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Comment by razordave | Hacker News Reader

This feels very exploitative.

While I don't entirely disagree I have friends who work for < $5/hr (Eastern Europe) who would love to have the option to do this instead.

I also have friends who work for only slightly more on Upwork projects who would hate it if those jobs disappear under the premise that 'they are getting exploited'.

Is all your clothing made solely in US?

Bangladesh minimum wage for garment workers (1000+ of whom died when a poorly maintained building collapsed) is 95 dollars per month.

Good point, better to keep exploiting than be a hypocrite!

You are not exploiting the person making the garments, you are exploiting the fact that the cost of living in Bangladesh is far below the cost of living in a Western nation.

The fact that the standard of living in Bangladesh is also lower does not mean that you are exploiting the worker. In fact, in many cases (especially employing them directly online as the GP is suggesting) you are helping to improve their standard of living.

Does this make it not exploitative?

And that makes this less exploitative, how, exactly?

Whataboutism is not useful.

Maybe they are just trying to provoke some thought. They did not make any grand claims regarding levels of exploitation... Not sure why there is always someone trying to get ahead of drama and signal how woke they are despite there being no drama at all.

I'm not going to say this isn't exploitative to some degree, but I will say that this is similar to sweatshop conditions: potentially an improvement over what they were previously doing. It's hard to jump from sustenance farming to a large income.

I highly recommend you take a trip to the Philippines. Go out to some of the villages. There are young children starving. That $2-$5 is huge for them. College graduates work in department stores because there are not enough jobs.

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