My Answers to HW2case, Q3

 Q3 (34 pts. max, 17 min) Finally, write up your case on another posting to your blog with the following subheadings:

• “The facts of the case.” Here is where you describe the case in your own words.
• “Analysis.” Examine the case in terms of the questions and/or discussion. If the analysis is simple or obvious, then address each of the utilitarian ethics perspective, the deontological ethics perspective, and the virtue ethics perspective.
• “Conclusions.” Your analysis, opinions, and conclusions about the case. Any opinions from your discussion group members that you disagree with and why. Three sentences of average length or more.
• “Future environment.” Describe your vision of a future in which technology is more advanced than today, or society has changed in some significant way. Three sentences of average length or more.
• “Future scenario.” Describe how this ethical case (or an analogous one) would or should play out in the environment of the future, and give your opinions about it. Three sentences of average length or more.

Answer:

The facts of the case. Amazon is the world’s leader in online retail. However, their superior performance requires them to be extremely demanding of their workforce. This has resulted in workers suffering various physical and mental hardships as well as numerous complaints of abuse. Furthermore, Amazon has barely paid any taxes in all this time which many people have criticized as unethical.

 

Analysis.  

1.)     Question: These workers all freely chose to work at amazon. Does that make amazons treatment of them alright?

Answer: Objectively, Amazon is inflicting severe physical and mental stresses on their workers that is causing them suffering. Every ethical perspective regards inflicting suffering on people as unethical so yes I would say its unethical. In any case, I don’t think you can talk about free choice when there is such a huge difference in power between Amazon and the workers.

2.)   Question: Amazon views its practices as being necessary to provide the best service to its customers. If it did not do these things then it might not be able to hire so many people. Does that make amazons treatment of their workers alright?

Answer: I don’t think so. By that logic paying them even less would enable them to hire even more people and would make that ethical too. It doesn’t make sense that treating workers poorly under any circumstances would be ethical. Besides, labor saving technology would enable them to provide the best service to their customers in the long term and abusing their workers probably disincentivizes them from doing that.

3.) Question: Amazon barely pays taxes because they continually reinvest profits to expand their business. Considering this, is it still unethical that they barely pay taxes?

Answer: I actually don’t think this is unethical on their part. They are paying what is legally required so it never made sense to me that this was unethical behavior. If someone thinks it were unethical then I would have to ask why is it not unethical for regular people to not pay more taxes. In any case, Amazon avoids taxes by investing more in their company to improve productivity. This seems like a positive and desirable result and shouldn’t be criticized.

 

4.) Question: Amazon employees are under tremendous pressure to perform. Good security often gets in the way of good performance. Do you think Amazon is more likely to have bad security since they would probably view this as an obstacle to performance?

Answer: I do think this is a concern. Security engineers routinely deal with the problem of workers resisting security procedures because they get in the way of their job. Since Amazon’s office workers report experiencing extreme pressure to perform it seems reasonable that they might avoid good security.

Conclusion: The consensus seems to be that Amazon’s treatment of its workers is unethical and I wholeheartedly agree. Every ethical system says that you should treat people with respect and concern for their wellbeing. Saying that high performance requires them to treat their workers this way reminds me of similar arguments made by factory owners during the Gilded Age. As everyone knows, those arguments were not true and factory productivity skyrocketed as time passed.  

Future environment: AI is currently progressing at an exponential pace and this will likely enable business to automate a huge number of tasks that previously required human input. Automating human physical labor has been much more challenging since movement has always been more difficult for machines to handle. I think its likely this will change someday, perhaps as neuroscience progresses and we can better understand how our own brains handle movement.

Future scenario: In a world with highly advanced robotics it seems like worker mistreatment will probably not exist since there will probably not be very many human workers. The machines involved wouldn’t suffer so Amazon or other companies could run them as hard as they liked. If they don’t pay much in taxes that might be an ethical problem though. A society without much human labor would probably require a universal basic income which would have to be financed through taxes.