Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

How, exactly, does Western liberalism absolutely require cheap brown people?


It doesn't. Western liberalism has, at times, relied on cheap white people, too.

But the need for unskilled labor has dropped precipitously, while demand for skilled labor has spiked. See, for example, the IT industry's need for "cheap brown people" (from India, Pakistan, and elsewhere in Asia). They're only marginally cheaper than white citizen labor, and a lot more expensive than unskilled labor. This has been offset some by outsourcing, so the labor can have a lower cost of living in their native country, but still.

Brown labor is always, always an act of desperation. A racist society would rather not have brown people at all, and only employs them if whites cannot or will not do the job.


"the need for unskilled labor has dropped precipitously"

here, the need for unskilled labor has dropped precipitously here


That's only because unskilled labor has become much more expensive here (unions, safety regulations, overtime, etc).


No, the need has gone away. Take, for example, moving a few tons of concrete rubble a couple hundred feet. The way it used to be done was to have a group of men hammering it into movable chunks, and another group of men carrying the chunks by hand. Now, you just use a Bobcat. One man can do the work of twenty.

Any job that requires a lot of muscle and not much brain has been more or less wiped out. That's a lot of jobs.


That's only true where the cost of labor is too high. Go visit a construction site in India and you'll see a lot of tasks done the way you've described above.


Every single thing you touched (And every single thing connected to what you touched) to type that statement was made overseas.

Welcome to the international system of currency and labor arbitrage, a core prerequisite for any democratic experiment. Democracy has ALWAYS and WILL always require slaves.


To me, I think you are objecting to capitalism more than democracy. That certainly chases labor arbitrage however I do think its a poor mischaracterization to attribute labor arbitrage to slavery. That doesn't mean arbitrarily small amounts of compensation don't effectively become slavery, but instead that pareto optimality is not the only way to prevent slavery.


Trade which is popular these days is not the same as slavery which is thankfully rare. The Chinese who make much of the stuff have done pretty well over the last few decades.


You are conflating economic neoliberalism (which is neither new nor contemporarily liberal) with social liberalism. They are not the same and nobody is pretending that they are.

I still fail to see your connection:

1: Slaves

2: Democracy

3: ????

4: Profit(?)

Could you explain with links or examples how exactly slavery (or economic peonage, depending on your definition), is required to maintain a democracy?


> You are conflating economic neoliberalism with social liberalism.

I agree it appears I'm making this conflation. But

> nobody is pretending that they are:

Is not an honest statement. Any attempt to make cheap brown labor more expensive through legislation (See the Trump protests) or even by IMPROVING their quality of life (See gentrification) is instantly fought off as racist. The powers that be have deeply merged international currency flow with Western liberal morality after the 1940s and use their sacred cows as hostages to stifle any threats to their power.


Gentrification pushes low income people out of their communities by increasing the costs of living there beyond their capacity to absorb those costs. It is also not inherently racist (as it affects anyone who is low income), but is one mechanism through which racial inequities are exacerbated in our country.


>Is not an honest statement. Any attempt to make cheap brown labor more expensive through legislation (See the Trump protests) or even by IMPROVING their quality of life (See gentrification) is instantly fought off as racist.

For the third time, I ask for a specific example. A link. Something. Otherwise I think you are either trolling or positing biased statements that are not backed up by facts.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: