"Perhaps these rules are in place because the people creating the rules know that rank and file have no bargaining power and cannot advocate for a less draconian system without fear of termination."
If that was the case, the same would have happened at the previous large corporations.
All those things are partially socialism. Simply instating minimum wage laws doesn't make a country fully socialist, but it is a puzzle piece. It means the wage is not set by the market anymore, but by a committee.
It's a nice thought. But where would all the unreliable people work then? Or you think they would just become reliable if they would get paid more? That seems unlikely to me. There are unreliable rich people, too. People with gambling addictions or drug habits. More money doesn't automatically cure bad habits.
"I doubt there are enough of them, even in Amazon’s warehouses, to warrant the draconian rules for all employees."
So why do you think those rules exist? Because Amazon managers simply are bad people who like to torture their underlings?
To me, THAT sounds implausible. Maybe the rules are not well suited to solve the problems that arise in such work places. But I'd prefer the critics to propose better rules then.
So, let's go. Assume you are manager of a warehouse and you find many employees take extremely long breaks on the toilet. What do you do?
Because he was fired for refusing to comply to the orders of his employer. Whether they seemed reasonable or not.
And he seems to have switched from worrying about his safety to campaigning against Amazon. Why should anybody be forced to employ somebody who has made it their job to damage their employers reputation?
That's why people work hard to acquire skills, to be able to work in better jobs.
I have never run a warehouse, but I suspect that many of the strange seeming rules are in place because people otherwise try to exploit the system (like getting paid for smoking on the toilet for hours on end). It may seem inhumane, but perhaps it makes it possible to give people jobs who don't deserve automatic trust. Such people exist, unfortunately.
I found very interesting the book of the guy who founded "The Big Issue", a magazine that homeless people sell in Britain. They also had to put some rules in place that seem strange, for example the vendors (homeless people) had to buy the magazines they wanted to sell. They are alcoholics, gamblers, addicts, so unfortunately some special rules were necessary to make it work.
What is so bad about treating somebody as someone who can pick and pack your parcels? It's just a job?
And what does it have to do with Capitalism. You think under Socialism they would care about your individuality? No they wouldn't - Socialism is a Collectivist ideology, after all.
The way to strengthen workers is to increase demand for their work, or find ways to make their (limited) skills more useful, or give them new skills. Those are all compatible with Capitalism.
"This data, known as “CVVs” in the cybercrime underground, is sold in packages for about $15 to $20 per record"
Would it be terribly complicated to make single use credit cards? Like if you have an app from your bank (which they push on you these days, anyways), you could generate a new virtual credit card for every transaction?
"In my case, I am willing to pay more to the local shop if everybody is doing it. If Im the only one, the benefit is lost but I personally pay the cost."
But a significant number of people should be wanting to do it - after all, the elected government wants it. So at least 30% of the people or so should want it, the ones who elected the government.
30% of people should be enough to keep some local shops afloat?
Also, I don't get the analogy of sharing travel costs. Shopping locally doesn't get cheaper if more people do it. Unless you build a huge mall, if that is what you want.
I don't understand that kind of thing: the government is presumably elected by the people. Why would the people want the government to fight a business that they could voluntarily avoid, without any government intervention whatsoever?
I mean the government represents what the people want. The people apparently want to buy at local businesses, rather than at Amazon. Why don't they simply do it?
Or if they actually DO want to shop at Amazon, why would they want the government to prevent them from doing it?
I wonder if it could be possible to mix test samples to test several people at once? Like maybe take 10 or even 100 samples, mix them together, and the test shows positive if any of the 100 has the disease? In that case, the samples could be tested individually.
Also I don't think the consensus is that only a vaccine can end the thread, or that it is necessarily much more dangerous than the flu. I know three people who died from the flu. And there are also cases of younger, healthy people dying from the flu, or people getting permanent health issues like inflammation of the heart.
"Perhaps these rules are in place because the people creating the rules know that rank and file have no bargaining power and cannot advocate for a less draconian system without fear of termination."
If that was the case, the same would have happened at the previous large corporations.