Comment on amazon can afford to treat its workers with dignity
humanamerican@lemmy.zip 5 days agoAmericans could afford to spend more on goods that are actually durable. And those who couldn’t would buy used items that actually are worthwhile because they were built to last.
tempest@lemmy.ca 5 days ago
Maybe they could 50 years ago but they decided then that Walmart was the way to go.
Now all most of them can afford is Walmart
its_kim_love@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 days ago
And nothing materially changed between then and now. It’s just as possible now as it was then. They just want you to think it isn’t.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 5 days ago
I’d hate to break it to you, but that just isn’t true. Manufacturing capabilities have left the continent. People no longer have the relevant expertise to pass on through apprenticeships. We’d basically be starting from scratch, and with corporate hegemony built on cheap overseas labor to compete with.
That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be worth doing, but let’s not fool ourselves about the uphill battle that it would be, or the very real possibility that people would just keep using the cheap convenient corporations instead of supporting local fabs
its_kim_love@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 days ago
You’re absolutely right. The word I chose was poor. What I meant was the underlying rules of the material world hasn’t changed. Atoms still act the same way, and all that. It was an exceptionally weird way to make an even weirder point, but yeah.
NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 4 days ago
No we didn’t. Wal-Mart showed up and undercut competition for years to force everyone else out of business, and then jacked up their prices, buy up the property where the competition was at and jack up the rent so they can’t come back.
tempest@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
That’s what they do now (and have done for the last 3 decades but Walmart is a lot older than that and you don’t get to be in that position by accident.
They were sourcing cheap Chinese goods in the early 80s.