Unashadened Freude

Maybe your parents should make more
ethical choices when it comes to shopping?

To be clear, my schadenfreude--about which I don't actually feel particularly ashadened--is aimed at Amazon the company and not say, people who work for Amazon (everybody's gotta eat), or even the people who buy from Amazon (although, you 100% don't have to do that). Although I suppose I feel a little badly for folks who bought their kids' Christmas gifts on Amazon, and now they're delayed, but then that's on the company's management and not the workers.

"You want to negoti--what? Sorry,
I can't hear you over all this money."

-Amazon

Like, maybe they should have agreed to bargain with the workers? But you, know, something something capitalism I guess. And now nine thousand Amazon employees walked off their jobs. Not because of the unsafe working conditions or inadequate pay--well, ok, kind of because of that--but because the company declined to even negotiate with them. And nine thousand workers are like, you know, .6% of the company's one and a half million workforce, but then it's enough to grind Christmas to a halt. 

Is it true? I don't know.
But people are saying...

Alarmingly, the former CEO and noted rich guy Jeff Bezos is hanging out with Trump and is handing him a million dollars for his dumb inauguration. Because the last one went so well. I say alarmingly both because of what he did at Notre Dame, and because billionaires are just straight up buying the presidential access now. Which isn't new, but the tit for tat feels particularly blatant, and I have a not unreasonable conspiracy suspicion that he'll pull a Reagan and send in scabs shortly after being sworn in. 

Or, easier still, he could pack the National Labor Relations Board. You might have heard that the Amazon/Trader Joe's/Tesla lawsuit to get rid of the NLRB isn't going so well at the moment, so like they say, if you can't beat'em, throw your money behind a populist autocrat, and let him fill it with billionaire-friendly puppets who will take your side when your underpaid staff complain about unsafe working conditions...you know, Republicans.  

Breaking News: the President has appointed a number of nineteenth-century
robber barons to the National Labor Relations Board in a move critics say not
only undermines labor protections, but violated the laws of nature by resurrecting
their corpses and giving them powerful positions in a federal agency.