4 ms·

I see no evidence of "exploitation" here. Somebody is employing Nigerians to do a boring job. What's wrong with that? It probably counts as a decent job over th

I see no evidence of "exploitation" here. Somebody is employing Nigerians to do a boring job. What's wrong with that? It probably counts as a decent job over there. Probably more fun (and ethical) than working at a call centre. Actually, thinking about it, it's probably not even that boring.

renewiltord 2y ago
Workers use that word when they can't use the word 'scab'. It's just a means for labour to control employment.
- barfbagginus 2y ago
  God forbid that labor would control itself
  - renewiltord 2y ago
    Of course everyone wants to assert power and control over things. Some groups of labour want to ensure that other labour cannot get compensated. That's a fundamental part of unionization: preventing others from working. I think it's good for us to talk about these as they are: power struggles between factions.
    - barfbagginus 2y ago
      Why you got to make workers rights sound sinister?
baron816 2y ago
Typical Leftist dribble from the Guardian. Pretty much any case of giving jobs to poor people is “exploitation”.
- everybodyknows 2y ago
  "Drivel" would be the word here. "Dribble" only makes sense if OP thinks the Guardian should have written more voluminously. Reference: https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=dribble&submit.x=75&submit.y=14 https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=dribble&submit.x... Or check out the scene in Burn After Reading where Frances McDormand confronts a Russian diplomat.
barfbagginus 2y ago
Well it's a shell game, right? On the one hand here's this huge valuation and future profit. On the other hand, the workers get just a small fraction of that value and still live in squalor. Is that where your billions come from? You comfortable with that? That's not how I run my company. You don't pay people less because you have them by the short and curlies of their own poverty. That is exploitive. You pay them a fair share of the value they're producing. The problem is that if corporations did this, if they stopped exploiting, if they paid a fair share, then those billions in valuation magically vanish. It's because the valuation was predicated on exploitation to begin with.
- dauertewigkeit 2y ago
  If you want to make an argument that employees are underpaid and don't capture enough of the wealth they generate, fine, I would agree with you. But this is not just true of Africans who are employed by Americans. This is almost the general case. I don't think invoking this debate in the context of lack of jobs in Africa, is useful. These are two completely different problems with different causes.
  - barfbagginus 2y ago
    It is an issue. They hire African workers because they can exploit them perhaps 3x or more than Western workers. For every unit of revenue they extract, they can pay the African workers 2/3 less let's say. Low cost of living means nothing when it also comes with low standard of living, caused by globalist exploitation in the first place. The globalist capitalists simply exploit the poverty of the final market to retain more of the revenue. They could try to exploit Western workers as mechanical Turks but their strategy would then fail. The strategy succeeds because the rate of exploitation of workers in impoverished countries - in terms of actual share of the real dollars produced - is much higher in the global South than the global West. Worse we're now all guilty and complicit, in using LLMs, and even in using open source llms train second hand on the unethically sourced llms. We will have to pay reparations. By making a false equivalence between the two worker classes, you potentially support the continued existence of the globalist hyper exploitation strategy, and prevent Justice for AI workers. You can speak out against it instead, act against companies who use it, and move towards understanding what reparations might entail. I think the exploitation of low-paid mechanical Turk style laborers is a real problem and we need to talk about it, rather than background it just because workers in the global West are exploited as well. True global worker solidarity means seeing this as a place where the iron is very hot and ready for striking. Finally, the scarcity of jobs in Africa is not a problem being seriously discussed here. It's being used as a red herring to justify exploitive investment.

renewiltord 2y ago

Workers use that word when they can't use the word 'scab'. It's just a means for labour to control employment.

barfbagginus 2y ago
God forbid that labor would control itself
- renewiltord 2y ago
  Of course everyone wants to assert power and control over things. Some groups of labour want to ensure that other labour cannot get compensated. That's a fundamental part of unionization: preventing others from working. I think it's good for us to talk about these as they are: power struggles between factions.
  - barfbagginus 2y ago
    Why you got to make workers rights sound sinister?

baron816 2y ago

Typical Leftist dribble from the Guardian. Pretty much any case of giving jobs to poor people is “exploitation”.

everybodyknows 2y ago
"Drivel" would be the word here. "Dribble" only makes sense if OP thinks the Guardian should have written more voluminously. Reference: https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=dribble&submit.x=75&submit.y=14 https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=dribble&submit.x... Or check out the scene in Burn After Reading where Frances McDormand confronts a Russian diplomat.

barfbagginus 2y ago

Well it's a shell game, right? On the one hand here's this huge valuation and future profit. On the other hand, the workers get just a small fraction of that value and still live in squalor. Is that where your billions come from? You comfortable with that? That's not how I run my company. You don't pay people less because you have them by the short and curlies of their own poverty. That is exploitive. You pay them a fair share of the value they're producing. The problem is that if corporations did this, if they stopped exploiting, if they paid a fair share, then those billions in valuation magically vanish. It's because the valuation was predicated on exploitation to begin with.

dauertewigkeit 2y ago
If you want to make an argument that employees are underpaid and don't capture enough of the wealth they generate, fine, I would agree with you. But this is not just true of Africans who are employed by Americans. This is almost the general case. I don't think invoking this debate in the context of lack of jobs in Africa, is useful. These are two completely different problems with different causes.
- barfbagginus 2y ago
  It is an issue. They hire African workers because they can exploit them perhaps 3x or more than Western workers. For every unit of revenue they extract, they can pay the African workers 2/3 less let's say. Low cost of living means nothing when it also comes with low standard of living, caused by globalist exploitation in the first place. The globalist capitalists simply exploit the poverty of the final market to retain more of the revenue. They could try to exploit Western workers as mechanical Turks but their strategy would then fail. The strategy succeeds because the rate of exploitation of workers in impoverished countries - in terms of actual share of the real dollars produced - is much higher in the global South than the global West. Worse we're now all guilty and complicit, in using LLMs, and even in using open source llms train second hand on the unethically sourced llms. We will have to pay reparations. By making a false equivalence between the two worker classes, you potentially support the continued existence of the globalist hyper exploitation strategy, and prevent Justice for AI workers. You can speak out against it instead, act against companies who use it, and move towards understanding what reparations might entail. I think the exploitation of low-paid mechanical Turk style laborers is a real problem and we need to talk about it, rather than background it just because workers in the global West are exploited as well. True global worker solidarity means seeing this as a place where the iron is very hot and ready for striking. Finally, the scarcity of jobs in Africa is not a problem being seriously discussed here. It's being used as a red herring to justify exploitive investment.