Hacker News Reader

Comment by friend_and_foe | Hacker News Reader

Enduring indignity for lucrative return is not unheard of or really all that uncommon. There's prostitution, pornography, and in most of the professional world there is some degree of hazing.

It's a shame, and I'm a person that would not endure indignity like this for any amount of money (probably unless it was a ludicrous amount; we really don't know until the money is on the table in front of us), and I'm sure there are lots of proud people like me, but when these people say they'd rather do this than toil in the fields for $2 I have to say, as disgusting as it is, it's their choice.

To say you don't like it is to say you wish there weren't people willing to pay for this, perhaps you find those people disgusting, and that you wish these people could find a less degrading way to make good money, but at least for me, it is not to say that you think they should be prohibited from doing it.

View on HN

> but when these people say they'd rather do this than toil in the fields for $2 I have to say, as disgusting as it is, it's their choice.

It's not that simple! This looks to be the case when you're the center of your own universe, but the effects cascade to everyone around them-- once landlords and merchants realize all these wage slaves now have money to burn, they raise prices of everything to capture as much of that as they can. You can no longer remain solvent as a $2 rice-picker; in order to compete with the prostitutes, you're forced to become one yourself. It's only the illusion of choice; if there were a way to make that much money through other means, you'd be doing it already.

This "hack" only works if you're among the first few people to do it. Once everybody is doing it, supply outpaces demand, and now you have to do something even more degrading to stand out from the others in competing to earn the privilege of sucking off some schlub. It's a race to the bottom...and beyond.

Lack of control for inflation is why UBI won't ever work, and why fraud and prostitution are problems. Much as we can't survive off of eating our own shit, you can't have a sustainable economy or civilized society built on rampant cannibalization.

How is this any different than Amazon workers being forced to piss into bottles and people becoming homeless due to medical debt?

That's why we'll never have UBI: because people are (apparently) fine with this.

It's the exact same thing and every bit as shitty.

As long as we- as a society, allow people to prey (read- profit) off other people it will remain this way.

I believe more and more of us are not OK with this, but it doesn't matter.

The problem is that the people with the money have the power to keep things as they are.

Voting doesn't work, they lobby and own our government.

We need a new way of doing things.

I wrote much, much longer comment that said basically this.

I am not okay with this, and I noticed that people just say "Well it's better than starving" like that's the obvious other choice.

I don't think it is - we could get rid of the system that causes this, or modify it somehow.

There are too many people who just can't see past the system at all. It's like Newspeak where they can't even form a thought that the system could be at fault.

It's because it's not the system that causes this. Life causes this.

There was a time not that long ago where every human born on this earth had to claw through the mud day in and day out to scrape together survival. A lot of people still live this way, as do all wild animals, and it was like this for all of time before, for every living creature on this earth. This is the nature of life. The system you talk about has created a world where a lot of humans, the majority of them and more humans than even existed 100 years ago, do not have to claw their way to survival until the fateful day they fail. That's not to say it still isn't hard to survive, but it is not as hard for most people as the natural state.

I'd like a world too where nobody has to suffer indignity to feed themselves, but that world requires more of what we have created, not less.

Doesn't price raising only work if there is either 1.an enormous wealth disparity between the lower and upper classes or 2. the upper classes have a monopoly on violence? The only way competition shouldn't be able to cancel out this price inflation is if the "wage slaves" can't say "maybe i should take this extra money and start my own landlord business, and undercut those assholes who just raised prices".

After all, in other first world counties, even those without strong regulations, landlords and merchants don't capture all of your profit.

Your second point about supply of this type of content outpacing demand is valid, though.

It's relatively easy to reject "dirty money" if it's extra money on top of your normal, sustainable income. It's much harder to reject when you literally don't know how are you going to feed yourself, or your children, next week. This is what the poorest face.

Agreed. Even in fairly normal jobs like hotel room cleaning, workers have to endure indignities that a person with a reasonably high, stable income would never want to endure, such as handling bed sheets with bodily fluids, entering rooms with naked people etc.

People who endure this humiliation usually have few other options. In the case of room cleaning, the downsides are largely intrinsic to the job and not necessarily immoral in my point of view - even if we should put mechanisms in place to try to get these people better pay. However, in the case of the TikTok videos, it's purely about exploiting the desperation of others, so I can't put it in the same level as normal unpleasant jobs.

Mechanisms in place: unions?

I don't really consider this "dirty money". Not as long as nobody is being hurt by it. I'm not worried about people willing to humiliate themselves for money (assuming that they're even bothered by what others would find humiliating).

It's the people willing to hurt others for money that bother me most. The ones knowingly selling poisoned or unsafe products because they'll save a fraction of a cent per unit sold. That's "dirty money" to me. It's usually being done by people who already have obscene amounts of wealth too, but even in cases where someone is struggling to feed themselves or their children it doesn't give them the right to hurt others. That's a choice. People who scam and exploit others for profit are just evil.

"Dirty" here is subjective: something I personally find off-putting, disgusting, and even morally wrong, but have to do anyway to avoid starving my children, or similar.

We have so much food we waste 50% of it and we have two individuals with effectively private space companies.

Maybe it shouldn't be ok, and we should level the field a bit instead?

The problem is not in "us" having too much. Also at least one of the private space companies definitely makes a positive difference in the world.

It's "them" not being able to have enough. Mostly it's not even a supply-side problem: huge amounts of humanitarian aid go to e.g. certain parts of Africa. It's the local power structures that want to stay on top and subdue or crush any competition, and / or advance some religious cause. They don't care about their population starving. They directly forbid and resist e.g. handing out too much food, etc, because it undermines positions of their power, their chokehold on resources.

This can't be realistically solved by sending even more aid (it will convert into even more corruption, yachts, and houses in Toronto and London). It can't even be solved with bombs, bullets, and removal of the current crop of corrupt petty dictators: a new crop would appear instantly.

This likely can be healed by relatively slow education, information, economic nudges, and providing examples of well-functioning societies.

Another problem with sending surplus food to developing countries is that it just destroys the little local economy they have.

I think education is one thing, but some form of financial or economic aid is probably also needed, but how to do it in a way that sustainably improves the economy is hard.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com