7 ms·

They are working for money, often in jobs paying more than others in their local economy, when they otherwise wouldn't be.

ceejayoz 5mo ago
Arbeit macht frei!
- satvikpendem 5mo ago
  Ah yes, people working for money, often more than they could make in other jobs in the local economy, is now slavery or concentration camp level conditions. I wish people here would actually live in a second or third world country before saying things like this from the comfort of their air conditioned house.
  - ceejayoz 5mo ago
    Slavery would still be slavery if you got paid $0.01/day, so there's clearly some kind of threshold we all have for "good, fairly compensated work".
    - satvikpendem 5mo ago
      If your local economy pays you $0.001/day instead, then congratulations, you now make 10x more than everyone else. It doesn't matter how much a dollar is worth elsewhere in the world, because purchasing power parity exists. It's like me being mad that on a hypothetical Mars people make a million dollars a day, that does not affect me whatsoever.
      - ceejayoz 5mo ago
        > If your local economy pays you $0.001/day instead, then congratulations, you now make 10x more than everyone else. Sure. The kapos at concentration camps got better food and treatment, too. That doesn't make it a fair, happy, or good arrangement.
        satvikpendem 5mo ago
        I'm not going to continue with someone like you who'd equate concentration camp contidions to working in a factory. It is simply highly disrespectful to those who've actually lived through or died in them. Have a good day.
        ceejayoz 5mo ago
        > equate concentration camp contidions to working in a factory Oh no, not accurately stating history! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labour_under_German_rule_during_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labour_under_German_rul... > The use of slave and forced labour in Nazi Germany (German: Zwangsarbeit) and throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II took place on an unprecedented scale. It was a vital part of the German economic exploitation of conquered territories. It also contributed to the mass extermination of populations in occupied Europe. Titrating the nastiness of it from "will definitely kill you" to "will make you die miserable, broke, and broken" isn't, IMO, a great fix. People are not required to be satisfied with a tiny pittance just because it's more than their neighbor has.
        satvikpendem 5mo ago
        Not sure what you're talking about, I explicitly said those are concentration camp conditions, so obviously yes Nazis murdered many people while making them work in factories. Seems like you think I think they didn't. But modern factory conditions are nowhere near what that regime did. If you want to know, work in a factory. That is what I mean by not equating concentration camp contidions to working in a modern factory.
        ceejayoz 5mo ago
        > But modern factory conditions are nowhere near what that regime did. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53481253 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53481253 > Reports by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and the US Congress, among others, have found that thousands of Uighurs have been transferred to work in factories across China, under conditions the ASPI report said "strongly suggest forced labour". It linked those factories to more than 80 high-profile brands, including Nike, Apple and Gap. > China, which is believed to have detained more than one million Uighurs in internment camps in Xinjiang, has described its programmes - which reportedly include forced sterilisation - as job training and education.
      - miyoji 5mo ago
        This isn't the question. The question is how much value do they add? If it's more than the money they're making, the people paying them are stealing. You don't like this because it makes it impossible to make money as a capitalist, but that's the entire argument. Making money as a capitalist is always unethical, because it necessarily involves stealing the value of someone else's labor. Just because you can pay someone $1 to do something that makes you $10 doesn't mean it's ethical. It isn't, ever.
        satvikpendem 5mo ago
        Not everyone subscribes to the labor theory of value, so I question your premise fundamentally.
        miyoji 5mo ago
        There is no labor theory of value, only a value theory of labor. It's funny though, I hadn't read a word of Marx but the first time I understood that I was being paid $15/hr to make websites for a guy who was charging his clients $100 for that same hour of my work, I immediately understood everything about it and its innate truth. I got into the business myself and figured out exactly what value the CEO and the salespeople were bringing, and let me tell you, brother, it wasn't $85. It wasn't even $15. You can call it whatever you want, but you will never convince me that guy wasn't stealing money from me.
        satvikpendem 5mo ago
        It is an economic term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value > I got into the business myself Exactly, as capitalism intends. If you don't want to make employee wages then you take on the risk and capital and do it yourself, and are thus rewarded for it. Ironic, if you were actually a socialist you would've tried to help your fellow workers but you instead are the capitalist now.
        miyoji 5mo ago
      - GTP 5mo ago
        Let's make a concrete example. I'm from Italy, currently living abroad. The salary I was getting where I am now, was almost double what I was offered in my home country. We're told that the cost of living in Italy is also lower than other EU countries. While this is true, it isn't half of the rest of the EU. I'm now in a situation where I could go back to Italy, but the above is one of the reasons that makes me doubt wheter it would be a good outcome or not. This is to answer your point about purchasing power. With an Italian salary (considering the same tech job), my purchasing power there would still be lower than my purchasing power here with a local salary.
        satvikpendem 5mo ago
        Yes, it can go both ways depending on the specific purchasing power, I never said otherwise, just my point that in many areas of Asia where factories are, people make way more than their local economy even if it might be less than the US.
- zeroonetwothree 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  - ceejayoz 5mo ago
    Say Nazi shit, get compared to Nazis. Per Godwin himself! Call it his second law. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/19/godwins-law-trump-hitler-00132427 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/19/godwins-la...
- sophrosyne42 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  - ceejayoz 5mo ago
    I will accept that, in context (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48531429 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48531429), as high praise.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
lkjdsklf 5mo ago
It’s still exploitative. The point is that the “gains” are overwhelmingly absorbed by the top. There’s no reason they couldn’t pay them a much bigger share of the profits and raise up that entire part of the world. But yet, they don’t. Because that would cost them some of their own wealth. I’m not even saying it should be equally distributed. The disparity is insane right now though.
- csallen 5mo ago
  > There’s no reason they couldn’t pay them a much bigger share... Why should they pay more than market worth? When you go shop at a store, do you pay double the price tag just because you can? No, you don't, because that would cost you more of your wealth. Does the average person in a first-world country donate half their wealth to the average person in a second-world countries? Does the average person in a second world country donate half their wealth to the average person in a third world country? No, and no. It's not really a common thing in human nature to give up a lot of what we have in order to support those who are less fortunate. You might say that's sad, but imo it's still a fact. What is curious about human nature is how, despite this lack of behavior on our own part, we expect those who have more than us to give us what they have. Market wages and prices are fairly set, largely due to supply and demand. > The disparity is insane right now though The disparity is better than ever imo. I'd rather live in this time period than any other, thanks to technology, which is a great equalizer. It provides amazing quality of life improvements across so many areas, from education and healthcare to entertainment and food; then capitalistic competition absolutely demolishes the costs of this tech, to the point where prohibitively expensive tech becomes affordable to billions. Today, a middle class person can eat a cheeseburger that's just as good as what Bill Gates is eating, drive a car that's 99% as good as his, travel to the same places he travels to, wear clothes that are just as good as his, read the same books, watch movies, listen to the same music, go to the same plays, etc. The rich sit in slightly bigger chairs, enjoy slightly shorter waits, and many other improvements that historically would've been considered negligible compared to the gaps between kings and peasants, nobility and servants, owners and slaves, rich and poor. In fact, the richest are having to resort to paying insane prices for useless luxury goods and brand names just to differentiate themselves. Or paying outrageous sums for luxury toys like yachts and planes that most wouldn't even want.

ceejayoz 5mo ago

Arbeit macht frei!

satvikpendem 5mo ago
Ah yes, people working for money, often more than they could make in other jobs in the local economy, is now slavery or concentration camp level conditions. I wish people here would actually live in a second or third world country before saying things like this from the comfort of their air conditioned house.
- ceejayoz 5mo ago
  Slavery would still be slavery if you got paid $0.01/day, so there's clearly some kind of threshold we all have for "good, fairly compensated work".
  - satvikpendem 5mo ago
    If your local economy pays you $0.001/day instead, then congratulations, you now make 10x more than everyone else. It doesn't matter how much a dollar is worth elsewhere in the world, because purchasing power parity exists. It's like me being mad that on a hypothetical Mars people make a million dollars a day, that does not affect me whatsoever.
    - ceejayoz 5mo ago
      > If your local economy pays you $0.001/day instead, then congratulations, you now make 10x more than everyone else. Sure. The kapos at concentration camps got better food and treatment, too. That doesn't make it a fair, happy, or good arrangement.
      - satvikpendem 5mo ago
        I'm not going to continue with someone like you who'd equate concentration camp contidions to working in a factory. It is simply highly disrespectful to those who've actually lived through or died in them. Have a good day.
        ceejayoz 5mo ago
        > equate concentration camp contidions to working in a factory Oh no, not accurately stating history! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labour_under_German_rule_during_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labour_under_German_rul... > The use of slave and forced labour in Nazi Germany (German: Zwangsarbeit) and throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II took place on an unprecedented scale. It was a vital part of the German economic exploitation of conquered territories. It also contributed to the mass extermination of populations in occupied Europe. Titrating the nastiness of it from "will definitely kill you" to "will make you die miserable, broke, and broken" isn't, IMO, a great fix. People are not required to be satisfied with a tiny pittance just because it's more than their neighbor has.
        satvikpendem 5mo ago
        Not sure what you're talking about, I explicitly said those are concentration camp conditions, so obviously yes Nazis murdered many people while making them work in factories. Seems like you think I think they didn't. But modern factory conditions are nowhere near what that regime did. If you want to know, work in a factory. That is what I mean by not equating concentration camp contidions to working in a modern factory.
        ceejayoz 5mo ago
        > But modern factory conditions are nowhere near what that regime did. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53481253 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53481253 > Reports by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and the US Congress, among others, have found that thousands of Uighurs have been transferred to work in factories across China, under conditions the ASPI report said "strongly suggest forced labour". It linked those factories to more than 80 high-profile brands, including Nike, Apple and Gap. > China, which is believed to have detained more than one million Uighurs in internment camps in Xinjiang, has described its programmes - which reportedly include forced sterilisation - as job training and education.
    - miyoji 5mo ago
      This isn't the question. The question is how much value do they add? If it's more than the money they're making, the people paying them are stealing. You don't like this because it makes it impossible to make money as a capitalist, but that's the entire argument. Making money as a capitalist is always unethical, because it necessarily involves stealing the value of someone else's labor. Just because you can pay someone $1 to do something that makes you $10 doesn't mean it's ethical. It isn't, ever.
      - satvikpendem 5mo ago
        Not everyone subscribes to the labor theory of value, so I question your premise fundamentally.
        miyoji 5mo ago
        There is no labor theory of value, only a value theory of labor. It's funny though, I hadn't read a word of Marx but the first time I understood that I was being paid $15/hr to make websites for a guy who was charging his clients $100 for that same hour of my work, I immediately understood everything about it and its innate truth. I got into the business myself and figured out exactly what value the CEO and the salespeople were bringing, and let me tell you, brother, it wasn't $85. It wasn't even $15. You can call it whatever you want, but you will never convince me that guy wasn't stealing money from me.
        satvikpendem 5mo ago
        It is an economic term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value > I got into the business myself Exactly, as capitalism intends. If you don't want to make employee wages then you take on the risk and capital and do it yourself, and are thus rewarded for it. Ironic, if you were actually a socialist you would've tried to help your fellow workers but you instead are the capitalist now.
        miyoji 5mo ago
    - GTP 5mo ago
      Let's make a concrete example. I'm from Italy, currently living abroad. The salary I was getting where I am now, was almost double what I was offered in my home country. We're told that the cost of living in Italy is also lower than other EU countries. While this is true, it isn't half of the rest of the EU. I'm now in a situation where I could go back to Italy, but the above is one of the reasons that makes me doubt wheter it would be a good outcome or not. This is to answer your point about purchasing power. With an Italian salary (considering the same tech job), my purchasing power there would still be lower than my purchasing power here with a local salary.
      - satvikpendem 5mo ago
        Yes, it can go both ways depending on the specific purchasing power, I never said otherwise, just my point that in many areas of Asia where factories are, people make way more than their local economy even if it might be less than the US.
zeroonetwothree 5mo ago
[flagged]
- ceejayoz 5mo ago
  Say Nazi shit, get compared to Nazis. Per Godwin himself! Call it his second law. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/19/godwins-law-trump-hitler-00132427 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/19/godwins-la...
sophrosyne42 5mo ago
[flagged]
- ceejayoz 5mo ago
  I will accept that, in context (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48531429 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48531429), as high praise.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

lkjdsklf 5mo ago

It’s still exploitative. The point is that the “gains” are overwhelmingly absorbed by the top. There’s no reason they couldn’t pay them a much bigger share of the profits and raise up that entire part of the world. But yet, they don’t. Because that would cost them some of their own wealth. I’m not even saying it should be equally distributed. The disparity is insane right now though.

csallen 5mo ago
> There’s no reason they couldn’t pay them a much bigger share... Why should they pay more than market worth? When you go shop at a store, do you pay double the price tag just because you can? No, you don't, because that would cost you more of your wealth. Does the average person in a first-world country donate half their wealth to the average person in a second-world countries? Does the average person in a second world country donate half their wealth to the average person in a third world country? No, and no. It's not really a common thing in human nature to give up a lot of what we have in order to support those who are less fortunate. You might say that's sad, but imo it's still a fact. What is curious about human nature is how, despite this lack of behavior on our own part, we expect those who have more than us to give us what they have. Market wages and prices are fairly set, largely due to supply and demand. > The disparity is insane right now though The disparity is better than ever imo. I'd rather live in this time period than any other, thanks to technology, which is a great equalizer. It provides amazing quality of life improvements across so many areas, from education and healthcare to entertainment and food; then capitalistic competition absolutely demolishes the costs of this tech, to the point where prohibitively expensive tech becomes affordable to billions. Today, a middle class person can eat a cheeseburger that's just as good as what Bill Gates is eating, drive a car that's 99% as good as his, travel to the same places he travels to, wear clothes that are just as good as his, read the same books, watch movies, listen to the same music, go to the same plays, etc. The rich sit in slightly bigger chairs, enjoy slightly shorter waits, and many other improvements that historically would've been considered negligible compared to the gaps between kings and peasants, nobility and servants, owners and slaves, rich and poor. In fact, the richest are having to resort to paying insane prices for useless luxury goods and brand names just to differentiate themselves. Or paying outrageous sums for luxury toys like yachts and planes that most wouldn't even want.