On the basis of a proposal from his city council, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is supporting a bill that “would force big warehouses like Amazon and FedEx to obtain new licenses with all the associated compliance costs, as well as hire thousands of city employees as couriers. It would have functionally forced these companies to make delivery workers directly employees,” Noah says, on today’s edition of The Editors. While the socialist mayor says this will help NYC residents, Noah says that, “More likely, it’s a sop to the unions, specifically the Teamsters and other transportation unions, who resent Amazon’s use of non-union drivers as subcontractors.”
Charlie also points out that, “If Amazon is breaking laws, by which I mean moral laws, laws that would exist in any society, not laws that are contrived so that Amazon can’t break them, then fine. If Amazon is engaged in exploitation or child labor, then fine, do something about it.” But Charlie is doubtful that “one in ten New Yorkers is actually unhappy with Amazon.”
“Americans aren’t unhappy with Amazon,” Charlie says. “Amazon is extremely popular. I think Amazon has been in the top three most admired companies in the United States every year for a decade? And why wouldn’t it be? It delivers things to your house for a relatively small annual fee cheaper and more quickly than anyone else.”
“So I don’t grasp the problem here. And I think that one has to be very interested in abstract ideology or abstract theory to get to the point at which one is looking at New York City and saying, ‘You know what the problem with this place is? It’s Amazon.'”
The Editors podcast is recorded on Tuesdays and Fridays every week and is available wherever you listen to podcasts.