinflinty republican fucks. But maybe thatâs just high school/college minimum wage worker perspective
Marc
Locally (SF Bay area), it’s always been fairly clear that “Amazon Prime” trucks are not driven by actual Amazon-paid employees. The ones I’ve spoken to are either 1099 contractors for third-party delivery companies, or are leasing the truck themselves and get paid per piece delivered.
J R in WV
@MattF:
When I order something from Amazon it means I will have to go to my local post office to pick it up, which is about a 15 minute drive over the ridge. Because “signature required” which is bullshit, because I’m retired and was home to sign for it. Also BS because no one has to sign for high-temp BBQ gloves!! Sometimes a piece of hi-tech electronics gets left out in the rain at the neighbor’s house, also too!!
Ruckus
@frosty:
You’d have liked my bike shop. Had my Obama sticker on the wall that could be seen when you walked in.
I think it depends on where the small business is and the people running it, not that it’s a business of any size. But yes if they have a trump sign or mega crap, walk out, hell tell them why you are walking out if you feel like it.
Ron Skurat
@lee: I’m pretty sure it’s only economy delivery that uses gig drivers, the other two levels use UPS. I usually order things at eBay because in my area they always use the post office. Remember them?