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The Grim Costs of Folly


 

 

What I’m watching: We just finished season 3 of Ozark. Wow. It’s the Netflix series on a family that launders money for a drug cartel, and the many related machinations surrounding said laundering, including a casino business in the Ozarks and a funeral home. The series has always had strong female characters, especially this season. We enjoyed it a lot. Some serious drama here, and family dynamics. And yes, crime. And, some violence; probably not suitable for children.

One of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot in recent days, grim as they are, is the unrecognized cost of our Amazon/just-in-time economy. And I have come to believe that one reason everything on Amazon looks so cheap and convenient, and we can say to one another (well, we used to), ‘just Amazon it,’ is that huge costs are either unrecognized or offloaded to other sources. When, in fact, those costs should be borne by either customers or by Amazon and related companies in this milieu.

Item: Drivers who are driving for Amazon, even if subcontracted, should receive benefits and be counted, somewhere, as employees. In fact, many drivers are not treated that way, and Amazon’s role as a de facto employer is often hidden, especially in cases of things like car accidents. Couriers who deliver the last mile are an especially vulnerable category.

Item: Warehouse workers in all these warehouses that service our ‘just-in-time’ economy should have benefits and be counted as employees, somewhere. We see, now, the cost of not having benefits, when we are trying to encourage sick people to stay home because, well, pandemic.

Item: Uber and Lyft drivers should be employees, and those companies and similar ones should pay unemployment and workers compensation premiums. We pay those costs, here at our newspapers. You pay those costs in your small businesses. Why not Uber and Lyft?

Amazon does, in fact, provide benefits to many of its employees. But huge parts of this ecosystem, including other parts that are directly tied to Amazon, do not provide benefits, employee status or workers compensation coverage. In America, in 2020, I think this is wrong.

Item: We have become so maniacally concerned with price that we have endangered a number of things. We’ve endangered local suppliers. We’ve endangered local or at least state-side manufacturers. And now, we’ve endangered ourselves, because absent a World War II type effort (as we are now doing with ventilators) we can’t make any of this material here, any more.

Friends, in New York City this week, they have been cheering the delivery of things like surgical or N-95 masks, vital personal protective equipment for doctors, nurses and others who may be exposed to the coronavirus. Cheering, I tell you. What does it say that it’s come to this? Why is this unusual? The idea that we can’t have a few production lines for these masks, and goggles or face shields, and protective gowns, in this country is beyond crazy. What a massive failure of imagination to think we didn’t need a stockpile of this equipment, because, well, we could just order more. You know, from Amazon if not from a normal supplier. Yet all the supply lines, or most of them, went through one country. Did no one think this might not go well at some point in the future? Say, if we had a pandemic and everyone wanted masks and shields? Including, naturally, the Chinese.

Don’t even start on the idea that 50 states are supposed to source ventilators and masks, though by the end of this, they will have done so. Fifty states. Think of the savings and efficiency gained because of the state contracting and bid system, which municipalities get to take advantage of in New York state. My goodness. If 50 towns had to bid on one dump truck and one plow, it would be a disaster. Some town in Westchester would get the truck every time.

We also need to be able to think a couple of years out. We need to think ahead, even if that means we are paying people who are not, actually, fighting the pandemic at this exact minute. Because the planning and analysis of those bureaucrats may well help prevent the next pandemic, or lessen its toll. Why is this one of our great weaknesses, the ability to think a couple of years out?

Anyway, we have, in trying to save pennies on a mask that is supposed to cost 75 cents to a buck, set in place the circumstances for one of the great disasters of our time. And then there is this: Think about how many other sectors of the economy have also been destroyed because of our relentless drive to save a couple of pennies. To skirt the law on workers comp, and unemployment insurance. To offload liability costs to ‘independent’ drivers delivering these packages filled with items we’ve saved pennies on. To provide breaks to companies like Uber because they have good lobbyists or they’re cool and part of the new economy. The gig economy, with an app. No workers comp, but hey, there’s an app.

We need to be serious now. Fifteen Putnam residents are dead of COVID-19, and that’s just so far. After this, part of getting our economic house in order should be ensuring that workers have basic protections like access to health care and can afford it. That they have unemployment insurance, and workers compensation if they should be injured. And, ensuring that we are not destroying domestic manufacturing to save a few pennies on a mask or a few dollars on some larger item. There are big, substantial unrealized costs to this just-in-time economy, to using companies like Amazon as our warehouse. We know, now, that those costs include lives, too, not just the few pennies we’ve saved.

Until next week.

Douglas Cunningham is editor of the Courier and the PCNR, in Cold Spring. Reach him at 845-265-2468, or by email at editor@pcnr.com. Letters are welcome, and should be sent by email.

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