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Comment by churchill | Hacker News Reader

I see so many comments from self-anointed do-gooders that I just have to explain something from my lived experience.

I'm Nigerian. I graduated high school at 15 and because my family didn't have the funds for uni, I got a job in what was essentially a sweatshop factory with extra steps. I got paid 12k Naira ($16) per month. After all, I had was a secondary school education and I couldn't bargain for better.

Roughly one year later, I got a job writing for a content mill where I was paid $1 for 100 words. I can't describe my happiness when I got my first $50 for 5,000 words. All earned while sitting at a desk, typing away on a broken laptop, using unreliable internet.

To a social justice warrior in SF or NY, it might have been exploitation, but to me an African teenager with no relevant experience or higher education, it was the first step I needed to pull myself up by my bootstraps.

I levered up and today, I make the same or a bit more than quite a few freelance writers in the West.

Point is, it's okay to feel bad for these Africans; but if you really do, you will support free trade - that's the most successful instrument for lifting humans out of poverty.

Without this "starvation-level" gig like some of you may call it, these workers would settle for something less.

Today, Nigeria's minimum wage is around 30k Naira, yet many Nigerians don't even make that much. On the other hand, a worker making $2 per hour 8 hours 5 days will net $80 per week or 59k Naira at the current market rates.

If you complain someone is exploiting me, please give me a better job - or let me take my least worst option.

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Reminds me of the chinese factories we used. We paid the staff to take downtime, otherwise they'd use free time to work in other factories.

Their goal was simple: make a dowry or funds to support the family in the village. Once that was achieved they'd not return after Chinese new year.

Every year 15-20% of assembly workers would not return after CNY.

At least in Vietnam, there is something similar... the 13th month of salary. Stay long enough for your Tet holiday bonus and then switch jobs after getting back to work from VNY. Usually for a higher paying job because now you had more experience.

In case you try to confirm these figures via Google, the exchange rates for the amounts I stated are based on the true (i.e., black) market rates (740 Naira/$1) instead of whatever Google shows.

I don’t know about the situation in Nigeria. How come the black market rate (740) is so much higher than the “officia” markets (450)?

Are there rules and regulations preventing access to the official forex markets?

The government printed a lot of Nairas starting 2020 (COVID) when oil revenues dried up.

The Naira's value plunged against the dollar. The Central Bank still insists the Naira is worth around 453/$1 while the free market insists it's much worse.

So, the Central Bank continues to advertise N453/$1 but you can't swap your Nairas to dollars - only at black (i.e., free) market dealers who will give you the true market rate.

Black market currency dealers. Never thought I'd hear something like that.

Yes, price controls often do a "good" job of causing shortages. So, an alternative market appears to fill the need.

It isn't that uncommon in countries with relatively high rate of inflation. For example in Ukraine government set some strict monetary controls and it's not really possible to get USD in cash form from official exchanges.

All currency dealers are "black market" [1] -- the only difference is that in some countries, there's a "white market" that bears no resemblance to reality.

Come to think of it, that's true of all "black markets". The only thing that makes a market "black" is the existence of some ridiculous official alternative.

[1] For example: when I land in Japan, I don't get Yen from the JCB -- I get it from a private entity who sells it to me for dollars, usually at a worse than officially stated exchange rate. The Travelex booth at the airport is literally a private market for cash. When I swipe my credit card in a foreign country, the intermediary banks are more than happy to sell me currency, on the spot, for a small fee.

This is very common in the developing world. As governments print money and cause high inflation they want to prevent, or at least significantly delay, citizens exchanging it for a more stable option. So, the governments add friction (limits, KYC equivalents or outright bans) and offer exchanges with less friction at a much lower rate.

Check Argentina -- their "blue rate", used by hotels and other cash-based businesses on site, is often twice as favorable as the official rate that you get with plastic.

That's what they're called, but typically they're the only real and free market and thus have real prices.

If a black market exists, that means the "official" markets are corrupt.

Argentina is littered with them. Walk down Florida Street (ironically named) in Buenos Aires and hear "cambio, cambio, cambio" being yelled out constantly.

Fascinating,but understandable - I was born in ex-Yugoslavia and went through the civil war there so there are many things I take for fully granted that my (Canadian born) wife cannot imagine, from try hyperinflation to various black markets, bribery and corruption :)

Oh, in case you're wondering - all the channels to arbitrage between both rates & become a billionaire overnight are effectively closed.

For most people.

Black market rate means that you go to a subway station, locate a sketchy "banker" and exchange some currency. Rules and regulation apply only above the ground level. The alternative is going to the bank, waiting 2 hours in a line, and getting half of what that dude would've offered you, because the central bank decided that its currency is strong and should be valued that much.

As one more data point: I've angel-invested in a couple of Nigerian startups, and I can confirm this tracks with the black-market rates my portcos are seeing over there. The divergence (between official and actual forex rates for NGN/USD) first took off in September '22 and has stuck around since.

You are perhaps placed very well to create an outsourcing company that serves the interests of Africans extremely well with entitlements, leave, healthcare, retirement, education and training and gives companies access to a lower cost workforce.

You probably would need to lead all your corporate messaging around the points you have raised, and how much further your company goes than the minimum.

I really haven't thought about this much but it's a brilliant idea. Maybe I can use it to get into YC & raise 1 bajillion from a16z?

No doubt Sam Altman is open to hearing about how to purchase African labor without any of the publicity downside - hit him up for a few mill. ChatGPT is riding high, it does not need Nike style bad publicity to bring the story down.

You would need to be actually ethical rather than marketing ethical - I don't know you so I don't know if you know the difference. Certainly there's no shortage of Silicon Valley "characters" who don't.

It's a very powerful "good news story" to sell to potential clients:

--> lower cost workforce

--> positive life benefit for the African people, lifting people to better lives

--> western style work protections at African costs

--> "publicity positive" for buyers versus "publicity negative"

You would not believe the power of "lower cost workforce" in gaining new clients.

If you know a bunch of African programmers then it should not be hard to find work for them at $x/hour to western clients.

Any employer that wishes to show it cares for African people and wants to help them to a better life really SHOULD be buying services from your new company.

Remember in places like Australia, the banks - who are the biggest buyers of outsources international programmer resources - would consider $40/hour to be an absolute bargain.

I understand what you mean & I 100% stand behind the idea of better-paying jobs for locals, in a way that makes affordable labor available to customers.

It's not a zero-sum game - you don't have to treat people like trash to get any value out of their labor.

I think a16z et al only invest in crypto and other scams now.

I think about this every few months since 2016! It's been a bit of a "maybe some time in the future if the stars align" life goal to set up a data consulting company in a country with a lot of poverty. I did a project in Nairobi last year and it seems like there are enough people there that would be interested and have the skill potential. Internet was also quite good in most places. I'm also part of a small data science training company which could be used to teach data skills there. Maybe it's time to think about it more seriously?

>You are perhaps placed very well to create an outsourcing company that serves the interests of Africans extremely well with entitlements, leave, healthcare, retirement, education and training [...] , and how much further your company goes than the minimum.

One can try to build an alternative company with all those extra employee benefits you laid out but it still has to deal with the economic reality of clients like OpenAI not willing to pay more.

If gp's hypothetical Nigeria outsourcing company costs +3x or more to label training data than Sama Kenya (https://www.sama.com/) -- because they have to fund those extra benefits, then game theory economics predicts that OpenAI would choose the less expensive Sama Kenya.

This means the hypothetical Nigeria company doesn't have revenue to fund those extra wages and benefits.

Just because a company has an alternative (and more expensive) idea to compensate employees, it doesn't mean customers will pay more for it.

The idea behind free trade is that the "OpenAI / the end user is not willing to pay more" part stops being a problem when there are no more poverty-class people in the world to employ at that ridiculous pay. They'll have to pay more or do without the labour.

This is the virtuous upward cycle, slow as it may be.

We're already seeing this with some manufacturing moving from China to India due to growing labor costs. Eventually the places with cheap labor to exploit dry up.

In this instance, corporate greed is like a spreading storm that destroys the poor… by making them middle class.

As a formerly underpaid third-worlder (I am now a Canadian) I would’ve LOVED more Western companies coming in to exploit me for my labour.

Survivorship bias much?

The only thing "the west" (or rather, the world bank) has done to address poverty is redefine it out of existence.

China has seen an uplift in wealth because they could leverage co-dependence to enforce better conditions. That isn't going to happen everywhere.

The last thing the West needs to do is to show more paternalism towards the third world, even though they caused some of the issues.

When people have more economic opportunities that are rooted in a solid reality, they acquire more of the only real power on this planet - economic power.

Reading the history of the working and middle classes in the West, it becomes clear that as they very gradually got more options over the centuries, they started building various edifices to cement that power. Unions, parties, laws, political traditions.

Next I would argue that human greed is not unique to us but is simply a form of price optimization. Corporations and consumers in the West, or planet Zog for that matter, will always want their sneakers manufactured for ten cents a pair if they can get it.

For that reason, sending these economic options to the third world is a very real and sustainable economic situation. Contrast that with artificial political solutions like regular aid packages (I’m not talking about disaster relief or aid for countries at war like Ukraine, I’m talking about funding some African country because they are poor).

Eventually, a situation similar to middle class life here in the West will develop there. Keep in mind this took centuries here even when the West owned the world.

Eventually, as the sweatshops move from country to country, they will run out of poor people to make sneakers for ten cents a pair. We’ll live in a world where everyone is too rich to accept that job. I want to live in that world asap, and the fastest way to get there is through free trade.

There's certainly good press associated with doing good for local economies.

Take Raspberry Pi's new partner factory, also in Kenya.

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/made-in-kenya/

I've seen a similar argument about Chinese "sweat shops" where they were paying above the average salaries for the area & if the work went it'd be disastrous economically for the village. Sometimes you have to be realistic - if the amount earned is good for the area then it's trending in the right way.

> if the amount earned is good for the area then it's trending in the right way.

Absolutely not. There's no reason to accept sweatshops just because workers are being paid to be exploited. There's no reason at all that workers in those places couldn't be paid just as well (if not better really) without all of the other issues commonly found in sweatshops like horrific and dangerous working conditions, child labor, sexual abuse, and human rights violations.

There's no giving corporations a pass on their use of sweatshops just because they're giving the desperate people they exploit a little more than they could get themselves. That's not "trending in the right way" it's just greed and exploitation.

For example, a person who is starving to death will be extremely grateful when someone gives them even rotten and moldy food. They'll accept the food even if the person offering it makes them first perform horrible immoral acts to get it, but that doesn't make it right and the person forcing starving people to do terrible things for spoiled scraps is still an asshole even if it fills that person's stomach for the night

Remove the sweatshop and there are higher suicide rates, less access to healthcare, less schooling, and worse standards of living. These may be counterintuitive but have been studied.

Higher suicide rates when they aren't locking workers inside under watch and putting nets up around tall buildings?

Not exploiting starving men in exchange for spoiled food can be proven to result in increased deaths too. Doesn't make the exploitation okay. Companies can continue to employ overseas labor at attractive rates without allowing those workplaces to be sweatshops and we should insist that they do, not give them a pass to abuse people for profit just because they throw the people they hurt scraps in the process.

Less bad exploitation is still exploitation.

I'm happy this is work that can help uplift people in third world countries and I don't want the work moved elsewhere.

However, Open AI can absolutely afford to pay more than $2 an hour for this sort of job, irregardless of the local economy and who does it - and they absolutely should.

What everyone complaining about what OpenAI can "afford" is missing is that if OpenAI were to pay more, the only rational thing for them to do would be to move the jobs to another country that has lower risk levels. This would leave Kenya without the jobs at all.

Thinking you can have both higher wages and jobs in unstable countries is either advocating for state-mandated outsourcing or is wishful thinking.

Ethics and current day globalized economics don't always mix well. It would still be the right thing to do.

If a company acts unethically that is bad, even if it's in the company's rational self-interest. It rings especially hollow when the company's supposed mission is to "ensure AI benefits all of humanity"

> Less bad exploitation is still exploitation.

Your statement is problematic, because (a) clearly at some point "less bad" stops being what anyone defines as exploitation, and (b) if you're not living in the tradeoff space, you're not qualified to judge where that crossover is.

There certainly is exploitation to be found*, but paying a multiple of all other opportunities, even if that multiple is below what is available in a different context, is not exploitation.

It's putting a thumb on the scale, accelerating the tilt towards equity.

* There are articles about labeling or screening done by workers in USA that are as PTSD-inducing as the linked stories, where people were paid US wage and had to quit. Don't confuse the job with the pay, these are two different issues.

// Disclosure: I grew up in central Africa. In my teens I worked in the local tech economy, not the expat economy.

sent from my iPhone

Irregardless isn’t a word

Thank you for this very important point.

I was going to comment, "was it mutually-beneficial? was it consensual? If so, then where is the harm done?" but your firsthand experience said it much better.

Glad you are succeeding (relatively).

If you don't know the extent of the abuse because it is hidden from you then that certainly isn't consent.

How exactly is it "abuse" to be paid a wage that is highly competitive with the other options in your given location and standard of living? Did you even read the comments from other Kenyans in this discussion? Your language is hyperbolic and ridiculous.

Over time this lifts those economies up which then forces their pay to go up; it's like slow arbitrage over time. But as it's happening, yes, the paying companies get a better deal. Temporarily. And that is fine.

Well done. I wish you all the success in the world.

Thank you!

> If you complain someone is exploiting me, please give me a better job - or let me take my least worst option.

that's what the so-called "social justice warriors" would be calling for here. OpenAI will be making hundreds of billions on this product and should pay the workers who do all the labor a generous wage with humane working conditions no matter where they live. Additionally, workers here were actually traumatized by the work itself, so much so that the contractor itself cancelled the job eight months early (!). So this is not really ethical and kudos to this article for highlighting the social injustice that OpenAI is apparently built upon. A sweatshop is a sweatshop and US companies ideally should not be profiting from them.

Can I please ask where I can find out about the sites Africans use to find online work? In the past I’ve used the highly advertised freelance sites for small pieces of work, and I like the idea of sending the money somewhere where Australian wages are are a lot of money.

Upwork, LinkedIn, and Andela are some good places to start.

Why not use google, as a start ? ie for Kenya .... https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ake+data+entry&oq=site...

Is for google the phrase site:ke data entry or maybe a more targeted search

Or maybe find local job sites?, to hire (virtual assistant) workers directly to cut out freelancer site commission ( but with increased risk .... etc )

It's getting harder to get a web-searchable answer, because in countries like Kenya 'good' jobs like this aren't publicly advertised. Yes, really - not publicized!

Fact: a lot of jobs (in Kenya, at least) from corporations and international NGOs, come with a deadline to submit your application - yet, the job isn't posted anywhere until 1-2 weeks before the deadline, AND then only on the company's website!

Kenya has private job posting sites that obviously crawl the company's pages for listing updates; and this helps to at least get the jobs publicized. But none of these sites have the sophisticated scraping systems like i.e. Indeed.com

For "social enterprises" work, it's all made worse because of the bad press and lawsuits that Sama/Samasource -YET AGAIN- and similar companies have been getting into within the last year, re: https://www.wired.com/story/social-enterprise-technology-afr...

These Companies have now stopped (i.e. hidden, temporarily) their listings for "content moderators" and "image labelers".

I guess the only way Kenyans are going to find about these jobs are through some connection with current employees; informal sources like Whatsapp groups; or Sama's recruiters sourcing exclusively within the country, so as to not put more international spotlight on their company.

Thank you for this. It's so infuriating hearing all of this social justice nonsense from people who don't know anything about actual situations. Knowing that people are paid twice the minimum wage is great and that it's not exploitation.

The shifting meaning of the word exploitation:

Companies are 100% exploiting cheaper labor in other countries - they are only interested in the bottom line.

opportunity and exploitation are not mutuality exclusive, nor does one person's opportunity erase another's exploitation.

Creating opportunity is great: do that without exploiting people - that isn't a requirement. Praise opportunity given. Denounce exploitations not to remove opportunities - but to improve them.

"Exploitation" has at least two very different meanings. While I have seen some texts that used the word in the same sense for "exploiting an opportunity" and "exploiting our workers", I think most of the time the former is neutral and the latter either a scam or abuse.

> Creating opportunity is great: do that without exploiting people - that isn't a requirement. Praise opportunity given. Denounce exploitations not to remove opportunities - but to improve them.

How much should they pay the workers though? It's already stated that they are paid well above average wage in said country.

What a great example of how borders suppress wages!

A lot of so called "SJW" rhetoric is in support of being able to support yourself.

Unfortunately, that's all that it amounts to: Rhethoric.

talking about left wing discourse as a single unified entity is insane, when it's millions or billions of people with different beliefs, formations, etc. Like in everything else, some discourse will be productive and some will be misguided.

It’s not very hard to find smart, well informed left wing / progressive discussion - if that’s what you’re looking for. I think it would be great if we got better at recognising that a lot of political discussion pretty silly. The more attention we give to cranks when we straw man our political opposites by spotlighting the latest silly trite out of their mouths the more we elevate them within their own political tribe. I wonder if this might be easier to fix in Australia than the US because our compulsory voting system means politicians can’t win by mobilising their base, when everybody votes you need to persuade the other side to win

compulsory vote in the US & Canada would be interesting. It also has no chance of happening as the right in the US is focusing so much energy making it hard for minorities to vote because they know it would fuck them

Lol yes left wing discourse is just so broad and complex it can’t possibly be generalized when references.

One of my exes is to the left of the literal Cuban communist party. I'm right of the Cuban communists, yet also left of the UK's Labour Party. The UK's Labour Party is to the left of the USA's Democrat party.

She's an anarcho-communist. Cuban communism is famously the opposite of an anarchy.

I don't understand the end of your sentence

A lot of “SJW” rhetoric is telling people that you know more about their circumstances that they do and know what is best for them, as your shown by your comment, to an actual previously poor person in Africa who used what we would call low-wage jobs to pull themself up by the bootstraps.

Perfect - just because people are poor doesn't mean they're stupid. They can still make decisions for themselves based on the realities on ground vs. utopian visions on what the world should look like.

A fallacy that's common when conversations enter these waters is that one person can be a "representative" of any group of people.

I think the discussion is great, but don't think we've concluded therefore that $2/hr is a fine thing for Africans to be paid and all is well again, because one user has said a similar job helped them get out of poverty.

The key thing to remember about "SJWs" is that they want to improve the world for the folks who need it most. Sometimes it does involve changing patterns people fall into without realizing, and sometimes "SJWs" get it terribly wrong. Poor people aren't stupid, but they are often stuck in some way of thinking or behaving (as anyone in their situation would be), and it's not always productive or helpful to "just" give them what they ask for directly.

But to deride someone for wanting a better life for another person strikes me as needlessly cynical. Why put that out into the world, why justify the hate?

Is your comment now arguing for them? At what point do you stop drawing these arbitrary argument lines?

Interesting the term of do-gooder. Reminds me of this comment this fella shared about his pop. https://youtu.be/NS4UT_t73b0?t=967

> 16:07 my father once said to me, I'll never forget this as long as I live, he doesn't like a reformer or as he used to call em a "do-gooder" in office. He used to call em do-gooders. > > I said "why pop?", he said "because every time they get in office it seems like all the businesses go out. Nothing happens in business. They make it tough for a guy to operate in business."

What a great admission that business often operates at the expense of society.

non-sequitur.

I did see this occur personally with this breakfast joint that closed down when some law changed that required some minimum benefits or something or other that added to the payroll expenses and made the venture not worth it. I remember the owner going around informing the guests at their tables that they'd be closing in the next month and if anyone knew of any jobs for their employees they'd welcome the suggestions. It was one of the rare breakfast places in town so it was very missed by us when it bailed. Eventually that location became a Five Guys. It took several years but eventually another breakfast place moved into town.

If a business needs to underpay its staff to survive then it has a faulty business model, so it deserves to fail, and to be replaced by something more robust.

This is about Kenya though, not Nigeria.

Minimum wage in Kenya is twice that in Nigeria at $122 a month.

Working 40 hours a week at $2/hr is still $320 per month. That's nearly 3x Kenya's minimum wage.

Besides, the government doesn't guarantee every Kenyan $122 a month so the real heroes are those who actually pay that money out-of-pocket.

It's about the minimum wage for a caretaker or lorry driver.

How depressing is it that we're all calmly discussing how a nation's minimum wage is $61 per month.

Cost of living is far cheaper too, assuming you avoid western aimed areas

The free market so called allows foreign companies to undermine African countries native industries and set wage floors at the global minimum. A global minimum wage with a system of cooperation and technology transfer and nationalization of companies would massively benefit workers the world over.

... except for in places like Nigeria and Kenya, because if there were a global minimum wage then companies would hire in countries that are more stable and predictable.

So what happens when most if not all of the assignments dry up because of GPT?

Given what GPT can already do, whatever it is that comes next, us software developers will have to start doing it too.

Software developers will be fine. Chatgpt is no where near replacing a mid-level developer. Maybe it could be different in 10-15 years. But right now, more often it simply outputs garbage once you up the complexity. Even if the output code was workable, one still has to make it fit into their larger code. Which still requires an understanding of how the code works.

Don’t get me wrong - chatgpt could be a great tool for learning. At the very least, it can teach a person on how to ask the right question.

We have no way of knowing how long it will take to replace us. A developer of a Go AI said much the same about Go two years before AlphaGo won:

"""After the match, I ask Coulom when a machine will win without a handicap. "I think maybe ten years," he says. "But I do not like to make predictions."""" - https://www.wired.com/2014/05/the-world-of-computer-go/

On the other hand, in 2009 I said "ten years" about consumer purchasable self driving cars good enough to not bother with a steering wheel, and that didn't happen. Seemed plausible to me even during the intervening years, given the videos Tesla was putting out. But, didn't happen.

But however long it takes, if companies like OpenAI et al can no longer benefit from humans rating the results (which is what I was replying to), then their AIs are going to be ready to replace us too.

what about criticisms from fellow Kenyans who say that it is exploitation?

Are their opinions more valid than that of the Kenyans that took these jobs?

The government can mandate a "fair" wage, but the government never employs everyone at that rate. These "exploiters" are actually giving Africans money for their labor - I think I'm more on the side of those who pay money for an African's labor vs. those that stand on the sidelines and try to determine what is fair.

Equal pay for equal work is not a hard concept to understand - it is basic fairness. Deriding advocates of this as "SJW in SF or NY" or "self-anointed do-gooders" indicates a lack of empathy, lack of thought around the broader implications, or in the worst case, capitalistic psychopathy.

Sure, you were able to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps". On the other side of the equation, the company paying you a pittance used your capitulation to drive down wages elsewhere, including in its home country. There's a reason why maybe women as a group in this day and age continue to earn only 82 cents on the $ that men make [1]. It is easy for a company to play off the "Nigerian" group of workers willing to accept a pittance against the "Women" group of workers living in a High COL area. Sure, you got your quadruple pay, while some woman here went without money for medicine and died before her time.

Nigerian Low COL today can be attributed to colonialism - Europeans extracted the multi-generational wealth in that region and left it impoverished within a short period of time, and it takes time to build that wealth back (real rate of return is typically 2-3%) so everything costs less because that's all the people living there can afford to pay for local consumables and durables like, well, food, or housing.

Now the (actual or philosophical) descendants of those Europeans play off the impoverished Nigerians against the local Women to exploit both groups.

So instead of fighting to correct the structural injustices of either colonialism or labor exploitation, the English-speaking Nigerians 'pulling themselves up by their bootstraps' lobby for the continued abrogation of equal-pay-for-equal-work and deride the people advocating for structural justice in the form of equal-pay-for-equal-work as "social justice warriors in SF or NY" or "self-anointed do-gooders". Bravo!

1. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/01/gender-pay-ga...

> Sure, you were able to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps". On the other side of the equation, the company paying you a pittance used your capitulation to drive down wages elsewhere, including in its home country.

Well, that's exactly the point.

The hypocrisy is to pretend it is concern about exploiting poor people while actually it's about protecting own high wages.

> The hypocrisy is to pretend it is concern about exploiting poor people while actually it's about protecting own high wages.

Just so I don't misunderstand, are you suggesting that equal-pay-for-equal-work is about protecting high wages?

Sounds like the cost of this job is $2/hr? Why justify the highest possible cost as the fair standard?

It's not; the standard is what is that job worth to the company? If exploitable low-cost Kenyans were not available, what would these companies pay? I can't tell you that, but I can tell you it is not $2/hr.

I don't know what exactly "equal-pay-for-equal-work" stands for.

But in this context as an analogy it's seeing a poor starving man eating a rat to survive. You basically want to take the rat away from him and shout "don't eat that! 'Someone' should give him a chicken!"

Unless you immediately offer to be that 'someone' personally you're not fighting for his good. You want him to die.

>But in this context as an analogy it's seeing a poor starving man eating a rat to survive. You basically want to take the rat away from him and shout "don't eat that! 'Someone' should give him a chicken!" >Unless you immediately offer to be that 'someone' personally you're not fighting for his good. You want him to die.

Let's analyze your argument shall we, with some historical context - first let's make the man poor, force him to starve through colonial theft from his family, then refuse to pay him to right the historical theft (oh no, it would reduce our standard of living, we can't have that!), then oppress a local group (like women or minorities) and when they ask to be paid a fair amount (equal pay for equal work), tell them - do you want to take the rat from the starving man??? Funny how it's always one group of oppressed people that must make sacrifices for other groups of oppressed people, never people like kuboble or ninjagoo.... noooo our standard of living mustn't be affected, we can't have our taxes going up.

>Unless you immediately offer to be that 'someone' personally you're not fighting for his good. You want him to die.

Did you offer to be that someone? Or is that all on me? You're happy to let the starving man go ahead and eat the rat as long as you don't have to do anything?

If you look at my other reply in this thread you'll realize that I actually lived being this poor person in poor country.

You might have your high morals and and what is morally rightest or who was at fault for me being born poor etc.

But knowing how it is at the bottom you have to realize that X offering me a better job does me a favor and anyone calling X to don't do that due to some moral concern over my well being is caring more about his ideals than about my actual wellbeing. You can let them give me this job while trying to improve my position in other ways. It's not a dichotomy.

You were poor once, but you are not poor now. I also don't see you stepping up to be that someone that you asked me to be. And it's a bit rich, accusing me of "high morals" (clearly a pejorative in this context) while at the same time accusing me of forcing starving people to eat rats and accusing me of wanting poor people to die, and at the same time refusing to accept higher taxes on yourself to help those starving people avoid having to eat rats. Your arguments, Sir, are opportunistic, hypocritical and dishonest.

Why do I think so? Because here's what's really going on - there are two injustices here- the lack of equal-pay-for-equal-work, and starving poor people in poor countries. Paying a higher pittance to the poor people resolves the second injustice, which is beneficial to people like yourself while they are poor, and benefits people like yourself when you are rich.

The solution to both injustices which involves equal-pay, and reparations/grants through taxes, benefits people like yourself when you are poor, but 'hurts' people like yourself now when you are rich - that solution you don't like because then you actually have to contribute something from your "earnings".

Paraphrasing, you only care about fixing the injustice where the fix benefits you in all scenarios, and not at all about any other injustice, because that doesn't affect you. Based on that, I wonder if you actually care about fixing an injustice at all, or whether you only care about yourself, and all these arguments about fixing the poverty are a smokescreen to continue a current benefit (lower costs and taxes) for yourself. I am having a real challenge discerning the true motives here.

You really want to resolve injustice(s)? You can support both equal-pay and reparations/grants.

You only want to resolve one injustice (donor fatigue is a real thing)? Fine, support reparations/grants to help the starving poor people in poor countries. These funds can pay for public works or factories that will create jobs with beneficial ripple effects throughout their economies. Just like the Marshall Plan for western Europe after WW2.

Which option do you choose? And why?

You're building a strawman here. I don't try to fix the world. I'm trying hard to not be poor again myself, yes.

In this topic I'm just stating very narrow argument that 2$/hr is better than nothing. And a company who offers it here does more good than companies who don't offer those jobs and even more good than people trying to prevent it from doing so.

Most of your very long argument is judging me for things I haven't said, done or thought.

Just so we're clear - I'm not arguing that the Kenyans should not be offered the jobs, I'm arguing that they should have been paid at least $15/hr - that's what equal-pay-for-equal-work means. That they were paid only $2/hr is the exploitation.

Yes, my arguments are very direct and uncomfortable to hear, but if I may remind you, the judging started with your accusing me of hypocrisy, and of taking away rats from starving people, and of wanting poor people to die, when I neither said nor implied any such thing. You, Sir, even used "high morals" as a pejorative dog whistle against me. And now you want to go back to the very narrow argument? Don't dish it out if you can't handle the blowback.

Oh, don't get me wrong. Your statement in this case is hypocritical. And I stand by my argument and rat analogy.

It's just that I'm pointing out that I'm trying to discuss this particular event of offering 2$ jobs. Even if I use a rat as an analogy we are discussing this topic.

You're attacking my whole person and belief system strawmanning it by talking about e.g. my opinion on taxes or other stuff.

> I'm arguing that they should have been paid at least $15/hr -

I'm arguing that 1) you are acting against Kenyan interests if you prefer status quo over this 2$ opportunity. 2) And you think you do morally right thing by doing so.

Which of those two statements are incorrect? And please focus your answer without using angry aggressive language or I will not humor you with more replies.

Here is a timeline: - there are poor people with no opportunities - you don't even know our think about it - someone offered them 2$ - you say, No! They should be paid 15$ - hypothetical: the company decides to comply with your argument and stops offering 2$ jobs

In this htpothetical case: - have you done favor to the Kenyans?

Yes, because they would be getting $15 jobs instead of $2 jobs. I don't know why this is so hard for you to understand, that the Kenyans getting $15 is better than them getting $2. You are acting against the Kenyans' interest if you want them to get only $2 instead of the $15 that they deserve.

You might have your realpolitik moralizing that poor people should accept the $2 because they are starving but they should be getting the $15 that is rightfully theirs, and that additional $13 will help many more starving people than $2 will because the additional $13 will create more opportunities in their economy.

> Yes, because they would be getting $15 jobs instead of $2 jobs

No. They would get nothing instead.

I totally agree that 15$ would be likely better for them. But the 15$ isn't rightfully theirs. With this opportunity gone they will go back to their <1$/hr but without you thinking about them being exploited.

> No. They would get nothing instead.

What's your basis for this claim? Or is it simply that is how it is structured in your hypothetical without regard to reality?

> I totally agree that 15$ would be likely better for them. But the 15$ isn't rightfully theirs.

Why do you think the $15 is not rightfully theirs? They did the work, didn't they?

So right now the local market pays them 1$. Once the external 2$ is gone where will the 15$ come from?

The $15 is external too. OpenAI should have paid $15/hr for the work, not exploited them by paying only $2/hr.

Why is it exploitative? Because the money (OpenAI, "Capital") can move across borders easily to get cheaper costs, but labor cannot move across borders easily to get higher salaries, so labor is forced to accept a lower wage. If that asymmetry was not there and both labor and capital had similar freedom AND ease of movement, then it would not have been exploitative.

And I believe this is why the EU enshrines freedom-of-movement as one of its basic principles along with a common market. Otherwise capital in a common market would be easily able to move and exploit labor in various regions, because labor wouldn't have been able to move. But the freedom-of-movement right reduces that asymmetry.

It doesn't completely eliminate the asymmetry because it's still hard to move to a different language and community, but at least there's no artificial barrier like a border, and money also has the same barriers around language and not being trusted automatically in a different community.

I would split your message consists in two parts.

1) imo obviously false statement: > The $15 is external too. OpenAI should have paid $15/hr

Shoulda, woulda, coulda.

The open AI also won't pay Kenyans the 15$.

If they have to pay 15$ they will hire better educated, closer geographically and culturally workers.

2) the ideological manifest that is only tangentially related to the topic and I don't want to discuss it here for several reasons.

> If they have to pay 15$ they will hire better educated, closer geographically and culturally workers.

1. For a minimum wage temporary job that doesn't need better educated, geographically or culturally closer workers? And for which they've already shown that they are willing to hire people outside North America? 2. When there is a large shortage of workers in their local continent? [1]

> the ideological manifest that is only tangentially related to the topic and I don't want to discuss it here for several reasons.

Core EU regulations against the exploitation of workers and the reasons behind them are an "ideological manifest" [sic] ?

> Shoulda, woulda, coulda.

That attitude is the reason bad people get away with exploiting labor, and why starving people exist.

I think I'm finished with this conversation. I don't believe you are having this discussion in good faith. Good luck for your future.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm

Let me also add ending notes.

I believe you're extremely ignorant of reality.

The reality being that labor in place A is different than in place B for many reasons unrelated to exploitation. 2$ in Kenya is terrible exploitation?? How about 4$ in EU?

You name EU as a great example.

Do you realize there are millions of legally employed EU citizens working for 4$/hr? And more working for less.

just Google minimum salary in Poland or Romania and Google how many people make that minimum.

Why a cleaning lady in Munich makes 5 times as much as cleaning lady in rural Poland?

If you don't understand why then why do you think you understand Kenyan situation?

Past the limit to edit or delete, so a clarification is in order: "Europeans" is too generic and collectivizes blame, which is not my intent and would be unfair. Please read this as edited below. Lesson learned!

-+-+-+

Nigerian Low COL today can be attributed to colonialism - European colonialists extracted the multi-generational wealth in that region and left it impoverished within a short period of time, and it takes time to build that wealth back (real rate of return is typically 2-3%) so everything costs less because that's all the people living there can afford to pay for local consumables and durables like, well, food, or housing.

Now the (actual or philosophical) descendants of those European colonialists and colonial companies play off the impoverished Nigerians against the local Women to exploit both groups.

[1] https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/01/gender-pay-ga...

> On the other side of the equation, the company paying you a pittance used your capitulation to drive down wages elsewhere, including in its home country. There's a reason why maybe women as a group in this day and age continue to earn only 82 cents on the $ that men make [1].

How much do you think wages are in Nigeria to the US? A quick googling gives approximately 3 cents to the dollar. That's a 33x difference. You would rather not improve the wages of someone making $0.03 / dollar. Because it _might_ hurt someone making $0.82 / dollar. Yeah equal pay for equal work is about protecting the relatively high US wages. And I don't think it's at all clear that exporting these jobs specifically hurts women workers and not male workers.

> Sure, you got your quadruple pay, while some woman here went without money for medicine and died before her time.

The average life expectancy in Nigeria is TWENTY FIVE years lower than in the US. Quadrupling the pay of someone in Nigeria has a far greater impact to their health than it does to someone in a first world country where there is significantly more access to medicine and other resources. If you are trying to help someone, wouldn't you want to focus on the population that is dying 25 years before everyone else?

> Now the (actual or philosophical) descendants of those Europeans play off the impoverished Nigerians against the local Women to exploit both groups.

How are Nigerians being exploited here? If it had been a local Nigerian company offering them a wage of $2 an hour (which is over their minimum wage) would it be exploitation? Or is it simply because the company operates multi-nationally does it become exploitative.

> Equal pay for equal work is not a hard concept to understand - it is basic fairness.

What is your proposed change here? The minimum wage where I am is $18.50 an hour. Therefore under equal-pay-for-equal-work, if a company based where I am living wants to offer a job outside my area must pay $18.50? Which means, the jobs would never get exported to Nigeria. Sure that is a win for people living in the US, but not for the people living in deep poverty on the other side of the world.

These are straw-man arguments [1]. Nice try. The original argument is equal-pay-for-equal-work and these are all arguments for why unequal-pay-for-equal-work is justified, or why much lower lifespans in Africa justify reducing the lifespans of Women in High COL locations, or that Nigerians being offered higher pay doesn't mean that they are being exploited, completely ignoring the fact of collective historical exploitation leading to the current impoverished Low COL conditions, making their current life "cheaper".

Is it really that hard to wrap one's head around the equal-pay-for-equal-work argument? Around basic fairness? Offer the same pay across the board for the same work - whether that worker is a Woman or a Nigerian. That's the basic exploitation at play here: the value of the work is $1 (for argument's sake), the US man gets $1, but the US Woman gets $0.82 and the Nigerian gets $0.03. On what basis? Being born a Woman. Or being born in Nigeria. It's not even based on skills, which is this whole different ball of wax. No, it's based on what 'your kind' make. Not what the work is worth, not on any kind of rational basis, simply based on what your kind make or what those around you make. That's deeply unfair. Offer them all $1.

Sure, now the counter argument can be, life is unfair, it is what it is. If the follow on to that is that the status quo is acceptable and that no change needs to be made, then that indicates a lack of empathy, or in the extreme, capitalistic psychopathy (which needs to be regulated, within reason, for an actual greater good). If there is empathy, which there presumably is - because I see an argument above to export jobs to reduce poverty, or to improve African lifespans - let's start by changing structural injustices. And using impoverished Nigerians to exploit US Women is not it. Pay them that da** $1 for $1 of work! Not try to get away with $1.85 for $3 of work.

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

You are arguing from an "fairness" standpoint but none of that matters if your proposed policy would the lives of people in poverty worse. That's where we differ. I think that if you enforce an equal-pay-for-equal-work law, you will see an increase in wages in the US and a decrease in wages in low-income countries. That is the opposite of the desired effect and a negative outcome.

> Offer them all $1.

Everyone regardless of where they are gets payed the same. Am I understanding this correctly?

So, like I said in my area the minimum wage is $18.50/hr. So a multi-national company that has people tagging data in my area would pay a minimum of $18.50/hr. And under your proposed equal-pay-for-equal-work, if that company were to hire people in Nigeria to tag data they would _have_ to pay $18.50/hr. Correct?

Would that company have an incentive to outsource work to Nigeria if they had to pay people the same $18.50/hr? This is a country ranked 154/180 on the corruption index. It is the 17th least peaceful country and has far worse infrastructure relative to the US. I think these companies would be significantly less motivated to outsource jobs Nigeria if they can hire people locally for the same price. Would you agree? If you think that companies would be more or equally likely to outsource jobs to Nigeria if they wages were $18.50/hr please elaborate.

Far fewer jobs being outsourced to Nigeria, means less job opportunities for Nigerians and worse economic outcomes. Right?

If requiring equal-pay-for-equal-work leads to worse economic outcomes for Nigerians then isn't it a bad policy?

Since you are so interested in reducing poverty and improving economic outcomes for those people abroad, what percentage of your first-world income/wealth are you sending to these impoverished regions? And for comparison, how does that amount compare to your donations to church and conservative causes?

Or am I confused and your concern only extends to reducing other people's (say for example less fortunate US women and unfortunate Nigerians) net income and definitely not your own income?

I donate 5% of my income to Malaria Consortium and Clean Air Task Force. It could be more, but it's significant for me. I would encourage you to look at givewell.org and donate to help people living in extreme poverty.

I'm surprised you think I'm conservative. :)

In that case, I apologize. I mistook genuine questions for obtuseness and the typical misdirectional hand-waving. With this new insight let me try again. You are right, I agree that as a policy equal-pay-for-equal work will indeed lead to a reduction in outsourcing. The solution to poverty in that case can be 2-fold (a) direct reparations, and (b) Marshall plans like for Germany and the world after WW2 [1].

It turns out that the Marshall plan was a large set of grants for billions of $ (big money in those days). There were some loans too with reasonable terms and reasonable payments, and because of natural inflation over time the payments became insignificant compared to the size of the German economy [2]. Maybe a modern day Marshall Plan with a mix of reasonable loans and grants is a good way to not shortchange either us Americans or the recipients.

Compare that with the outsourcing fiasco that has been Industry moving to China due to cheaper labor there. This did make the Chinese better off, and made the industrialists very very rich, but it gutted the American heartland and impoverished the people there, leading to the rise of Christian extremism and fascism in the US. We don't know yet if this was a fatal blow to the body politic and democracy worldwide, it's an ongoing crisis.

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

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/18/who-still-owes-what-for-the-...

This is an eye opening response thank you and a great argument for getting valid work to Africans.

The fact that it’s good for Africans doesn’t absolve rich Silicon Valley tech companies from doing better.

Silicon Valley have developed an eye rolling bad reputation for many reasons.

The CEO of such an organization would be a fool not to realize that this looks bad to the rest of the community.

If I was a tech CEO id be extremely wary of paying anyone $2/hour. What about safety, entitlements, conditions, potential for child labor, hours worked etc.

I totally agree that it’s good for African people to get the work but rich companies have to do a whole lot more than just agree to that and pay $2/hour. They have to ensure that if they’re going to do this sort of thing that not only are they paying the $2, they have 100% ensured the working rights of the people.

And if they’re remotely smart they would go well beyond, for example sponsoring computer science university for 500 young people.

I think it's okay - even preferable - if rich companies decide to pay more, but compared to the alternatives, this "exploitative" gig is actually doing more to lift Africans out of poverty.

We've seen this experiment in China - in one generation, hundreds of millions of Chinese have made the leap from farm labor to the iPhone-owning middle class.

I think companies can choose to pay better, but even if they choose to be "evil, greedy capitalists" it still beats the majority of local alternatives.

> They have to ensure that if they’re going to do this sort of thing that not only are they paying the $2, they have 100% ensured the working rights of the people.

So you want every corporation to have a law enforcement or investigative journalism arm? How would that work exactly?

What rights, specifically, should they be enforcing? European rights? American rights? Australian rights? The UN's human rights?

> If I was a tech CEO I'd be extremely wary of paying anyone $2/hour. What about safety, entitlements, conditions, potential for child labor, hours worked etc.

And thus wouldn't pay Kenyans to do this labor. Not sure that makes any Kenyans better off.

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