[changing1999]

None of that is factual. If it is - present evidence that:

1. all workers involved in this project are slaves, i.e. trafficked and sold into slavery and are owned as property.

2. OP justifies the deaths and not merely tries to add context and find a reasonable explanation for some of the deaths (which does not exclude possible human rights violations).

[wormlord]

I like that you ignored my first point where I pointed out that your objective, rational analysis failed to account for basic variables like age and sex.

1. I don't need to prove "all workers" are slaves, that is an arbitrary burden established by you. I can provide links for you to educate yourself about the Kafala[0] system however. Here is an excerpt from the section on Saudi Arabia:

"an employer assumes responsibility for a hired migrant worker and must grant explicit permission before the worker can enter Saudi Arabia, transfer employment, or leave the country. The kafala system gives the employer immense control over the worker."

Sounds like ownership to me. You can dispute that if you want but I don't think it is a meaningful distinction to make, personally.

2. > My guess is that it's some combination of (a) truly awful slave-like conditions, (b) just general "lack of safety culture" conditions (e.g. ~100 people died building the Hoover Dam - I don't think people considered them slaves but they definitely weren't following OSHA rules)

OP is trying to contextualize the deaths in a way that makes them "cleaner" or "more acceptable" instead of just reading the damn articles that actual investigative journalists have written which would prove to them that YES this is slavery and YES these are human beings that are being worked to death.

If all your objective, rational analysis has wrought is a shitty half-assed statistical comparison in an attempt to justify slavery, on an internet forum, what good was it to begin with?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kafala_system#:~:text=The%20ka....

[changing1999]

> I'd like to see this death rate for the subset of the SA population that matches migrant demographics, ex: age and gender. Then we can see what the comparable death rates are for healthy young men.

I don't disagree with your first point. Yes, I would like to see these breakdowns. However, OP's point was that other factors like natural death can account for some of these numbers. This point is reasonable and data seems to suggest that it is statistically probable.

> educate yourself about the Kafala[0] system

Is this an abusive system? Yes. Does it create opportunities for slavery? Yes. Can 21K deaths be attributed so slavery? No evidence. This is not splitting hairs, this is a reasonable approach to digging into details when dealing with complex issues.

[wormlord]

> This point is reasonable and data seems to suggest that it is statistically probable.

You found a random datapoint to compare to without accounting for confounding variables. That is an unserious analysis.

> Yes. Can 21K deaths be attributed so slavery? No evidence. This is not splitting hairs, this is a reasonable approach to digging into details when dealing with complex issues.

The issue is not complex. You are just using this air of objectivity as cover for your intellectual incuriosity. You could literally stop arguing with me and go read articles that have been documenting the high mortality rate and human rights abuses, that have been coming out since around the time that the Qatar World Cup was announced, but you wont. People have done the legwork to bring this journalism to you, but you wont bother to go and read it, because you'd rather pull some stats out of your ass and call it a day, and then lecture others about emotionally-driven arguments.

The fundamental problem here is that you are being intellectually incurious, but don't want to admit it, and you are trying to stave off the cognitive dissonance that happens when you read about something bad happening, so you can contextualize it and go about your day without feeling sad. If that's the case, just say "I don't live in Saudi Arabia why the fuck do I care", at least it's honest.

[changing1999]

Hope you get well soon!

[wormlord]

Try being honest with yourself mate, instead of pretending like you're being rational while plugging your ears saying "lalala" to confirm your biases. It's not cute.