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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   26353 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024

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not even pseudo slave labor

It’s not slave labor, and it’s also not “not genuine” slave labor? That’s what pseudo means. The simplified point is that, just like slave labor is great for the wealthy employers but bad for the non-slave wage competitor, so is it bad when you import a class of people who are practically economic serfs within a given industry: no hope of ever obtaining a better position because of the language barrier / citizenship barrier / possibly no degree at all even in Mexico/Honduras/etc.

Actual slave wages are zero. People talking about "slave wages" are simply trying to use the negative affect of "slavery" (or "serfdom") to tar something that's entirely unlike slavery rather than argue against it on the merits.

There are people who will probably work low level jobs their entire life, yes. Some of them are (illegal) immigrants. Maybe this is bad, but I can't see how it's bad because they agreed on a wage you don't like. These people are free to go home if they don't like their conditions (and in fact some of them do).

For a practical discussion on the effect of wage depreciation on the lower and lower middle class, I fail to see a substantive difference between “these people signed up to work because they live in extreme poverty and so will labor for almost nothing”, and “these people genuinely work for nothing but room and board and food.” In both cases it is horrible for domestic workers who do not and cannot live like a Honduran who sends home remittance payments. Calling it pseudo slavery is no less manipulative than the economists’ misuse of the terms “efficiency”, “free market”, “low costs”, etc.

We can only hope one day the Indians become trained enough that we can completely replace our domestic economists with Indian-born workers. This would be highly efficient.

For a practical discussion on the effect of wage depreciation on the lower and lower middle class, I fail to see a substantive difference between “these people signed up to work because they live in extreme poverty and so will labor for almost nothing”, and “these people genuinely work for nothing but room and board and food.”

The mistake you're making is that "slavery" isn't about the effects on low class wages. It's about an involuntary labor arrangement. Just because you don't like something doesn't make it slavery.

There is plenty of actual slavery going on with illegal migrants as well.

What is the actual slavery? It's not like they can confiscate people's passports. These people don't have passports.

Illegal immigrants undercut domestic workers, it would logically raise employment and wages amongst the working class.

they don't have better prospects too.

That is not actual slavery.

Nobody said that it was, but it is pseudo slavery if your only options are that, crime (medium term death) or starve (early death).

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