<story><title>“Location-Based Pay” – Who are we to complain?</title><url>https://blackshaw.substack.com/p/pay</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gamesbrainiac</author><text>As a Bangladeshi, I can tell you that the workers in my country don&amp;#x27;t have proper unions. They can&amp;#x27;t negotiate. Salary is the last thing on their minds, they can&amp;#x27;t even negotiate safe working conditions. They are uneducated, so they don&amp;#x27;t know what they deserve. See here -&amp;gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;2012_Dhaka_garment_factory_fire&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;2012_Dhaka_garment_factory_fir...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;So, the cheap stuff that you&amp;#x27;re getting is because someone is getting a super bad deal, by exploiting the heck out of workers. Same in China.&lt;p&gt;The garments factory owners are walking away with tonnes of money, leaving the workers high and dry.&lt;p&gt;The more _subtle_ point that the author is making, is that, &amp;quot;wait, if people realize that they can get awesome developers in developing nations for a lower price, I&amp;#x27;m not going to get hired any more in my over-priced city&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Good, move to a place where your salary is worth more, and work to enrich that community. Why should SF and NY get all the benefits of economic growth?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>runarberg</author><text>Precisely. The OP reaches the wrong conclusion from an excellent point.&lt;p&gt;The fact that they are benefiting as a consumer because of location based salaries is another point against them. Pitting &lt;i&gt;“closing down the ‘sweatshops’”&lt;/i&gt; (i.e. unemployment) as the only alternative for the workers is disingenuous. Another alternative is worker control over the factories. Yes OP as a consumer will loose some luxury as the price of consumer products rises along with the workers’ pay, but what natural law states that the OP has the right to that luxury at the cost of foreign workers?&lt;p&gt;The original point, you deserve the value of your work in salaries regardless of your location still holds. Even more so when it is applied to the global scale. And the fact that it isn’t applied on the global scale is just another fact pointing to the fact that we live in an unequal economy that exploits workers. Instead of rejecting this, OP should have reached the conclusion that there are alternative worker arrangements which would benefits workers globally.</text></comment>
<story><title>“Location-Based Pay” – Who are we to complain?</title><url>https://blackshaw.substack.com/p/pay</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gamesbrainiac</author><text>As a Bangladeshi, I can tell you that the workers in my country don&amp;#x27;t have proper unions. They can&amp;#x27;t negotiate. Salary is the last thing on their minds, they can&amp;#x27;t even negotiate safe working conditions. They are uneducated, so they don&amp;#x27;t know what they deserve. See here -&amp;gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;2012_Dhaka_garment_factory_fire&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;2012_Dhaka_garment_factory_fir...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;So, the cheap stuff that you&amp;#x27;re getting is because someone is getting a super bad deal, by exploiting the heck out of workers. Same in China.&lt;p&gt;The garments factory owners are walking away with tonnes of money, leaving the workers high and dry.&lt;p&gt;The more _subtle_ point that the author is making, is that, &amp;quot;wait, if people realize that they can get awesome developers in developing nations for a lower price, I&amp;#x27;m not going to get hired any more in my over-priced city&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Good, move to a place where your salary is worth more, and work to enrich that community. Why should SF and NY get all the benefits of economic growth?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jrochkind1</author><text>I find the author&amp;#x27;s point to be a very disturbing one: If we really pay people fairly, I won&amp;#x27;t be able to afford all these cheap consumer goods any more.&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;idea&amp;quot; of location based pay for developers is that you an have the same standard of living in Boise on less salary than in London.  Whether this is true or not is subject to debate.&lt;p&gt;But what&amp;#x27;s not subject to debate is that, as you say, Bangladeshi garment workers do &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; have a standard of living that is okay. What do we do with the fact that our (in the USA or UK) cheap clothing comes at that &amp;quot;price&amp;quot;?</text></comment>