Luxon taking his cues from Amazon

This is embarrassing: I just had to google who Andrew Jassy is.

I come to substack to learn terrible things

In my defence, they promoted him during the pandemic and I had other things on my mind. Also watching Amazon injure their workers at a rate of over four times the US average and cover up the deaths of so many people we literally have no idea how many they are killing (also) is a bit like watching a car crash: for the first decade or so, you can’t look away from the horrific level of human suffering, but eventually you have to or you’ll go insane.

But Google is very enlightening. Most illuminating to me was the age of these articles: a week ago. Right before Luxon’s announcement. Not a few months back. Not a year ago. Not after. 7 days before.

The CEO of Amazon, a company so famous for mistreating its staff it‘s almost more well known for that than it is for selling things, said “Everyone has to work in the office again” because his fiduciary duty to shareholders mandates that he put productivity and profit above human health and lives regardless of the cost (that’s a mere $7,000 fine in the state of Indiana). And our Prime Minister said “Sounds great, let’s do it!”

And why would he do something like that? Well, you only need to scroll a little to the left and Google has an answer for that too:

I don’t respect CEOs because they’ve shown time and time again that they are a class of people who do not respect workers or their lives, and lack any morals when money is on the table. There is one good CEO and it’s this guy. And he just quit because he’s facing charges for domestic abuse.

Even knowing that, I think he’s probably a better person than Luxon.

Sure, Luxon didn’t go as hard as Jassy. He didn’t make everyone return full time. But that’s kind of his style: announce something based on a horrible philosophy but pretend he’s a goddamn saint because his version is “fair”, while ignoring the fact the philosophy it’s based on is cruel and usually incredibly flawed as well. Thats why beneficiaries will get payment cards instead of losing half their benefit - but as I point out, that still makes it impossible in many cases for beneficiaries to make their rent.

But why would Luxon care about that? He’s a CEO. Not a beneficiary. Not a worker. Not a Prime Minister, even. He’ll do what CEOs do, not because it’s clever or effective. Because it’s what’s already been done.

Our dear leader is a sheep.

He’s only lacking the empathy.

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Updates from me will be a bit briefer and less frequent this month as I’m currently out of the country. But I have some long reads that I’ve been working on that I hope to finish, so keep an eye out for those.