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Comment by GrinningFool | Hacker News Reader

> traumatizing contract workers for $2-3 an hour)

Is there an hourly rate at which this should be acceptable?

There's no dollar amount but proper support during and after employment is a minimum, and a large paycheque will both offset some of the human cost and make it easier for people to be pushed to quit the job; Such that they aren't doing the job for too long.

The current support systems for police in this subject are already insufficient. Facebook's treatment of their moderation staff is abhorrent. The point of including the pay figure is to further illustrate just how damning this subcontracting practice is.

There is labor that is necessary for our societies to function, but a direct threat to the people doing the work. Someone has to do it, and it should be seen as a great service to society and rewarded accordingly. In a just world, we would be paying significantly extra for threats to health that come from work, in the one we are currently in we use threat of worse harm instead.

Someone has to do it, and it should be seen as a great service to society and rewarded accordingly

You are just too priviledge to understand people: many people would be glad do do it for the minimum wage, I would fight to have that oportunity (I live in west EU).

We have coal miners destroying their bodies and lungs, cobalt mining slavery, cocoa nut child labour and de facto slavery, sex workers, CPS investigators, first responders, and doctors with high rates of suicide…

Not only is there an acceptable market rate for trauma, it’s sometimes competitive and requires licensing.

There is one difference between first responders/doctors and the other classes (and the moderators under discussion here)

First responders/doctors/CPS investigators see the worst but they also have days where they make a difference. Save a life or multiple lives. I'm sure it's a huge part of what makes the job bearable, and to some meaningful.

I'm not discounting your point about high rates of suicide either. If anything, when you take away any good days, you're left, as a content moderator, with just seeing the worst of the world day in, day out, with nothing to make it meaningful. I'd suggest that's something we as a society should not tolerate as being an acceptable trade for the ability to share cat photos.

>First responders/doctors/CPS investigators see the worst but they also have days where they make a difference. Save a life or multiple lives. I'm sure it's a huge part of what makes the job bearable, and to some meaningful.

You think miners don't make a difference or save lives?

> You think miners don't make a difference or save lives?

Do you think miners mining is saving lives in the same way that doctors saving lives is saving lives?

To continue the parents point, do you think miners derive a deep or powerful satisfaction from some of their mining work which might offer some of the heavy cost it has on them physically and emotionally?

I think miners save more lives (through the supply of gas, energy, battery materials, pesticides, fertilizers, solar panel minerals, and ultimately electricity, computing materials, etc) than doctors do.

And I think what prevents miners to "derive a deep or powerful satisfaction from some of their mining work which might offset some of the heavy cost it has on them physically and emotionally" is not anything inherent in their work, but people thinking that only direct affect should be prestigious and satisfying and underapreciating the thankless background work to keep the lights on.

Same way people sneer at cleaning people or teachers and their meagre salaries and no respect, or domestic labor.

Emergency Department^ doctors, what do they make? give people who have to review the worst humanity has to offer and pay them that. and while we're at it, ambulance personnel should get a huge pay bump. Take it from nurses' pay.

^ i originally said "triage doctors" but i meant the resident ER doc.

Why take from other workers when it can be siphoned from upper management and shareholders?

you're right, it's a personal failing that i must snip at nurses whenever the word appears in my head. Apologies.

ER triage is usually done by a nurse, at least in England.

Rookie police officers in my country are paid 2500 euro per month and they have to deal with the underbelly of society.

They have access to better counselling and are ostensibly trained for the job. But there are still suicides.

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