You act like you're the only person who has ever known anyone to work at Amazon. I used to know one of the guys profiled in The Everything Store - the dude who was at the office shipping stuff for so long that he didn't notice his Volvo had been towed three months previously. He got fired by a human, not a robot; it was a gentler time. What did he get fired for? Getting older. Getting slower. Your argument, fundamentally, is "if you don't want to be a galley slave, don't get captured." Home Depot doesn't have an entire division dedicated to short-term itinerant labor. You're right - they aren't looking for a long-term career. But what you're missing is that most people leave shitty jobs on their own because they're shitty. Amazon is purging 10-20% of their manual labor workforce per year and that's the people they get rid of, not the ones who leave of their own accord (I talked to a dispatch guy in LA who told me that Amazon delivery drivers have a turnover of about 2 weeks). What's really appalling is that nowhere in your disquisition of the glories of Amazon do you leave any room for incentives - traditionally, the go-to motivation for blue-collar labor. I mean, how do you monitor whether someone takes sixteen minutes to take a shit? The developed world, anyway, the universe outside of sweatshops, says you don't. You know what warehouse jobs used to be? UNIONIZED. Know who used to look for careers there? EVERYONE. "I'd like to find a hard-working job in manual labor where I have no security and could be fired at any moment by an algorithm" said no one ever. You shouldn't have to work "VERY hard" to keep a shitty job. That you do is proof positive of how predatory the employer is, not of how shiny our future has become.
I do? Not sure what post you were reading. I'm just a guy who has managed teams of 20 people, has a friend who used to be in the actual job the article referred to, and currently serves an industry that suffers from a 100-120% annual employee turnover rate (long-haul trucking). I have relevant experience here, and am sharing those experiences. Not sure how I excluded anyone else from participating in the conversation...? Anyway, the long and short of it is that some jobs suck. The reasons they suck are often because people are overworked or abused. You can either have good working conditions and long-term employment (thanks to labor unions), or low-costs and high turnover. (Broadly speaking, of course.) The entire history of the 20th century is a real-world demonstration of that principle in process. Should shitty employers with shitty working conditions and expectations have their feet held to the fire, and be forced to improve conditions for their employees? Absolutely.+ The Fourth Estate picking on a large employer and encouraging them to do better, is a part of the process due to the way our systems are designed. American employers can treat people like this because we have shitty healthcare, no social safety net, and few basic worker/union protections, unlike almost every other first-world country. If people didn't HAVE to take shitty jobs just to live or get healthcare, then the employers would be forced to make the jobs less shitty. This would increase worker satisfaction and then increase worker retention. Sure. In that world, everything gets more expensive because you are actually paying a commensurate price for the product INCLUDING all its externalities. But, people are making more because they are more valuable workers. So it should work out in the end. The real core of problem - since Henry Ford's first production line all the way up to today - is that we let US companies avoid many of the real costs of their products. You act like you're the only person who has ever known anyone to work at Amazon.
"Here's the deal" (I have an anecdatum) is not an inclusive way to start a discussion. I'm guilty of it myself but when my anecdata flies boldly in the face of the statistics being discussed, I try to temper my arrogance. Your first post was an essay on social darwinism: some jobs suck, average is over, survival of the fittest. Your second post is basically some jobs suck because capitalism, fortunately capitalism. That's a Milton Friedman canard, by the way - if people really cared about worker rights, they'd pass laws ensuring worker rights. If people really cared about the environment, they'd pass laws protecting the environment. It's your duty as a capitalist to take every advantage of every externality up to the point where you're violating the law, and then you're supposed to do a costs-benefits analysis on the price of breaking the law. The labor movement fundamentally argues that jobs shouldn't suck. And the problem is that generally, those who work the jobs have less power than those who hire the jobs. Sure, "4th estate" and all that but you can't pit "Kirby" against an algorithmic reduction of 10% of the workforce per year in a really shitty job and act like it's all just the circle of life.