[tathagatadg]

This takes me to my childhood. My dad was an electrical engineer in India and worked at a ship repair dockyard. He once came back with a few shelves and cabinets for our kitchen. These were taken out of ships that were getting cut up in their dockyard. They were complete mismatches in aesthetics but it did not matter to his "why waste such functional ..." attitude. He was excited about what his "workers" could salvage from the ship. Mom didn't care as this was an old house where we have been living for generations and functionality trumped aesthetics.

The most intriguing part to me was the wooden cabinet was painted white with something stencil printed in green. My best guess was that was a Cyrillic script, and about twenty five years back, it wasn't easy to decipher what they meant.

Those cabinets are still hanging in our old house. Next time I'm there, all I need to do is pull up my phone and translate that text and get a kick out of what the original intention was for the sailors and what my mom is storing in it!

[Waterluvian]

I can only imagine the conditions his "workers" worked in back then given how poor the conditions still are today.

I think scenes from ship breaking, electronics recycling, and other recycling efforts sent overseas could fit in, as-is, to a film like Blade Runner.

[boringg]

Those industries don't pay well to anyone involved but are a global benefit. Such a strange world we live in.

[paxys]

"Paying well" is relative. There are lots of industries that are rightly considered exploitative from the western eye, but people who are working these jobs would otherwise be starving or relying on meager government handouts if they went away.

[teachrdan]

This is plainly true. But there is a middle ground between "the least amount of money workers will accept before choosing to starve instead" and "so much money it's no longer economical to pay workers to do."

I have no idea what the case was in this specific industry in India. But in many developing countries, first world companies collaborate with government and pay off private muscle to make it impossible for workers to organize and earn anything in that middle ground.

(I do not mean to imply that you deny this possibility. But there are many on HN who uncritically believe that if workers take a job, it is therefore a fair wage taken voluntarily.)

[FireBeyond]

> (I do not mean to imply that you deny this possibility. But there are many on HN who uncritically believe that if workers take a job, it is therefore a fair wage taken voluntarily.)

Reminds me of the Libertarian Police Department (https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertari...):

> "Do we have any leads?”

> “Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”

> “Easy, chief,” I said. “-Any- rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”

> He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”

[eru]

> This is plainly true. But there is a middle ground between "the least amount of money workers will accept before choosing to starve instead" and "so much money it's no longer economical to pay workers to do."

That's what labour market competition between employers (or employment opportunities, because people can strike out on their own) is for.

More and stiffer competition is better.

> (I do not mean to imply that you deny this possibility. But there are many on HN who uncritically believe that if workers take a job, it is therefore a fair wage taken voluntarily.)

I don't know what definition of 'fair' you want to use here. It's taken voluntarily in some sense. But so is the choice between starving vs cannibalism, if you have no other options. So that's not a very useful distinction.

If you want to help people, you not to improve their options, make sure that better options can be provided. That's very different from outlawing bad options, and just the opposite. (Ie giving the would-be cannibal access to some bread is actually helpful. Just banning cannibalism on the lifeboat only leads to starvation, if there are no other options.)

Conditions in the ship breaking industry will improve as other industries compete for workers with them.

For comparison, have a look at the working conditions of eg nannies in England today vs 800 years ago. They do essentially the same job, but get paid so much more in real terms. And not out of any generosity by their employers.

(You can pick many other professions, too.)

[jordanb]

What were the people of Alang doing before shipbreaking? Were they starving?

We know from the history of enclosure that the starvation was an intentional strategy to compel people into wage work. There were guides to how to do enclosure that advised lords against planting fruit trees, because the peasants would eat the fruit from the trees and therefore not want to engage in work.

[fennecbutt]

Only because we let 1% take from us and are easily distracted by petty race, sexuality, gender, immigration squabbles.

The rich often pay 0% tax but we're still doing nothing about it. We'll never do anything about it.

[numpad0]

> but people who are working these jobs would otherwise be starving

That's extortion...

[Retric]

I don’t think you understand what that word means. Extortion isn’t simply any negative consequence.

A dentist requiring payment before preforming surgery didn’t cause your tooth decay and they have no obligation to help you. Same deal here, someone offering a job is offering the possibility of a mutually beneficial relationship, but that’s as far as it goes.

[numpad0]

By that logic it's up to you to die or not from being shot in the face. That's like 18th-19th century or earlier model of world.

> A dentist ... have no obligation to help you.

btw, this is region dependent. Medical services are just businesses in the US, but doctors are obligated to provide emergency cares by law in many regions.

[ToucanLoucan]

What about when someone invents the concept of private property ownership, claims all the food as his own, hires a bunch of people by paying them with the food he has declared he owns to guard that food, and then demands payment for you to eat that food to survive?

Maybe extortion isn't the right word, but it's certainly not voluntary exchange either.

[almostgotcaught]

Is there a word for this specific kind of ambivalence where you label a pitiable, miserable set of circumstances "strange"? As if it's on the same level as the strong nuclear force? Maybe "motivated ambivalence".

There's nothing strange about it just as there's nothing strange about cobalt mining conditions in Democratic Republic of Congo: exploitative trade agreements, political corruption, and apathy.

[byteknight]

Just because you don't think its strange doesn't mean others don't. Strange is subjective. If he feels its odd we willfully ignore it, then its strange.

[vasco]

Using "strange" instead of "bad" to me indicates someone has enough maturity to recognize that human nature is part of nature, which is gnarly and creates bad things like humans setting up incentives without having to necessarily classify humans or the universe as bad.

Is it bad when a lion kills another animal? In a way yes, it's extra death that could be preventable, in another way it's what it is. Is it strange or bad if a human is born dumber than average? What about if a human is born more narcissistic than average and does bad things?

It leaves open the possibility of you the writer also being wrong, so it comes across as humbly sharing an opinion.

[almostgotcaught]

> has enough maturity to recognize that human nature is part of nature

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

[vasco]

I literally didnt define it as good. Maybe read again. I said it isnt good or bad, its nature, its what it is. Ironic that while explaining why using "bad" to qualify nature is not appropriate you think im saying its good.

[frutiger]

> Is it strange or bad if a human is born dumber than average?

And by definition, 50% of babies are.

[s1artibartfast]

Why is that strange? At no time in history have jobs paid according to their benefit.

[throw10920]

It's not actually strange - GP is just using that word to emotionally manipulate readers.

[vasco]

To manipulate readers into realizing that industry doesn't pay their workers well?

[s1artibartfast]

basically. To manipulating the reader into thinking that workers being paid well or according to their "benefit" is the natural, logistical, or otherwise expected outcome.

It is an attempt to switch the roles between what the conventional, familiar, and safe what is unconventional, weird, and strange.

Paying workers according to "benefit" is not tried and true. It has real challenges and problems.

[throw10920]

HN is not an advocacy platform, so manipulative comments, like boringg's, and yours, are not appreciated.

[ornornor]

Not trying to defend this kind of practices, it just reminds me of something I watched recently about the working conditions in the Victorian era in a UK cotton mill… Atrocious and exploitative by all current standards, and yet people chose this over more traditional agricultural occupations because it paid better, weekly, and there was no uncertainty that you’ll lose an entire season of wages because the harvest was bad. And yet they were working 72h a week, had indentured child labour, average life expectancy was something like 40 years old, injuries and loss of fingers or limbs were regularly occurring.