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by sneak 103 days ago
It’s not exploitation unless the participants in the deal are being coerced. You can’t make a solid case for employees being coerced to work for an exploitative employer outside of company towns or non-functioning labor markets; neither of these apply to the Philippines.

If the chatter thought the job was so bad, they can quit and get a different one. Millions of people make that choice, it is available to them. There is no requirement that they do this work; it is entirely voluntary. The people doing these jobs have determined that it is the best option for them, personally, or they wouldn’t be there.

PS: $2-4/hr is a more than decent wage in the Philippines. Median income there is $2.11/hr, minimum wage is $1.36/hr.

3 comments

If you don’t work, you die, or at least suffer much worse quality of life, especially in poor countries or countries without a big social safety net.

There is a reason why in many places it’s considered highly unethical to pay people for organ, egg, blood donations, etc (besides just compensating lost wages/travel expenses).

Completely true, but also completely irrelevant to the claim at hand: that sex work specifically is exploiting the sex workers.

The general claim that capitalistic societies exploit workers has famously been made many times before.

> unless the participants in the deal are being coerced.

Here's the nice thing about it: they are! If they don't work (for any of the equally exploitative companies in their country) they die.

Maybe you should take it up with your deity of choice. Capitalism didn't make humans need to eat to survive. Or perhaps you should try to bring back slavery, to make others work so you can eat without doing any work yourself. I admit it's an attractive proposition, but I'm not too fond of the impact on others since I'm a bit of a softie
They are being coerced to participate in the capitalist system, maybe. Not to be a “chatter”.

No argument against protections, though.

And yet lots of people don't work for companies and still manage not to die. I wonder how they do it? A mystery, I guess.
Yes, everyone should become a one-person company!
The requirement is that they not starve, not be made homeless, and not be forced into even less appealing and/or more dangerous work.

The coercion comes from the very limited choices they have to avoid that.