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Comment by kogus | Hacker News Reader

It is very patronizing to think that these Kenyans have those kinds of opportunities, and have foolishly traded them in for a job writing essays. This is the best opportunity available to them at this time, and it is being taken away from them. If you think there were better opportunities they missed, then you are implicitly saying that they don't know what is best for themselves.

Having said all of that, let's not overstate the difficulty of writing college level essays, especially essays that are good enough for someone who isn't able to write such essays themselves.

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> This is the best opportunity available to them at this time, and it is being taken away from them. If you think there were better opportunities they missed, then you are implicitly saying that they don't know what is best for themselves.

But the opportunities in Kenya weren't taken from them? That's what the poster is trying to explain: A country should make sure their brightest are gainfully employed and compensated. That's how you build a better nation.

Three parts of bugger-all is still bugger-all. Can't take opportunities that weren't there in the first place.

That's a very faulty understanding of economics and labour. Wealth is created by man interacting with nature. Most nations in the history of the world created their wealth without being dependent on foreign money. Of course there are endless opportunities in Kenya, just as in other countries. The limiting factors are political and/or cultural. If some of the most barren countries in the world could spawn rich nations, what's lacking in Kenya?

This depends solely on what you're defining as an opportunity. Are the job positions there today? I.e., the "opportunity" that's an alternative to writing essays for foreign nations? Not enough of them. Could they be after a long cascade of primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary development? Yes. But they aren't there today. That's the key thing. People need to put food on the table today.

> A country should make sure

and the weather should make sure to rain often enough to not cause famine.

Now maybe they have more reason to try - since the college fraud money tap has been closed.

That is not what they are saying. They are saying that for the economy of Kenyan as a whole having a bunch of smart people writing essays for westerners does nothing to improve the local economy. If they are instead working to provide services or build infrastructure locally that will improve the economy for everybody there.

And where does this demand for their services come from locally?

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