Quote:
Originally Posted by Abtacha
Oh, I think I know that one. The first is a bookstore the second isn't.
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Exactly -- my point wasn't that factories are evil (though I tend to think they incline that way). It was that, in choosing Amazon over indie places and even chains, the consumer is choosing conditions in a particularly loathsome factory for many workers instead of those of a book store for a great number, and perhaps that choice is worth talking about.
The idea is not to single Amazon out as evil (though the number of people who reacted as if someone had -- cross-sectioned with the number who have posted in the past four years their belief that Apple is evil -- is instructive: People make excuses for whichever companies they've decided to accept and condemn as immoral the ones they dislike).
The idea was to raise the question of worker treatment in concentrated factories generally and to contrast it with treatment in less stripped-down versions of the goods and services industry, in which the work is distributed more evenly between factories and stores. The idea was to find ways to support those companies which treat their workers best.
If the desire for better worker treatment became a customer preference, Amazon could respond to it or ignore it -- the choice would be theirs. But the process itself -- of supporting companies which offer the best experience for workers -- is one that can have a positive impact in any age. Look at the factory reforms brought about in the Victorian period by Dickens and others.
No doubt people were flinging ad homimen phrases like "hand-wringing" and "whining" back then as well when others like me objected to terrible working conditions for the lower classes. But the salient point is neither the attitude of the person who points out dismal working conditions nor one's own feelings of loyalty or annoyance toward the franchise which promotes them.
The point is whether the social responsibility of the prevailing culture is to maintain civilized conditions for workers at every level.
Your definition of civilized conditions might well be different from mine. But if I, personally, have a choice between supporting a number of book stores which allow for the inner lives and deeper sense of meaning of their workers (which for me is the definition of
civilized) or a dystopian factory that makes even veteran coal miners cringe, then I'll opt to support the book stores. I'll also have a look at warehouse-based web companies to see whether anything can be done to ensure better conditions without an untenable loss of profit -- and whether any of our present companies are choosing to do the better thing and making it work.
Costco has been mentioned several times on this thread as a company that promotes better conditions. Is there something about Costco's business which allows them to treat their workers better than Amazon, or is Amazon simply focusing on profits beyond the level of mere success in order to maximize them to the detriment of the humanity of its workers?
People behave as if this is an unreasonable question to ask, but it's one that has been asked in other times and other countries. Occasionally, the consensus has been that the workers' lives are more important than that extra amount of profit. That's the conclusion I've come to as well.