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As companies continually erode employee benefits and aggressively seek out ever cheaper labor, we have to continually be reminded how innovative and great this

• civilized 4y ago
  Everybody wants to talk about how bad the sweatshop is. Nobody wants to talk about the poverty that was so bad, people jumped at the chance to work in the sweatshop.
  • boh 4y ago
    Yes they do. They love to talk about that and do all the time. It helps make exploiting poor people with limited protections seem moral. Don't forget to mention how employing a person to work 16 hours a day making clothes or a phone helps feed their family.
    • XorNot 4y ago
      "that child worker could be an important income source to help feed their family" I've heard that in polite settings when I was younger, and my absolute rage at it has only grown.
    • civilized 4y ago
      I share your moral objections to exploitative working conditions. But most of us aren't doing those people any good. Work opportunities, on the other hand -- even exploitative ones -- do seem to be doing them good, if they are voluntarily choosing to do them. I think that should humble and temper all of our moral sensibilities a little, when we are attempting to judge a development like this as Good or Bad. Here is something doing good for poor people, and here we are, doing nothing for those poor people, judging it. That feels off to me. If this was Stripe Slavery, I would have no problem calling it Bad. I don't support slavery. But empowering people to engage in voluntary working arrangements -- it can be abused, sure, but Bad? I'm skeptical.
      • vore 4y ago
        drunk driving may kill a lot of people, but it also helps a lot of people get to work on time, so, it;s impossible to say if its bad or not,
        • civilized 4y ago
          Oh jeez, I quit Twitter and it's followed me here.
    • jimmySixDOF 4y ago
      I have worked off and on with an overseas engineering company. The department I work through has a secretary who left his South Asian home and family to work there in basic accomodations sending home every overtime hour he could get his hands on. One of the best days I can remember in an office is being introduced to his son the recent engineering graduate who just joined the company. Following the success of that young mans career as he went to better and better jobs makes me smile and shields me a little from the over woke virtue signaling brigade of people who probably mean well but tend to let their outrage at a problem get in the way of actually fixing it.
      • vore 4y ago
        Your solution to fixing the problem is... hoping you have a successful child?
        • jimmySixDOF 4y ago
          not sure where I proposed a solution but if there is one, I can tell you it will not involve crying out exploitation when someone offers an impoverished person the opportunity to pull themselves up somewhere better in life, just because you think it's unjust for that poverty they live in to exist in the first place but yet also have no working alternative.
          • vore 4y ago
            Sidestepping your culture war flaming, this is just a race to the bottom. Are we supposed to give employers are free pass to work someone to the bone just because they're poor? Surely we can also acknowledge that, that while it's unfortunate that having a sweatshop job is often better than no job, employers should not treat their employees like shit either.
            • jimmySixDOF 4y ago
              agreed.
        • 4y ago
  • vore 4y ago
    Paul Krugman literally wrote a notorious article about this. https://slate.com/business/1997/03/in-praise-of-cheap-labor.html https://slate.com/business/1997/03/in-praise-of-cheap-labor....
    • hef19898 4y ago
      The more I think about the current state of things, and the more I learn about the ugly truth behind the industrial revolution prior to workers rights and such, the more I understand how Marx came to his conclusions. And why the communist movement developed. Last time, the industrial revolution ate the artisans. Then automation ate the blue collar jobs in the industrialized world. It seem digitalization is going to eat the white collar jobs, kind of starting, it seems, with the lower level dev jobs that helped to bring this whole thing about in the first place. Early on it was workers forming unions that brought change about, not sure if white collar employees, currently being highly paid, will do the same thing.
• throw101010 4y ago
  Is your solution to keep the walled garden systems we currently have that benefit proportionally very few people on earth? Why not give the rest of the world access to the tools for economical freedom too? And please let's not even debate if they work or not yet, I am more interested in the reasoning behind preserving the current status quo where billions of people literally cannot access these tools.
  • zaptheimpaler 4y ago
    Just don't forget that capital works in the interests of capitalists above all. It's not because they suddenly started caring about all the countries they previously ignored. Today Braintrust is a democratizing force enabling talent to earn from anywhere, yay! Tomorrow everyone is going to be competing with the absolute cheapest labor globally and NA will be earning avg(NA, Africa) salary while paying NA rents. Uber's trajectory is the same - in every market, it started out with drivers making amazing wages (yay Uber is great!!) and ended with them making less than minimum wage.
    • Karrot_Kream 4y ago
      Right but in this case, Braintrust's governance is based on token holders, the talent who actually put their work up on the platform. Braintrust is paid for via a 10% fee on client success. This is a relationship where labor ownership is baked into the platform.
  • Cederfjard 4y ago
    > Is your solution to keep the walled garden systems we currently have that benefit proportionally very few people on earth? Almost every single person on Earth benefits in some way from the current systems over not having them at all. Yes, they tend to let power and resources accumulate with a select few, which is not necessarily the best or most moral outcome. I'd be interested to know why you think this wouldn't be the case with the alternatives - regardless of the intentions of well-meaning ideologues, the powerful tend to get what they want in the end. > Why not give the rest of the world access to the tools for economical freedom too? If the issue was as simple as this sentence, then sure. In reality it isn't, though. I could flip it and ask "why abandon regulations that limit how capital can exploit labor and prevent criminals from evading laws"? > And please let's not even debate if they work or not yet, I am more interested in the reasoning behind preserving the current status quo where billions of people literally cannot access these tools. What line of thinking is this? Of course the reasoning behind preserving the current status quo, which is a known quantity, over something new, could well be that you don't yet know if or how the alternatives work? That doesn't mean that they can't be better or shouldn't be implemented at some point, but it's totally valid not to want to run head-first into something unknown and potentially detrimental, just because what we have now is imperfect.
• fny 4y ago
  A lot of the world does get paid in unregulated "tokens" though. That's literally what the eurodollar system is. A US dollar abroad is not equivalent to a US dollar in the US. US banking regulations do not apply to those dollars. Hence, they even have different interest rates! But you're absolutely right that this is a mechanism by which they can expand the labor pool for digital work.
  • nicbou 4y ago
    It is regulated by central banks though, and taxed. What's your definition of unregulated?
  • lottin 4y ago
    First, a Eurodollar is a USD that is deposited outside of the US. As such it's interchangeable and indistinguishable from a USD. US banking regulations don't apply to these dollars? Well, of course, because US banking regulation only apply in the banks in the US. Banks that are located outside of the US are subject to whatever regulation is in place in the location that they're at. Does that mean that Eurodollars are unregulated? No, it doesn't. Second, currencies don't have interest rates. Only debt instruments do. I have no idea what you're talking about when you say that Eurodollars and US dollars have different interest rates.
    • Karrot_Kream 4y ago
      Because eurodollars have fewer regulations (for good and for bad, such as FDIC reserve requirements) around them, eurodollar deposits can generate higher interest rates than equivalent USD-denominated deposits. Saying a eurodollar is identical to a USD is a stretch as regulatory regimes, and as such risk, are different between them.
      • lottin 4y ago
        I don't know that they have fewer regulations. Banking regulations follow the guidelines set by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and as a result are very much the same across the developed world. Also it's absolutely not true that looser regulations result in higher interest rates.
• datadata 4y ago
  Cheaper labor is sought, but also workers are capable of doing more and more productive work due to technology. The net is economic growth. Maybe I am an optimist, but generally things have gotten better. For example poverty globally has been plummeting. Given also this announcement is a new capability for how to get paid, not an impairment or obligation, I would hope it wouldn't have detrimental results.
  • hkt 4y ago
    I'm not sure about the rest of the world, but in the UK we have a woeful record of investing in anything new, at least in recent memory. Offshoring and outsourcing are both cheaper than doing anything new with technology, so companies do it whenever they can. Which is to say that, certainly for now, there's a conflict between technological progress and profit, because cheap labour is so reliable and de-risked compared to eg, creating new machines to automate a process that is currently outsourced. Risks include being undercut by cheap labour, too. All of which is to say, I don't share your optimism. Maybe there's a case to be made for global full employment being preferable to a highly automated economy, but that begs the question of how to make work itself less hostile to life.
• spraveenitpro 4y ago
• imtringued 4y ago
  If people prefer unregulated tokens over government managed tokens I don't see the problem. I am more worried about excessive tax complexity that getting paid in a foreign currency brings.
• RF_Savage 4y ago
  From what I understand from past discussions on HN, it is legitimately hard and convoluted to pay remote workers in Africa for example. Your bank might just not want to do it, or make it complicated. I recall Nigerians and Ethiopians mentioning how cryptocurrencies have allowed them to more easily work with western clients or employers. Kainda sad how all else is either hard to use or skimms too much off the top.
• hef19898 4y ago
  >> The future of work Heck, if the future of work is limited freelance gigs, without any workers rights and protection, and being paid in potentially worthless crypto tokens, it is a very ugly future.
• YetAnotherNick 4y ago
  I don't understand your reasoning. So you are saying paying privileged workers is better than paying underprivileged workers. Labor laws are non existent only because of economy. There hasn't been any country in history with good economy and bad labor conditions for citizens.
  • boh 4y ago
    You're right, China now has nets to catch their suicidal workers. "Privileged" worker? The cult of the robber baron really has spread its wings. Not everyone is willing to talk themself out of a livable wage and benefits, but you do you.
• birracerveza 4y ago
  You get paid in unregulated tokens which you can trade for hard cash money, if you so need. What's bad with having the option to do so?
• porsager 4y ago
  Or maybe everyone could have a more prosperous life, if we didn't have so many people, like you, scared of losing their priviledged positions, and using exploitation as an excuse to quell any potential competition. If you're so afraid anyone will get exploited, spend your time telling them how much you make, so they dare charge a bit more.
  • boh 4y ago
    It's amazing how cutting into corporate profits is now considered unethical. Educated people from first world countries wanting a living wage and benefits? How greedy of them. If there's one thing missing from every 10k it's how prosperous "everyone" is becoming.
    • porsager 4y ago
      Yes, indeed greedy.. > If there's one thing missing from every 10k it's how prosperous "everyone" is becoming. What does that even mean?
• from 4y ago
  I can assure you that most developers from the former Soviet Union would prefer USDC over their fake local currencies any day of the week.
• rabite 4y ago
  I am on my 12th year of virtually no access to the traditional financial system. I had all my bank and brokerage accounts killed with no suspension and no allowance to appeal. No bank will do business with me either on my Pridnestrovian passport. Your regulators are thieves and thugs and I don't trust them one bit. I have faith in Bitcoin, or things I can instantly convert to Bitcoin without your regulators interfering. Fiat currencies I need SWIFT or ACH to access are literally worthless to me as I have access to neither, and even if I did it would be a precarious situation that I have to worry about all my money disappearing in a Kafkaesque net of AML investigations from which it will never escape. Your sarcastic tone about "unregulated tokens" is exactly how everyone in my country views your worthless dollar.