Return of the robber barons …

… Inside Amazon by Dan Hitchens | Articles | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

One of Hired’s most disturbing implications is that the modern economy is built on illusions: not just in the familiar sense that global finance relies on shell companies and empty promises, but at a more mundane level. Amazon’s workers can look up and see giant portraits of their fellow employees, saying things like, “We love coming to work and miss it when we’re not here!”—a selective statement given that, in one survey by the GMB trade union, 89 percent of Amazon workers said they feel exploited, and a slightly higher proportion said they wouldn’t recommend the job to a friend. Not that the workers are called workers: They are “associates.” And they aren’t fired, but “released.” This language obscures more than it reveals. There’s an analogous gap between appearance and reality in the employment agencies that advertise unavailable jobs, then find you a worse one when they have your details; in the culture of compulsory “fun activities” at the call center; in the “freedom” and “autonomy” offered to Uber drivers, until they break the strict guidelines for accepting passengers; in the payday-loan and rent-to-buy industries that suck money out of the vulnerable; in the endless ways to avoid paying workers even the shoddy wages that have been agreed upon. The reader gets used to Bloodworth’s interviewees saying things like, “All the management are nothing but liars.”