What happens when the quest for ever-cheaper products, delivered ever faster, completes the takeover of American business? The Warehouse. The Cloud company.
Cloud is to Amazon what the Black Death is to a cold. Cloud takes everything down to the cheapest possible solution, whether it is products, delivery, employees, vendors, customers or government.
Amazon today hosts “camperforces”, RV parks to house their seasonal workforce, who migrate around the country seeking work. Cloud builds huge dormitories housing tens of thousands who must wear ID trackers to access their rooms, the trams, the work space, the bathrooms. Employees work 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, with nominal breaks. Warehouses cover hundreds of acres, too large to see from one end to the other; with few bathrooms and break rooms scattered inadequately. Cloud pays in script and charges hefty fees to convert between script and dollars. It’s the company town and company store on steroids.
Cloud’s founder Gibson Wells believes the market should dictate everything, that customers only value low prices and convenience, and he has Cloud work aggressively to swipe ideas and push vendors into bankruptcy in order to cut prices ever lower.
He tells us about his triumph with Cloud Pickles. He liked a brand of $5 pickles and wanted the company to sell them for $2, but the company could not. So Cloud came up with their own almost-as-good product and drove the original pickle company out of business.
Cloud privatized the FAA in order to deliver via millions of drones and expects to privatize the rest of the government. Wells never considers the long term end state because the ends – cheap products and services – justify the means.
This is not libertarian economics run amok, it is totalitarian rule with a bit of bread and circuses thrown in.
Morality Play
One way to read The Warehouse is as dystopian economics. What happens when one company dominates everything, from transport to food to retail to government services? What happens when that company is just about the only employer left?
How do the people running this behemoth justify their predatory behavior? How do their employees, their vendors respond to the never-ending push push push for more for less?
When people forget the basic rules of decency and morality, stop following the Golden Rule, they become monsters. That’s what is happening in Cloud. Gibson Wells sees employees and vendors, even the country, as giant sponges to be wrung dry, turnips to suck to dust. He justifies everything by his goal for cheap products and services, ignoring the cost to everyone else.
Paxton and Zinnia, two new employees at a Cloud warehouse, also have decisions to make. Paxton had invented a gadget to cook the perfect boiled egg and his company did quite well, for a while. Then Cloud demanded to purchase at below Paxton’s costs and put him out of business. Now Paxton is a reluctant security guard at the warehouse. Zinnia is a corporate spy hired to find out how Cloud is powering this enormous facility.
Paxton is more reactive while Zinnia takes action on her own. Zinnia discovers a creepy pervert supervisor and tries to protect others from him; Paxton later discovers the man was never fired, just reassigned. (The security lead says it’s quieter and easier to move someone than to fire one, although Cloud routinely axes their lowest performing decile every quarter.)
Characters
Gibson Wells is the most interesting character. He narrates his story now as he is dying, and manages to justify the destruction Cloud has done by remembering the good he has done. Or thinks he has done. It’s very difficult to justify putting millions out of work and treating employees like dirt just to cut a buck off the price of some gadget.
One lesson I learned very early in purchasing for my small business was that deals need to be good for everyone. You have to be willing to leave money, not on the table, but in the pockets of your supplier. Otherwise you won’t have a supplier. Apparently Gibson Wells never learned this. He thinks it’s great if he’s the only supplier.
Zinnia is fascinating too. She has zero intention of falling in love, or even caring about anyone at Cloud. She’s there to do her job, get the information she came for, and get out successfully. Instead she gets pulled into an affair with Paxton that may cost her life.
Paxton is there mainly as a foil, to move the story along and to show us a bit more about Cloud and the misery it causes.
There are a few minor characters, also well drawn and believable. The other security people are willing to ignore cruelty in order to keep Cloud running smoothly, while dealing harshly with small infractions. They see their job as keeping the place running the best it can for everyone, making mediocre omelettes while breaking more than a few eggs.
Overall
5 Stars
I received The Warehouse via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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