oh come on.. someone who worked at an amazon facility, that just doesn't happen. that's the news media running wild over some crazy employee who pissed in a bottle. at the ups warehouse i worked at, i even heard the drivers did that too. and their wages are mountains more than DSP amazon drivers. that's got nothing to do with slave labor, it's idiotic and lazy employees lol

with your going green stuff that's another can of worms. i mostly agree

This post was edited by ChocolateCoveredGummyBears on Feb 1 2024 08:58pm

I live near a pretty big Amazon warehouse and nexus where deliveries are sent from. If you're within 200+ miles of me it will pass through my fulfillment center. I know because I lived 200+ miles away 5 years ago and my orders came through it.

It happens. I know several people who have worked there.

Maybe you had a uniquely good center you worked at, but it's not abnormal for that kind of thing to happen.

all the workers could re-create the pyramids of giza with their accumulated piss bottles. even then, it's not even remotely relevant to his argument of equating working at amazon as slave labor

@SwamiVivekananda amazon has an awesome flex gig thing for drivers too, and a flex scheduling system if hired on officially. could sign up and pick the hours you want to work. total opposite of "being a slave"

This post was edited by ChocolateCoveredGummyBears on Feb 1 2024 11:11pm

I think working under capitalism in many ways is analagous to slavery, but not the same obviously.

Once upon a time I could go into the woods and forage for myself. Now that is not an option. The forests are depleted, fish populations are collapsing, all the land is taken up so I can't go homestead. The options to not participate in the system do not exist for things as basic as even feeding and sheltering yourself. You do not have a choice but to engage in the capitalist system to eat and be housed.

In that way, there's an analogy to slavery. If you are in a situation where the only good job is Amazon and everything else is poverty, which exists in some areas, then in many ways it's similar even if you technically have a choice even though its a choice between poverty and starvation, and being worked to the bone at a warehouse.

My cousin is a UPS driver(not the box truck the 53 footers) and despite people losing their mind over that 170k salary people have no IDEA what that entails for the average driver(almost half of that is for healthcare because drivers fuck up their knees/hips/etc. going up and down out of a truck THOUSANDS of times. I should know because I fucked up my knee building my lawn maintenance business over 10 years. I probably went in and out of a GMC pick up half a million times in those 10 year and because I was young and in shape I didn't think about. Now it's hard for me to jog for 30 minutes without it aggravating it a little bit. So I'll add that's the only negative for me looking back. Getting paid in cash/check and not having health insurance. My mom is a nurse so I was covered from 15-25(pretty much the duration it took me to build a clientele and then sell it) but my knee didn't act up until just a few years ago(when I hit 30).

My cousin the UPS driver literally was busting his ass and got his CDL and did ANYTHING and EVERYTHING for them during Covid(taking every shift offered)(no days off) and he did that for 3 straight years and guess what when he applied within the company to go from the box truck(which he drove those 3 years) to a 53footer the union rep literally laughed in his face and said "All these people have been here for 10+ years and still have not moved up to that position and you think because you busted your ass for us during Covid you can pass these people ahead of you on the waiting list". So he brought up what you did most of these warehouse workers were lazy employees who had a kush spot and a family so they didn't want to have to work anymore then they did. He ended up being offered what no one was offered. Moving UPS 53's from warehouse hub to hub and so because he busted his ass it ended up paying off for him.

Have a friend who worked for FedEx as a "package handler" and moved his way up into "logistics" and got a salary gig and within 3 years they overworked him and we play hockey together and all he would do is bitch about his work and be like "Wow I would've stayed a package handler making 30/hr instead of getting worked to death". He now does logistics for a smaller company because it was too much. Most people are not "lazy" if they are trying to move up the ladder but when they get up there the "money" isn't worth the "mental stress" on you. You can make 250k a year and be miserable we all know that.

The people I know who worked for Amazon no longer work there and one was a driver and the other 2 were warehouse employees. All of them were equally overworked and my buddy who drove made videos of "How Amazon does force you to piss in a water bottle" because if you go "off the pre-programmed route" you are costing them money because their algorithm tells you how to deliver those (x) packages in a day "point to point". He got 2 strikes in less then a month(you get 3) and one wasn't his fault(packages mishap) the other one was he went off the route to a gas station to piss and when he got back to the warehouse he had to sit down with a higher up to have it explained to him. He quit on the spot. The two warehouse workers just got burnt out and if you look at these companies "employee retention rates" they are dogshit.

Here's what my dad saw going into work yesterday. Like I said he works on the pressline making the "physical newspaper". He's 3rd in line in terms of how long he's been at the Tribune(35 years) there's two other guys who've been there for 40+. My dad started working at the Tribune when he was 20 years old and never could've anticipated the "internet" or "digital newspapers" but he did know that the pressline would run until the company runs into the ground. Multiple times throughout his time there he was offered an office job but my dad was smart enough to know those people would be the first to go and that happened. So him sticking it out doing the hard manual labor allowed him to always have a full time job even if his yearly pay bump was next to nothing.

I despise someone like Bill Ackman who I mentioned in the previous post. I won't go into how much of a jew the guy is(actual and financial) and so my dad went from basically having close to a 2 million dollar pension to now basically be waiting for them to offer him a severance package which would be substantially less. It perfectly embodies greed and to Bill Ackman my dad is just another "goyim" a non-jew low class slave worker. Think I'm some white supremist who hates jews?? No but I know a billionaire jew who gutted the company my dad works for, aged my dad 10 years, and stole his future financial security. If that isn't the definition of corporate greed and how capitalism is inherently flawed I don't know what is but I'm sure these people striking for the first time in the Tribune's 180 year history they aren't getting jew'd either.(article is worth the read but have to put in email to view I believe)

https://chicago.suntimes.com/business/2024/2/1/24058233/chicago-tribune-strike-alden-global-capital-union-walkout-labor-history

Worse than slaves in many respects. A slave was provided food, housing, clothes, and medical care by their owner.. Education as well, though not what you think of as education. Real "education" is teaching people what they need to know to live a productive life. While some slaves were used as butlers, accountants, etc. the majority were physical laborers. Teaching physical laborers literacy or algebra would simply waste their time, and their owner's investment. While the occasional abuse of slaves has been made into a massive thing, the majority of slaves were not abused, and the worst abuses tended to be carried out by foremen who were themselves slaves.

Fast forward to 100 years ago: Slavery is "gone". But if you want a job, you work for a corporation. The corporation provides food, housing, clothes, and education. Transportation is limited, and you're paid in corporate scrip. Scrip cannot be used to purchase vehicles or horses, the company does not offer such. The scrip is not usable anywhere outside the company. Thing is, all your needs are met, but you have no "freedom" because you can't leave, as you have nothing of value outside your corporate bubble. So they outlawed it.

Fast forward to today: Amazon pays $20/hour for delivery drivers. Sounds great! Unfortunately, $42K a year, especially under current pricing, isn't enough for a home loan. What you run into is along these lines: You can't get a home loan, so you rent. Rent prices on the same exact places that were $400 a month in 2000 are currently $1600 a month or higher. Electric bills that were $30 a month in 2000 are now $150-300 a month. Food that was $0.50 a pound in 2000 is now $3/lb. Before it's all said and done, the $42K/year you think you're making that's really $25K/year after taxes is completely absorbed in rent, food, clothes, and transportation. You can quit your job any time you want, but you'll lose everything by doing so, unless you go get a job somewhere else, which'll pay approximately the same wages, and put you in roughly the same circumstances. It's called economic slavery.

Take it to the next level though, let's say you DO get a home loan. You spend the next 20 years paying it off, you're gold! Not particularly. That $400,000 property you just spent a third of your adult life, sacrificing your time, your body, and your health paying for? Doesn't really belong to you. Which becomes apparent every single year when tax season comes around and you have to pay $4000-$10,000 in property tax simply to exist on your own land. Like, you just spent the last 20 years in the meat grinder to have your own spot. Maybe all you want to do is farm a bit of your own food, raise a couple pigs and cows, and keep to yourself. You've had enough of consumerism and making other people money, you just want to settle down and do your own thing, opt out of the market. Thing is, how? It doesn't matter if your property generates income. You don't actually own it. If you fail to pay your annual rent to the government, they seize it. If you don't participate in the market, aka hope back in the meat grinder, you aren't earning the USD to pay it.

Our entire system is designed AS slavery. Just without the chains. And it's far worse today than it was under corporate scrip OR slavery, because the head slave owner is the Government themselves, who've enacted laws that FORCE the working class to continue worrking. With the "promise" that after the age of 65, you can finally hang up the towel, the up and coming slaves, the new generations will pay for your life while you relax, body and soul broken by the endless whip of wage slavery.

It's great!

The fact that people are so eager to equate modern work trivialities to slavery seems to be a good indicator of how great society is.

Spoken like someone who's never worked a physical job. The problem with backbreaking labor is that it's backbreaking labor. When slaves performed backbreaking labor, they were provided food, clothes, lodging, and medical care. When they tried to "quit" they were hunted down and hanged. When "free" citizens perform backbreaking labor, they're provided a paycheck too low to afford their own housing OR proper medical care, and rent, food, clothing, and transportation soaks up pretty much all of the pay.

Your ability to order your daily groceries and have them delivered to your doorstep depends on backbreaking labor that you neither acknowledge nor understand, from people who's only real option is to do it or starve on the streets. Sure, they could get a similar job elsewhere for similar results. Play the economic wage slave game or starve sounds a lot like be a productive slave or be hanged. Just that death by hanging happens to be more merciful than death by starvation, or dying of the elements.

Ben Shapiro often makes the point that homeless people are homeless specifically because they want to be. According to him, the majority of them would RATHER be sleeping in tents on the side of the street, collecting EBT and doing drugs. He says it like these people are making the wrong choice. I'd argue that when you talk to a lot of these people, what they'll tell you is that they used to hold down multiple jobs, average 50-80 hours a week working, and could never afford to save anything. All their wages were swallowed up by rent, power, transportation, and various forms of insurance. While they paid for health insurance, they couldn't afford the copays to actually go to the doctor. While they paid their rents, they never gained any actual equity in their homes, and rents only ever went up, not down, but they didn't have the credit for a home lone, because they had no assets for collateral. And the first thing they typically sacrificed to make ends meet was food. Rather than eating steak and potatoes, drop down to ramen and cheap processed garbage. Now that they're homeless? They can afford the steak and potatoes thanks to EBT. Now that they're homeless, they aren't spending 10 hours a day making somebody else profits while they can barely afford a pot to shit in. Now that they're homeless, they don't have to fuck with trying to go through doctors to treat the back or neck or whatever pain that their years of physical labor have brought on. The government will provide them free needles and enough cash benefits that they can afford to buy their drugs of choice and just chill.

Which is better? Spending your life making someone else money so that you never get ahead, never get out from under the thumb of some dickhole employer, or using government benefits to just fuck off and live your live stoned or high or drunk, doing whatever the fuck you please?

why would you think that?

that's the disconnect (or part where we don't agree on). if you try to quit or get disciplined, the worst is what a write up? the comparison is not the same at all, and that's a huge distinct difference

i feel you about the housing stuff it is pretty ridiculous. regarding your worldview, i also think a lot of that is from different perspectives on life. my mom worked for over 25 years for the state and she's enjoying a good pension and retirement. sadly, the newer people are not getting the same pension plans.

one of my buddies i worked with at home depot was a retired e-9 in the military. his body ran laps around all the new hires. in fact, a lot of the co-workers were retired people just bored out of their minds slinging boxes and sweating bullets. some were even in their 60s. saw the same at amazon.

you can either live life through a negative worldview thinking you're worse than the slaves that were tortured and hanged, or find joy in your physical work or shocker incoming: voluntary quit and go drive for fcking uber/dd if all else fails. there's really no excuse, and the comparisons to actual slavery sound like some /r/antiwork crap

This post was edited by ChocolateCoveredGummyBears on Feb 3 2024 10:16am