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Comment by guard-of-terra | Hacker News Reader

> It would be sensible to sacrifice the well-being of a small group in order to save the whole

Why then we don't revert to capturing slaves in poor countries and have them "save the whole" (like, recycle garbage by manual labour) while working 18 hr/day?

We can surely sacrifice their well-being in order to save the world for us, can't we?

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From a strictly utilitarian point of view, we could go with "because it's impossible". Enslaving one group would only make things slightly easier for everyone else. In an alternate universe where we actually could solve huge problems by enslaving Belgium for three years then it might be worth it. I might even volunteer to help do the work.

Saving the world by exploiting Tesla factory workers seems equally impossible.

Yes, that's true, it's very unlikely it helps Tesla much in the first place. But if it could be done it would at least be worth having a discussion about the pros and cons.

I think the solution here is Human Rights and also Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative.

You can't use people as slaves unless situation is so that everybody has to become slave. Also, you can't use people as a tool (without their consent).

There's not much to discuss. We've been there already with Hitler's Work Camps and Stalin's GULAG Camps.

> You can't use people as slaves unless situation is so that everybody has to become slave. Also, you can't use people as a tool (without their consent).

> There's not much to discuss.

Since it's just an unrealistic though experiment, I wouldn't dismiss out of hand the idea of "enslaving" everyone for a short time for some kind of amazing outcome.

> We've been there already with Hitler's Work Camps and Stalin's GULAG Camps.

Ha. No. Neither of those gave enormous benefits to the world. And they killed people, not just put them through unpleasant working conditions. Completely noncomparable.

Well, Stalin used GULAG to dig river channels (Moscow channel for example), design planes and rockets. He just replaced HR department with arrest squads.

One can argue he had quite similar result in mind to the proposed electric-vechicle-enabling indentured servitude.

I don't think it would be excusable even if he avoided killing people while defaulting to raping and beating the crap out of them.

It's odd to get these extreme responses when I went out of my way to say that this behavior is wrong and they should change it.

I'm not defending Tesla's behavior. I'm just pointing out that it's not inherently contradictory.

Because the post you originally responded to was contrasting Tesla's (alleged) treatment of its employees with its save-the-world ethos in order to question the sincerity of the latter.

By adding the "if necessary" bit you turned it into a trolley problem which misses the point entirely.

It uses an extreme example to illustrate how the two are not contradictory. But you're right, I should have just gone straight for pointing out that they're not connected.

This is a very good point.

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