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Comment by dauertewigkeit | Hacker News Reader

I see no evidence of "exploitation" here. Somebody is employing Nigerians to do a boring job. What's wrong with that? It probably counts as a decent job over there. Probably more fun (and ethical) than working at a call centre.

Actually, thinking about it, it's probably not even that boring.

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Workers use that word when they can't use the word 'scab'. It's just a means for labour to control employment.

God forbid that labor would control itself

Of course everyone wants to assert power and control over things. Some groups of labour want to ensure that other labour cannot get compensated. That's a fundamental part of unionization: preventing others from working. I think it's good for us to talk about these as they are: power struggles between factions.

Why you got to make workers rights sound sinister?

Typical Leftist dribble from the Guardian. Pretty much any case of giving jobs to poor people is “exploitation”.

"Drivel" would be the word here. "Dribble" only makes sense if OP thinks the Guardian should have written more voluminously.

Reference: https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=dribble&submit.x...

Or check out the scene in Burn After Reading where Frances McDormand confronts a Russian diplomat.

Well it's a shell game, right? On the one hand here's this huge valuation and future profit. On the other hand, the workers get just a small fraction of that value and still live in squalor.

Is that where your billions come from? You comfortable with that?

That's not how I run my company.

You don't pay people less because you have them by the short and curlies of their own poverty. That is exploitive. You pay them a fair share of the value they're producing.

The problem is that if corporations did this, if they stopped exploiting, if they paid a fair share, then those billions in valuation magically vanish. It's because the valuation was predicated on exploitation to begin with.

>Well it's a shell game, right? On the one hand here's this huge valuation and future profit. On the other hand, the workers get just a small fraction of that value and still live in squalor.

I'm not seeing how this is a "shell game" in any meaningful sense. In contrast to the actual game[1], everyone knows and gets what they signed up for. There's no deception going on aside from a vague "but I thought corporations were supposed to give everyone a fair share (whatever that means) that idealists have".

>You don't pay people less because you have them by the short and curlies of their own poverty. That is exploitive. You pay them a fair share of the value they're producing.

What is a "fair share"?

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

If you want to make an argument that employees are underpaid and don't capture enough of the wealth they generate, fine, I would agree with you. But this is not just true of Africans who are employed by Americans. This is almost the general case.

I don't think invoking this debate in the context of lack of jobs in Africa, is useful. These are two completely different problems with different causes.

It is an issue. They hire African workers because they can exploit them perhaps 3x or more than Western workers. For every unit of revenue they extract, they can pay the African workers 2/3 less let's say. Low cost of living means nothing when it also comes with low standard of living, caused by globalist exploitation in the first place. The globalist capitalists simply exploit the poverty of the final market to retain more of the revenue.

They could try to exploit Western workers as mechanical Turks but their strategy would then fail. The strategy succeeds because the rate of exploitation of workers in impoverished countries - in terms of actual share of the real dollars produced - is much higher in the global South than the global West.

Worse we're now all guilty and complicit, in using LLMs, and even in using open source llms train second hand on the unethically sourced llms. We will have to pay reparations.

By making a false equivalence between the two worker classes, you potentially support the continued existence of the globalist hyper exploitation strategy, and prevent Justice for AI workers. You can speak out against it instead, act against companies who use it, and move towards understanding what reparations might entail.

I think the exploitation of low-paid mechanical Turk style laborers is a real problem and we need to talk about it, rather than background it just because workers in the global West are exploited as well. True global worker solidarity means seeing this as a place where the iron is very hot and ready for striking.

Finally, the scarcity of jobs in Africa is not a problem being seriously discussed here. It's being used as a red herring to justify exploitive investment.

You mismanage your company to signal virtue and you're proud of it? Crazy

Gaslighting actually decent business people on the internet is a very bad look for you. I'm not insane, I just have values and principles you don't understand. If I'm virtue signaling, then you're signaling you are an unreasoning a**.

It's hard to imagine that you have anything constructive to contribute to a business conversation, when you see someone who acts out of ethics and assume they're acting performatively. That just means you don't believe ethics are real. That's a very dangerous attitude in a business person.

Curious about the company that you own, what its business model is. I bet you're in crypto.

That's a lot of projection going on. It's deeply unethical to squander economic resources on your vanity. The elephant in the room is that your employees are not starving Africans who deserve charity far more. Your actions cause the death of starving children who would have otherwise been fed if you had not overpaid your rich employees so you can feel good about yourself. You're a bad person.

And no I'm not in crypto. I've been saying it has no lawful utility so voluminously that mods have asked me to stop trolling crypto people. So we can establish your assumptions and fundamental intuition and instincts are very inaccurate. You have a broken compass and it has caused you to become disconnected from first principles of microeconomics.

What is your company name and who are the unlucky shareholders you're victimizing?

Last, I hope you can learn the difference between kindness and niceness. The former is legitimate while the latter is what you do - a manipulative social strategy, often employed by predators with subclinical psychopathology, to ingratiate yourself to others in leu of merit.

First off you yourself are projecting that I am squandering anything. I would argue that what you say is squandering is simply not taking advantage of customers and workers to deliver your crypto scam. You would argue that you're being virtuous.

Now you're charging me with causing death of children. f** you. Laying the charge that I'm being nice to manipulate, while being manipulative.

Anyways if you want to argue that you need to reduce your workers to squalor and keep them there in order to be a virtuous business person... Guess what? I'm very comfortable with you calling me a bad person then. Because to you the good person is one who enslaves customers and workers alike. That's absurd to me.

Anyways, your argument is that a large mega national corporation should exploit the cheapest market because that saves lives in that market. I argue that they only use that market because it is exploited, and their strategy will keep it that way. So they are perpetuating the conditions that cause the deaths you are trying to prevent.

Anyways you keep making heroes of multi-billion dollar corporations, and I'll keep trying to dismantle them.

Not going to tell you my company and have you attack it, but I'll point out that I'm the sole investor, and every worker gets a full copy of our engineering stack because we run open source.

I'm not overpaying anyone. I'm paying everyone the fair share of the work that they produce. You want me to reduce them to serf's because that maximizes the companies utility and is good Management in your mind. Paying someone less because you can get away with it is an abuse.

You're going to keep projecting that I'm being manipulative and nice rather than simply having some ethics and having worked very hard to free myself from under the thumb of abusive bosses.

So f** you.

Also I'm not going to respect the mental health assessments - which you continue to persist in - and which I call gas lighting - of some ableist who thinks that subclinical pathology is a bad thing or relevant to this conversation. What you are engaging in is character assassination and ad hominem reasoning, while addressing my arguments with gross mischaracterization. You're approaching with an immoral and disgusting approach to business, where if I don't exploit the cheapest poorest labor in a way that won't lift them up, then I'm evil. I find you creepy and disturbing.

But I'm not scared of you.

How could we chat voice to voice? I'm curious to see how your abusive unethics, illogic, and harassment tactics will unfold in a voice chat. The benefit is that it will help me harden myself against counter-revolutionaries and pro-capitalists. Considered doing me the honor!

The lady doth protest too much

You're here to hurt me aren't you telepathy. Not to tell the truth or nothing. But to hurt me because you don't like my ideology.

I'm going to f** you up. Logically I mean. In debate I mean. I don't think you have the balls to end this conversation with me. It will take more blood sweat and tears than you have in your body. And I will beat you effortlessly. Cuz I'm everything you think of when you think of a hateful human. A human that doesn't deserve to exist who continues to claw there body against the fabric of reality and exist. You hate me. And I will defeat you. Let's talk. Debate. Not afraid of you.

Okay okay. If you actually troll crypto folks maybe you're not so f*** awful as I think you are.

But that's if. And that's it. If you're not also on Marxist, arguing that AI companies need to be paying more than the market rate, and making the workers part of the company. Then I think you need to leave the conversation because I have won.

And my merit is amazing bro. I have been studying computer graphics for over 20 years. I only just now started the company where it depends on that. I had to steal the company idea from a capitalist who refused to develop the idea, and wanted to hire low paid workers to do our work for us so we can get rich.

You would have loved him. Maybe you are him Chris is that you?

Too bad I buried him. Long ago in my heart.

The business is mine today. Operating like I wanted to. You hate me. It Ain't that I took it from you. It's that it was mine all along.

You want to call me crazy because I run a company and I don't exploit labor.

What's your name what's your name what's your name what's your name what's your name is your name Chris?

Talk to me

The more information u reveal the more information u talk to me.

So tired of dealing with people like you. So tired of people wanting to attack me just cuz wanting to do good business

Wanting to do decent business.

Wanting to do good business.

PS I'm not a subdiagnosed whatever you say it is. I'm just autistic. Had to run my own company without a boss to boss me. Because I'm so disabled I can only work two or three days a week and otherwise your type would fire me. Now you want to think you can sass me. I will destroy you in this conversation. Keep coming at me bro.

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