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Nobody is forcing you to write. I write because it's something I can do. I'm seriously handicapped and there are a lot of things I simply cannot do. That's a

Nobody is forcing you to write. I write because it's something I can do. I'm seriously handicapped and there are a lot of things I simply cannot do. That's a lousy argument. I use myself as an example for various reasons, but the reality is this a widespread problem and the state of journalism is a real problem, as I noted above. I'm well aware of why people don't like hearing they basically want slave labor. I've listened for years to the reasons people on HN do not like ads, do not like content marketing, etc. I removed ads from my sites and I don't typically use affiliate links. I use myself as an example in hopes of elucidating the problem space and making it clear that I've studied this for years and I'm not blowing smoke. It's not just me. Writing generally has terrible pay even when it's good quality, etc. Find some way to help writers pay their bills. The fact that writers exist and that's what they know and there aren't other middle class jobs with good benefits they can readily apply for is an actual issue which negatively impacts the world. Gig work is up. Benefits are down. Lots of people are underpaid, underemployed, etc. It isn't just writers. As for medicine, our medical system is probably even more messed up than what we do to writers. We actively incentivize a system of keeping you drugged up and limping along and yadda. But I'm sure people are even less interested in hearing that than in hearing "If you don't want the shitty internet we've chosen to create, then make other choices that support some other outcome." I don't intend to spend a whole lot of time arguing it. I've been here a lot of years. I know people don't like hearing this, quickly turn to dismissive personal attacks and ugly justifications. This is hardly some original rebuttal to my points. I chose to say it anyway because I know most folks here are business people or IT people and haven't thought it through as much as I have. Each individual case of criticism of how people here don't want to support writers seems logical and not a problem in isolation. Most folks here are not on the receiving end going "Wait a minute. This is part of why I remain poor. There's no good means to get paid for what I do, though there is certainly demand for good writing." This is me telling folks I write, the world makes it really hard for writers to make ends meet, that's part of why you get certain kinds of garbage on the internet. People can do with that info what they choose, including nothing at all. I've occasionally said such things for years and it seems to make no difference. But I will likely continue to say something from time to time anyway, even though people think it's appropriate to attack me instead of taking my points seriously. And that's why I say it boils down to an expectation of slave labor because, yeah, people basically get mad at being told "this is why this goes on" rather than going "oh, I had not thought to connect those dots. I shall have to keep that in mind going forward."

kortilla 6y ago
> I'm well aware of why people don't like hearing they basically want slave labor. They don’t like it because it’s a bald faced lie. You’re accusing them of supporting slavery. Just a quick refresher on what slavery is (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery) > Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave, who is someone forbidden to quit their service for another person and is treated as property. I implore you to read that article to grasp how horrific and life smothering actual slave labor is. You comparing writing voluntarily for free to that is offensive and smacks of first world entitlement. Perhaps you’re just trolling and I fell for it, but there are people surviving today in slave labor conditions that can only dream of quitting and spending their days arguing on the Internet (after they learn to read and write of course!). Until then they’ll just keep working 12 hour days of hard labor 7 days a week. Wanting something for free is not the same thing as wanting slavery. I use hacker news and read the comments here under the expectations that I will not pay for them and nobody will be writing them under coercion. The same applies to reading random blogs, etc. I don’t want to pay for that because it changes the entire nature of the relationship and I frankly just don’t care about any one particular piece of information. I will pay for deep expertise (e.g. books or even substack). But as I said before, the ability to write is necessary, but the subject is what I’m paying for. I bought the Harry Potter books because of the world she built, not because of her writing ability. The same applies to most of her fans, as born to out by the tepid performance of the pseudonym book.
- lemmsjid 6y ago
  Slave labor is also a colloquialism for poorly paid work. The Cambridge dictionary for example says it has an “informal disapproving” sense of “very hard work for which people are paid very little” and has an example sentence of “It’s slave labor working in that office”. Dictionary.com’s example is “data entry at that salary is slave labor.” You can argue that colloquialism is a crass juxtaposition of horrifying slavery and things far less horrifying, but it’s clear to me the OP was using it in that informal sense, and is probably quite aware slavery was a terrible thing.
  - 6y ago

kortilla 6y ago

> I'm well aware of why people don't like hearing they basically want slave labor. They don’t like it because it’s a bald faced lie. You’re accusing them of supporting slavery. Just a quick refresher on what slavery is (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery) > Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave, who is someone forbidden to quit their service for another person and is treated as property. I implore you to read that article to grasp how horrific and life smothering actual slave labor is. You comparing writing voluntarily for free to that is offensive and smacks of first world entitlement. Perhaps you’re just trolling and I fell for it, but there are people surviving today in slave labor conditions that can only dream of quitting and spending their days arguing on the Internet (after they learn to read and write of course!). Until then they’ll just keep working 12 hour days of hard labor 7 days a week. Wanting something for free is not the same thing as wanting slavery. I use hacker news and read the comments here under the expectations that I will not pay for them and nobody will be writing them under coercion. The same applies to reading random blogs, etc. I don’t want to pay for that because it changes the entire nature of the relationship and I frankly just don’t care about any one particular piece of information. I will pay for deep expertise (e.g. books or even substack). But as I said before, the ability to write is necessary, but the subject is what I’m paying for. I bought the Harry Potter books because of the world she built, not because of her writing ability. The same applies to most of her fans, as born to out by the tepid performance of the pseudonym book.

lemmsjid 6y ago
Slave labor is also a colloquialism for poorly paid work. The Cambridge dictionary for example says it has an “informal disapproving” sense of “very hard work for which people are paid very little” and has an example sentence of “It’s slave labor working in that office”. Dictionary.com’s example is “data entry at that salary is slave labor.” You can argue that colloquialism is a crass juxtaposition of horrifying slavery and things far less horrifying, but it’s clear to me the OP was using it in that informal sense, and is probably quite aware slavery was a terrible thing.
- 6y ago