Slashdot Mirror
BBC: Amazon Workers Face "Increased Risk of Mental Illness"
Rambo Tribble writes "The BBC is reporting that an investigation into a UK-based Amazon facility has uncovered conditions that experts believe foster mental illness. At the root of the problem seems to be unreasonable performance expectations combined with a fundamentally dehumanizing environment. From the article: 'Amazon said that official safety inspections had not raised any concerns and that an independent expert appointed by the company advised that the picking job is "similar to jobs in many other industries and does not increase the risk of mental and physical illness."'"
I once accidentally worked for the US Postal Service for a year and a half and my job involved walking that much every shift; I must say that I was probably at my best physical shape of my life outside of military service...
It turned into a liberal vs conservative issue because those who aren't in favour of workers not being made ill by their work needed a way to justify that, and therefore did their best to associate it with what's commonly seen as an extreme, and slightly insane political affiliation. They then burned this straw political affiliation man at the steak to demonstrate how dumb it was to support the idea of workers not being made ill by their work.
I would argue that very few jobs are actually "good" for you.
But we can't all run around naked in the forest eating nuts and berries.
Quite the conundrum.
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.
I wouldn't class stress or depression as a mental illness, it is a physical one.
AC, at least the BBC have the balls to do this, unlike other commercial broadcasters.
That's reasonable to consider, but strong enough correlations say something. Not necessarily causation, but implies a relationship of some kind. Thankfully us plebs are spared the actual p values to make a judgement for ourselves.
Call me back when they find evidence of actual people with actual mental illness which is actually attributable to the job.
What, you're asking for causal attribution in individuals? You're aware that there are huge swathes of medical science where you simply won't get any? Unless you're willing to undergo a premature autopsy, that is. It's quite disingenuous to dismiss the study results for this reason alone.
Ezekiel 23:20
Then, some Romanians, Poles, Bulgarians come in, get the same jobs for 70% of the initial wage the UK natives were whining about and work harder and are happier with 0% insanity.
That's because they're getting paid ten times as much as a doctor would in their own country for doing menial work, and can save enough in a few years to go home and set themselves up for life.
If 'Lazy Britons' could earn $1,000,000 a year for fifteen hour days cleaning offices in Poland, they'd be out there with a big smile on their face eager to do as many hours as they could.
Yes, that was my first thought when reading the article.
And since you did not provide a link here is one for people wondering what we are talking about.
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
just started reading from that link and then I found this paragraph in the story:
Ultimately, you would expect that there would be riots across America. But the people could not riot. The terrorist scares at the beginning of the century had caused a number of important changes. Eventually, there were video security cameras and microphones covering and recording nearly every square inch of public space in America. There were taps on all phone conversations and Internet messages sniffing for terrorist clues. If anyone thought about starting a protest rally or a riot, or discussed any form of civil disobedience with anyone else, he was branded a terrorist and preemptively put in jail. Combine that with robotic security forces, and riots are impossible.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Not just that, but "correlation is not causation" is only true in that those could be correlated due to a secondary cause. The phrase isn't meant to imply a complete lack of connection, just that the connection isn't necessarily the intuitive one.
To go hunting and foraging you need to own the land or have the permission of someone who does. Even on public lands such activities would be restricted. You might get away with breaking the rules for a long time, but that doesn't mean it's allowed. Owning land requires money which requires some job other than hunting and foraging. Also there is absolutely no way that this planet can support 7 billion people (or even 1 billion) via hunting and foraging.