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Comment by reedwolf | Hacker News Reader

US needs to emulate more worker-friendly nations like South Korea and Japan.

It's horrific to read, but it's true. I hear terrifying stories about the work culture and expectations in South Korea and Japan that make me feel sorry for the people who work in those countries, but I have far worse ones about working in the US (personally, from the news, from lawsuits, and from government investigations) that I could tell people in South Korea and Japan that they could never imagine happening in their countries.

edit: they're just very different. Workers have very few rights at all in the US. I'm pretty sure all we have left is the right to annoy our employers if we feel they've treated us in a racist, sexist, or homophobic way. We'll never get a settlement out of it if we carry it through to the end, but maybe they'll give us a few bucks and admit to nothing in order to save the money they would have spent on lawyers and lobbyists to crush us. You don't have that recourse at all if the employer just decides to fire you one day because they just don't like your face.

>South Korea

Wow you Sir are the blindest of the blinds...really South Korea and Japan???

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_South_Korea

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20190501000216

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Japan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoshi

He was clearly joking, but Japan’s suicide rates have dropped. Meanwhile countless Americans are dropping out of life, overdosing on drugs, and their deaths are counted as a separate statistic. There were about 46,000 suicides in America in 2016 and 70,000 drug overdose deaths in 2017.[1] Looking at rates of unemployment, depression, and other problems, I doubt the overwhelming majority of those are completely accidental. If someone were to close their eyes and slam the gas pedal and accept whatever happens, we’d rule that a suicide, but we try saying drug overdoses are just accidents. It’s time to take it seriously and recognize that something in life is driving people to accept the risks of dangerous drugs. Including them in the statistic would be enough to push the American suicide rate to about double Japan’s.

But to focus on the actual topic, most of the problem in Japan is social pressure. Workers have actual legal rights. Employers are required to offer vacation time and workers can’t be fired without good reason. It’s actually incredibly difficult to fire someone.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/prescription-drug-overdo...

> Including them in the statistic enough to push the American suicide rate to about double Japan’s.

Including all drug overdoses in suicides would be a very far overreaching fabrication requiring knowledge that you can never possess about the person that died (you have to know their state of mind and intent at the time of overdose). It also does a disservice to the aspect of how extraordinarily dangerous opioid drug addiction is and how easy it is to overdose by accident (especially if fentanyl is involved).

If we're going to play that game, then you have to use that god-like power to remove all suicides that didn't really mean to do it and all accidental drug overdoses.

Magically the number just dropped by 2/3.

Suicide is defined by a successful attempt to kill one's self. The fact is you have no idea what the intent of all the people that overdose on drugs is, so conflating them is plainly incorrect.

I agree with you, and I'm reminded of this experiment which I think adds evidence to the idea that drug use and perhaps other vices are tied to how happy / fulfilled people are in life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

>but Japan’s suicide rates have dropped.

Yes as everywhere in the world.

>He was clearly joking,

Why? Because the US is so much better? It would be acually a joke, IF the US is much better...

EDIT: And im really no shure why you point to drug abuse...

Clearly the original poster was being sarcastic, in reference to those places being ranked as better for workers' rights in spite of being terrible places to work by most accounts.

The ITUC report itself rates South Korea below the US, placing `Korea (Republic of)` in the category of `No guarantee of rights`.

edit: https://www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/ituc_globalrightsindex_2020...

Honestly when it comes to international cultureral sensitivity, I don't feel the hacker news crowd is exactly the most woke. I quite often see statements like these that are completely oblivious to the actual reality in other countries

The comment you're replying to was being snarky about Japan and South Korea.

Well, I certainly can think of more worker-friendly nations. Isn't Japan known for its toxic work culture?

That won't work until super rich & their puppet politicians continue to harass poorer masses with crap like socialism=communism

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