alt Hacker NewsI usually try not to judge, people have family, commitments, gotta put food on the table. But. I genuinely wonder how people working at some of these companies that actively make the world a worse place live with themselves. This is basically, and obviously, child abuse in the implied usage. Someone might make a tablet good for education, but I don't think Amazon is structurally capable of doing it.
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Ethics is taught. Directly or indirectly (i.e. environmental/cultural). Also for some, a loss of an employment has significantly higher consequence than others.
If you take these into consideration then it makes sense why one would make such choice. Whether they are aware of building an evil device is irrelevant at this point -- they're making best choice for themselves and their family. Employers love employees who follows orders so they'll craft environment where only those kinds of employees would survive.
IMO this isn't really the problem between employers and employees. They are doing what the system incentivizes them. It's the regulator's role to govern to protect individuals.
The irony is U.S. allows lobbying and SuperPAC which essentially makes the system in favor of those with money.
I think the people who choose to hurt others for profit are basically psychopathic. No conscience. Lack of empathy or compassion. Inflated Ego. They're no different than muggers and rapists who are also willing to hurt others to get what they want, they just happened to end up finding a way to hurt people that they can (so far) get away with.
People like Jeff Bezos and Andy Jassy who already have more money than they could ever need but still feel compelled to cause others to suffer in order for them to make even more money likely have some other kind of mental sickness. Either some form of pathological greed that causes them to never be satisfied with what they have and obsess over hoarding, or something that causes them to derive some sort of sick pleasure from causing suffering.
Unless/until they can treated our world would be better off if we locked these kinds of people up to keep the rest of us safe from them, but right now those with enough money can get away with just about anything which only further emboldens them. They can bribe law makers to prevent regulations that would stop them from releasing harmful products and services. They can hide behind corporate shields. Hopefully we find a way to hold them accountable for the harms they cause soon because they're never going to stop hurting us, or our children.
That's exactly correct, The idea in itself isn't bad.
Amazon doing it will make it really horrible.
Unless this is 100 open source and ad/telemetry free? Right..
Neoliberalism is at a state where moral shaming has very little effect. If you shame someone for trying to build a career or better themselves, you are the problem to a bigger extent than the person doing the previously morally bad thing. People's shame in a neoliberalist society comes from personal failures, such as not working hard enough, eating too much, not looking good enough, etc.
Have you considered that they are making the the world better and your process of measuring is flawed.
Child abuse is practiced by the parents who end up deciding to use such a thing. Please don't shift responsibilities away from those who have them. If a parent makes such a decision, they are prone to also do other bad things to their children.
150 years ago, people used to pacify toddlers with "cordial" containing laudanum, better known as opium.
Today we're still doing the same thing, only the drugs hit is being delivered by other means.
> I genuinely wonder how people working at some of these companies that actively make the world a worse place live with themselves. This is basically, and obviously, child abuse in the implied usage.
My guess: there are a lot more narcissists and sociopaths out there than you'd guess, and they bully the rest into submission.
Marx explained how the division of labor alienates people from what they produce, from the act of production itself, from their human nature, and from one another. People are forced to perform mind-numbing, degrading, or *harmful tasks* simply to earn the wages needed to stay alive, reducing human life to a commodity
If not Amazon, someone else would ship this. At least if you ship it you can make it less shitty
It's not obviously child abuse. If you go back 100 years old children were abused far more than we possibly could simply by malnutrition, disease, lack of shelter. Giving them something that may or may not harm them is not obviously child abuse.
A few years ago this would have made the perfect April Fools joke.
(Continue down below for an amusing rant - trigger warning maybe?)
Now it’s just part of insatiable corporate greed and the current sad reality.
I wonder if Zuck lets his girls use Instagram all day long or if Andy would gift his own toddler (if he had another one) this beautiful tablet. Probably not, he’d have a full time nanny to keep the kid busy.
Alas, these folks are the symptoms and the real problem is systemic folks. Companies are chasing targets to please…drumroll…the shareholders. Yes, each one of us holding index funds are also culpable. It’s a SNAFU. We’ve been sucked whole into the system and escape is hard (especially with the newly proposed Dell bank account for kids that can only be used to invest in stocks).