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Just curious, why would you expect him to be paid less? I know historically pay is bad for prisoners, but if he's working the same hours and is just as producti

by laufey 1y ago

Just curious, why would you expect him to be paid less? I know historically pay is bad for prisoners, but if he's working the same hours and is just as productive as any other employee, shouldn't he be paid the same? I could potentially see paying someone less if they were coming in with much less experience than what's usually hired for in the role, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

the__alchemist 1y ago
I speculate: Supply and demand. He doesn't have many options, so doesn't have leverage in negotiating.
chatmasta 1y ago
Well that’s basically what I’m wondering. Is this a normal employment arrangement - subject to same state payroll tax, labor laws, employee rights, etc - with the additional detail that he resides in prison? Or does the employer need to go through some gateway enforced by the prison with maximum compensation or other restrictions? But otherwise, in terms of why he’d default to being paid less… yes, what the other commenter said: supply and demand, aka leverage. Turso could choose to be a good citizen and pay him the same as any other employee, but that’s subject to all the questions I posed above, regarding the structural requirements placed on them as the employer.
- glommer 1y ago
  I am the CEO of Turso. We are free to negotiate any salary we want with him, the prison system doesn't put any caps, up or down. We are paying him well, and certainly not trying to enslave him or anything. There are some restrictions on how the payments are made but not the amount. We also don't pay him healthcare, because he wouldn't be able to use it.
koakuma-chan 1y ago
I assume he doesn't have to pay rent while in prison and gets free meals, so unless they take some of his income, he might actually be doing pretty good.
wffurr 1y ago
The 13th amendment specifically allows slavery of prisoners. Edit: I don’t mean to imply the author isn’t paid fairly by Turso. A few posts down, the CEO of Turso asserts that they do pay fairly. The OP in this thread might reasonably wonder about this because several states do in fact use prisoners as unpaid slave labor.
- mkoubaa 1y ago
  If I was a prisoner one day I think I'd rather spend my days in slave labor than weird ethno-status games.
- code_for_monkey 1y ago
  finally, someone who took a humanities class!
  - shermantanktop 1y ago
    There are dozens of us. Dozens!
    - code_for_monkey 1y ago
      hacker news: a collection of the smartest tech minds on the internet, but only for code!
- pyuser583 1y ago
  It's unclear whether the carve out for prisoners applies to just "involuntary servitude" or "slavery and involuntary servitude." In practice, only "involuntary servitude" has been used. "Community service" - unpaid - is a very common low level sentence. The eighth and fourteenth amendments almost certainly forbid enslavement - permanently becoming human property - as a criminal sentence. Even before the 13th amendment, enslavement as a punishment not common, if it happened at all. There is almost no case law on the 13th amendment. There are no legal slaves in the US today, and there have not been since the 19th century.
TheGrumpyBrit 1y ago
You can make the exact same argument about employers paying different rates depending on the country the employee is based in, and for all the same reasons. Is there a good reason why a developer in Thailand or India should be paid less than their colleague who works on the same team, but is based in the US? Many companies believe so - there's a significant difference in the cost of living between those two employees, and employers believe it is fair to adjust the salary to provide a similar quality of life to both. Equally, a person incarcerated in New York City doesn't have the same living costs as a person who has to live in New York City, so you could reasonably argue that any "Cost of living premium" that a company offers to NYC based employees doesn't need to apply to a person who doesn't experience those higher costs.
- koakuma-chan 1y ago
  > and employers believe it is fair to adjust the salary to provide a similar quality of life to both That's bullshit. E.g. electronics cost the same in all countries.
  - dylan604 1y ago
    Actually, no they don't. With various forms of VAT and tariffs, things definitely do not cost the same in all countries.
    - koakuma-chan 1y ago
      The point is that they are definitely not cheaper than in the US
      - dylan604 1y ago
        Is that true still? I don't go searching prices in foreign markets, but something like the RPi being a UK piece of kit seems like it would now be more expensive in the US compared to UK simply based on recent tariffs being applied.
      - SomeUserName432 1y ago
code_for_monkey 1y ago
I guess if you look at pay as solely a result of 'work done' you'd come to this conclusion, and it should work this way, but really its got more to do with the relationship between employer and employee. A person in prison has a very different legal status than someone who doesnt and they do tend to get paid less.
komali2 1y ago
> but if he's working the same hours and is just as productive as any other employee, shouldn't he be paid the same? He should, but the median salary of engineers in Taiwan is like, 40,000 USD, vs SF which is 160,000 USD. Or London, if one wants to argue something about English language ability or whatever, is 80,000 USD. Literally half that of SF. Salaries aren't determined by labor value, they're determined by how well employers can collude in a region to get the lowest possible rate while still being able to hire people. Thus they somewhat tend to correlate with cost of living, but not really, e.g. see London vs SF vs NYC. All correlations are used as excuses, when the core, real, reason always comes down to, employers will pay as little as they can get away with. This annoyed me enough that I started a co-op about it, and we're doing pretty well. I'm still annoyed though. Apparently glommer, the CEO, pays him "full salary" (market rate?), which makes them a good person, but a bad capitalist. They could easily pay basically a slave wage and leverage this dude's ingrained passion for programming to get huge output for almost nothing - that's what the rest of the industry merrily does.
- gruez 1y ago
  >Salaries aren't determined by labor value, In a free market, very little is determined by its "value". Clean drinking water costs pennies, but its value is far higher. People in developing countries routinely spend hours a day getting clean water, which works out to a price far higher than even bottled water from for-profit companies. >they're determined by how well employers can collude in a region to get the lowest possible rate while still being able to hire people. Thus they somewhat tend to correlate with cost of living, but not really, e.g. see London vs SF vs NYC. Is there any evidence there's more collusion happening in London? >employers will pay as little as they can get away with. You're making it sound like this is some sort of profound insight, or that companies are being extra dishonorable by doing this, but literally everyone in an economy is trying to pay "pay as little as they can get away with". When was the last time you tipped a gas station?
- Ray20 1y ago
  > they're determined by how well employers can collude in a region to get the lowest possible rate Colluding is only one of the factors that influencing the demand for labor. Moreover, in most regions it is a rather insignificant factor. Typically, this is the degree of economic freedom, protection of investments and capitals, the level of regulation and the tax burden in the region, not the degree of colluding. > good person, but a bad capitalist. Capitalism is not about evaluative characteristics, but about descriptive ones. It is not "bad capitalists pay a lot, good ones pay the minimum", but about "people tend to pay minimum, so to pay the minimum is expected behavior of capitalists"
whywhywhywhy 1y ago
>but if he's working the same hours and is just as productive as any other employee, shouldn't he be paid the same? Why would the salaries all bump up to big American city salaries instead of resting somewhere in the lowest range worldwide? If we purely judge work completed. If you're a remote worker your competition is the world not people in the major city the company is based in.
blks 1y ago
Because US constitution forbids slavery except as a punishment. A lot of prisoners doing labour right now are compensated literally pennies.
Ray20 1y ago
Because the level of payment almost always depends on the level of competition for a particular person's work. When you're in prison, there's practically no competition for your work. So it's expected that he'll be paid much less.

by laufey 1y ago

the__alchemist 1y ago

I speculate: Supply and demand. He doesn't have many options, so doesn't have leverage in negotiating.

chatmasta 1y ago

Well that’s basically what I’m wondering. Is this a normal employment arrangement - subject to same state payroll tax, labor laws, employee rights, etc - with the additional detail that he resides in prison? Or does the employer need to go through some gateway enforced by the prison with maximum compensation or other restrictions? But otherwise, in terms of why he’d default to being paid less… yes, what the other commenter said: supply and demand, aka leverage. Turso could choose to be a good citizen and pay him the same as any other employee, but that’s subject to all the questions I posed above, regarding the structural requirements placed on them as the employer.

glommer 1y ago
I am the CEO of Turso. We are free to negotiate any salary we want with him, the prison system doesn't put any caps, up or down. We are paying him well, and certainly not trying to enslave him or anything. There are some restrictions on how the payments are made but not the amount. We also don't pay him healthcare, because he wouldn't be able to use it.

koakuma-chan 1y ago

I assume he doesn't have to pay rent while in prison and gets free meals, so unless they take some of his income, he might actually be doing pretty good.

wffurr 1y ago

The 13th amendment specifically allows slavery of prisoners. Edit: I don’t mean to imply the author isn’t paid fairly by Turso. A few posts down, the CEO of Turso asserts that they do pay fairly. The OP in this thread might reasonably wonder about this because several states do in fact use prisoners as unpaid slave labor.

mkoubaa 1y ago
If I was a prisoner one day I think I'd rather spend my days in slave labor than weird ethno-status games.
code_for_monkey 1y ago
finally, someone who took a humanities class!
- shermantanktop 1y ago
  There are dozens of us. Dozens!
  - code_for_monkey 1y ago
    hacker news: a collection of the smartest tech minds on the internet, but only for code!
pyuser583 1y ago
It's unclear whether the carve out for prisoners applies to just "involuntary servitude" or "slavery and involuntary servitude." In practice, only "involuntary servitude" has been used. "Community service" - unpaid - is a very common low level sentence. The eighth and fourteenth amendments almost certainly forbid enslavement - permanently becoming human property - as a criminal sentence. Even before the 13th amendment, enslavement as a punishment not common, if it happened at all. There is almost no case law on the 13th amendment. There are no legal slaves in the US today, and there have not been since the 19th century.

TheGrumpyBrit 1y ago

You can make the exact same argument about employers paying different rates depending on the country the employee is based in, and for all the same reasons. Is there a good reason why a developer in Thailand or India should be paid less than their colleague who works on the same team, but is based in the US? Many companies believe so - there's a significant difference in the cost of living between those two employees, and employers believe it is fair to adjust the salary to provide a similar quality of life to both. Equally, a person incarcerated in New York City doesn't have the same living costs as a person who has to live in New York City, so you could reasonably argue that any "Cost of living premium" that a company offers to NYC based employees doesn't need to apply to a person who doesn't experience those higher costs.

koakuma-chan 1y ago
> and employers believe it is fair to adjust the salary to provide a similar quality of life to both That's bullshit. E.g. electronics cost the same in all countries.
- dylan604 1y ago
  Actually, no they don't. With various forms of VAT and tariffs, things definitely do not cost the same in all countries.
  - koakuma-chan 1y ago
    The point is that they are definitely not cheaper than in the US
    - dylan604 1y ago
      Is that true still? I don't go searching prices in foreign markets, but something like the RPi being a UK piece of kit seems like it would now be more expensive in the US compared to UK simply based on recent tariffs being applied.
    - SomeUserName432 1y ago

code_for_monkey 1y ago

I guess if you look at pay as solely a result of 'work done' you'd come to this conclusion, and it should work this way, but really its got more to do with the relationship between employer and employee. A person in prison has a very different legal status than someone who doesnt and they do tend to get paid less.

komali2 1y ago

> but if he's working the same hours and is just as productive as any other employee, shouldn't he be paid the same? He should, but the median salary of engineers in Taiwan is like, 40,000 USD, vs SF which is 160,000 USD. Or London, if one wants to argue something about English language ability or whatever, is 80,000 USD. Literally half that of SF. Salaries aren't determined by labor value, they're determined by how well employers can collude in a region to get the lowest possible rate while still being able to hire people. Thus they somewhat tend to correlate with cost of living, but not really, e.g. see London vs SF vs NYC. All correlations are used as excuses, when the core, real, reason always comes down to, employers will pay as little as they can get away with. This annoyed me enough that I started a co-op about it, and we're doing pretty well. I'm still annoyed though. Apparently glommer, the CEO, pays him "full salary" (market rate?), which makes them a good person, but a bad capitalist. They could easily pay basically a slave wage and leverage this dude's ingrained passion for programming to get huge output for almost nothing - that's what the rest of the industry merrily does.

gruez 1y ago
>Salaries aren't determined by labor value, In a free market, very little is determined by its "value". Clean drinking water costs pennies, but its value is far higher. People in developing countries routinely spend hours a day getting clean water, which works out to a price far higher than even bottled water from for-profit companies. >they're determined by how well employers can collude in a region to get the lowest possible rate while still being able to hire people. Thus they somewhat tend to correlate with cost of living, but not really, e.g. see London vs SF vs NYC. Is there any evidence there's more collusion happening in London? >employers will pay as little as they can get away with. You're making it sound like this is some sort of profound insight, or that companies are being extra dishonorable by doing this, but literally everyone in an economy is trying to pay "pay as little as they can get away with". When was the last time you tipped a gas station?
Ray20 1y ago
> they're determined by how well employers can collude in a region to get the lowest possible rate Colluding is only one of the factors that influencing the demand for labor. Moreover, in most regions it is a rather insignificant factor. Typically, this is the degree of economic freedom, protection of investments and capitals, the level of regulation and the tax burden in the region, not the degree of colluding. > good person, but a bad capitalist. Capitalism is not about evaluative characteristics, but about descriptive ones. It is not "bad capitalists pay a lot, good ones pay the minimum", but about "people tend to pay minimum, so to pay the minimum is expected behavior of capitalists"

whywhywhywhy 1y ago

>but if he's working the same hours and is just as productive as any other employee, shouldn't he be paid the same? Why would the salaries all bump up to big American city salaries instead of resting somewhere in the lowest range worldwide? If we purely judge work completed. If you're a remote worker your competition is the world not people in the major city the company is based in.

blks 1y ago

Because US constitution forbids slavery except as a punishment. A lot of prisoners doing labour right now are compensated literally pennies.

Ray20 1y ago

Because the level of payment almost always depends on the level of competition for a particular person's work. When you're in prison, there's practically no competition for your work. So it's expected that he'll be paid much less.