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Grognan
Jan 23, 2007

by Fluffdaddy

Inescapable Duck posted:

Amazon can literally shut down an entire warehouse that attempts to unionise and re-open it nearby with all new staff. I wouldn't be surprised if they did exactly that the first time someone tries.

They already did this in Washington state I believe.

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Xae
Jan 19, 2005

Triangle Shirt Factotum posted:

I think that has change dramatically as well. The poster Sundae has a sideline of publishing short stories (erotica?) on Amazon, and he has bitched massively about how Amazon has changed the ebook revenue models.

You used to get $2 if someone with Kindle Unlimited read 10% of your book. So people published 10 page stories so as soon as people opened the book the author got $2.

They changed it to being paid per page.

Oxxidation posted:

the best paid authors on amazon also do nothing but spam terrible porn and romance novels using loopholes within amazon's algorithms to maximize views and profits

both models are broke as poo poo
The best paid authors write genre fiction and churn out a novel or novella or two a month.

Genre fiction (romance, SF&F) generally get turbo hosed by publishers and end up with under 1% royalty rate.

When publishers tried to buy the rights to Wool they offered Howey less money than he was making each month from Amazon. For book and movie rights in perpetuity.

That is how low publishers pay authors. They're a parasitic middleman whose primary service is owning expensive machines in an age where you don't need expensive machines to publish text.

NerdyMcNerdNerd
Aug 3, 2004

Xae posted:

There is a reason why the best paid authors on the planet are people self publishing through Amazon. Amazon gives them 70% of revenue. Traditional publishers usually pay less then 5%.

It is worth noting that Amazon also treats authors like poo poo. They have lowered the payouts for books enrolled in Kindle Unlimited over and over again, and they aren't always clear about what's going on with your profits.

If you choose to enroll on Kindle Select ( and you probably will ), you cannot publish that work anywhere else. Period. If someone else pirates your book and republishes it elsewhere without your permission, Amazon can punish you for it.

Authors and publishers are not all held to the same standards. The rules are not set in stone and are basically "whatever the hell Amazon feels like", and are subject to change whenever the wind blows. They are deliberately obtuse about their rulings and often refuse to clarify when authors ask about them.

Oxxidation posted:

the best paid authors on amazon also do nothing but spam terrible porn and romance novels using loopholes within amazon's algorithms to maximize views and profits

both models are broke as poo poo

Every genre is filled with trash, friend.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!
I just want to say that I don't know about book publishing, but the companies that publish academic monographs are staffed by the dumbest motherfuckers on earth.

Oxxidation
Jul 22, 2007

Xae posted:

The best paid authors write genre fiction and churn out a novel or novella or two a month.

Genre fiction (romance, SF&F) generally get turbo hosed by publishers and end up with under 1% royalty rate.

When publishers tried to buy the rights to Wool they offered Howey less money than he was making each month from Amazon. For book and movie rights in perpetuity.

That is how low publishers pay authors. They're a parasitic middleman whose primary service is owning expensive machines in an age where you don't need expensive machines to publish text.

None of this contradicts what I just said.

Xae
Jan 19, 2005

NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:

It is worth noting that Amazon also treats authors like poo poo. They have lowered the payouts for books enrolled in Kindle Unlimited over and over again, and they aren't always clear about what's going on with your profits.

If you choose to enroll on Kindle Select ( and you probably will ), you cannot publish that work anywhere else. Period. If someone else pirates your book and republishes it elsewhere without your permission, Amazon can punish you for it.

Authors and publishers are not all held to the same standards. The rules are not set in stone and are basically "whatever the hell Amazon feels like", and are subject to change whenever the wind blows. They are deliberately obtuse about their rulings and often refuse to clarify when authors ask about them.


Every genre is filled with trash, friend.

Amazon needs competition for ebook pushing there is no denying that.

But it is very telling that century old companies were able to get poo poo on by a newcomer almost instantly.

And a decade or so later those companies still don't have their poo poo together and have spent most of their time sueing I court to reduce competition in the industry instead of stepping up and competing.

Xae
Jan 19, 2005

Oxxidation posted:

None of this contradicts what I just said.

They only terrible if you think providing people what they want to read instead of what some self-absorbed rear end in a top hat working "in the industry" wants them to read.

Amateur, sure. But not terrible.

Oxxidation
Jul 22, 2007

Xae posted:

They only terrible if you think providing people what they want to read instead of what some self-absorbed rear end in a top hat working "in the industry" wants them to read.

Amateur, sure. But not terrible.

Both models lavish wealth on a handful of kingmakers and game-players and leave the rest to rot. The actual writing has very little to do with it, whether it's stodgy MFA lit or fifty thousand find-and-replace novels about lusty maidens being pounded in the rear end by trillionaire werewolves. Amazon's e-pub isn't a panacea for anything.

Magius1337est
Sep 13, 2017

Chimichanga

ryonguy posted:

Again, for three year or less, then they "encourage" you to find other employment. And a significant percentage of their staff is through employment agencies which get none of the things you mentioned.. They have very high turnover, and can maintain that easily.

Like I said, all warehouse/light industrial is like this. They thrive on having new employees/low wages. You don't really know what you are talking about, and are regurgitating easily dis-proven libertarian bullshit.

seriously where are you getting this because looking at the employment page they actually reward you with more benefits for staying around longer?

Magius1337est
Sep 13, 2017

Chimichanga

Liquid Communism posted:

Are you a libertarian shill, or just so ignorant that you are incapable of understanding how Walmart's model has destroyed most of their competition and is being seen as an ideal to copy by other large retailers?

Even working for a company that is a supplier to Walmart is a special hell, because much of their competitive advantage is based on being big enough to dictate terms to their suppliers that are absurdly in Walmart's favor.

and all of this is in the consumer's favor

walmarts greatest accomplishment is driving down prices for name brand products and their amazing logistic management

NerdyMcNerdNerd
Aug 3, 2004

Oxxidation posted:

Both models lavish wealth on a handful of kingmakers and game-players and leave the rest to rot. The actual writing has very little to do with it, whether it's stodgy MFA lit or fifty thousand find-and-replace novels about lusty maidens being pounded in the rear end by trillionaire werewolves. Amazon's e-pub isn't a panacea for anything.

This isn't actually true. While there is some manipulation with keywords going on, it's more Amazon's fault for not being more transparent with what's going on. To be honest, it isn't that hard to do the keyword research for genres if you really, really want to. It just takes time.

I dunno why people are so eager to poo poo on romance when it is one of the most competitive genres you can try to squeeze into. I've seen a number of people go, :smug: "I'll just write a romance, bored housewives read any old trash." And then they get crushed.

Magius1337est posted:

seriously where are you getting this because looking at the employment page they actually reward you with more benefits for staying around longer?

Most people will burn out before they ever reach the carrot at the end of the stick.

As a for instance, there's a confection factory about twenty miles away from where I live. In a rural area, it offers some of the best pay an uneducated worker can possibly get.

They also force their employees to work seven days on before they get time off, and the shifts are often longer than eight hours a day.

The people that work there have great pay and good benefits, and they're also loving miserable.

Xae
Jan 19, 2005

Oxxidation posted:

Both models lavish wealth on a handful of kingmakers and game-players and leave the rest to rot. The actual writing has very little to do with it, whether it's stodgy MFA lit or fifty thousand find-and-replace novels about lusty maidens being pounded in the rear end by trillionaire werewolves. Amazon's e-pub isn't a panacea for anything.

You're letting perfect be the enemy of good.

A system where authors get literally 50x more of the proceeds of their work is good.

I don't think anyone is arguing that it is perfect, but it is a good system and one that it is better than the previous system.

Crow Jane
Oct 18, 2012

nothin' wrong with a lady drinkin' alone in her room

NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:

I dunno why people are so eager to poo poo on romance when it is one of the most competitive genres you can try to squeeze into. I've seen a number of people go, :smug: "I'll just write a romance, bored housewives read any old trash." And then they get crushed.

Because women read it, so it must be stupid, and mostly women write it, so it must be easy. It's really that simple.

Oxxidation
Jul 22, 2007

Crow Jane posted:

Because women read it, so it must be stupid, and mostly women write it, so it must be easy. It's really that simple.

lmao gently caress off with this poo poo

One of the best things about the self-pubbing scene at its height was the schmucks who thought their mountains of smut made them feminist allies. I thought it had died off once Amazon's sacred algorithm choked most of their livelihood to death.

MixMastaTJ
Dec 14, 2017

Magius1337est posted:

and all of this is in the consumer's favor

walmarts greatest accomplishment is driving down prices for name brand products and their amazing logistic management

And this is at the expense of overworking employees without giving them a livable wage.

And let me cut you off before you say "they can just quit" because freedom to starve isn't actually a freedom

ryonguy
Jun 27, 2013

Magius1337est posted:

seriously where are you getting this because looking at the employment page they actually reward you with more benefits for staying around longer?

And again, since you can't read for poo poo, a big portion of their workforce is temps who get none of that, and if you think 100% of the people who make it into direct hire are able to work more than a few years at the pace demanded, you are delusional. The facility my nephew worked at was buying out employees who had been there more than two years, him included. They do not want long term employees. I'm sure their bullshit handbook says whatever looks good, but I'm telling right now it's completely full of lies.

edit: Actually, I just want to bold that part so everybody can laugh at it, because it's finally sinking in to me that you actually believe a company's employment website.

ryonguy fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Jan 17, 2018

Vegetable
Oct 22, 2010

Halloween Jack posted:

I just want to say that I don't know about book publishing, but the companies that publish academic monographs are staffed by the dumbest motherfuckers on earth.
How's that? What did they do to you?

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!
They're companies that collect fees to handle administration for academic journals, which are run by academics, who don't want to deal with that poo poo. This is why it costs $500 to publish an article on hematology.

Surprise! The company that is paid to handle administration and payment processing also doesn't want to handle administration, or payment processing. So they outsource it to some company in India or the Philippines, who will keep refusing to actually take your purchase order and cash your check. The publishing company will keep sending invoices to the professor, who will lose his poo poo, because he thought you took care of this months ago, and you thought you did.

(The flipside of this is dealing with academic journals and conferences that actually are being run in-house, with all the work dumped on somebody's secretary.)

ReidRansom
Oct 25, 2004


Halloween Jack posted:

They're companies that collect fees to handle administration for academic journals, which are run by academics, who don't want to deal with that poo poo. This is why it costs $500 to publish an article on hematology.

Surprise! The company that is paid to handle administration and payment processing also doesn't want to handle administration, or payment processing. So they outsource it to some company in India or the Philippines, who will keep refusing to actually take your purchase order and cash your check. The publishing company will keep sending invoices to the professor, who will lose his poo poo, because he thought you took care of this months ago, and you thought you did.

(The flipside of this is dealing with academic journals and conferences that actually are being run in-house, with all the work dumped on somebody's secretary.)

The pay to publish journal industry is full of some really scammy poo poo.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
I WILL CUT OFF BOTH OF MY ARMS BEFORE I VOTE FOR ANYONE THAT IS MORE POPULAR THAN BERNIE!!!!!
It's not even specific to scummy, scammy journals--the whole industry is lovely for the same reason Ticketmaster and Diamond (the comics distributor) are lovely.

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

Oxxidation posted:

the best paid authors on amazon also do nothing but spam terrible porn and romance novels using loopholes within amazon's algorithms to maximize views and profits

both models are broke as poo poo

People need to stop pretending like there's anything special about "algorithms" involved there. It's just the same old romance novel/sex book thing thats been huge for about as long as mass literacy. Tailor your content to specific trends/fetishes/events and you can pull a little ahead but there's always some horny person you can grab with Generic gently caress Plot #6775 With Stock Model Cover.

Most of the high paid authors are just making it in sheer volume of titles anyway.

Sundae
Dec 1, 2005
I could go on about Amazon's publishing practices for pages and pages, but we're in the retail thread and I'm not sure it's relevant. Feel free to PM me if you want to discuss the digital practices. I just want to address one slight inaccuracy here:

Xae posted:

You used to get $2 if someone with Kindle Unlimited read 10% of your book. So people published 10 page stories so as soon as people opened the book the author got $2.

They changed it to being paid per page.


Not exactly. They were paid X, where X was based on an arbitrary pot (not disclosed until month ended) divided by the total number of books read (10% progress). It started out at around $2.14 in the beginning and dropped to $1.40-1.50ish by the time they changed the system. Because of that structure, it encouraged people to write shorter works, because that bullshit 10-page pamphlet got the same payout as a 700-page fantasy novel. On top of that, actual sales of e-books crashed hard after the subscription model started, so the 700-page book couldn't even count on higher-priced retail sales saving it anymore. It just wouldn't get any.

After the flood of people scamming the "per read" approach, Amazon changed to the page system. This system had all the problems of the old, but added new ones, for legitimate authors. There were still scam approaches to get around it that are still prolific now.

They changed it to an arbitrary pot of money that they will not tell you the size of until the end of each month, then divide it out by the number of total pages read across all books in Kindle Select. At the same time, they removed already existing tools to tell how many people were reading your books (they used to give this info and got rid of it), did not allow you to see information on how far people are reading into your books (though they can track it), and defined "pages" in a way that they will not explain or provide a measure for, but one which appeared to vary depending on how you formatted your e-book (even formatting in ways that shouldn't affect your page count). Additionally, if you do not join the Select/Unlimited program, you have artificially reduced visibility on the platform and can't use most of their marketing tools.

To summarize: They changed it to pay per page* out of a pot of money** based on total pages read***.

*subject to interpretation
**subject to how much they feel like paying authors this month
***subject to data they won't show you


quote:

A system where authors get literally 50x more of the proceeds of their work is good.

The old way was hosed up, poorly considered, and abused in exactly the way you described with the 10-page pamphlet poo poo. It probably had to go. However, the new way deprives authors of so much information that they honestly can't tell you how much they really should be making. All they can say is what pittance Amazon gave them at the end of each month. Also, regarding the 50X number: Amazon self-publishing authors don't get anywhere near that sort of advantage except at the literal Top 10 on the site stage of things (and even they occasionally get dicked with hard). I expect the worst of both worlds exists now, though, in which you publish through a traditional publisher who is still at the mercy of Amazon, so who the gently caress knows how bad that works out for those people.

Sundae fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Jan 17, 2018

MiddleOne
Feb 17, 2011

Anyone who blindingly believes that corporations with what amounts to monopolies in a market are any kind of solution the problems of publishing companies clearly have not been around for the last 5 years of Steam. Being a publisher can be extremely profitable (due to effectively gating access to consumers) but sucks on a practical level, it's not happen-stance that Youtube, Amazon and Steam have all opted for various kinds of hands-off approaches with all the unintended consequences that can generate.

MiddleOne fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Jan 18, 2018

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

MiddleOne posted:

Anyone who blindingly believes that corporations with what amounts to monopolies in a market are any kind of solution the problems of publishing companies clearly have not been around for the last 5 years of Steam.

What about the last 5 years of Steam? It's easier than ever for someone who actually has a good game to get it listed somewhere people will trust to buy it from. It's also not like it hurts the revenue share the developers get.

That's also going to mean a bunch of poo poo gets listed for sale too, but that's a necessary evil and doesn't really hurt people too much.

MiddleOne
Feb 17, 2011

fishmech posted:

What about the last 5 years of Steam? It's easier than ever for someone who actually has a good game to get it listed somewhere people will trust to buy it from. It's also not like it hurts the revenue share the developers get.

That's also going to mean a bunch of poo poo gets listed for sale too, but that's a necessary evil and doesn't really hurt people too much.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0GPmRCTOO8



EDIT: To clarify, what Steam and Valve have in common is that both of their selling platforms are rapidly deteriorating due to a complete lack of quality control. It may not seem problematic at face value but long-term it's really bad for both producers and consumers. I would compare them to Youtube which has similiar problems but that would imply Youtube was ever making money.

MiddleOne fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Jan 18, 2018

OJ MIST 2 THE DICK
Sep 11, 2008

Anytime I need to see your face I just close my eyes
And I am taken to a place
Where your crystal minds and magenta feelings
Take up shelter in the base of my spine
Sweet like a chica cherry cola

-Cheap Trick

Nap Ghost

Cool Nazi video

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

MiddleOne posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0GPmRCTOO8



EDIT: To clarify, what Steam and Valve have in common is that both of their selling platforms are rapidly deteriorating due to a complete lack of quality control. It may not seem problematic at face value but long-term it's really bad for both producers and consumers. I would compare them to Youtube which has similiar problems but that would imply Youtube was ever making money.

Yeah so once again, what about it? Boohoo you have to look at some lovely games. Meanwhile a ton more good games can be bought without having to trust some random paypal storefront and deal with all that mess. It'd be nice if magically no bad media was ever created but that's not how media can work.


You're still free to only watch what's on normal broadcast/cable TV and only buy what's sold on a GameStop's shelves for games if you want a super-curated "quality control" environment, but most people are capable of searching for the things they want to watch and the games they want to play.

Basically you sound like the kind of killjoy who'd demand this video not be on YouTube anymore because "my quality control1!!!":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqPxD3HHETs&t=1s

fishmech fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Jan 18, 2018

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

I don't care about steam selling lovely games or not curating, idiots can buy whatever bad games they want if they're too lazy to read the reviews. What's dangerous though is when platforms like steam or youtube become near total monopolies. It lets them dick around both the content creators and the customers, because what are you going to do, make your own competing service? Monopolies like that will generally know exactly how bad they can gently caress with people before it's bad enough for anyone to seriously consider the monumentally expensive task of making a competing service.

The most damning thing though is that there's never going to be a half life 3.

MiddleOne
Feb 17, 2011

fishmech posted:

Yeah so once again, what about it? Boohoo you have to look at some lovely games. Meanwhile a ton more good games can be bought without having to trust some random paypal storefront and deal with all that mess. It'd be nice if magically no bad media was ever created but that's not how media can work.


You're still free to only watch what's on normal broadcast/cable TV and only buy what's sold on a GameStop's shelves for games if you want a super-curated "quality control" environment, but most people are capable of searching for the things they want to watch and the games they want to play.

Posters in this very thread have complained about how much it sucks having to wade through crap to find what you're looking for. In the long-term, quality products being drowned in junk products is good for neither consumer or producer. Only the publisher (who doesn't really care what you buy, just that you buy) benefits.

And of course also:

Baronjutter posted:

What's dangerous though is when platforms like steam or youtube become near total monopolies. It lets them dick around both the content creators and the customers, because what are you going to do, make your own competing service? Monopolies like that will generally know exactly how bad they can gently caress with people before it's bad enough for anyone to seriously consider the monumentally expensive task of making a competing service.

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

Baronjutter posted:

I don't care about steam selling lovely games or not curating, idiots can buy whatever bad games they want if they're too lazy to read the reviews. What's dangerous though is when platforms like steam or youtube become near total monopolies. It lets them dick around both the content creators and the customers, because what are you going to do, make your own competing service? Monopolies like that will generally know exactly how bad they can gently caress with people before it's bad enough for anyone to seriously consider the monumentally expensive task of making a competing service.

The most damning thing though is that there's never going to be a half life 3.

Well, what exactly do you want to be done about it? It really has no ties to the content curation thing at all.



MiddleOne posted:

Posters in this very thread have complained about how much it sucks having to wade through crap to find what you're looking for. In the long-term, quality products being drowned in junk products is good for neither consumer or producer. Only the publisher (who doesn't really care what you buy, just that you buy) benefits.


You can have the opportunity for good content that doesn't already have an in to be easily accessed/purchased in a trustworthy fashion, or you can have strict quality control that will block a significant portion of the bad stuff.

You can't really have both.

PS: "drowned in junk products" applies to neither Steam nor YouTube.

MiddleOne
Feb 17, 2011

fishmech posted:

PS: "drowned in junk products" applies to neither Steam nor YouTube.

https://twitter.com/ZhugeEX/status/928680024512892929

Yes, no junk here. Nothing to see.

Also, you'd have to be blind to miss that Steam and Youtube is following the same trajectory as Amazon. Quality control gradually being replaced by lovely reporting systems and algorithms opening up the floodgates.

BlueBlazer
Apr 1, 2010

Liquid Communism posted:

Are you a libertarian shill, or just so ignorant that you are incapable of understanding how Walmart's model has destroyed most of their competition and is being seen as an ideal to copy by other large retailers?

Even working for a company that is a supplier to Walmart is a special hell, because much of their competitive advantage is based on being big enough to dictate terms to their suppliers that are absurdly in Walmart's favor.

In the last year, as a small manufacture selling to Amazon, I have noticed the shift to automate the practice of dictating terms to suppliers. It's straight up out of Walmarts playbook except they figured out how to get robots to shake you down instead of a greasy account manager.

ryonguy
Jun 27, 2013

BlueBlazer posted:

In the last year, as a small manufacture selling to Amazon, I have noticed the shift to automate the practice of dictating terms to suppliers. It's straight up out of Walmarts playbook except they figured out how to get robots to shake you down instead of a greasy account manager.

Hand Row
May 28, 2001

BlueBlazer posted:

In the last year, as a small manufacture selling to Amazon, I have noticed the shift to automate the practice of dictating terms to suppliers. It's straight up out of Walmarts playbook except they figured out how to get robots to shake you down instead of a greasy account manager.

That's been a blessing for my company because the people were constantly threatening to shut us down if we didn't go wholesale. But no way could we give them control of pricing as that would have torpedoed a lot of channels.

Robots don't indirectly gently caress around with us at least. For instance they would tell us image violations and poo poo like that to try to sleezeball their way.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

fishmech posted:

You can have the opportunity for good content that doesn't already have an in to be easily accessed/purchased in a trustworthy fashion, or you can have strict quality control that will block a significant portion of the bad stuff.

You can't really have both.

PS: "drowned in junk products" applies to neither Steam nor YouTube.

A rare case of agreeing 100% with fishmech. I'm a pretty big PC gamer and I really really like steam because I never have trouble finding things, unlike on amazon. Steam is designed around selling video games though, so it's entirely geared towards bringing games I might be interested in to my attention. When a game is poo poo, it very quickly gets horrible reviews. I never see the shovelware garbage games because steam knows not to show them to me and I certainly don't seek them out. People also get bent out of shape over early access games turning out bad, no poo poo don't buy early access if you aren't willing to risk the product not being finished up to your standards. But at no time are you ever confused or overwhelmed by lovely products because all they do is sell computer games and the entire interface is designed around that. I can see what's trending with my friends, I can see what curators that match my interests are adding to their lists, and steam can look at my tastes and recommend games to me. It's not at all like amazon where someone can flood the market with lovely poorly made extension cords and sell a ton of unwary people.

I'm glad it's fairly easy to get a game onto steam because it's really opened up this golden age of indie development. I wish steam took less of a cut from developers, specially the smaller ones, but they have a lot of infrastructure to keep up so their existence isn't entirely parasitic.

Raldikuk
Apr 7, 2006

I'm bad with money and I want that meatball!

KingFisher posted:

So paying 1/3rd more than average retail wages, stock, benefits, employee education programs.

Looks like if every retail job was replaced with an Amazon warehouse job, millions of people would be better off financially.

Last time I checked people working in retail weren't in unions either, and it is way easier to unionize an entire Warehouse or all of a single firms warehouses then you know one Old Navy store at a time.

So I'm still not buying it.

You're not exactly comparing like to like here. A warehouse worker isn't a retail worker, even if Amazon as a whole is a retailer. All retailers have warehouse jobs of varying capacities. The question would be how do Amazon warehouse jobs pay (total comp) compared to other warehouse jobs. Even better, compare it specifically to retail warehouse jobs specifically. Once you do that then Amazon offers the average wage or less.

There do exist retail unions as well; the most common is in the grocery business (UFCW). And it is easier to shut down and move a warehouse than retail locations for a couple reasons. Fewer employees total to care about with the transition for one. Also, while location matters a lot for distribution centers, but here they care about access to transit nexuses and such. For a retail store location is everything because of the need to get customers in the door. Proper placement of the store is critical in most markets.

If we really wanted to make employees lives better, it seems that making everyone a warehouse worker for Walmart would be even better (about double the pay!), but of course it is nonsensical because we aren't comparing similar positions. So unfortunately, no, the solution is not just to make everyone a warehouse worker, nor does an Amazon warehouse worker earning more than the average retail worker make any of Amazon's lovely work conditions better.

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

MiddleOne posted:

https://twitter.com/ZhugeEX/status/928680024512892929

Yes, no junk here. Nothing to see.

Also, you'd have to be blind to miss that Steam and Youtube is following the same trajectory as Amazon. Quality control gradually being replaced by lovely reporting systems and algorithms opening up the floodgates.

Nobody is getting "buried" in it that wouldn't simply have never been on Steam themselves beforehand. Plus it's really easy to just search for different things than "Zombie Acheivement Simulator 2019 [MORE MEMES EDITION]". Like again, sure, it'd be great if magically no one ever made a bad media product again but that's not a reasonable expectation to have. Even still, when I go to the Steam Store homepage I only see the true garbage games show up at all in the "new releases" section and even then it's only a few - and while I don't particularly like a lot of the games that are on the total front page they're all fairly big name things or seem to have a reasonable bit of effort, including after clicking through a bunch of the recommendation queues.

This whining about "trajectories" is just plain dumb. Youtube has always been full of dumb bullshit since day one. Steam used to be literally just Half Life 2, and then just Valve games and 5 other games, that was hardly useful. From the start, Amazon stocked a lot of dumb books, and later a lot of dumb movies, then a lot of dumb video games and so on.

Which do you want: availability, or a carefully roped off area of content? If it's the latter, go watch ABC for all your visual media, go to a Gamestop for all your games, go to a 7-11 for all your shopping.

boner confessor
Apr 25, 2013

by R. Guyovich
i dont care if there's a lot of lovely games on steam because they quickly fall to the bottom of the ecosystem and nobody cares about them. meanwhile it's pretty easy to tell if a game is poo poo or not vs. deceptively marketed knit sweaters or long legged bears on amazon

Reynold
Feb 14, 2012

Suffer not the unclean to live.

Raldikuk posted:

You're not exactly comparing like to like here. A warehouse worker isn't a retail worker, even if Amazon as a whole is a retailer. All retailers have warehouse jobs of varying capacities. The question would be how do Amazon warehouse jobs pay (total comp) compared to other warehouse jobs. Even better, compare it specifically to retail warehouse jobs specifically. Once you do that then Amazon offers the average wage or less.

There do exist retail unions as well; the most common is in the grocery business (UFCW). And it is easier to shut down and move a warehouse than retail locations for a couple reasons. Fewer employees total to care about with the transition for one. Also, while location matters a lot for distribution centers, but here they care about access to transit nexuses and such. For a retail store location is everything because of the need to get customers in the door. Proper placement of the store is critical in most markets.

If we really wanted to make employees lives better, it seems that making everyone a warehouse worker for Walmart would be even better (about double the pay!), but of course it is nonsensical because we aren't comparing similar positions. So unfortunately, no, the solution is not just to make everyone a warehouse worker, nor does an Amazon warehouse worker earning more than the average retail worker make any of Amazon's lovely work conditions better.

This happens all over the place. When I worked as a machine operator for 3M, they had quarterly meetings for the plant where they would explain how our pay was WAY ABOVE AVERAGE for the warehouses in the area, so it didn't make sense to give out much in the way of raises at this time since 3M is already DOING SO MUCH for its employees. Motherfucker this isn't a warehouse, I make aircraft parts.

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OneEightHundred
Feb 28, 2008

Soon, we will be unstoppable!
Steam's already dealing with competitors like itch.io and first-party storefronts. I don't think it's really a monopoly because there's not much they can leverage to shut out competitors like Apple, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo can, the most they can do is make their own games Steam exclusives, which doesn't really matter when they have a lot of competitors producing games on the same quality tier, many of which are powerful enough to give Steam the finger if it comes down to it. League of Legends already left Steam long ago, PUBG could leave if they got pissed enough about it for whatever reason, EA pulled their entire catalog, Blizzard has their own store, etc.

There's a much bigger barrier to competing with Amazon because of the massively higher capital needed for physical distribution, and YouTube has massive relationships with advertisers built up.

OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Jan 18, 2018

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