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People love to shout from the top of the hill how much they promote equality, fair treatment for everyone, until it hits them in the pocket. Until the restauran

People love to shout from the top of the hill how much they promote equality, fair treatment for everyone, until it hits them in the pocket. Until the restaurant bill is a bit higher, until their Amazon orders aren't arriving by the end of the same day. And then they find reasons to explain why equality and fair treatment aren't for everybody. Or they close their eyes and pretend there's no problem, those people don't exist as long as you never think about them. And the reasons why poor people are universally exploited are straight forward. They have no say, and no power. When other discriminated groups (color, gender, sexual orientation, etc.) get some power they're still part of that group but when poor people get to power they are no longer poor and have very little interest in pursuing that cause. On the other hand trying to help any of these people is quickly branded as socialism (or worse, communism) and that's a scarlet letter sentence which most do their best to avoid.

CoastalCoder 4y ago
> People love to shout from the top of the hill how much they promote equality, fair treatment for everyone, until it hits them in the pocket. Could you clarify which people you're referring to? It's a pretty strong criticism, so painting with an overly broad brush isn't really fair.
- buran77 4y ago
  Have you ever heard from someone saying that gender or color shouldn't matter? Sometimes they don't even just propose equality of opportunity but even equality of outcome. When it comes to the poor and their fair chance you get to watch a ridiculous spectacle where all the arguments you just heard a minute ago are turned on their head. Suddenly there are reasons why those people are in that situation and it's usually their fault - didn't work enough, study enough, picked a job that has no value, picked a job anyone can do, etc. But the reality is that it's not that the job has no value, or anyone could do it. If your trash sat in front of your house for weeks you'd pay them a yearly salary just to take it away. They get abuse because they have no choice. Somehow they ended up on that bottom rung of the ladder and society made it close to impossible to get up from there. If you want to solve other types of discrimination you intrinsically accept that the abusers will pay for it. Your board is all white men? Some will have to pay the price for centuries of abuse and make room for other genders or people of color. If you are looking for such equality you will have solid arguments to justify getting it. Until it comes to poor people and then nothing else matters, they're poor for a reason, why should you pay for lifting them up? So I'll say there's no brush broad enough to paint this with. It has been almost universally proven throughout recorded history, it has happened all over the world to varying degrees: the world needs a bottom rung to do what nobody else even wants to think about. It will make sure that bottom rung keeps existing in ample supply to achieve that and it will abuse those people because it can. It's the one universal discrimination where the power balance is so one sided it's absolutely ridiculous. It doesn't care about gender, race, religion, if you're poor you will pay for it in ways you never though exist, you will be forced to subsidize the well being of those better off. And those better off will find justifications to not do much, if anything, about it. Maybe you aren't one of those people. But you did have to ask with surprise which makes me think you never even noticed or ever really wondered.
  - CoastalCoder 4y ago
    > But you did have to ask with surprise which makes me think you never even noticed or ever really wondered. Actually, I'm trying to get better at speaking politely. That's the reason for how I phrased my earlier post.
techsupporter 4y ago
> And then they find reasons to explain why equality and fair treatment isn't for everybody. I completely agree with this. In Seattle, our city council proposed an ordinance requiring minimum wage and hour standards for so-called platform workers (your nominally independent contractor staff for companies like Uber and Lyft and Amazon and the like). Everything was, by Seattle political standards, going smoothly until DoorDash put the "the cost of your delivery will go up because of meddling by the Seattle council" blurb in their app. Then, immense pushback. I hear this fairly often from people I work with. I work for a medical practice group and patients, of course, want to be seen outside of the hours when they work, so we have some clinics that are open until the ungodly late hours of 7 or 8pm. One clinic is, because the clinic director is a Khan-level tyrant, open for four hours on Saturdays. The amount of moaning and wailing and gnashing of teeth by some of my colleagues, and some of the medical staff, when their turn in the rotation comes up is deafening. To be asked to work anything other than 9am to 5pm Monday through Friday is an affront to dignity. Yet these same people think nothing of also complaining when their favorite restaurant spot trims its hours back from midnight to 11pm. Or when the grocery store closes at 10pm. Or that places are crowded and have slower service on the weekends. Where, exactly, do they expect all of those employees to come from and why should those employees "suffer" to work nights and weekends? It grates on me.
- i_love_music 4y ago
  Thanks for calling this out. I too have noticed the same behavior and it’s frustrating. I’m happy to see others notice the same phenomenon.
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  At least in Seattle, I find a fair amount of places that stay open to accommodate weekend business generally close on Mondays and Tuesdays. One fairly awful bit about the nighttime economy is commuting. Light rail is closed from midnight to 5, parking is also not good during night hours. When I lived in Berlin they ran 24/3, so weekdays they would do nighttime maintainance but they would maintain service for the weekend nighttime economy.
  - 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pavlov 4y ago
This story is much less general, though. It’s about fine dining restaurants in Denmark, a country that’s not exactly averse to socialism. These dining experiences cost hundreds of euros per meal, so it’s not the most price-sensitive market. And the people who work in the kitchens are not necessarily poor. After all you can’t be completely broke to work for months on an unpaid internship. The power dynamic here is more about exploiting ambitious young people and pushing them beyond their limits, even making them suffer abuse, while paying little or nothing. It’s like if Google took unpaid SWE interns, asked them to work in data centers where temperatures are above 100 F, and supervisors would kick them in the balls if their programming performance is unsatisfactory (this actually happens in Copenhagen restaurants based on the article). To me, the revelation in this article was that these fine dining experiences are often unsustainably designed for the price. Even if each dinner customer brings in $200-500 of revenue, the amount of manual labor is so huge that these restaurants can only make it work by using unpaid interns. I wouldn’t have guessed that.
- zemvpferreira 4y ago
  Star-chasing is overall horrible and the incentives mean it's not going to change any time soon. Imagine you're a restaurant wanting to compete in the scene and looking to pay your employees fairly. You can't price your menu at double the competition, so you need to charge the same $200 per guest as other Michelin-hopefuls. But your margin is cut in half by your fair labour practices and you're bleeding money by the table. Where do you make up the difference? If you skimp on ingredients your food won't make the cut. Raise prices? You'll be out of clients and business in a week. Fine china and decor are mandatory. You can't win. The way to break the cycle is to change the system. Force everyone to play by the rules we agreed on a century ago. Prohibit unpaid labour. Extra hours are paid double and capped at a reasonable 60/week total. Shifts have to be separated by 12 hours minimum. Two days off per week minimum. Heavy, heavy fines for anyone breaking labour law and jail time for repeat abuser managers/owners. Come down on these practices like teamsters in the early years. Fuck these oppressive, abusive situations. Repeat for construction, fruit picking, whatever other situation forces a person to work their hands to the bone to survive.
  - 4y ago
FreqSep 4y ago
> On the other hand trying to help any of these people is quickly branded as socialism (or worse, communism) I get your sentiment, but I personally think you’re off base here. You seem to be demonizing the other side a bit and implying they don’t want to help these people. Is it so hard to believe that some members of society genuinely believe that welfare programs hurt this group rather than help them in the long run? I’m not asking you to agree with that sentiment - I’m not even saying it’s correct - I’m simply pointing out that many of the people against socialism and communism do genuinely believe that their viewpoints will help these people in the long run.
ZanyProgrammer 4y ago
So I guess the answer is to be selfish and unapologetic about being selfish? Or is this another screed against a certain kind of affluent liberal/progressive person?
Ekaros 4y ago
Minimum wage discussion is always fun to read. How there is always comments popping up about "protecting" small-businesses. So those deserve to exploit their labour, but labour doesn't deserve fair rates for work?

CoastalCoder 4y ago

> People love to shout from the top of the hill how much they promote equality, fair treatment for everyone, until it hits them in the pocket. Could you clarify which people you're referring to? It's a pretty strong criticism, so painting with an overly broad brush isn't really fair.

buran77 4y ago
Have you ever heard from someone saying that gender or color shouldn't matter? Sometimes they don't even just propose equality of opportunity but even equality of outcome. When it comes to the poor and their fair chance you get to watch a ridiculous spectacle where all the arguments you just heard a minute ago are turned on their head. Suddenly there are reasons why those people are in that situation and it's usually their fault - didn't work enough, study enough, picked a job that has no value, picked a job anyone can do, etc. But the reality is that it's not that the job has no value, or anyone could do it. If your trash sat in front of your house for weeks you'd pay them a yearly salary just to take it away. They get abuse because they have no choice. Somehow they ended up on that bottom rung of the ladder and society made it close to impossible to get up from there. If you want to solve other types of discrimination you intrinsically accept that the abusers will pay for it. Your board is all white men? Some will have to pay the price for centuries of abuse and make room for other genders or people of color. If you are looking for such equality you will have solid arguments to justify getting it. Until it comes to poor people and then nothing else matters, they're poor for a reason, why should you pay for lifting them up? So I'll say there's no brush broad enough to paint this with. It has been almost universally proven throughout recorded history, it has happened all over the world to varying degrees: the world needs a bottom rung to do what nobody else even wants to think about. It will make sure that bottom rung keeps existing in ample supply to achieve that and it will abuse those people because it can. It's the one universal discrimination where the power balance is so one sided it's absolutely ridiculous. It doesn't care about gender, race, religion, if you're poor you will pay for it in ways you never though exist, you will be forced to subsidize the well being of those better off. And those better off will find justifications to not do much, if anything, about it. Maybe you aren't one of those people. But you did have to ask with surprise which makes me think you never even noticed or ever really wondered.
- CoastalCoder 4y ago
  > But you did have to ask with surprise which makes me think you never even noticed or ever really wondered. Actually, I'm trying to get better at speaking politely. That's the reason for how I phrased my earlier post.

techsupporter 4y ago

> And then they find reasons to explain why equality and fair treatment isn't for everybody. I completely agree with this. In Seattle, our city council proposed an ordinance requiring minimum wage and hour standards for so-called platform workers (your nominally independent contractor staff for companies like Uber and Lyft and Amazon and the like). Everything was, by Seattle political standards, going smoothly until DoorDash put the "the cost of your delivery will go up because of meddling by the Seattle council" blurb in their app. Then, immense pushback. I hear this fairly often from people I work with. I work for a medical practice group and patients, of course, want to be seen outside of the hours when they work, so we have some clinics that are open until the ungodly late hours of 7 or 8pm. One clinic is, because the clinic director is a Khan-level tyrant, open for four hours on Saturdays. The amount of moaning and wailing and gnashing of teeth by some of my colleagues, and some of the medical staff, when their turn in the rotation comes up is deafening. To be asked to work anything other than 9am to 5pm Monday through Friday is an affront to dignity. Yet these same people think nothing of also complaining when their favorite restaurant spot trims its hours back from midnight to 11pm. Or when the grocery store closes at 10pm. Or that places are crowded and have slower service on the weekends. Where, exactly, do they expect all of those employees to come from and why should those employees "suffer" to work nights and weekends? It grates on me.

i_love_music 4y ago
Thanks for calling this out. I too have noticed the same behavior and it’s frustrating. I’m happy to see others notice the same phenomenon.
bobthepanda 4y ago
At least in Seattle, I find a fair amount of places that stay open to accommodate weekend business generally close on Mondays and Tuesdays. One fairly awful bit about the nighttime economy is commuting. Light rail is closed from midnight to 5, parking is also not good during night hours. When I lived in Berlin they ran 24/3, so weekdays they would do nighttime maintainance but they would maintain service for the weekend nighttime economy.
- 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

pavlov 4y ago

This story is much less general, though. It’s about fine dining restaurants in Denmark, a country that’s not exactly averse to socialism. These dining experiences cost hundreds of euros per meal, so it’s not the most price-sensitive market. And the people who work in the kitchens are not necessarily poor. After all you can’t be completely broke to work for months on an unpaid internship. The power dynamic here is more about exploiting ambitious young people and pushing them beyond their limits, even making them suffer abuse, while paying little or nothing. It’s like if Google took unpaid SWE interns, asked them to work in data centers where temperatures are above 100 F, and supervisors would kick them in the balls if their programming performance is unsatisfactory (this actually happens in Copenhagen restaurants based on the article). To me, the revelation in this article was that these fine dining experiences are often unsustainably designed for the price. Even if each dinner customer brings in $200-500 of revenue, the amount of manual labor is so huge that these restaurants can only make it work by using unpaid interns. I wouldn’t have guessed that.

zemvpferreira 4y ago
Star-chasing is overall horrible and the incentives mean it's not going to change any time soon. Imagine you're a restaurant wanting to compete in the scene and looking to pay your employees fairly. You can't price your menu at double the competition, so you need to charge the same $200 per guest as other Michelin-hopefuls. But your margin is cut in half by your fair labour practices and you're bleeding money by the table. Where do you make up the difference? If you skimp on ingredients your food won't make the cut. Raise prices? You'll be out of clients and business in a week. Fine china and decor are mandatory. You can't win. The way to break the cycle is to change the system. Force everyone to play by the rules we agreed on a century ago. Prohibit unpaid labour. Extra hours are paid double and capped at a reasonable 60/week total. Shifts have to be separated by 12 hours minimum. Two days off per week minimum. Heavy, heavy fines for anyone breaking labour law and jail time for repeat abuser managers/owners. Come down on these practices like teamsters in the early years. Fuck these oppressive, abusive situations. Repeat for construction, fruit picking, whatever other situation forces a person to work their hands to the bone to survive.
- 4y ago

FreqSep 4y ago

> On the other hand trying to help any of these people is quickly branded as socialism (or worse, communism) I get your sentiment, but I personally think you’re off base here. You seem to be demonizing the other side a bit and implying they don’t want to help these people. Is it so hard to believe that some members of society genuinely believe that welfare programs hurt this group rather than help them in the long run? I’m not asking you to agree with that sentiment - I’m not even saying it’s correct - I’m simply pointing out that many of the people against socialism and communism do genuinely believe that their viewpoints will help these people in the long run.

ZanyProgrammer 4y ago

So I guess the answer is to be selfish and unapologetic about being selfish? Or is this another screed against a certain kind of affluent liberal/progressive person?

Ekaros 4y ago

Minimum wage discussion is always fun to read. How there is always comments popping up about "protecting" small-businesses. So those deserve to exploit their labour, but labour doesn't deserve fair rates for work?