Amazon, SpaceX and other companies are arguing the government agency that has protected labor rights since 1935 is actually unconstitutional

jeffw@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 541 points –
Amazon, SpaceX and other companies are arguing the government agency that has protected labor rights since 1935 is actually unconstitutional
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Wow, I've read the whole thing. If that goes through, they are going straight back to the 1880 labor's law, with child labor, no overtime and whatever the company wants to contract you. The consequences will be massive.

Sadly, it took blood and death to get the worker’s rights we do have, and only apathetic voters to lose them.

Modern Apathy failed to repair the damage, but the ENTHUSIASTIC giveaway of the country to the rich in both capital and power, the "Reagan revolution," is most directly responsible for the later Citizens United, Trump, and our imminent collapse.

Apathy didn't destroy this country for the people, Enthusiastic greed worship BY the people did. Greed is a personal failing, character deficit, and is every bit as dangerous and destructive to society as hatred. The Gordon Geckos and Mr. Potters of the nation are supposed to be hated, booed, and shunned by decent people for their antisocial activities, not worshipped as the celebrities and...🤮... Role models they are treated like today.

The owners have spent decades propagandizing us to forget what a societal poison greed is as they took over.

Oh I'm sorry it's not greed anymore. I meant greed rational self-interest. Shout out to George Orwell.

It's incredible. Let's see how those check and balance ⚖️ do now.

I'm honestly shocked I hadn't heard about this until now, seems like a big deal

This is the boiled frog effect.

If the SCOTUS creates enough national crises, and that's what they've been actively doing, rolling back the rights and protections of individuals while further empowering capital as citizens discover there is just no recourse, then the crises they continue to create, as dire as they are, just feel like another tuesday.

Moreover, it seems to be happening faster and faster. This is a democratic emergency. We are dangerously close to a critical point where our votes become meaningless and we simply have an authoritarian regime in a trenchcoat.

Vote because your life depends on it, because if you don't, you might not get another chance.

I vote for the lesser evil(D) like clockwork so I can sleep at night, but it is water pumps on the Titanic, I don't do it with hope, it only slows the path we're on slightly, because both our fascist and neoliberal parties worship the same groups of "donors" who are the root cause of our decline. Our government officials are the owner's well bribed middle managers. That's what happens when political bribery is legal and corporations have more rights than people. Neither Biden nor Trump nor all but maybe a half dozen people in Congress are less than hyper-capitalists. Most got into politics to be bribed because that's American politics.

Without revolution, there will be no hope for a better future until collapse. Fortunately for future generations long term, climate change is likely going to force the second one, because we're too chickenshit and social opiate addicted for the first one. Better painful collapse and rebuild than multigenerational subservience under the Bezos/Zuck/Musk dynasty.

I choose to believe that you are wrong, if only because I can't function without hope for a better future.

I don't blame you. My core value has always been truth over comfort, but I fully admit, that value only leads to pain.

It was surely all over the Washington Post, i mean the amazon guy owns it, right?

Why wouldn’t it be, yknow, bang, right on the ol front page there?

eh, I don't really buy that. I think WaPo has maintained editorial independence pretty well. Yes, you can find memes that show WaPo pro-Amazon opinion columns, but if you actually look on your own and not just trust the memes, you can find similar opposing views in their editorials that criticize Bezos

edit: if you don't believe me, the coverage is evenly split: https://www.washingtonpost.com/search/?query=amazon

Can I ask, what evidence would you need to see to conclude there is a bias at WaPo?

If AMZN wanted to buy a propaganda operation, they wouldn't kill every anti-Amazon story. That would ruin WaPo's credibility and thus waste their investment. Instead they would kill only the handful of most damaging stories, while also frequently posting tepid criticism of AMZN, which would give us the "evenly split" result you use as evidence.

I would need to see skew not present in other mainstream publications. WaPo and NyTimes coverage, for example, or even NPR, none of it significantly varies.

Look up criticism of all the newsrooms I mentioned and there’s plenty from internal or ex-reporters. “Bezos pressures us” is not one from WaPo journalists. So, I would need to see a shred of evidence, basically. Word of mouth, reporting discrepancies… something besides memes

I think that’s a pretty reasonable ask.

What makes sense to me is a sentiment classifier that could measure how negative or positive a given story is, and look for the centroids of the positive and negative clusters.

I thought that's what their goal has been, to get back to that time before workers had any protection

I'll see you in the seitch

Like, to escape the desert winds and worms...?

That is indeed the reference.

I don't get the connection though.

I think they are saying that going far away may be required because it’s all going to blow up.

Why else do you think Bezos and Musk are touching themselves over this?

States have labor laws. It would differ by state.

Until the fascists take the fed and enforce their will on the states, which was their plan all along.