been in a good way when you go all the way, because you join me every thursday on the alex simon show. and i'll be speaking to guests in the world, the politics, sport, business and show business. i'll see you then. me. ah. just ah, the whole earth catalogue was part of the movement. this publication was created by steward brand, a former biology student, and a jack of all trades. he wanted to help to middle is find everything they needed to fend for themselves by showing them where to buy all the necessary tools

so weird because right, so these people are going to build farms. but what kind of tools are they take? well, they take books and that's because what people wanted in the communes was not just farm equipment, but consciousness, equipment. they wanted to change their minds catalog is absolutely central to the counterculture and to the, to the, to the commune. movement of the late 19th sixty's. but it's also central to silicon valley. they found this world and they began to reimagined computers as the kinds of tools that the whole catalog had promised. when i was young, there was an amazing publication called the whole earth catalogue, which was one of the bible's of my generation. it was idealistic, overflowing with me, tools, and great notions on the back cover of their final issue, were the words stay hungry? stay foolish. it was their farewell message as they signed off, stay hungry,

stay foolish. and i have always wished that for myself, you know, when you look at the catalog, it is trying to give you access to goods that will transform your life and it is trying to be whole. it is trying to literally be the whole world of goods. you can see that now in the amazon world on steroids, amazon is in many ways trying to be the whole world of access to the things you might want to buy in its structure in its interconnections, in its being a global information system to supply goods to make your life better if the catalog on life do thanks to the internet, has amazon globalize the ideals of the whole earth catalogue today, steward, brand its founder, has a very rich friend, jeff bezos. me

affinity between hippies and wall street stop here. ah, jeff basis is a libertarian, advocating for small government, he values complete, entrepreneurial freedom, unimpeded by laws and regulations, with amazon burned off the social vision that animated so many in the 1900 sixty's, the hope of a better world through consumption, through interconnected information systems, that's gone, this is gone for the consumers of amazon and it's gone along with my local bookstores. it's gone along with my local shops, it's gone. the civic world is not something that i see amazon carrying about at all . and i think that's

a great shame. i think it's picked up on one on one of the core elements of the horse catalogue, but it's lost. whatever, civic and vision animated the catalog. and that's a great shame. me the my name is alex, i'm known shribel fish and wouldn't be the fish been i don't feel fish off when they say john, august 2000 if by online so in that fish when you pick it up for you to finish

your course up. title receive. so pick and taking the ball before joining amazon, alexander was a soldier in the german army. but in the warehouse he was confronted with a ruthless work culture where employees are treated like robots and all that stuff. and that's what comes up when she isn't mentioned in the past built, i've put a time on the phone. him, how're? if there's mister anthony for them? i think i'll take a log on and i'm thinking i'll take it up to when i was in an articulate infection for patterns on the have also the home is the things you can go home. i can keep in

mind i'm talk most most seems how isn't my in the whole month most from the 1000 lives in john law and up i come through this because i'm supply from seizures. that's kind of the most not him off can no, no, no, no, no. you have a scanner that there is a line that in your where you have to go you. when you pack, you have to move the way where computers then and the scanners and managers, and teachers and leaders teach you to make so called the question of movement. so 1st you take this hand to park like this, and you park in the line and you really have to follow all this movement. and there's something new in the sense that you work a machine, but who are also controlled by machines. and this is something scary if you don't

follow this, read them of the corporation. portion new york does not accept as they tell you, if you don't like walking here, you just go, we don't want, we don't want to happy workers. when mr. johnson from the 1000 my mom was mission to the land by and s as in this basically, it's like, you know, for out, since the fall that's been the place effect and burn out about the syndicate window for the guys to get wonderful. don't take this, this is the house for the long distance, the police are and for the ones with all the hope and for the i know ah. ringback in germany on black friday, the unions are calling for a strike. oh, does it look like? all right,

bob. i thought it's not the banner stud muffin up knows gob. thank you sir. i'll give you my daughter's law, but i did not get the vote was i'm that the europe jeff bezos is facing strong states where social protections are especially important ago and where employees have more labor rights. this is a full knock them individual aiden for leaking out of them. august as plans are built for the last 5 years verde. the main german union has been organizing strikes in the countries 11 amazon warehouses. i'm perfect, you know, i spoke heights in the foolish little humid i get the workers are mainly asking for wage increases. thanks to these mobilizations, the leipzig warehouse workers have successfully increased their wages by 11.2 percent in the last 5 years. that this multi dollar stangler se,

april 2018. the major german media group axle springer is about to award. basil it's prize for the most innovative person of the year. dirty has called on workers from all over europe to come and protest in front of the building. standing alongside the germans to day are polish, italian, and french workers. they are 1000 strong. welcome to berlin. thanks. it's great to be here. today, amazon is employing 566000 people. you're probably the biggest dropped grade of recent times. at the same time, you're aggressively criticized by unions and by a media for paying low wages for inappropriate working conditions. how

do you deal with these accusations? if you do anything new or innovative, you have to be willing to be misunderstood. if you cannot, if you can't afford to be misunderstood, then for goodness sake don't do anything new or innovative. yet i'm very proud of our working conditions and i'm very proud of the wages that we pay. i, in germany, we employee 16000 people. we pay at the high end of the range for any comparable work. great. and so we can live our, we have very good communications with our employees. we don't believe that we need the union to be an intermediary between us or employees. congratulate you. fall, you have achieved thinking and congratulate. very nice. thank you. back

in 2017 amazon made $178000000000.00 in total revenue. the multinational is crushing all its competitors in online sales. but amazon is also the leader in another area. it has nothing to do with parcels or material goods, but it's of strategic importance. the cloud, an online data storage infrastructure, entire databases and web services are physically hosted in amazon's data centers. huge buildings filled with servers. ah, amazon owns 120 data centers like this one spread around the world in 2017 amazon web services accounted for only 12 percent of its turnover, but 60 percent of its profits. mm.

mm. mm mm. ah ah i was on a lot as a retailer, but it's really, it's a mistake to think of amazon that way. amazon is a company that really wants to control the underlying infrastructure of the economy . so wants to be the platform on which all buying and selling happens. it wants to be basically the interface between all buyers and sellers. and it is a major part of the, the cloud on it's amazon web services controls about

a 3rd of the world's cloud computing capacity. and increasingly, it's moving into shipping and package delivery. there isn't anything in history that's quite like amazon. i mean, it's completely a new thing. we've never really encountered anything like this, but you can think about it in some ways, like a railroad in the sense that that's what amazon controls and lots of other companies need access to that in order to get to market. that's an incredibly powerful position. i don't think amazon has any other competitor that could potentially challenge it. i think the only thing that could stop amazon today would be government intervention. oh, when i want shown the wrong one,

i just don't hold any world yet to shape out. disdain becomes the attitude and engagement equals the trail. when so many find themselves worlds apart, we choose to look for common ground. there may or may, we should all be mayor, may we should all be angry because of what's going on right. can't understand united states history and the role that slavery play is already very formal institution. by the time united states became a nation, it actually define the nation. the rise of capitalism is clearly on the backs of flight. and the slave down, if you investigated, lynching said a great extent. you can't believe that really in the country. and the country still stands in brick. i'm from the south. everybody. i know know

what their failure to some extent, i would argue that we're still fighting the civil war in the south is winning aware of the risk amazon is increasingly nurturing its relationships with governments. in 17 years, it's lobbying expenses exploded. in the united states, they've gone from $492000.00 in the year, 2000 to $13000000.20. in europe alone, they add up to at least 2000000 euros. with will jeff bezos used this money to counter a less than accommodating europe in 2017. for the 1st time,

the european commission decided to attack the company, margaret vest, hagar, european commissioner for competition sanctioned amazon for its taxes. arrangements and the commission has today adopted a decision that emerson's tax benefits, ah, a legal and i used aid aid rules. a tax ruling granted by luxemburg has reduced emerson's tax bill in more than 8 years, between may 2006 and june 2014. it was not justified. amazon now has to repay the tax benefit worth around $250000000.00 euros plus interest. amazon paid the 250000000, but luxembourg appealed the decision. not all states endorsed the commissioner's approach,

nor to the also court other measures that promote tax furnace the thing with with amazon, and we know that from the tax case is that you don't necessarily make profits, but you create value. so you create value on the stock exchange, but you don't make profit in your business. so people make money by buying and selling stocks instead of making money by having a profits coming out of the business in itself. and one of the reasons why we are so a eager are also to have a sort of broad european digital sex ation, is to make sure that, that we get it right. because say digital companies, on average pay 9 percent in tax, where ordinary businesses, on average pay 23 percent in tax. europe is trying to put in place a new tax that specifically targets gaffer, including amazon this new tax would levy the revenues and not their profits.

since these web giants usually store away their profits and countries with low tax rate, france is alone in defending this initiative. we have all had a wake up call to say, well, yes, technology is fascinating and it produces say great things that we can do. but that's a bad sight to everything. that's a fetch our democracy. there's a threat to the way we do business. that's the threat for us as consumers to be respected in the marketplace. we need to getting control of that. so here it is. the world, according to amazon, a world where a single company controls the distribution of all our daily products. the infrastructure of our economy. when

i'm buying stuff or receiving packages or i have friends who are doing like yes, also man as a great thing that we built. but as i said, if i put my head of being a citizen no more. busy questioning of what do i really feel, any pride in that? i think most of the time i, i, i feel almost the opposite. really i helped to create something that may not help to really be a net good in the world. so the issue of who shapes the future of our country is that us or is that amazon, you know, that's the question me on the pacific coast in seattle, that question has already been answered

here. amazon is already imposing its vision of the world of tomorrow. at 1st glance is an ideal world. the company's headquarters are located in this building called day one added feed. the brand new structure wanted by jeff basis. a series of balls sheltering rare tropical plants, like a bio to a 2 point oh, where amazon employees come to work in harmony with a domesticated nature. in total 20 percent of seattle's downtown area is occupied by amazon. ah, in the last 2 years,

40000 new executives from around the world have joined the ranks of the american giant often young and very well paid. they can take full advantage of the amazon way of life and can preview much of the company's innovations. lockers where you can pick up your packages at any time or amazon, go supermarkets, where no check out is required for customers. enter with their smartphone and the computer automatically charges their account to welcome these new comers. luxurious buildings are constantly being constructed. thanks to amazon. seattle has become a favorite city for the american executive class. mm. but at night seattle becomes

a completely different city since amazon's arrival with its numerous hires of senior executives, rents and seattle have been rising by 10 percent each year. ah, the poorest can no longer find housing, even if they have a job. me. here. 30 percent of the homeless population is employed at city hall, seattle's younger city, counsellor theresa mosquito made housing. the priority of mandate me we saw out of 600 percent increase in

how and homelessness. and we saw twice the amount of people who are living in our v's become homeless. that number is immense. you can see the crisis of poverty and homelessness on the street. however, here in seattle, we have a higher rate of homelessness per capita than cities like los angeles, which is a call for action. and it's imperative that we do something. we have a 1000 people who are moving to this region a week, which means that we're not building housing. the costs of housing increases people who were and otherwise affordable rental units really have nowhere to go. they're falling into the street or they are getting displeased and pushed out of seattle spring. 2018 city council proposes the creation of a new tax. the biggest companies in seattle, including amazon, will have to pay $500.00 per employee per year in order to finance the construction of social housing. we had initially proposed tax because you would have brought in $75000000.00 a year, which is a drop in the bucket of what we actually needed. we ended up with $47000000.00 per

year, which amazon agreed to. the proposal was passed unanimously, unanimously. by the council and signed by the mayor within 24 hours of amazon agreeing to that amount of taxing and at each corporation, $275.00 per head for 5 years for just the largest companies after they agreed to that within 24 hours they changed their mind. they found that the opposition and ran a campaign to undermine it. no. oh, no. amazon initiated a power struggle to push back on city council. seattle was divided to counter the multi nationals campaign citizens mobilized for social justice. i

amazon won the battle of opinion. it's petition gathered over 45000 signatures. on june 12th, 2018, the seattle city council decided to hold a new vote on the tax in front of supporters of both sides. a red against green pro tax against anti tax herbal vote quickly the city council voted to reverse its new taxation policy, whereas vote for i. so on only 2 council members, including theresa mosquito voted against the repeal of the tax. must get a vote for ne o'briant vote for i 7 in favor to oppose ah,

to the bill passes in the chair was sign it. mm . 3 months later, jeff visa announced the launching of his own housing policy. me a 2000000000 dollar private fund to help poorly house families across the country. i want to make sure that public policy is driven by those who were elected to pass public policy, not by the whims of one seal or one corporation. 11 day decides to donate money. i think it's a real warning signal to the entire country that we have got to be able to govern and do so with integrity, to make sure that our most vulnerable are being protected and invested in. we need public policy to be passed by those have been elected to do so me . ready ready every night and seattle city

hall opens its doors to provide a place to sleep on the floor, to those who have nowhere else to go on in the me, i me

ah ah ah 50 in champs all down there, here i'm calling this the larry over here so your camps are always a little nicer than this is evidence of absolute poverty, despair. people in our city and other cities all across america are living like

this, where at the original need and bill, it's that opened up in 2018 right now. there's 31 homes on the property. it's a little over 4 acres with 31 homes and a community center. unfortunately, a lot of people don't make it out of edition more homelessness, like, i'm just really happy with it. and bad you with, oh, oh oh. and i dream, shaped by concur, some of those with

who dares sinks, we dare to ask, ah, ah, the west ratchets up the temperature further over alleged russian plans to invade youth, current bolstering its military presence in the region. that is here of itself says there is no reason to panic, insisting and attack is next to impossible us food and drug administration is asking americans to wait 75 years to get all the information concerning the licensing of the pfizer. maxine, we speak with the lawyer represent a group that made a freedom of information request to the health watch. you can't see them in any manner. the very same health authorities that are telling you this product.