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Comment by viach | Hacker News Reader

>> Loot of course takes many forms, gold, silvers, the work of serfs, the work of slaves

Gas, oil, fresh air, ...

And cheap labour in countries with lower worker/human right standards

Low paying jobs in developing economies have to be considered in the context of existing alternatives. If a Vietnamese rice farmer's son previously had only daily hours of backbreaking labor to look forward to on his father's paddies for what amounts to a dollar worth of earnings per day (only paid when they can finally sell the rice after many weeks of toiling) and then one day American McShoe Factory opens in the nearest city offering 3 dollars a day paid biweekly, this is a move up in the world. He'd willingly redirect his physical capacity for the job and trade it voluntarily for the money. Is this ideal? No, and to the labor market sensibilities of people in developed countries it could be seen as "looting" of workers but in relative terms, it's a previously unavailable, voluntarily chosen improvement for the farmer's son.

Yes, human rights have to be seriously improved in many countries and many companies offering jobs in developing markets really need to clean up their worker rights standards, but on a fundamental level, we can't simply compare a given economic change to our ideal of how things should be (because ideals are not limited by any practical constraints). We have to compare it to existing and previous alternatives.

I love this kind of reply.

To me it's like that rabbit duck optical illusion[1]: when seen one way it seems reasonable, even almost inevitable, and then it suddenly flips and sounds like smarmy weasel words excusing exploitation.

Here's my suggestion, why not pay the former rice paddy worker 50$/day and improve human rights at the McShoe Vietnam factory? It's still an awesome bargain by western standards.

Oh and the money is there, just cut the seven figure salaries of all the C level executives back at McShoe headquarters.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit%E2%80%93duck_illusion

Unfortunately reality doesn't work that way, unless you don't mind destroying the local economy and you'd rather force rich countries to subsidize economically backward countries.

To put the money into perspective, $50/day, which might seem like a pittance to most people on HN, is almost 4-5 times the amount that most employees make at some of the better Indian outsourcing companies.

> Unfortunately reality doesn't work that way

Because we make sure to keep it from working that way.

Rich countries don't seem to have much trouble with destroying 'backward' countries when it suits them[1], maybe Vietnam could use a bit of this kind of economic 'destruction' you describe.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War

Or, as informed consumers, we can identify the obvious fact that, outside certain exceptional industries, corporations have no inherent interest in improving the standards of living of their workers and accept that we have a vital role to play in incentivizing them toward more ethical behavior, mainly be refusing to patronize them in the absence of rigorously-enforced and progressive ethical standards.

A lot of (rich) people confuse poverty with slavery.

They are nothing alike.

I'm not confusing anything. Our current way of living is supported to the availability of labour that works for wages and in conditions that would be illegal in our countries. And there's no way this will never change

They differ by methods, but little by outcome. (And even the method is often similar. See e.g. [1] )

Poverty, to a large extent, is a deliberate construct because a weak labor force is an exploitable one. Sure, you don't whip people any more. (Well, somewhat. Ask the UAE[2]) You just make sure their life is going to be rather short if they don't work for you, at your conditions.

[1] https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/female-garment-workers-... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/oct/23/m...

> They differ by methods, but little by outcome.

They differ they same way rape and regular sex does: By consent.

Sure, to an outsider watching it can look very similar. But it's not.

Our grandparents were probably just as poor as the third world laborers are today. They were allowed to work their way up and build prosperous countries. The third world is well on their way doing the same.

They don't differ by consent. You might want to read up on how workers in the third world are actually treated.

And no, our grandparents weren't close to as poor. And the reason they got to live in prosperous countries is that those prosperous countries exploited the shit out of poorer countries. (For an example: Britain extracted ~$45 trillion from India during colonial rule)

Third world labor exploitation is continuation of colonialism by other means, free market apologists notwithstanding.

A slave and a poor free man working equally hard look exactly the same, and differ only by consent. The difference is hard to tell for rich people, but poor people are very clear on it.

I strongly disagree with your history telling!

Before industrialism, the whole world was poorer than the third world is today. Britain didn't get rich from plundering India or anywhere else, in part because there wasn't much to take. Every country was dirt poor by current standards.

In the last ~250 years industrialism and capitalism created wealth through inventions, industrialization and hard work. Now more than half the world is rich. China is already a medium income country, after having been desperately poor only 30 years ago. India isn't far behind.

Some pockets of real poverty remain, but the world will run out of poor people a few decades, unless trends take a serious turn for the worst. None of this depends on exploiting poor countries. Quite the opposite. The more advanced countries there are to trade with, the better off everyone is.

You're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.

Starting wage in the US, 1931: $820/year[1]. Even without inflation adjustment, there are currently 21 countries with less than that as gross national income[2] (which is higher than starting wages)

On the $45 trillion, the original research is in book form, but try [3][4]

For the US stealing from South America, try reading up on the "Banana Wars"[5]. Far from the only thing, but it's well documented and somewhat more widely known.

As for running out of poverty, go for climate refugees - there's a good chance there'll be 1 billion of them in a few decades[6]. And, fwiw, this already plays a large part in the mediterranean migrant crisis right now.

Oh, and as for the idea that slavery doesn't exist: 35 million people, roughly[7]. And that's not accounting for wage slavery and debtors prisons that just happen to loan out workers.

Laissez-faire capitalism is far from an unmitigated good. In fact, except for the people holding the capital, it's an unmitigated disaster.

[1] https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112032654953;v... [2] https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-lowes... [3] https://www.globalresearch.ca/legacy-of-colonialism-britain-... [4] https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/britain-stole-45-t... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Wars [6] https://reliefweb.int/report/world/climate-migrants-might-re... [7] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/12/the-horrors-of-modern...

I would say this is an attempt on their part not to put slavery in a better light, but to minimize the immorality of wage labor. Slavery requires force to capture people and to keep them from escaping. Wage labor replaces that entire system of work with one where people will volunteer, even compete, to be exploited and can be discarded at the whims of employers. Kevin Bales' _Disposable People_ [1] goes into this theme in depth.

1: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/178676.Disposable_People

Water, lumber (formerly known as trees), open land, furs, fish ...

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