Cleanup on Aisle Five: Essential Work, Poverty Wages, and the View from Behind the Supermarket Register

Cleanup on Aisle Five: Essential Work, Poverty Wages, and the View from Behind the Supermarket Register by Ann Larson

A labor organizer takes a job at a supermarket during the pandemic and then writes about the experience. What do you think the result would be? It felt like the author already had the answers in mind before she started. The workers must organize. Right to work laws need to go away to allow it. She should disobey things from up high to favor the workers. (In one bit of humility, she did realize this was a bad option after doing it for a while.)

The author works at an anonymous corporate grocery store in Salt Lake City. Various anecdotes of the experience are covered. There are plenty of anecdotes, but they could just as well be the work of fiction. Management makes appearances here and there. Scheduling can be a challenge, with many workers quitting or even not showing up. Self-checkout machines are given a bad rap. (Workers do not have as much casual human interaction and need to walk around on their feet.) The book talks about the history of supermarkets and how they evolved. They helped cut costs and eliminated racists haggling. The author also does not like electronic store tags. (Her concern is for the ability to give different customers different prices - what about the ability to make sure the price on the shelf is always correct?) On one hand, she would like for no changes to occur in supermarkets, while on the other she would like for many changes to make workers' experience better. The stories and history are interesting, but the analysis drags on.

Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid

Chokepoints in the economy have had a devastating impact on various creating occupations. The internet has caused changes in the chokepoints, but have often just moved the money from one rich corporation to another, with little real benefit to the actual creators.

Music is a key case study. Major labels have had a control on getting artists notists. However, they often require them to sign difficult contracts that leave little to the artist. The industry has further consolidated with companies owning venues and ticketing, and others owning publishing and distribution. There is little competition, and the companies are notoriously bad at their accounting. Digital music lead to additional chokepoints. Apple was able to dominate in digital downloads in part due to the lock in with digital rights. (The DMCIA law did not allow anybody to strip copy protection.) By the time Apple opened DRM-free downloads, the world was moving towards streaming. In streaming, the streamers need the major labels, and thus negotiate deals, which often do not provide much benefit to artists. (Artists still get old, low royalties, even though distribution costs are now much lower. Labels also user accounting tricks to limit those royalties.)

Book publishing repeated the same problem by letting Amazon dominate the book market with DRM books. Amazon also has audiobooks with DRM. Publishers thought that the protections of DRM would help them prevent copying of books. But all it has really done is allow the big vendors to control the market. At least the big publishers negotiate from a position of relative strength. The small publishers are even more worse off.

In both cases, there was unintended consequences of laws to protect content producers. Copyright is another case where the law provides extremely long terms and protection, with the result being more power to big companies and less cultural benefit.

The authors propose some solutions, such as a cultural guardian that seeks royalties and payments for orphaned works. This seems a little too dreamy. There will be some way for big companies to milk it also. Perhaps we just need to limit the copyright terms altogether. Perhaps we should just have things drift into the public domain if they are no longer publicly available. Alas, with digital distribution, a company could just put it out for a day and say it is in "limited release". It makes things difficult. Copyright as it exists is much too long to provide society benefit, and servers more to enrich big companies. Getting the proper incentives to help the "little guy" is a huge challenge, with risks of continuing to empower bigger companies. The more we depend on big business to provide revenue and "benefits" for us, the more we risk being held hostage.

The Jungle

I had managed to avoid reading the Jungle through school. However, I had read plenty about it, about how it was an example of muckraking journalism that exposed the horrible conditions in meat-packing plants and the vile filth that has being passed off as meat. However, the actual novel was much different. Compared to modern "food" literature, like Fast Food Nation, this novel is rather tame. We hear about "sick" animals being passed off as meat, and second hand stories of workers becoming part of animal products. Now we have mad-cow diseased, E. coli and Salmonella, along with horrid conditions for immigrant laborers in the food-production industries. Hmm.. Guess things haven't changed much. But, at least the children of the jungle immigrants can now get fat at McDonalds while toiling in light-service jobs. The main focus was the struggle of an immigrant man in an oppressive system. He tries honest labor. His wife and child die. He tries the freedom of hoboing around the country. He tries being a party hack and a criminal. He even tries being a strike-breaker. No matter how much success he has, he is eventually beaten down. Finally, he stumbles in to a socialist meeting and finds his nirvana. This would make a nice pro-socialist ending, but the novel keeps going and rambles on and on about socialist ideology. And, then, socialism doesn't seem that good after all. Oops, maybe it would have been best to stop when ahead. The first part of the novel is fairly believable. However, as the novel goes on, the coincidences and chance happenings greatly stretch the limits of credibility. (He just happens to run in to a rich, drunk boy who invites him to dinner and gives him $100? And he runs in to a "budy" in prison that is willing to lead him on a life of crime?) With just a few of the events in story, it would have remained within the realm of the possible. But with so many, it strains the imagination.