Aram Zucker-Scharff

Look… we all understand that speech policing is a rhetorical weapon that can be used on any side of the debate to varying degrees of effectiveness and at levels of honesty?

Usually because ’you shouldn’t say that’ is easier to defend than ’you’re wrong’ or doing your research to provide a counterpoint?

But by the same regard, attempting to police speech policing is just going down a rhetorical bullshit hole. It’s basically just falling into the trap of distracting whatever point you actually want to make, unless you’re doing it not to make a point but to win political followers.

That said there are times when saying ’you can’t say that’ is actually the correct response (that doesn’t make it always correct) and there are times when it isn’t (that doesn’t mean it always isn’t). Those times are not defined by political spectrum position, nor are they entirely ruled by one group or another.

And following down the loop, when there is a reason ’you can’t say that’ is the correct response, the claim of ‘political correctness is bad’ is just a bullshit argument to avoid actually engaging in a real discussion.

Seriously, can we all understand that if someone says ’You can’t say that’ then the correct response is to ask “Ok, why?”, not to say ’you can’t tell me what not to say’ like some insane petulant child?

You live in a society, the goal should not be to have everyone serve your whims of what the world should be. If you want to be able to shout whatever stupid thing comes into your brain without thinking, go live on a mountain top and leave the rest of us out of it.

Complaining about political correctness is the last rhetorical gasp of a dying argument made because you can’t be bothered to find out what another person’s point of view is. Don’t be the idiot who complains about PC culture. 

Copied and saved from a Facebook comment I made.

The revelations aren’t surprising, this is pretty standard startup fare. Or really just the way the economy is going in general – more work, less pay (http://www.motherjones.com/…/speed-up-american-workers… ) and increasingly terrible work-life balance ( http://qz.com/…/americans-dont-just-work-longer-hours…/ ), and less regular work (http://www.theguardian.com/…/gig-economy-silicon-valley… ). Which sort of gets to another point, that this mediated work brutality is nothing compared to the regular un-mediated work brutality of the gig economy (http://www.fastcompany.com/…/pixel-and-dimed-on-not… ).

Nor is it particularly surprising as Amazon’s tactics, because *we already knew* they were doing this shit to blue-collar workers and have for a while (http://www.theawl.com/…/how-amazon-solved-the-problem… ). This is pretty sad, that the real push back against Amazon care around white collar and not blue collar workers, and it probably says something particularly nasty about our culture.

That said, for all the things that make this unsurprising and ordinary, it is the Amazon’s ruthless effectiveness in transforming their workers that makes it extraordinary. It isn’t just that it works them hard and creates a cut-throat environment with burn-out as basically a goal, that part isn’t unusual. It is how it gets its employees to love it so effectively. More than that, how it actually works.

The promise of the tech sector is ‘don’t unionize, you don’t need to because if labor conditions are truly horrible the market will adjust’ (http://gawker.com/report-upworthys-lefty-owners-scared… ). Which, amusingly, is basically Amazon’s defense:

“The fundamental flaw in the story is the suggestion that any company that had the kind of culture that The New York Times wrote about, sort of a cruel, Darwinian, or Dickensian kind of atmosphere in the workplace could survive and thrive in today’s market place,” – http://seattle.cbslocal.com/…/amazon-bruising…/

What shocks people is that they had believed this. If conditions got truly bad, surely the market would select against an employer and they wouldn’t be able to get the employees they needed to run. This article is so interesting because it puts yet another stake in the coffin for that idea.

Current status: new shoes.

Hey everyone! I got the Tumblr button working over at www.salon.com, where I work, so you all should go over there, find an article you like, and try it out! Tell me how it works!Anyone having any problems with it?