Amazonian

The most interesting aspect to me of some of the newer work being done on American slavery, such as Edward Baptist's, is not in how it shows that slavery got the entire American economy off the ground but in how much working at an Amazon warehouse resembles that slavery. Slavery had to make sense within a limited context or it wouldn't have been used. The problem was the context. 

The model for me has always been sports, in relation to competition. You have extremely rational, reasonable and well-enforced rules within which participants can behave all the more aggressively because the rules protect the larger system and ensure that the competition can continue on to the overall benefit of everyone indefinitely. This is the brilliance of having a good set of rules. 

Which is to say regulation. Regulations protect everyone. A system that doesn't work for all of the enfranchisees is barbarism and is inherently unstable. Why should the people being unfairly used continue to acquiesce to the system? They won't. They have to be kept down somehow, through force or some other means. As for the context you look at extent and sustainability.

Is everyone included in some way and is the system stable over time? I think these are exactly the things the American system is designed for, breadth and stability. It isn't designed for efficiency. Hell, no. Tyranny is efficient. Monarchy is efficient. Any kind of totalitarianism is more efficient than Democracy, in the short run, so suck it up, I say to those haranguing on about efficiency. 

You can't blame nutballs like Bezos. The problem is imbedded in the system itself. Bezos just plays the system well. The system is the context and the context is corrupt. It serves only a minority, a small percentage of the population, and even them only in the short-term so the system must be recalibrated and returned to factory settings, meaning the letter and spirit of the law.

This is not the Amazonian rainforest, our civilization and economy. It wasn't intended to be a jungle. We're supposed to be better than that. Let's start behaving as though we are.