6 ms·
This takes me to my childhood. My dad was an electrical engineer in India and worked at a ship repair dockyard. He once came back with a few shelves and cabinet
by tathagatadg 2y ago
This takes me to my childhood. My dad was an electrical engineer in India and worked at a ship repair dockyard. He once came back with a few shelves and cabinets for our kitchen. These were taken out of ships that were getting cut up in their dockyard. They were complete mismatches in aesthetics but it did not matter to his "why waste such functional ..." attitude. He was excited about what his "workers" could salvage from the ship. Mom didn't care as this was an old house where we have been living for generations and functionality trumped aesthetics.
The most intriguing part to me was the wooden cabinet was painted white with something stencil printed in green. My best guess was that was a Cyrillic script, and about twenty five years back, it wasn't easy to decipher what they meant.
Those cabinets are still hanging in our old house. Next time I'm there, all I need to do is pull up my phone and translate that text and get a kick out of what the original intention was for the sailors and what my mom is storing in it!
- Waterluvian 2y agoI can only imagine the conditions his "workers" worked in back then given how poor the conditions still are today. I think scenes from ship breaking, electronics recycling, and other recycling efforts sent overseas could fit in, as-is, to a film like Blade Runner.
- boringg 2y agoThose industries don't pay well to anyone involved but are a global benefit. Such a strange world we live in.
- almostgotcaught 2y agoIs there a word for this specific kind of ambivalence where you label a pitiable, miserable set of circumstances "strange"? As if it's on the same level as the strong nuclear force? Maybe "motivated ambivalence". There's nothing strange about it just as there's nothing strange about cobalt mining conditions in Democratic Republic of Congo: exploitative trade agreements, political corruption, and apathy.
- byteknight 2y agoJust because you don't think its strange doesn't mean others don't. Strange is subjective. If he feels its odd we willfully ignore it, then its strange.
- vasco 2y agoUsing "strange" instead of "bad" to me indicates someone has enough maturity to recognize that human nature is part of nature, which is gnarly and creates bad things like humans setting up incentives without having to necessarily classify humans or the universe as bad. Is it bad when a lion kills another animal? In a way yes, it's extra death that could be preventable, in another way it's what it is. Is it strange or bad if a human is born dumber than average? What about if a human is born more narcissistic than average and does bad things? It leaves open the possibility of you the writer also being wrong, so it comes across as humbly sharing an opinion.
- frutiger 2y ago> Is it strange or bad if a human is born dumber than average? And by definition, 50% of babies are.
- almostgotcaught 2y ago> has enough maturity to recognize that human nature is part of nature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy
- vasco 2y agoI literally didnt define it as good. Maybe read again. I said it isnt good or bad, its nature, its what it is. Ironic that while explaining why using "bad" to qualify nature is not appropriate you think im saying its good.
- almostgotcaught 2y agoi'm sorry that you don't have the patience to read a wikipedia article > Some people use the phrase, naturalistic fallacy or appeal to nature, in a different sense, to characterize inferences of the form "Something is natural; therefore, it is morally acceptable"
- s1artibartfast 2y agoWhy is that strange? At no time in history have jobs paid according to their benefit.
- throw10920 2y agoIt's not actually strange - GP is just using that word to emotionally manipulate readers.
- vasco 2y agoTo manipulate readers into realizing that industry doesn't pay their workers well?
- s1artibartfast 2y agobasically. To manipulating the reader into thinking that workers being paid well or according to their "benefit" is the natural, logistical, or otherwise expected outcome. It is an attempt to switch the roles between what the conventional, familiar, and safe what is unconventional, weird, and strange. Paying workers according to "benefit" is not tried and true. It has real challenges and problems.
- throw10920 2y agoI don't think it's wrong to pay workers according to the value they provide. It's just not normal (again, not necessarily a good thing), so use of the word "strange" is inaccurate - in addition to being a manipulative use of the word (it's pretty clear that the writer doesn't actually think it's strange, and is using the word to tug on heart strings).
- throw10920 2y agoHN is not an advocacy platform, so manipulative comments, like boringg's, and yours, are not appreciated.
- 2y ago
- paxys 2y ago"Paying well" is relative. There are lots of industries that are rightly considered exploitative from the western eye, but people who are working these jobs would otherwise be starving or relying on meager government handouts if they went away.
- fennecbutt 2y agoOnly because we let 1% take from us and are easily distracted by petty race, sexuality, gender, immigration squabbles. The rich often pay 0% tax but we're still doing nothing about it. We'll never do anything about it.
- teachrdan 2y agoThis is plainly true. But there is a middle ground between "the least amount of money workers will accept before choosing to starve instead" and "so much money it's no longer economical to pay workers to do." I have no idea what the case was in this specific industry in India. But in many developing countries, first world companies collaborate with government and pay off private muscle to make it impossible for workers to organize and earn anything in that middle ground. (I do not mean to imply that you deny this possibility. But there are many on HN who uncritically believe that if workers take a job, it is therefore a fair wage taken voluntarily.)
- FireBeyond 2y ago> (I do not mean to imply that you deny this possibility. But there are many on HN who uncritically believe that if workers take a job, it is therefore a fair wage taken voluntarily.) Reminds me of the Libertarian Police Department (https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertarian-police-department https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertari...): > "Do we have any leads?” > “Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.” > “Easy, chief,” I said. “-Any- rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.” > He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
- eru 2y ago
- ornornor 2y agoNot trying to defend this kind of practices, it just reminds me of something I watched recently about the working conditions in the Victorian era in a UK cotton mill… Atrocious and exploitative by all current standards, and yet people chose this over more traditional agricultural occupations because it paid better, weekly, and there was no uncertainty that you’ll lose an entire season of wages because the harvest was bad. And yet they were working 72h a week, had indentured child labour, average life expectancy was something like 40 years old, injuries and loss of fingers or limbs were regularly occurring.