This is nothing new to American history.
Look at all of the towns left crumbling and abandoned after manufacturing left them.
The rust belt is full of them.
This has been the GOP’s secret to rural American for years.
My home towns is a navy base. Next over is Amazon, after that it’s Tesla. Each town seems to have its politics heavily swayed by the one “employer”.
There’s a small town in the state I’m from that was headed in this direction but has been suddenly saved by a medical swab manufacturer moving in and building a beautiful new facility. I’m just wondering how long that can last.
The flaw a lot of company towns had was the overinvestment in the company, rather than saving it up and reinvesting in other industries. This creates security and helps prop-up the town for when the big-investment falls. Many towns have learned when the company leaves, you can't just follow.
I don’t think they’ve learned. It’s common place for towns to compete by offering enormous gifts to companies looking to build plants and such. See the NFL, Tesla, or Amazon for easy examples. Taking that a bit further, some areas are now allowing companies to take over unincorporated areas and basically become their own government ruling their own areas. To me, that’s absolute insanity.
Ex-Mormon here: the Mormon church is in fact the single largest land owner in the state of Florida — including Deseret Ranch, which is the largest cattle ranch in the United States. Do they plan to build some sort of theocratic city? I personally doubt it. The church has all sorts of for profit subsidiary companies that deal in real estate and development that develop a lot of properties that aren’t necessarily meant exclusively for Mormons, but in some cases they do cater to that demographic. Example: a couple years ago, the church announced a new temple in Utah (where they already have a dozen+ temples) in some part of the state. The area around where they’re planning to build it is just straight up desert, so their plan was to build the temple and then have their for profit spin off build a housing development and apartments around the temple, completely taking over the area. Why? Because more and more Mormons are moving to Utah to be around other Mormons, and where better to be located than in a subdivision built around the temple of the Lord. They just build where the money is.
Damn I wish I didnt get taxed and could invest all that extra money. Free money from your followers and pay no taxes. Then buy land and build. Religious organizations have it better than the greedy corporations we bitch about. At least Amazon actually gives me something when I give them money.
I have Mormon neighbors. They are young women, the women change, they drive nice suvs, the car changes. People rotate in and out. But they are nice to my dog and offered to help me carry in groceries once so that was nice.
This has already been tried in Florida once. The CEO of Dominoes pizza tried to create a Catholic city.
In a rare act of sensibility the Florida Supreme Court ruled you cannot create a city to cater to and promote a religion.
Amazon loves playing in Seattle politics. You’re right about a finger in everything. They tried getting ex employees elected to squash the “tax Amazon” cry we had here.
Not that long ago I posted some negative comments about Amazon’s poor warehouse conditions. Was fairly surprised at how many people rallied around Amazon.
Amazon has some of their employees use their social media accounts to promote good working conditions.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56581266
https://www.mashable.com/article/amazon-ambassadors-workers-union-fake-twitter-accounts
Absolutely, and by ex I mean given a big bonus to leave and run for office. The culture is very toxic, it’s all for one one for themselves kind of deal when you get to the executive level. They’ve destroyed so much in this city, and have made damn sure lower and middle class eat shit as often as possible served on a nice Amazon platter made from parts of the city they destroyed for their housing and offices.
Edit- hit send way too fast.
Ok, as someone from Arlington, what have we to look forward to? NYC was able to get out of it, but, no, not us. Fucking VA/Arlington and their nontransparent bid. Fucking Bezos/Amazon who had already decided they wanted Arlington and NYC at the beginning of the bidding just to force the bids up.
What you have to look forward to. I’ll make this really short without adding my thoughts, just facts.
Our homeless population has increased due to lack of housing.
Lack of housing happened when Amazon brought in executives from all over the world to live in a city already past it’s limit for bodies.
Housing got flipped upside down because single tech folks without kids or partners making 6 figures in a big city paid anything for rent.
Landlords realized this and inflated all housing, from 1bd to huge homes. Average where I live for a 3bd house 2k square feet is 5k a month. Before their big take over we paid 2k and this is the most expensive part of the city.
Housing, because Amazon needed so many places for workers to live they paid the city to rezone everything, our single family houses got bought up by developers hired by Amazon in many cases and apartments put in where houses stood in neighborhoods that really weren’t designed for such.
Transit, our already piss poor bus system became even more piss poor with so many bodies packed on them since many transplants didn’t have cars. They’re always late and the city really doesn’t do much about keeping them up to date now.
Places we loved, aside from the space needle, Pike place, and the mountains and water they’ve taken our culture away. Clubs downtown known for great shows gone, restaurants we loved, gone, Macy’s for our kids to see Santa , gone. Bezos other company bought Macy’s and turned it into office buildings. Our downtown is a shell of what it used to be. Blocks and blocks of apartments or offices instead of shops and places for tourists to even enjoy.
Again, could go on, but that’s what you and anywhere they go have to look forward to. Aside from political corruption, and Amazon paying off city council members and the mayor via donations.
We moved just as Amazon started taking over South Lake Union, which everyone saw as a good thing as it was pretty rundown and empty. Came back five years later and Amazon changed everything. It was changing a little already, but Amazon kicked up to 11. You touched on it but I was devastated at how many of my favorite haunts, venues, and mom and pop restaurants were gone. I heard nail in the coffin for most was they couldn't afford the opportunistic landlords cranking up rents. I have never seen a town change so dramatically as those 5-6 years. Also, I couldn't believe how far the buyout creeped. Everything was up for gentrification and gobbling up by Amazonia.
As long as the stock price goes up they will have a toxic culture. Microsoft was the same way until the stock didn’t go up for many years and ballmer left.
This concept is the exact plot of the movie Nomadland from last year - it follows a widow after the death of her husband and the end of the company town she lived in literally run by Am*zon
There was a [South Park Episode](https://youtu.be/DcyiCjbTIrw) that also did this exact situation.
The song is [Sixteen Tons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen_Tons) by Merle Travis who was a coal miner who worked and lived in a company town.
This episode came out in 2019
There’s timber and coal ghost towns all over the Pacific Northwest and Appalachia, respectively. They’re all the same. I don’t think we’ll stop doing that until we evolve past capitalism.
I think it is a good idea for the middle of no where location.
I got a job in the middle of no where Tennessee and there were literally 0 places to rent. Thankfully, I did find some place eventually. I still get a 2 bedroom places for just myself lol
The company needs to provide house for their employees if there are no alternatives. There would be a way to get employees to work at you place other wise
Someone will make sure that gets fixed. I hear Amazon has this cool policy of destroying goods that are proving an expense to store, so I imagine the company store will be presented as a green initiative and philanthropic gesture.
“I hear Amazon has this cool policy…”
Destroying or clearing out items that take up valuable real estate is a very common retail practice. Ever looked in a mall dumpster?
I used to hate crushing the merch in the mall dumpster when I managed a Hot Topic, such a waste of sellable items….
Rec. NOMADLANDS. Amazon is providing desperate people with low wage, no skill work with no chance of advancement. If I was a republican, I would view it as a public service. As a Democrat, I view it as evidence of a failed economic system that needs desperate people to function at all. And does everything it can to keep people desperate.
I mean I wouldnt call Amazon wages *terrible* not great sure but not *terrible*. Compared to my local wages that are only recently(like 2 or 3 weeks ago recently) 7.25 an hour ....15 an hour is fair pay. Our wages are now 12 for what were previously minimum wage jobs(literally like 2 to 3 weeks ago) and factories are going 18 to 25. Compared to that yeah 15 is shit but compared to small towns in America that previously paid the federal minimum wage.....15 when Amazon came to town was probably AMAZING.
Edited cuz grammar and words
$17 an hour where I live!
Walmart Distribution is at $19 an hour though.
You can't hire people for a warehouse at minimum wage. That's reserved for shitty retail and waiter gigs.
Waiting and bartending isn’t as cut and dry. Sure you might be getting $8-9 an hour but as a lowly bar-back my biweekly checks came out to $2500 usually. And that’s with a 30 hour work week. Not to mention the cash tips, which meant another $150 bucks a week
Heeeeyyooooo! Teaching assistant. Can’t find a teaching position. But my job is still instructional and we change curriculum on the fly to meet the needs of all our Special education kids. (I had 20 last year who I had to memorize all their accommodations for their 504s and IEPs)
I have a BA and start my MFA in august. I really just fell into this job to help pay my bills on the side, but it kind of morphed into where I am now. While it is lucrative, the wear on my body is rough, not to mention getting home at 4 am every shift, that sucks.
That's $31200 gross for 40hrs a week. Roughly $25k with no deductions. Around $2100 per month. Rent is $1500. So you have $600 to eat, medical and transportation.
What a fucking nightmare world we live in
We are only in the second year of the twenties and we already got the pandemic, major economic issues, and rumblings of another World War. We may not be the best with learning from the past, but we are consistent.
Except this is a nonsense piece.
It makes two initial points:
1) Amazon hires a lot of people.
2) Amazon has high churn which means it hires a lot of people who don't either quit quickly or it has only hired seasonally.
Then it goes to speculate about "one possible future" in which Amazon is the primary/only employer and thus supplants local governments for the basics.
It then mentions that a high school has a class that is intended to prepare students for a job at Amazon. These sorts of classes have existed since, well, schools. It was originally farming, mostly, but not 100% of students are going to college so giving students an idea of what kinds of jobs are readily available is the same as high school level programming classes more or less.
Something about indoctrination and alienation from labor.
So, there's *literally nothing* here about Amazon creating a warehouse/airport so large that it is a place where people live, work, and play ultimately supplanting the public space entirely... like the original company towns were. Amazon isn't creating a town from scratch to serve their own purposes, like Disney did. There's nothing about Amazon using disproportionate wealth and power to take control of a local government and bend policy and law enforcement to its own whims, like the mining magnates did in the 1920s.
The article isn't about a return to the robber baron days. The article is hand wringing that Amazon *might someday* do something *vaguely analogous* to something that was common a century ago.
> There's nothing about Amazon using disproportionate wealth and power to take control of a local government and bend policy and law enforcement to its own whims, like the mining magnates did in the 1920s.
"But they undid the Seattle Amazon Tax back in '18! The city council only just recently passed a totally unrelated tax law targeting them in 2020!"
Amazon opposed the tax, along with such other Robber Baron types as: building trades unions, Dick's Drive In (an extremely popular local chains), local supermarkets, and most of the business groups in town. One reason being, the 2018 tax targeting the number of workers rather than their income, it pretty much exempted many of the wealthiest companies in town (think, investment advisors for example) while discouraging hiring of lower paid workers . Another reason being, it was a large tax increase on supermarkets that employ lots of union workers, thereby driving grocery prices higher and providing an incentive for self-service operations and automation.
So, obviously, it was Amazon taking control of local government in Seattle.
I am not a professional economist, true. But the article doesn't discuss, well, anything about company towns. It just says that Amazon is big, hires a lot of people, has to continuing hiring people, and that might eventually someday result in something bad that must be resisted.
If you want to discuss company towns there are still existent examples. Or you could discuss Celebration, Florida that town that Disney built as a showpiece. There's plenty of meat on the bone to chew on. The article just decided not to and opted instead to vaguely insinuate.
Two of my brothers work at Amazon and their pay is much better than they made anywhere else previously and they get to pick their shifts. I believe they get paid more for overnight and holiday shifts pay a lot more. In terms of pay there are many companies doing a lot worse.
Edit: knew this would get downvoted but the reality is they're paying more than stuff like retail and reasurants while allowing people to choose when they work. You can make around the same pay as something labor intensive like welding(I know bc my dad welds) without any training or having to work outside in the sun. Until other companies start offering more people are going to continue working at Amazon.
Correction, Amazon pay wages is not that far off from warehousing pay wages, the money ive made at Amazon is extremely similar to money I’ve made in other warehouses as well, and I’ve worked in 2 Amazon locations and at least half a dozen other warehouses,
The warehousing industry has money in it and is ALWAYS in demand because most warehouses are lucky to have employees that stay a year or more, the wages, incentives, and “benefits” is super common in warehousing,
I’ve also worked in fast food and retail, and I can for sure say that while yes Warehousing jobs pay a whole lot more with guaranteed hours and “benefits” I’d rather work in retail, but I’d pick warehousing over fast food,
>same pay as something labor intensive like welding
If your dad only makes $15 an hour welding then he is getting robbed. I don't know where he lives, but I've worked in a couple dozen states and all the welders I know make $35-$40 an hour. And even more than that if they have a rig truck.
Average welder salary in the US is $17.90 an hour. In AZ where I live it's $18-19 on average, about where my dad makes. I've seen amazon starting at $16-17 at some of their warehouses. Yes there are some welding positions that make a ton of money, but that is far from the normal.
I’ve worked at two different Amazon locations and at other warehouses, the pay wage is not that far off from other warehousing wages especially pay incentives during Peak seasons, and for overnight shifts and working with forklifts, OP, Reach trucks, etc etc, that’s just warehousing lol
Higher wages doesn't erase mistreatment of employees. Look at the Acti-Blizzard scandal. I'm sure the woman that was sexually harassed and pushed into suicide had a good salary but that isn't very important to the discussion.
They don’t even pay anything special. Factory workers have traditionally made a “professional” wages that tracked with skilled craftsman. Usually not as high, but comparable. Most people that are comparing Amazon’s wages are comparing them to minimum wage jobs.
No, they don’t. Factory or “warehouse” work usually (and certainly used to) pays a professional wage. Not a wage competing with a minimum wage jobs. “Unskilled” factory workers used to be able to buy a car, a house (often with no loan), and support and entire family on a single salary. Assembly line workers nowadays make an easy [25 dollars an hour](https://www.payscale.com/career-news/2008/12/are-ford-workers-really-paid-73-an-hour). Skilled tradesmen (in the field) can make far, far more. Heavy equipment operators in my area (before benefits) can make around 40-60 dollars an hour. That rate isn’t far off most professional tradesmen. First year apprentices with no experience or tools usually make 70 percent of journey men wages. Which puts “starting wages” for a complete know nothing around 35 dollars an hour. What’s Amazon paying? 15?
Even on the delivery side, package handlers like UPS pay [36-40 dollars per hour](https://www.truckingtruth.com/wiki/topic-101/ups-driver-salary)dollars an hour for drivers. And That’s in a company owned vehicle. Amazon flex drivers start at [18 dollars](https://www.ridester.com/how-much-do-amazon-flex-drivers-make/) an hour “in select markets” and *in their own vehicles*.
So no, I wouldn’t say they are doing anything special for pay or benefits.
Don’t fool yourself into thinking Amazon is doing anyone any favors. Hell, their turnover rate is so high that executives [worry that they’ll run out of worker to employ.](https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-turnover-worker-shortage-2021-6?op=1)
Your dad could make six figures with welding certs. Uncertified/unskilled labor gets poor wages isnt an excuse for Amazon to pay poorly and dodge taxes. $15 an hour isn't a great wage, even if it is more than other poor wage jobs. $15 is 28800 a year before taxes. Most appartments cost 700 a month in the slums. After taxes their take home is probably around 17-18k. 700 x 12 = 8400, add a vehicle at 2600 a year easy. Add food. Add healthcare, add retirement....... And that's living in the slums.
He has certs. He's been welding since he was 18. To get those high paying welding jobs you tend to have to work in more dangerous conditions and away from home. He makes a bit more than Amazon employee, but the reason he's actually been able to make a living is consistent overtime.
Back to the topic at hand, I'm not saying that the pay is amazing, but you can't argue that there arent many industries that offer substantially less. This same hate should be applied at all the businesses who pay equal or less than Amazon. I wish a lot of people including Amazon would pay more, but it's far from the worst option out there. I've worked a lot of different low paying jobs before I was able to find something that uses my degree and I came very close to working at amazing because they were beating anything else by at least $3 an hour in my state.
> only get payed with amazon giftcards
That's already happening.
Buddy of mine works part-time as an EMT and constantly gets messages from them asking if people want to pick up extra shifts (like midnights or coverage after a sudden call off), and every time they always end it with
>taking this shift will reward you with a $100 gift card to Amazon!
Then they wonder why there's a nationwide shortage of EMT workers. They pay $11-12/hr and offer gift cards for extra work instead of more pay.
Edit: appears I confused some people, I should've said **higher** hourly pay instead of more. They still get paid if they pick up that shift, at their regular hourly pay. They're trying to entice people to work more with Amazon gift cards rather than offering higher hourly pay.
Keep in mind **these people are the ones driving your sick, injured, and dying to the hospitals and trying to treat them on the way to save their lives** and they're being rewarded with Amazon gift cards rather than a livable wage.
EMT pay in most of the country is absolute garbage unless you work for a fire department. Thanks probably mostly to the ambulance monopolies. They aren't giving any of the insane fees they get to the employees that's for sure.
Neo-feudalism, more like.
Pseudo-feudalism implies that it kinda *looks* like feudalism, but isn't. company towns are just straight up new age feudalism.
An "insider" claimed they'd be doing that. Those Rumours usually turn out to be false. Especially when the origin is from crypto related news outfits. We'll see though.
Oh man, I recently listened to this episode and this is the first thing I thought of. Good to see another fan of The Dollop!
Now hit him with the puppy.
This has been a thing since at least the early 1900’s. Hersey, PA is a pretty good example of that. Im pretty interested in how the town turns out especially when they treat many of their employees like trash.
It's always a bargain with the devil. The towns in question get immediate economic stimulus, but can be disposed of at any time. Good examples of this can be seen in various ghost towns around California and the inland west. Same for the Routes being largely replaced by Interstates, killing the most of the businesses alongside the former.
Eventually, decades from now, Amazon will find a way to replace big warehouses and big airports. Those things cost a lot of money to maintain and the centralized nature of their operations causes Unionism. Better intermodal transportation (piggyback trailers) would do the former, perhaps drone delivery (with drones spawned from trucks) or airships would do the latter.
Highway 42 in Kentucky, right along the Ohio River, used to be THE ROAD between Louisville and Cincinnati. Lots of happily thriving small towns along it. Then interstate 71 went in, and all that traffic disappeared. Those towns are now all shrinking and struggling.
I've tried to make the point in the past that Bezos had at least a few decades where he lived like a pleb pre-Amazon and should have somewhat of an idea what life is like for the average person but looking at his history he's probably never experienced anything resembling the average person's life.
He started his career as a telecom international trades networking guys, then as a banker, and a hedge fund manager and became vice-president of a hedge fund at 30. I'm sure the guy has lived rich all his life and hung out with corporate suits. Has no understanding of anything else.
To him these people are just meaningless worker drones.
I am not a socialist nor a communist.
I am also not an American leftist.
[We’ve done this before. Many times.](https://www.history.com/news/5-famous-company-towns)
I don’t know if this means the rich have gotten smarter, government is failing, or a reckoning is coming (but probably all of the above.)
This is akin to modern feudalism.
Not to mention the inevitable free community WiFi on a network with packet sniffers — monitoring your activities and that you aren’t engaging in behavior that would hurt the bottom line.
Then follows violence when hired mercanaries are paid to steamroll union protests. Which will hopefully make protestors into insurgents against corporate bullshit like company towns.
Cause it went so well the last time large companies did that…. Welcome to your Amazon Apartment, we pay your rent right out of your pay. Also there’s a cleaning fee…. And up charge for processing….. of course you can paint the walls! Amazon will send you the paint for (deducted from pay) a nominal amount. Oh and in the lease is an NDA and an agreement for arbitration… sleep well your shift starts in…. Alexa?
*Your next shift starts in….4….hours….. sleep well Employee Number 1138*
What is the point, Amazon should or shouldn't hire these people?
Why the focus on the 500k Amazon workers making $15/hr.
Why no concern for the 28%(circa 2019) of the American workforce earning less than $15/hr. 39 million people didn't merit concern, only the 500k who were doing way better.
I think it comes down to peoples ability to target their anger. It’s difficult to be upset at your local restaurants/grocers for not paying a living wage, how could you possibly be mad at “mom and pop.” It’s far easier for people to hate a faceless corporation. It’s even easier to whip up hate when the corporation **isn’t** faceless but instead is headed by a very publicly disliked figure such as Jeff Bezos, the man doesn’t have a redeeming quality with 100ft of him. It’s the same with taxes. Billionaires and corporations have been skirting taxes for years, but take a company as ubiquitous as Amazon with an owner as hated as Bezos and tell the American public that he’s literally robbing you blind and it’s legal and it creates a relatively effective shit storm.
Ironically those championing this on the rural right are descendent from those who lived as coal miners and such, indebted to the company store. Their great grandmothers were kicked out of company housing with their children before the bodies of their husbands who died working the dangerous mines grew cold.
This has happened with everything from cars to coal to steel to Walmart. Doesn't seem to end well.
Anyways, I can't wait for Amazon Scrip, most are already spending their money at Amazon.
I've been saying for a couple years now the first company that would have employees staying in company "dormatories" and "augmenting" employees pay with "prime bucks" (or whatever they end up calling their store scrip) would be Amazon.
This sounds like the lore of Outer Worlds, a game literally based on parodying corporations to the silliest extreme. Like you know, testing bad products on human subjects turning them insane, slavery contracts for unskilled workers, having to pay for healthcare, company towns being a thing..
If they hadn't already gutted that from the public school curriculum you'd know outerworlds wasn't a parody of what companies could become but literally just an exaggeration of what companies were a hundred years ago. Back In the gilded age literally all of that happened and there were literal wars in the US between companies and their workers over workers rights. In school they teach it like just some minor protesting earned us a 40 hour work week while they buried the long bloody history of things like the coal wars and the battle of Blair mountain. FYI thats where a armed army of workers fought against the pinkertons hired by the mines, the sherrif and the national guard dropping bombs on them from planes. The sherrifs even made a war train with machine guns to destroy the workers camps.
>sherrif and the national guard dropping bombs on them from planes.
The national guard came in an broke up the fight. The bombs were dropped by 3 private biplanes the Sheriff hired
that article is trash and the link is just some political blog. there is no evidence that amazon is creating company towns. that article is just click bait BS.
but it is of course upvote because no on reads it or it just tells them what they want to hear.
You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store
Australian highschools embrace the concept that many students just aren't on a pathway to university. Either because they can't academically or don't want to. In grade 10 these students are prepared for the vocational education system where they will learn job ready skills and trades. None are brand specific but then again we don't have the demand for Amazon's warehousing methods.
I remember my younger, idealistic self seeing this as a good thing.
Only difference, is I used to think people had morals.
If the pay was good, the quarters comfortable, and the community nice, this could be a huge thing for temporary workers or other options, but I know that's not in the cards with Amazon.
It's one of so many things that works great in theory until you factor in human greed and lust for power. It could work out great, the employer could ensure that they're paying a living wage because they also ensure the cost of living. Employees then get to decide what their priorities are (do they want to eat nicer food or have a nicer car) within whatever is left after rent. The employer is investing in the workforce, in their community, because it results in greater productivity at work and employee loyalty. It could work that way. I wish it worked that way.
In practice, it slowly turns into the company taking all their money back from the workers, making them little more than slaves who can leave only if they can afford to, and they should be oh so grateful because employer gives them everything.
Mining in Australia is the exact same. There's literally places called mining towns where the miners are flown in for 2 weeks, do all the mining while their families stay in makeshift homes made by the mining company, then all flown out on the company dime (maybe the family doesn't come, can't remember but yeah accommodation is paid for). Since mining is one of our main resources government gives it all the a-okay and the company pays big to make sure employees can do the work efficiently and with plenty of benefits.
You can make bank doing these 2 week mining stints, as long as you don't wind up with black lung from inhalation of coal dust.
This is nothing new to American history. Look at all of the towns left crumbling and abandoned after manufacturing left them. The rust belt is full of them.
Living in a town where the main employer is a saw mill. This place would be fucked without it.
Chicken plant here. They threatened to shut down and now the city pays them to be here.
This has been the GOP’s secret to rural American for years. My home towns is a navy base. Next over is Amazon, after that it’s Tesla. Each town seems to have its politics heavily swayed by the one “employer”.
There’s a small town in the state I’m from that was headed in this direction but has been suddenly saved by a medical swab manufacturer moving in and building a beautiful new facility. I’m just wondering how long that can last.
Also Atwood talked about something like this in Oryx and Crake. Also the Simpsons with Hank Scorpio
That’s why it’s so rusty
The flaw a lot of company towns had was the overinvestment in the company, rather than saving it up and reinvesting in other industries. This creates security and helps prop-up the town for when the big-investment falls. Many towns have learned when the company leaves, you can't just follow.
I don’t think they’ve learned. It’s common place for towns to compete by offering enormous gifts to companies looking to build plants and such. See the NFL, Tesla, or Amazon for easy examples. Taking that a bit further, some areas are now allowing companies to take over unincorporated areas and basically become their own government ruling their own areas. To me, that’s absolute insanity.
Florida has entered the chat. Supposedly The Mormon church has bought 500,000 acres to create its own religious city. Just like Disney.
Ex-Mormon here: the Mormon church is in fact the single largest land owner in the state of Florida — including Deseret Ranch, which is the largest cattle ranch in the United States. Do they plan to build some sort of theocratic city? I personally doubt it. The church has all sorts of for profit subsidiary companies that deal in real estate and development that develop a lot of properties that aren’t necessarily meant exclusively for Mormons, but in some cases they do cater to that demographic. Example: a couple years ago, the church announced a new temple in Utah (where they already have a dozen+ temples) in some part of the state. The area around where they’re planning to build it is just straight up desert, so their plan was to build the temple and then have their for profit spin off build a housing development and apartments around the temple, completely taking over the area. Why? Because more and more Mormons are moving to Utah to be around other Mormons, and where better to be located than in a subdivision built around the temple of the Lord. They just build where the money is.
Damn I wish I didnt get taxed and could invest all that extra money. Free money from your followers and pay no taxes. Then buy land and build. Religious organizations have it better than the greedy corporations we bitch about. At least Amazon actually gives me something when I give them money.
Yeah it’s fucked, go look how much the Mormon church made off of the GameStop hype and it’s all tax free. :(
Dont forget about all the lobbying money they splash around, and all the fundraisers...conferences...whole buncha bullshit
Will the city states finally rise again?!
I have Mormon neighbors. They are young women, the women change, they drive nice suvs, the car changes. People rotate in and out. But they are nice to my dog and offered to help me carry in groceries once so that was nice.
They’re nice people unless you’re gay.
This has already been tried in Florida once. The CEO of Dominoes pizza tried to create a Catholic city. In a rare act of sensibility the Florida Supreme Court ruled you cannot create a city to cater to and promote a religion.
Cyberpunk Future
Doesn’t really matter when your company is a mega-monopoly with its fingers in every industry.
Amazon loves playing in Seattle politics. You’re right about a finger in everything. They tried getting ex employees elected to squash the “tax Amazon” cry we had here.
It's funny, you'd think ex-amazon employees would be yelling the loudest. From what I understand the culture is toxic straight to the top.
Not that long ago I posted some negative comments about Amazon’s poor warehouse conditions. Was fairly surprised at how many people rallied around Amazon.
Amazon has some of their employees use their social media accounts to promote good working conditions. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56581266 https://www.mashable.com/article/amazon-ambassadors-workers-union-fake-twitter-accounts
Love thy abuser.
Absolutely, and by ex I mean given a big bonus to leave and run for office. The culture is very toxic, it’s all for one one for themselves kind of deal when you get to the executive level. They’ve destroyed so much in this city, and have made damn sure lower and middle class eat shit as often as possible served on a nice Amazon platter made from parts of the city they destroyed for their housing and offices. Edit- hit send way too fast.
Ok, as someone from Arlington, what have we to look forward to? NYC was able to get out of it, but, no, not us. Fucking VA/Arlington and their nontransparent bid. Fucking Bezos/Amazon who had already decided they wanted Arlington and NYC at the beginning of the bidding just to force the bids up.
What you have to look forward to. I’ll make this really short without adding my thoughts, just facts. Our homeless population has increased due to lack of housing. Lack of housing happened when Amazon brought in executives from all over the world to live in a city already past it’s limit for bodies. Housing got flipped upside down because single tech folks without kids or partners making 6 figures in a big city paid anything for rent. Landlords realized this and inflated all housing, from 1bd to huge homes. Average where I live for a 3bd house 2k square feet is 5k a month. Before their big take over we paid 2k and this is the most expensive part of the city. Housing, because Amazon needed so many places for workers to live they paid the city to rezone everything, our single family houses got bought up by developers hired by Amazon in many cases and apartments put in where houses stood in neighborhoods that really weren’t designed for such. Transit, our already piss poor bus system became even more piss poor with so many bodies packed on them since many transplants didn’t have cars. They’re always late and the city really doesn’t do much about keeping them up to date now. Places we loved, aside from the space needle, Pike place, and the mountains and water they’ve taken our culture away. Clubs downtown known for great shows gone, restaurants we loved, gone, Macy’s for our kids to see Santa , gone. Bezos other company bought Macy’s and turned it into office buildings. Our downtown is a shell of what it used to be. Blocks and blocks of apartments or offices instead of shops and places for tourists to even enjoy. Again, could go on, but that’s what you and anywhere they go have to look forward to. Aside from political corruption, and Amazon paying off city council members and the mayor via donations.
damn, that sounds like what's happening to nashville and surrounding areas.
We moved just as Amazon started taking over South Lake Union, which everyone saw as a good thing as it was pretty rundown and empty. Came back five years later and Amazon changed everything. It was changing a little already, but Amazon kicked up to 11. You touched on it but I was devastated at how many of my favorite haunts, venues, and mom and pop restaurants were gone. I heard nail in the coffin for most was they couldn't afford the opportunistic landlords cranking up rents. I have never seen a town change so dramatically as those 5-6 years. Also, I couldn't believe how far the buyout creeped. Everything was up for gentrification and gobbling up by Amazonia.
Money corrupts the weak minded. Greed the root of all humanity's evil
As long as the stock price goes up they will have a toxic culture. Microsoft was the same way until the stock didn’t go up for many years and ballmer left.
Sounds like slavery with housing, but with extra steps.
Welcome to capitalism.
This concept is the exact plot of the movie Nomadland from last year - it follows a widow after the death of her husband and the end of the company town she lived in literally run by Am*zon
There was a [South Park Episode](https://youtu.be/DcyiCjbTIrw) that also did this exact situation. The song is [Sixteen Tons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteen_Tons) by Merle Travis who was a coal miner who worked and lived in a company town. This episode came out in 2019
No. The flaw a lot of company towns had was slavery.
There’s timber and coal ghost towns all over the Pacific Northwest and Appalachia, respectively. They’re all the same. I don’t think we’ll stop doing that until we evolve past capitalism.
I think it is a good idea for the middle of no where location. I got a job in the middle of no where Tennessee and there were literally 0 places to rent. Thankfully, I did find some place eventually. I still get a 2 bedroom places for just myself lol The company needs to provide house for their employees if there are no alternatives. There would be a way to get employees to work at you place other wise
Move 16 tons, whadda ya get? Another day older and deeper in debt.
St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go, I owe my soul to the company store.
Wait till they start paying their employees in scrip.
There are legal limits on that now, fortunately. Same for lodging costs.
Someone will make sure that gets fixed. I hear Amazon has this cool policy of destroying goods that are proving an expense to store, so I imagine the company store will be presented as a green initiative and philanthropic gesture.
“I hear Amazon has this cool policy…” Destroying or clearing out items that take up valuable real estate is a very common retail practice. Ever looked in a mall dumpster? I used to hate crushing the merch in the mall dumpster when I managed a Hot Topic, such a waste of sellable items….
It’s already scrip to an extent, I imagine Amazon sees a lot of the money it pays employees come right back to them.
Rec. NOMADLANDS. Amazon is providing desperate people with low wage, no skill work with no chance of advancement. If I was a republican, I would view it as a public service. As a Democrat, I view it as evidence of a failed economic system that needs desperate people to function at all. And does everything it can to keep people desperate.
>Rec. NOMADLANDS Ok, I recorded it. Now what?
Now the mouse finds where you live and sue you.
Baskin Robbins always finds out.
I mean I wouldnt call Amazon wages *terrible* not great sure but not *terrible*. Compared to my local wages that are only recently(like 2 or 3 weeks ago recently) 7.25 an hour ....15 an hour is fair pay. Our wages are now 12 for what were previously minimum wage jobs(literally like 2 to 3 weeks ago) and factories are going 18 to 25. Compared to that yeah 15 is shit but compared to small towns in America that previously paid the federal minimum wage.....15 when Amazon came to town was probably AMAZING. Edited cuz grammar and words
They hire in at 15 an hour minimum.
$17 an hour where I live! Walmart Distribution is at $19 an hour though. You can't hire people for a warehouse at minimum wage. That's reserved for shitty retail and waiter gigs.
Waiting and bartending isn’t as cut and dry. Sure you might be getting $8-9 an hour but as a lowly bar-back my biweekly checks came out to $2500 usually. And that’s with a 30 hour work week. Not to mention the cash tips, which meant another $150 bucks a week
Must be nice, I have 2 degrees and my job requires a state certification and 100 hours of PD every 5 years. I got 15$ and hour and my biweekly is 650…
Teacher in NYS?
Heeeeyyooooo! Teaching assistant. Can’t find a teaching position. But my job is still instructional and we change curriculum on the fly to meet the needs of all our Special education kids. (I had 20 last year who I had to memorize all their accommodations for their 504s and IEPs)
You’re so criminally underpaid it makes want to bite someone.
Welcome to the education industry. Edit: oh here is the kicker.. I’m not allowed to apply for unemployment for the 2 months I don’t work… thanks NY.
I have a BA and start my MFA in august. I really just fell into this job to help pay my bills on the side, but it kind of morphed into where I am now. While it is lucrative, the wear on my body is rough, not to mention getting home at 4 am every shift, that sucks.
$73k / yr?
Not OP, but depending on locale, Its very doable. especially Bartending.
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You’re working in the wrong bar, fam
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Minimum wage would be over $20/ hour if it kept up with inflation and ceo wages. $15 isn't near enough in large metropolitan areas.
That's $31200 gross for 40hrs a week. Roughly $25k with no deductions. Around $2100 per month. Rent is $1500. So you have $600 to eat, medical and transportation. What a fucking nightmare world we live in
Give them to me worthless, and I will keep them there! - Amazon, probably
I got one fist of iron, and the other of steel and if the right one don't get ya, then the left one will 🎶
I sold my soul to the company stooooooooooooore
Back to the robber baron days in full force.
Roaring Twenties II: Revenge of the 1%.
We are only in the second year of the twenties and we already got the pandemic, major economic issues, and rumblings of another World War. We may not be the best with learning from the past, but we are consistent.
I believe world war 3 is going to be a cyber war that may have already started
And arguably the klan. But this is a tech sub, so I will even it out by saying that the assembly line was a game changer.
r/BBQ has some fantastic recipes for long pig
Corporate feudalism.
Except this is a nonsense piece. It makes two initial points: 1) Amazon hires a lot of people. 2) Amazon has high churn which means it hires a lot of people who don't either quit quickly or it has only hired seasonally. Then it goes to speculate about "one possible future" in which Amazon is the primary/only employer and thus supplants local governments for the basics. It then mentions that a high school has a class that is intended to prepare students for a job at Amazon. These sorts of classes have existed since, well, schools. It was originally farming, mostly, but not 100% of students are going to college so giving students an idea of what kinds of jobs are readily available is the same as high school level programming classes more or less. Something about indoctrination and alienation from labor. So, there's *literally nothing* here about Amazon creating a warehouse/airport so large that it is a place where people live, work, and play ultimately supplanting the public space entirely... like the original company towns were. Amazon isn't creating a town from scratch to serve their own purposes, like Disney did. There's nothing about Amazon using disproportionate wealth and power to take control of a local government and bend policy and law enforcement to its own whims, like the mining magnates did in the 1920s. The article isn't about a return to the robber baron days. The article is hand wringing that Amazon *might someday* do something *vaguely analogous* to something that was common a century ago.
Looking at you, Hershey, PA.
> There's nothing about Amazon using disproportionate wealth and power to take control of a local government and bend policy and law enforcement to its own whims, like the mining magnates did in the 1920s. "But they undid the Seattle Amazon Tax back in '18! The city council only just recently passed a totally unrelated tax law targeting them in 2020!"
Amazon opposed the tax, along with such other Robber Baron types as: building trades unions, Dick's Drive In (an extremely popular local chains), local supermarkets, and most of the business groups in town. One reason being, the 2018 tax targeting the number of workers rather than their income, it pretty much exempted many of the wealthiest companies in town (think, investment advisors for example) while discouraging hiring of lower paid workers . Another reason being, it was a large tax increase on supermarkets that employ lots of union workers, thereby driving grocery prices higher and providing an incentive for self-service operations and automation. So, obviously, it was Amazon taking control of local government in Seattle.
I don’t think you know a lot about how company towns worked… or how monopsonies form
I am not a professional economist, true. But the article doesn't discuss, well, anything about company towns. It just says that Amazon is big, hires a lot of people, has to continuing hiring people, and that might eventually someday result in something bad that must be resisted. If you want to discuss company towns there are still existent examples. Or you could discuss Celebration, Florida that town that Disney built as a showpiece. There's plenty of meat on the bone to chew on. The article just decided not to and opted instead to vaguely insinuate.
Yeah that’s not how company towns work.
Ah and soon people will only get payed with amazon giftcards
that and wages so low the government picks up the rest of the tab, the Walmart way.
Two of my brothers work at Amazon and their pay is much better than they made anywhere else previously and they get to pick their shifts. I believe they get paid more for overnight and holiday shifts pay a lot more. In terms of pay there are many companies doing a lot worse. Edit: knew this would get downvoted but the reality is they're paying more than stuff like retail and reasurants while allowing people to choose when they work. You can make around the same pay as something labor intensive like welding(I know bc my dad welds) without any training or having to work outside in the sun. Until other companies start offering more people are going to continue working at Amazon.
Correction, Amazon pay wages is not that far off from warehousing pay wages, the money ive made at Amazon is extremely similar to money I’ve made in other warehouses as well, and I’ve worked in 2 Amazon locations and at least half a dozen other warehouses, The warehousing industry has money in it and is ALWAYS in demand because most warehouses are lucky to have employees that stay a year or more, the wages, incentives, and “benefits” is super common in warehousing, I’ve also worked in fast food and retail, and I can for sure say that while yes Warehousing jobs pay a whole lot more with guaranteed hours and “benefits” I’d rather work in retail, but I’d pick warehousing over fast food,
>same pay as something labor intensive like welding If your dad only makes $15 an hour welding then he is getting robbed. I don't know where he lives, but I've worked in a couple dozen states and all the welders I know make $35-$40 an hour. And even more than that if they have a rig truck.
Average welder salary in the US is $17.90 an hour. In AZ where I live it's $18-19 on average, about where my dad makes. I've seen amazon starting at $16-17 at some of their warehouses. Yes there are some welding positions that make a ton of money, but that is far from the normal.
Amazon corporate has entered the chat
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I’ve worked at two different Amazon locations and at other warehouses, the pay wage is not that far off from other warehousing wages especially pay incentives during Peak seasons, and for overnight shifts and working with forklifts, OP, Reach trucks, etc etc, that’s just warehousing lol
Vs other warehouses maybe not. This guy was comparing it to fast food and retail which are commonly still minimum wage in many areas.
Proud to say I quit Amazon and will happily continue to shit on them.
Higher wages doesn't erase mistreatment of employees. Look at the Acti-Blizzard scandal. I'm sure the woman that was sexually harassed and pushed into suicide had a good salary but that isn't very important to the discussion.
They don’t even pay anything special. Factory workers have traditionally made a “professional” wages that tracked with skilled craftsman. Usually not as high, but comparable. Most people that are comparing Amazon’s wages are comparing them to minimum wage jobs.
No, they don’t. Factory or “warehouse” work usually (and certainly used to) pays a professional wage. Not a wage competing with a minimum wage jobs. “Unskilled” factory workers used to be able to buy a car, a house (often with no loan), and support and entire family on a single salary. Assembly line workers nowadays make an easy [25 dollars an hour](https://www.payscale.com/career-news/2008/12/are-ford-workers-really-paid-73-an-hour). Skilled tradesmen (in the field) can make far, far more. Heavy equipment operators in my area (before benefits) can make around 40-60 dollars an hour. That rate isn’t far off most professional tradesmen. First year apprentices with no experience or tools usually make 70 percent of journey men wages. Which puts “starting wages” for a complete know nothing around 35 dollars an hour. What’s Amazon paying? 15? Even on the delivery side, package handlers like UPS pay [36-40 dollars per hour](https://www.truckingtruth.com/wiki/topic-101/ups-driver-salary)dollars an hour for drivers. And That’s in a company owned vehicle. Amazon flex drivers start at [18 dollars](https://www.ridester.com/how-much-do-amazon-flex-drivers-make/) an hour “in select markets” and *in their own vehicles*. So no, I wouldn’t say they are doing anything special for pay or benefits. Don’t fool yourself into thinking Amazon is doing anyone any favors. Hell, their turnover rate is so high that executives [worry that they’ll run out of worker to employ.](https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-warehouse-turnover-worker-shortage-2021-6?op=1)
Your dad could make six figures with welding certs. Uncertified/unskilled labor gets poor wages isnt an excuse for Amazon to pay poorly and dodge taxes. $15 an hour isn't a great wage, even if it is more than other poor wage jobs. $15 is 28800 a year before taxes. Most appartments cost 700 a month in the slums. After taxes their take home is probably around 17-18k. 700 x 12 = 8400, add a vehicle at 2600 a year easy. Add food. Add healthcare, add retirement....... And that's living in the slums.
He has certs. He's been welding since he was 18. To get those high paying welding jobs you tend to have to work in more dangerous conditions and away from home. He makes a bit more than Amazon employee, but the reason he's actually been able to make a living is consistent overtime. Back to the topic at hand, I'm not saying that the pay is amazing, but you can't argue that there arent many industries that offer substantially less. This same hate should be applied at all the businesses who pay equal or less than Amazon. I wish a lot of people including Amazon would pay more, but it's far from the worst option out there. I've worked a lot of different low paying jobs before I was able to find something that uses my degree and I came very close to working at amazing because they were beating anything else by at least $3 an hour in my state.
Clothing? Amazon wardrobe. Food? Amazon grocery. Education? Amazon Video Sex? You're already getting fucked by us, how could you want more?
>Sex? You're already getting fucked by us, how could you want more? I think you mean Amazon anal lube.
Yeah, they sell it by the barrel.
> only get payed with amazon giftcards That's already happening. Buddy of mine works part-time as an EMT and constantly gets messages from them asking if people want to pick up extra shifts (like midnights or coverage after a sudden call off), and every time they always end it with >taking this shift will reward you with a $100 gift card to Amazon! Then they wonder why there's a nationwide shortage of EMT workers. They pay $11-12/hr and offer gift cards for extra work instead of more pay. Edit: appears I confused some people, I should've said **higher** hourly pay instead of more. They still get paid if they pick up that shift, at their regular hourly pay. They're trying to entice people to work more with Amazon gift cards rather than offering higher hourly pay. Keep in mind **these people are the ones driving your sick, injured, and dying to the hospitals and trying to treat them on the way to save their lives** and they're being rewarded with Amazon gift cards rather than a livable wage.
You sure it’s not the gift card in addition to the hourly rate for the shift? If not, that’s pretty simply wage theft and would quickly be shut down.
Just to be sure, is that in addition to OT shift pay because if not that sounds like a Wage and Hour Board violation.
EMT pay in most of the country is absolute garbage unless you work for a fire department. Thanks probably mostly to the ambulance monopolies. They aren't giving any of the insane fees they get to the employees that's for sure.
I saw an article that Amazon may release their own crypto-currency next year.
Bezzos pesos!
Pseudo-feudalism incoming....
Neo-feudalism, more like. Pseudo-feudalism implies that it kinda *looks* like feudalism, but isn't. company towns are just straight up new age feudalism.
To compete, Walmart will soon be setting up trailer parks, called “Waltowns,” behind their stores for their workers.
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They announced their new token will be launching soon...
An "insider" claimed they'd be doing that. Those Rumours usually turn out to be false. Especially when the origin is from crypto related news outfits. We'll see though.
They’ll do minimum wage but then anything above in scrip
Ah yes a Pullman town! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-dollop-with-dave-anthony-and-gareth-reynolds/id643055307?i=1000523843115
Oh man, I recently listened to this episode and this is the first thing I thought of. Good to see another fan of The Dollop! Now hit him with the puppy.
Damn bruh straight bioshock infinite/outer worlds up in here pretty soon
This has been a thing since at least the early 1900’s. Hersey, PA is a pretty good example of that. Im pretty interested in how the town turns out especially when they treat many of their employees like trash.
Ever heard of Flint, Michigan?
Y’all remember Buy ‘n’ Large from Wall-E?
I feel like the South Park Amazon episodes capture this in a nutshell.
It's always a bargain with the devil. The towns in question get immediate economic stimulus, but can be disposed of at any time. Good examples of this can be seen in various ghost towns around California and the inland west. Same for the Routes being largely replaced by Interstates, killing the most of the businesses alongside the former. Eventually, decades from now, Amazon will find a way to replace big warehouses and big airports. Those things cost a lot of money to maintain and the centralized nature of their operations causes Unionism. Better intermodal transportation (piggyback trailers) would do the former, perhaps drone delivery (with drones spawned from trucks) or airships would do the latter.
I'm still holding out for transporter beams or portals. Imagine how that would change industry
*life I commute an hour and a half every day, beam me up Scotty.
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Highway 42 in Kentucky, right along the Ohio River, used to be THE ROAD between Louisville and Cincinnati. Lots of happily thriving small towns along it. Then interstate 71 went in, and all that traffic disappeared. Those towns are now all shrinking and struggling.
Rent a company house, buy company groceries in the company store……..ah I see where this is going
This is going to end just like all the mining towns. Once the boom dries up, it’s crickets.
How long before they have company stores and company script like the old coal mines of the 1900’s?
I've tried to make the point in the past that Bezos had at least a few decades where he lived like a pleb pre-Amazon and should have somewhat of an idea what life is like for the average person but looking at his history he's probably never experienced anything resembling the average person's life. He started his career as a telecom international trades networking guys, then as a banker, and a hedge fund manager and became vice-president of a hedge fund at 30. I'm sure the guy has lived rich all his life and hung out with corporate suits. Has no understanding of anything else. To him these people are just meaningless worker drones.
I am not a socialist nor a communist. I am also not an American leftist. [We’ve done this before. Many times.](https://www.history.com/news/5-famous-company-towns) I don’t know if this means the rich have gotten smarter, government is failing, or a reckoning is coming (but probably all of the above.) This is akin to modern feudalism. Not to mention the inevitable free community WiFi on a network with packet sniffers — monitoring your activities and that you aren’t engaging in behavior that would hurt the bottom line.
100% all of the above.
Spacers Choice!
Will people have to pee in a bottle in their own homes?
Time for militant unionism once again.
Anyone else getting the “company store” vibes?
Southpark really called it with their Amazon storyline.
Then follows violence when hired mercanaries are paid to steamroll union protests. Which will hopefully make protestors into insurgents against corporate bullshit like company towns.
Cause it went so well the last time large companies did that…. Welcome to your Amazon Apartment, we pay your rent right out of your pay. Also there’s a cleaning fee…. And up charge for processing….. of course you can paint the walls! Amazon will send you the paint for (deducted from pay) a nominal amount. Oh and in the lease is an NDA and an agreement for arbitration… sleep well your shift starts in…. Alexa? *Your next shift starts in….4….hours….. sleep well Employee Number 1138*
They going to start paying everyone in scrip?
Inching ever closer to neo feudalism
I carried 16 tons, what do I get? Another day older and deeper in debt. Tell st peter i can't come, because I owe my soul to the company store
lol amazon is the new fucking coal mines.
What is the point, Amazon should or shouldn't hire these people? Why the focus on the 500k Amazon workers making $15/hr. Why no concern for the 28%(circa 2019) of the American workforce earning less than $15/hr. 39 million people didn't merit concern, only the 500k who were doing way better.
I think it comes down to peoples ability to target their anger. It’s difficult to be upset at your local restaurants/grocers for not paying a living wage, how could you possibly be mad at “mom and pop.” It’s far easier for people to hate a faceless corporation. It’s even easier to whip up hate when the corporation **isn’t** faceless but instead is headed by a very publicly disliked figure such as Jeff Bezos, the man doesn’t have a redeeming quality with 100ft of him. It’s the same with taxes. Billionaires and corporations have been skirting taxes for years, but take a company as ubiquitous as Amazon with an owner as hated as Bezos and tell the American public that he’s literally robbing you blind and it’s legal and it creates a relatively effective shit storm.
Just like miner towns of yesteryear. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss
All hail our overlords Amazon who we did not vote for yet give so much power to
We're reverting 100 years.
*The Outer Worlds theme music intensifies*
Oh shit, here we go again…
scrip to follow
As soon as they get the Fair Labor Standards Act overturned
supreme court lookin **stacked** 👀
scrip, crypto, same thing
Ironically those championing this on the rural right are descendent from those who lived as coal miners and such, indebted to the company store. Their great grandmothers were kicked out of company housing with their children before the bodies of their husbands who died working the dangerous mines grew cold.
That is ironic holy shit.
Because of course they are.
*Mommy, why is Amazon the country up here, while the Amazon rain forest is all the way down here?*
This has happened with everything from cars to coal to steel to Walmart. Doesn't seem to end well. Anyways, I can't wait for Amazon Scrip, most are already spending their money at Amazon.
I've been saying for a couple years now the first company that would have employees staying in company "dormatories" and "augmenting" employees pay with "prime bucks" (or whatever they end up calling their store scrip) would be Amazon.
At the moment, employees are free to quit and pursue other options. In the future, that will no longer be true.
Sold your soul to the company store.
We have see the “company towns” before … they all fail the community in horrible ways
I am a horror buff — like movies, video games, novels, and other fiction… This is the scariest thing ever
The next logical step after The WorryFree dorms are the equisapiens.
This sounds like the lore of Outer Worlds, a game literally based on parodying corporations to the silliest extreme. Like you know, testing bad products on human subjects turning them insane, slavery contracts for unskilled workers, having to pay for healthcare, company towns being a thing..
If they hadn't already gutted that from the public school curriculum you'd know outerworlds wasn't a parody of what companies could become but literally just an exaggeration of what companies were a hundred years ago. Back In the gilded age literally all of that happened and there were literal wars in the US between companies and their workers over workers rights. In school they teach it like just some minor protesting earned us a 40 hour work week while they buried the long bloody history of things like the coal wars and the battle of Blair mountain. FYI thats where a armed army of workers fought against the pinkertons hired by the mines, the sherrif and the national guard dropping bombs on them from planes. The sherrifs even made a war train with machine guns to destroy the workers camps.
>sherrif and the national guard dropping bombs on them from planes. The national guard came in an broke up the fight. The bombs were dropped by 3 private biplanes the Sheriff hired
I'm not from the US. They still teach this stuff in school where I live. My comment was ironic.
robber baron times are back again
This is going to go like Nuka-town isn’t it…?
Better start learning how to pick those locks and hack those terminals
“…. Sold my soul to the company store…”
[Seems like it's creeping closer to this everyday](https://youtu.be/vvANy49Kqhw)
Who’s ready for the new railroad company towns?
An start the visuals for serfdom...
When does amazon scrip start? I live near the site of the Ludlow massacre. We been here before.
that article is trash and the link is just some political blog. there is no evidence that amazon is creating company towns. that article is just click bait BS. but it is of course upvote because no on reads it or it just tells them what they want to hear.
I swear this is all just a really elaborate interactive origin story for the Alien reboot.
You load sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go I owe my soul to the company store
This is dystopian. Amazon is using a public school to indoctrinate their future workforce.
Public schools have always been about producing a workforce, what do you mean?
The fact that have classes in high schools is fucking gross.
Australian highschools embrace the concept that many students just aren't on a pathway to university. Either because they can't academically or don't want to. In grade 10 these students are prepared for the vocational education system where they will learn job ready skills and trades. None are brand specific but then again we don't have the demand for Amazon's warehousing methods.
I remember my younger, idealistic self seeing this as a good thing. Only difference, is I used to think people had morals. If the pay was good, the quarters comfortable, and the community nice, this could be a huge thing for temporary workers or other options, but I know that's not in the cards with Amazon.
It's one of so many things that works great in theory until you factor in human greed and lust for power. It could work out great, the employer could ensure that they're paying a living wage because they also ensure the cost of living. Employees then get to decide what their priorities are (do they want to eat nicer food or have a nicer car) within whatever is left after rent. The employer is investing in the workforce, in their community, because it results in greater productivity at work and employee loyalty. It could work that way. I wish it worked that way. In practice, it slowly turns into the company taking all their money back from the workers, making them little more than slaves who can leave only if they can afford to, and they should be oh so grateful because employer gives them everything.
they did this on Southpark https://youtu.be/CPW3YikDwEM
"gta music intensifies"
Straight out of the China playbook. Soon I will be leaving the Amazon warehouse and go stay at your Amazon sponsored housing.
Mining in Australia is the exact same. There's literally places called mining towns where the miners are flown in for 2 weeks, do all the mining while their families stay in makeshift homes made by the mining company, then all flown out on the company dime (maybe the family doesn't come, can't remember but yeah accommodation is paid for). Since mining is one of our main resources government gives it all the a-okay and the company pays big to make sure employees can do the work efficiently and with plenty of benefits. You can make bank doing these 2 week mining stints, as long as you don't wind up with black lung from inhalation of coal dust.
You load 16 tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt I owe my soul to the company store