As I indicated in my last post, I have been having problems with readers' comments. I have not been receiving them. I have found a workaround the situation; although I am still not being notified of them, I went into the dashboard and looked under Comments Awaiting Moderation, where I found several. The following is one of them, a response from BM to my post, Be Careful What You Wish For:
Walmart has been pulling off the same manoeuvre for years. Come into an area just outside town to get cheap real estate, ruin local businesses with cheap prices, employ people at minimum wage so that municipalities and state/provincial governments end up effectively having to provide top-ups - and the ruin is complete. Of everybody and everything.
Amazon merely does it on an even lower cost base. Get stupid local governments to bid (can you imagine the utter stupidity of anyone actually "paying" for an Amazom warehouse?), then running a military operation of having people running around filling orders with no breaks for no money. There are many descriptions online of the hell it is, from the UK and US. Gernany has no Walmarts because they insisted on work standards that Sam's boys could not tolerate - don't know about Amazon.
Still your average modern twit sails blindly to their doom blissfully unaware that hailing Uber sends money to California instead of local taxi drivers. Money gaily sent off to a central collection house instead of being spent locally,the only rationale being it's a bit cheaper for you personally upfront. Gradually, all these centralized businesses hollow out local economies. Then you pay for more welfare as taxi firms go bust. Enjoy your cheap ride! Disruptors, these firms call themselves. Spot on.
The whole thing is an extension of the offshoring of jobs to China. Now the offshoring is to send money to some app developer in a place far away who is feted as a business hero.
And so we blindly march to the destruction of our societies apparently saving a loonie at a time, until eventually nobody can afford anything because we all work crap jobs. The rich get incredibly richer and the plebs stand around wondering what hit them.
And people slave to develop apps that will let them hit the hackpot, screw everyone else.
Nobody ever claimed the average dude or dudette wandering down the street glued to their phone actually had reasoning power, after all. They might have a PhD, but they're still terminally stupid, because they simply do not bother to think, and say "hang on a minute!". No, saving a nickel now means they regard themselves as smart.
And Bezos laughs at hundreds of millions of dummies, collects their data as well as money, and becomes a de facto emperor.
I buy local, I use the post office. I would not pay a dime for an Amazon warehouse in land or subsidies. Let the predator pay his own way.
try mining and oil and gas in the northern 2/3s of our country. over 80% of the workers are flown in, stay in camps and flown out with their pay cheques deposited to bank accounts down south. top that with no real royalties to speak of and local government spending, twice what they get any benefit from. one example, in the Yukon campground fees contribute more to the local economy than mining no matter how big it gets. Of course no company will move if they don't get all the goodies and freebies first.
ReplyDeleteThe prime question remains, "Who's an economy for?"
ReplyDeleteBill and Owen, it seems to me that the rapacity of the corporate agenda reveals that companies care not a whit for the jurisdictions within which they operate; because of that, they should always be treated warily by all levels of government.
DeleteI only just found this post which I had written. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI'm a phone person, with everything turned off to the extent possible, minimizing Google data capture.
Progressive Bloggers webpage has a new format since Friday which is incomprehensible for both iPhone and Android users, hence my lateness in responding. Navigating ProgBlog is now a complete drag. I see Willy Loman has my exact problem and is complaining at a higher level as a blogger himself. One wonders if your commenting problem issue is not caused by referral from the now screwed up main ProgBlog page.
BM
I don't think it is related to changes at Pro Bloggers, BM, as I went to a Blogger forum and discovered that many people with various types of blogs are dealing with the same issue. I am mystified over this, and am hoping that a tech person monitors the Blogger forum and can shed some light.
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