I'm pointing out the irony of the most probable outcome after all the moralizing and hand-wringing here by (primarily) well-paid, privileged, white collar tech workers. The jobs will be automated away, Amazon will be no more morally virtuous than they were the day before, yet the outrage will simply shift to the next employer.
A fair assessment of Amazon's worker treatment would involve comparison to the workers' treatment if Amazon were not employing them. Presumably nearly all would be employed elsewhere. How would they fare at other employers? Better? Worse? More or less the same?
If the answer is, "more or less the same," then it hardly seems like Amazon is the problem. Perhaps they're just a more convenient target.
The amount of effort and time it would take to automate away warehouse work makes this whole question ludicrously moot, even concern-trolling. It’s akin to saying “at least Uber is employing its drivers because otherwise self-driving cars will automate them away.”
And Amazon is indeed a more convenient target because you would expect a company with its resources and power to have a higher standard of treatment of its employees. They can certainly afford to.
I understand the disease-symptom dichotomy, but if amazon is only a symptom then it is one of the biggest ones out there. This makes tackling amazon more important than tackling a mom and pop shop who treats their workers poorly, even if they're both symptoms of a bigger working class oppression disease.
I'm pointing out the irony of the most probable outcome after all the moralizing and hand-wringing here by (primarily) well-paid, privileged, white collar tech workers. The jobs will be automated away, Amazon will be no more morally virtuous than they were the day before, yet the outrage will simply shift to the next employer.
A fair assessment of Amazon's worker treatment would involve comparison to the workers' treatment if Amazon were not employing them. Presumably nearly all would be employed elsewhere. How would they fare at other employers? Better? Worse? More or less the same?
If the answer is, "more or less the same," then it hardly seems like Amazon is the problem. Perhaps they're just a more convenient target.