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When traveling in India, I foolishly took a cycle rickshaw. It was gross/shameful. A man far less fortunate than I was sweating, working hard, barely getting pa

When traveling in India, I foolishly took a cycle rickshaw. It was gross/shameful. A man far less fortunate than I was sweating, working hard, barely getting paid, and breathing horribly polluted New Delhi air while I just sat there. When Uber started to squeeze its drivers, I again felt just like this. I hated hearing drivers complain about their life problems. I hated doing the math and seeing how little these people were making out of this transaction. I hated feeling like a perpetrator of class division. The common argument in support of Uber’s poor economics is their superior user experience compared to taxis. However, exploitative industry is a terrible “user experience” for the ethically- or morally-conscious. And that’s just the privileged party’s perspective…

chrischen 5y ago
You think that taxi driver was being paid more fairly? Often they just drove for medallion owners and rented the time. The economics would have been at best same, if not worse since there was probably little oversight since it was a bunch of small cab operators.
meowtimemania 5y ago
I used to live in Latin America and I would avoid hiring shoe-shiner kids in spite of them following me each day. I thought it was sad to see these kids working at such an early age and thought hiring them would be me exploiting them. In hindsight I should’ve just hired them, they need the money. it’s horrible people live in poverty and have to work such jobs, but IMO hiring them helps them more than not hiring them.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  No, hiring them to shine your shoes would not have helped, it only perpetuates the system. What is needed is a social change that eliminates the need. Sadly this sometimes only happens when the oppressed party suffers enough to elicit real sympathetic action or in extreme cases an uprising. As you didn't hire them, presumably your shoes didn't need shining so they were not really performing a necessary function anyway. This suggests that the system continues to exist partly because some people like the idea of paying a pittance to someone to perform a menial job simply because it makes them feel good or superior instead of donating that money to an effort to eliminate the poverty in question.
  - AussieWog93 5y ago
    >No, hiring them to shine your shoes would not have helped, it only perpetuates the system. What is needed is a social change that eliminates the need. While you're right that the system needs to change, giving the shoeshine boy a peso might be the best help that someone in GP's position could have given. Their life is still terrible, but at least they're not hungry for a night. >Sadly this sometimes only happens when the oppressed party suffers enough to elicit real sympathetic action or in extreme cases an uprising. That's really dark, man, and I don't think it's true. Plenty of groups have won their rights without being deliberately ground into the dirt by another section of society. >This suggests that the system continues to exist partly because some people like the idea of paying a pittance to someone to perform a menial job simply because it makes them feel good or superior I run a retail business, and much of what we sell is like this. Even for things that have utility (e.g. a washing machine), the price you'd pay at a retail store is often (but not always) significantly higher than the value of the good itself sold on, say, Facebook Marketplace. A "$2000 washing machine" is often just a $600 washing machine plus $1400 worth of making the customer feel special. You can say this is wrong or wasteful, but it's part of human nature and exists across all cultures. >donating that money to an effort to eliminate the poverty in question. Steve Hughes argues against this better than I ever could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm6kl17HH9s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm6kl17HH9s
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - aeyes 5y ago
    If they weren't shining shoes for money, they'd be straight begging or stealing. So what should we do with the homeless who only beg for money? Tell them to get a real job? It doesn't work like this, at least not in countries which are less developed. Here we can't create millions of entry-level jobs for people who mostly don't have any type of formal education overnight. Seeing kids work is not right by our standards but people have to eat. Luckily I hardly ever see that here. But I see a lot of people that are willing to work, even if the job is unnecessary by your definition: Cleaning windscreens, carrying bags, singing or other artistic presentations, selling candy or water... I give them money, they are part of this society and most of the time they did not choose this route. I would like to do more but unfortunately my time is very limited.
- FabHK 5y ago
  I think an additional problem with kids in developing countries is that hiring them (for shoe shining, lawn mowing, ...) gives them an incentive to drop out of school. They might make some extra money in the short term, but lose an education and higher earning potential long term. It's not trivial, certainly for an outsider, to judge what the right course of action is.
mjburgess 5y ago
I'm not following this logic -- do you think it would've been better not to take the rickshaw? You do realise that this man is providing for himself, and perhaps others, by this job? It seems like your issue was being confronted with the "realities of life" which distressed your sensibilities; and your solution appears to be to hide from these. I dont see this as a moral impulse, but a disgust response. If you wished to do anything, tip.
- nicbou 5y ago
  Imagine making the same argument for 7 year old chimney sweeps in Victorian England, and the flaw in your argument becomes more obvious. OP choses not to hire underpaid and overworked labour because it's wrong, even if doing so would provide temporary relief.
  - funklute 5y ago
    > Imagine making the same argument for 7 year old chimney sweeps in Victorian England, and the flaw in your argument becomes more obvious. It doesn't make it any more obvious to me. That 7 year old Victorian chimney sweep still has to eat. If society doesn't have the infrastructure to take care of them, then the other alternative is to starve, possibly to death. Refusing to hire these workers only makes things better if doing so also results in a real pressure to provide said infrastructure. It seems unlikely that would be the case both with the chimney sweep and the rickshaw cyclist (at least in the short term).
    - kwhitefoot 5y ago
      > That 7 year old Victorian chimney sweep still has to eat. If society doesn't have the infrastructure to take care of them, then the other alternative is to starve, possibly to death. Yet we no longer have 7 year old chimney sweeps. Refusing to hire one now is one part of the process that changes society so that the missing infrastructure that you mentioned gets provided for future potential 7 year old chimney sweeps.
      - 5y ago
whitepaint 5y ago
Just make a tip. Problem solved.
forinti 5y ago
I have used Uber a lot in Brazil and you can clearly perceive the deindustrialization of the country and the consolidation of large retail chains from the conversations with the drivers. You get lots of people who had small businesses, sometimes even engineers and economists. The last one I talked to had had a small machining shop.
overthemoon 5y ago
I hear what you're saying. A few months ago, a guy, clearly homeless, rang my doorbell and offered to shovel my driveway in exchange for some small amount, I can't remember. It couldn't have been more than ten bucks. I do not need that. I can get it done in about 45 minutes. It felt posh and exploitative. What I realized later is that he was just asking for some dignity. To earn something, to not be a charity case. He wanted to feel like he was offering something worthwhile in exchange. I've thought about that incident a lot. I too am disgusted by how society is organized. When confronted by my own relative wealth and privilege, I felt gross. But in that exact moment, you can't re-engineer the economy. You have to choose whether or not to be generous while respecting that person's dignity. I can only speak for myself here, but too often I'd rather just not encounter hardship in others at all. This is a bad impulse. The world is a terrible broken place, and it's right to be generous in whatever way someone will accept in that moment. This reasoning is often used to justify poverty wage jobs--people want to work, so let them--and that's definitely not my take. I think work can impart dignity, there's a certain amount of shitty work that can't be avoided, but you can't feed your children with dignity, so let's pay people a lot more.

chrischen 5y ago

You think that taxi driver was being paid more fairly? Often they just drove for medallion owners and rented the time. The economics would have been at best same, if not worse since there was probably little oversight since it was a bunch of small cab operators.

meowtimemania 5y ago

I used to live in Latin America and I would avoid hiring shoe-shiner kids in spite of them following me each day. I thought it was sad to see these kids working at such an early age and thought hiring them would be me exploiting them. In hindsight I should’ve just hired them, they need the money. it’s horrible people live in poverty and have to work such jobs, but IMO hiring them helps them more than not hiring them.

kwhitefoot 5y ago
No, hiring them to shine your shoes would not have helped, it only perpetuates the system. What is needed is a social change that eliminates the need. Sadly this sometimes only happens when the oppressed party suffers enough to elicit real sympathetic action or in extreme cases an uprising. As you didn't hire them, presumably your shoes didn't need shining so they were not really performing a necessary function anyway. This suggests that the system continues to exist partly because some people like the idea of paying a pittance to someone to perform a menial job simply because it makes them feel good or superior instead of donating that money to an effort to eliminate the poverty in question.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  >No, hiring them to shine your shoes would not have helped, it only perpetuates the system. What is needed is a social change that eliminates the need. While you're right that the system needs to change, giving the shoeshine boy a peso might be the best help that someone in GP's position could have given. Their life is still terrible, but at least they're not hungry for a night. >Sadly this sometimes only happens when the oppressed party suffers enough to elicit real sympathetic action or in extreme cases an uprising. That's really dark, man, and I don't think it's true. Plenty of groups have won their rights without being deliberately ground into the dirt by another section of society. >This suggests that the system continues to exist partly because some people like the idea of paying a pittance to someone to perform a menial job simply because it makes them feel good or superior I run a retail business, and much of what we sell is like this. Even for things that have utility (e.g. a washing machine), the price you'd pay at a retail store is often (but not always) significantly higher than the value of the good itself sold on, say, Facebook Marketplace. A "$2000 washing machine" is often just a $600 washing machine plus $1400 worth of making the customer feel special. You can say this is wrong or wasteful, but it's part of human nature and exists across all cultures. >donating that money to an effort to eliminate the poverty in question. Steve Hughes argues against this better than I ever could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm6kl17HH9s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm6kl17HH9s
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- aeyes 5y ago
  If they weren't shining shoes for money, they'd be straight begging or stealing. So what should we do with the homeless who only beg for money? Tell them to get a real job? It doesn't work like this, at least not in countries which are less developed. Here we can't create millions of entry-level jobs for people who mostly don't have any type of formal education overnight. Seeing kids work is not right by our standards but people have to eat. Luckily I hardly ever see that here. But I see a lot of people that are willing to work, even if the job is unnecessary by your definition: Cleaning windscreens, carrying bags, singing or other artistic presentations, selling candy or water... I give them money, they are part of this society and most of the time they did not choose this route. I would like to do more but unfortunately my time is very limited.
FabHK 5y ago
I think an additional problem with kids in developing countries is that hiring them (for shoe shining, lawn mowing, ...) gives them an incentive to drop out of school. They might make some extra money in the short term, but lose an education and higher earning potential long term. It's not trivial, certainly for an outsider, to judge what the right course of action is.

mjburgess 5y ago

I'm not following this logic -- do you think it would've been better not to take the rickshaw? You do realise that this man is providing for himself, and perhaps others, by this job? It seems like your issue was being confronted with the "realities of life" which distressed your sensibilities; and your solution appears to be to hide from these. I dont see this as a moral impulse, but a disgust response. If you wished to do anything, tip.

nicbou 5y ago
Imagine making the same argument for 7 year old chimney sweeps in Victorian England, and the flaw in your argument becomes more obvious. OP choses not to hire underpaid and overworked labour because it's wrong, even if doing so would provide temporary relief.
- funklute 5y ago
  > Imagine making the same argument for 7 year old chimney sweeps in Victorian England, and the flaw in your argument becomes more obvious. It doesn't make it any more obvious to me. That 7 year old Victorian chimney sweep still has to eat. If society doesn't have the infrastructure to take care of them, then the other alternative is to starve, possibly to death. Refusing to hire these workers only makes things better if doing so also results in a real pressure to provide said infrastructure. It seems unlikely that would be the case both with the chimney sweep and the rickshaw cyclist (at least in the short term).
  - kwhitefoot 5y ago
    > That 7 year old Victorian chimney sweep still has to eat. If society doesn't have the infrastructure to take care of them, then the other alternative is to starve, possibly to death. Yet we no longer have 7 year old chimney sweeps. Refusing to hire one now is one part of the process that changes society so that the missing infrastructure that you mentioned gets provided for future potential 7 year old chimney sweeps.
    - 5y ago

whitepaint 5y ago

Just make a tip. Problem solved.

forinti 5y ago

I have used Uber a lot in Brazil and you can clearly perceive the deindustrialization of the country and the consolidation of large retail chains from the conversations with the drivers. You get lots of people who had small businesses, sometimes even engineers and economists. The last one I talked to had had a small machining shop.

overthemoon 5y ago

I hear what you're saying. A few months ago, a guy, clearly homeless, rang my doorbell and offered to shovel my driveway in exchange for some small amount, I can't remember. It couldn't have been more than ten bucks. I do not need that. I can get it done in about 45 minutes. It felt posh and exploitative. What I realized later is that he was just asking for some dignity. To earn something, to not be a charity case. He wanted to feel like he was offering something worthwhile in exchange. I've thought about that incident a lot. I too am disgusted by how society is organized. When confronted by my own relative wealth and privilege, I felt gross. But in that exact moment, you can't re-engineer the economy. You have to choose whether or not to be generous while respecting that person's dignity. I can only speak for myself here, but too often I'd rather just not encounter hardship in others at all. This is a bad impulse. The world is a terrible broken place, and it's right to be generous in whatever way someone will accept in that moment. This reasoning is often used to justify poverty wage jobs--people want to work, so let them--and that's definitely not my take. I think work can impart dignity, there's a certain amount of shitty work that can't be avoided, but you can't feed your children with dignity, so let's pay people a lot more.