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Comment by rob74 | Hacker News Reader

It's all nice and well to rail about Tim Ferriss... until you realize that all of us (in the developed world) are profiting from people in less developed countries, or even people in our own country, working (much) more than 40 hours per week for less than we would get for 4 hours. If all these people would have acceptable work conditions, we would have to pay way more for clothing, food, electronics... you name it.

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As someone living and working in the developing country I say: please profit from my work! I started my software development career making 2.5EUR per hour. Now, 10 years later, I can find consulting gigs in EU/US market for 40-50EUR which is really great for me, and stl affordable for the clients. Win-win, right? What is wrong with that?

Nope, if people in less developed countries had acceptable work conditions and were able to realize their potential in terms of skills and passion, we'd have 10x the number of innovative companies/products/technology. Life isn't zero-sum.

Before those people were being exploited by the West, many of them were just barely surviving.

> If all these people would have acceptable work conditions, we would have to pay way more for clothing, food, electronics... you name it.

Are you saying that would be bad?

Definitely not, sorry if it sounded like that...

EXACTLY. Very well said. All this talk of 4 hours and so on are fine when your stomach is full and you have built up a capitalist society that feeds off the poor in a different society.

Why do you suppose those poor are willing to be fed off of? Maybe because they don't much in the way of better work alternatives. But guess what happens in places like India and China after a couple decades of exploitation by the rich countries? They have a huge rise in the middle class, reduction in abject poverty, emergence of their own big companies, and their country becomes significant economic players on the world stage.

The pie isn't a fixed size. It grows with increased economic activity. What happens in countries that are closed off to all the global "exploitation"? I'll let you work that out for yourself.

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