If you consider this to be exploiting the consumer then this is a good example for the textbooks of how, in a free market, there has to be some regulation to prevent exploitation of those at the edges of society.
It’s exactly the same argument for laws against the most vulnerable types of sex work, or selling body organs donated by the living. Without those laws, those who are most desperate will be able to act in desperation, to someone else’s benefit, with society doing nothing to stand in the way.
It’s probably time ad-tech was re calibrated on this spectrum before we race to the exploitative-bottom there as well, and build a shopping mall that we don’t want on the open common land that we do.
Regulating freely consented exchanges _you_ don't like out of existence will not actually make them disappear, just push them underground, out of society's eye and where the REAL exploitation takes place.
That's why adults actually working in those domains militate for legalization and that's why totalitarian societies require so much surveillance just to avoid collapse.
Because people WILL do the deals they need to do to survive or get ahead. Your laws will just provide the reason to catch and incarcerate them afterwards.
Sure, but that's not an argument for "actually exploitation is good." That's an argument for figuring out a solution to exploitation seeming like a rational choice in the first place.
In some cases, the problem is just that the free market sets up a race to the bottom and regulations can provide an artificial bottom. This is the standard argument for the minimum wage, for instance: even if businesses can afford to pay more and still be profitable, they won't voluntarily do so in a market where there's more supply of labor than demand for it.
In some cases, like livestreaming your hotel stay or selling your organs or sacrificing your lungs to mine coal, there's a qualitative difference, and saying "This job no longer exists" doesn't solve problems. If that's the case, society should figure out if it can afford in any way to provide for people's basic needs so that they can start having meaningful other options.
It seems entirely possible to me that a society with a strong social safety net (welfare, UBI, whatever) needs less regulation of its free market than one that puts the burden on its market to treat the most desperate in society with fairness.
(BTW, a minor point about sex work: I believe "legalization" refers to making it a regulated industry with the remaining possibility of criminal penalties for breaking regulations, and many sex workers prefer "decriminalization," i.e. just removing criminal penalties.)
Minimum wage hurts most the very people it pretends to help: the least productive of us, who become unemployable legally.
Business who can't raise their labor costs will either:
- raise prices while passing costs to consumers
- go out of business thus reducing consumer choice
- turn onto robots or offshoring (if possible)
None of those is good for neither workers nor consumers. I'd rather we raise worker wages the Silicon Valley way: through merciless competition between companies for talent, while encouraging said talent to start their own competing businesses.
You know what minimum wage is great for? Electing politicians.
Businesses that cannot turn a profit without paying their employees enough to cover basic expenses (leaving aside whether this is higher or lower than the current minimum wage) do not deserve to exist. Having those jobs automated away or passing the cost of living of the employees on to the customers are both reasonable alternatives.
It's an easy position take take when you're a well paid developer and money problems aren't a concern.
I used to feel the same way, until I started my own business. I couldn't attract venture capital and I had to bootstrap the company. There was no way in hell I was using my house for a loan.
Early on I relied on people who wanted to stay relevant, but needed flexibility, and were happy to take a lower hourly wage. For example, a stay at home parent whose SO earned the majority of the household income.
My business contributes sincere value to a niche industry that otherwise doesn't get any attention or investment. It's been said by several in my industry that without my company, several hundred community news organizations would likely fail.
Today, I can afford to pay a living wage. But now I understand that growing a real revenue generating business (without artificially inflating a company via investment) is difficult, and often requires low cost labor in order to get to the place where you can afford higher cost labor. Try it and you may not be as idealistic.
That's a good point, and a nice bottom-up view. The other side, the "do not deserve to exist" position however seems also true. It's a top-down view, coming from empirical observation: under competitive pressure, businesses will end up abusing everything and everyone that they can get away with abusing. Your bottom-up view relies on your own moral character - you were able to find people willing to work for below-market rates while making it a win-win and non-abusive situation. Top-down view correctly notes that ethics don't scale under economic pressure - and I have a whole collection of second-hand anecdotes demonstrating that - things people I personally know experienced.
My point being, I see both views as correct in principle. The hard challenge lies in reconciling them - letting good people craft better deals, while preventing malicious individuals from abusing their fellow human beings.
i totally have the same problem. i can't afford the wages that employees ask for. but that doesn't give me an excuse to hire people who are willing to work for less. yes, off-shoring is an option, and financially that would work, and is certainly a better option than underpaying locals who need more to pay their rent.
i do not believe that underpaying locals is a better option than off-shoring. even if the unemployment is high enough that people are willing to work for scraps, then i still believe that it is better for changes that allow me to actually pay local employees instead of taking the money out of employees pockets by paying them less.
the question should not be: how can we lower employment income so that you can hire more people. but how can we lower other costs so that small businesses can afford to pay people what they need for life.
so yes, i am trying for some years now, and i remain as idealistic as ever.
- Let's say I'm a 16 year old adolescent who's doing well in school and wants to take a part-time/weekend job to gain experience in the job market. My basic expenses are covered (I live with my parents). Should a business get to pay me less just because of this fact?
- I'm a wife of a rich man and have never had to work, but decided to try it because I'm bored. I know nothing but the finer things of life and my basic expenses are 10x what the middle class is. If a business has to cover basic expenses why are we not going to cover this claim of full expenses, what determines in a corruption-free manner whether a claim for a basic expense is valid, and what is an acceptable burden to a business owner to determine this?
- Let's say I'm a jobless struggling adult, sharing a cramped living space with 4 others including 1 or 2 who are drug addicts. A job would really help me get out of this situation, but company X is only willing to pay minimum wage. It's better than what I have now which is nothing. How is having this job automated away a reasonable alternative for me - because you don't want this employer to give me a job in the first place because it doesn't cover my expenses.
- Let's say I'm a customer of your business, and you decide to pass on the full cost of living of all employees to me. Your product jumps from $10 to $50. I'm not shopping there, your business closes, and your employees are now jobless. How does this help anybody?
Are the first 2 points even made seriously? Obviously they aren't advocating for businesses to compensate people for exactly their specific 'basic expenses', they clearly intend to mean basic expenses for low to middle class in general, not based on the person.
Also, it always seems weird that whenever a minimum wage discussion comes up people jump in with these obviously contrived what if scenarios. How about we care about the real people that can barely/cannot afford food/housing/etc because businesses don't pay enough, rather than these situations with made up people.
The number of teenagers having jobs has plummeted over time as minimum wage has increased. Teenagers don't often have the skills / work ethic / experience needed to provide more value than they cost and so the job is eliminated. We are removing the bottom rung of the ladder. This is not a contrived example.
> How about we care about the real people that can barely/cannot afford food/housing/etc because businesses don't pay enough
Obviously depending on people to care out of the goodness of their hearts isn't working, if someone really cared about these people they wouldn't be in their situation. You can ask me or anyone else to care, you can even pressure them into appearing to care, but you can't really make them care, so this is a bad way to solve a problem.
If a good system that doesn't depend on emotions, media performances, or pathos can be put into place, it's probably going to be more reliable in the long run, and can mutually benefit both those in bad situations and those who would like to be able to walk in a city without getting asked for money constantly.
Hence it's very valid and good to ask what exactly entails things like "basic expenses" and use hypothetical situations.
1 and 2 are counterexamples to something nobody really argues for, even in case of UBI. 3 is a more general problem, and a social safety net is one example solution here.
WRT 4, regulatory intervention ideas like minimum wage only work and derive all their power from being universally. Even if, as in your example, my product jumps from $10 to $50 (which would be something unprecedented), all my competitors (within the country) face the same issue too! Their prices will have to jump by roughly $40 as well. The overall demand for the product category may go down, but my position relative to competitors remains unchanged.
This may not work well for goods that can be easily offshored, like manufacturing plastic widgets. But (with the caveat that I'm not an economist, and didn't study this in too much detail) it seems perfectly matched for physical-space services sector - something, which by very definition can't offshore, and also resists automation pretty well.
> passing the cost of living of the employees on to the customers
I see this trope a lot, but the point I think it misses is the customers of these businesses are often enough the ones making minimum wage. So raising the business’s prices to pay the higher wages just ends up in a self defeating loop for all involved.
If the solution to poverty was “just give the poor people money”, it would’ve been done already I believe. Sadly, societal problems are generally not easy to solve.
By your logic startups (and pretty much any new business) should not exist, since they turn no profit for years.
And this is why Socialist economies are so crappy and need minimal wage laws: they kill their startups before they even exist and have no competition on the talent market.
And then they wonder why they can't produce an Apple, Microsoft, Amazon or Google...
The problem with this argument is that is presumes that other forms of compensation can be used to purchase food, healthcare, housing, etc.
Also, unpaid internships are legal in the US (at least federally) if they are primarily for the benefit/training of the worker and that information is made available upfront.
No, it presumes that the people taking these jobs have access to those things through other means. Like parental support, spousal support, scholarships, student loans, fellowships, government programs, side gigs, etc.
Just FYI, the argument for a minimum wage is that the market for workers is not a competitive market, allowing firms to pay low wages and putting the difference between the competitive wage and market wage into profit.
Kind of funny that you'd refer to Silicon Valley as an example. Aside from having no practical implications (you can't snap your fingers and make markets act the way you want) they had one of the most famous cases of employers colluding to drive down wages.
Your case isn't rested at all given most businesses in the United States aren't in a position to do business globally without heavily escalated logistical or infrastructural cost expansion due to physical goods or services (body in seat) as their product. Whereas Silicon Valley companies often only have to ensure that their information processing infrastructure expand to meet the capability to track/handle transactional load in order to have global consumer bases to pull from, thus allowing that several times higher wage financially. The digital expansion scales far easier than the physical.
Those wages therefore aren't some quirk of the unregulated free market. That was physics. More income sources = more income extraction = higher geographic pool to fuel competitive salary while earning a profit. Yet you still have to answer for wage suppressive collusion. Despite having everything going right for them, they still colluded.
Those of us subject to the wage competition in silicon valley make wages many times higher than the minimum wage. We're talking an order of magnitude more money. Competition in silicon valley does shit all for the people on the lower end of the wage scale in the bay area.
You conveniently forgot the "use existing profits that would have gone to owner to instead cover costs", something that seems to actually happen in combination with the others instead of the usually doomsday prediction before introduction / increase of minimum wages.
I understand slower progress would mean less conflict. But I'm also fine with robots, since accelerated progress means I'll experience more of it in the time I have left.
- decrease owner's profits to the point she will rather close the business and get a low-stress job as middle manager in some multinational corporation
As it happens, I am looking forward to robots too but I doubt they will help the least-productive members of our society too much...
I should have been clearer: I'm not taking a position on whether that argument for minimum wage is accurate. I don't know enough.
If it's not, then minimum wage also falls in the second category - of problems that should be solved by saying "Society will provide for the least profitable workers among us," not "You shouldn't be legally unemployable, but being legally underemployable is your own problem."
Minimum wage laws are part of the larger system, not an isolated black/white switch. What if people out of employment also get some financial support to retrain / kick out their addictions / cure a sickness. A minimum wage law would push a number of people out of employment, but the additional support systems would increase their chances to come back at a higher wage level. We do this all the time at a personal level, by deferring employment and using the time [and hefty sums of money] to go to school.
The end result may well be diverting resources from the most productive centers of society to the most needing sections thereof. Worse, it will be afflicted by corruption, only a fraction of the diverted money will end up on the most needing people plate.
What level of wasteful spending we are comfortable with?
> Minimum wage hurts most the very people it pretends to help: the least productive of us, who become unemployable legally.
How do you explain that the countries with the highest minimum wages also seem to have plentiful jobs and high performing economies? It seems that with your logic the should have large unemployed underclasses, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
Probably because already rich countries can afford to have high minimum wages in the first place. But many European countries with high minimum wages either by government fiat or because of strong unions have unemployment rates 2 or 3 times higher than the U.S. (e.g. Spain, Italy, Portugal, Sweden, France).
Few policies split economists as equally as the minimum wage, and I'm not necessarily advocating for it, but it's a little bit telling that you don't even consider that business might successfully adjust their compensation structures.
I think it’s ok to separate what one approves of or doesn’t approve of, from a separate axis of looking at what causes objective harm and misery to people.
Some of the hardest policy topics involve accepting things one finds distasteful because there is a moral ground for people being allowed to do what they want, and vice versa.
Your point on cannabis is certainly an excellent example of how to get policy wrong and create a huge net harm to society, especially in the US where late night TV hosts can joke about getting high, while 8 million others were arrested and harassed for possession over the last decade.
In my experience, from what I’ve learned from my friends who work with rough sleepers, all sex work is exploitative of those in desperation to some extent. It’s a spectrum that has at one end people trying to make ends meet, and at the other, slavery and trafficking.
I know of attempts to unionize and protect some kinds of sex work, but I don’t know if that represents the majority or a vocal and comparatively unexploited minority. It’s never the most exploited that you see in a debate arguing for complete legalization.
It’s easy to see both sides of an argument. It’s difficult and important to focus on where harm is being done, and to do something about that. For something with as rocky a history as prohibition has, I’m in favor of the arguments for it when it comes to sex work, and to my original point — to try to drag this back on topic! — it’s an example of required action to step in where the free market fails to protect the most vulnerable from harm.
Edit: and it’s stories like this $1 voyeur hotel that really add positively to thought on the subject. A really good non-tech HN submission, imho.
Your friends are probably not the best source on the matter. Go on YouTube and listen to interviews with actual sex workers in places where it is institutionalized (e.g. Amsterdam, New Zealand). There are plenty of Vice documentaries e.g. https://youtu.be/Q8_UGthO3CM
I’d reiterate that my sources are trained professionals who already work with the most vulnerable people who society has already failed — those who sleep rough and who have turned to or are thinking of turning to sex work. I accept your point though, that “sex worker” is a wide bracket that encompasses a range of personal situations though. Thanks for the link.
> Regulating freely consented exchanges _you_ don't like
I believe the argument they are trying to make is not about whether they like the transaction, but what constitutes "freely consented".
If someone's alternative is, for example, going hungry or sleeping on the streets or having their children go hungry, can we really say they are giving their consent freely?
Should we be concerned about other forms of coercion in addition to direct physical violence?
Define 'fair' in a way 65% would agree with. To me, 'fair' is what I negotiate. In my view, when value and price are decoupled, things tend not to go well. Keeping the things we value expensive, is exactly as it should be. This view does not perclude a social 'safety net', it just takes the position that wage laws should not be forced into imperfect duty as one.
Somewhat tongue in cheek, but if we’re going to consider the hotel residents as actors, and the room as remuneration equivalent to the fair market value of the room, then US residents should expect to be paying income tax on their stay. Oof: this is sadly all too plausible a scenario.
Yes, but the theory is that the requirement to be underground decreases transaction volume. So in a country where organ selling is banned, there will be far fewer cases of organ selling, although those that do happen will be far more horrifying than anything that would happen in a legal framework.
Thank you for the counter-point. I can see how it’s easy to come from the view that it is always bad. It certainly puts Hotel Voyeur into perspective, as an issue for society to spend its finite energy on tackling.
It’s not exploitation if adults, without coercion, agree to it of their own free will. It’s no one’s place to tell them what they aren’t allowed to do with their bodies or their lives (provided it’s not harming anyone else), simply because you wouldn’t make the same choice or don’t agree with it.
This is what self-ownership is about. To try to control others in this way is deeply immoral.
Adhering to axiomatic principles like self-ownership to the degree that you can justify scenarios like 'an addict legally selling their kidney' is a mistake. It's the equivalent of trying to stick to Newton's laws to explain the universe: they work great right up until there's a contradiction.
I'm all for decriminalization of drugs and sex work, but another first principle is that society should protect the vulnerable. Sometimes, regulation will be the best tool for that. Other times, a deregulated market will be the best tool. Unfortunately, the world is complex. While our principles can guide us, each situation needs to be considered individually and the right set of tools needs to be selected after careful consideration.
> Adhering to axiomatic principles like self-ownership to the degree that you can justify scenarios like 'an addict legally selling their kidney' is a mistake. It's the equivalent of trying to stick to Newton's laws to explain the universe: they work great right up until there's a contradiction.
That is precisely when it's most needed! There is no entity on Earth that can make any better claim to authority over a person's kidney than the owner of that kidney. The fact that you call them an "addict" as a way to delegitimize their decisions is an appeal to emotion; but ultimately every person is the sole determining authority on their own kidneys, without exception. This is not something that the opinions of others have any bearing on. In fact, "in cases of addiction" is a good canary in this coal mine: it's frequently trotted out by people who think that circumstances—any circumstances—are legitimate reasons to override another person's self-determination about their own physical person or choices about which that harm no other party, in an appeal to "common sense". It's not!
There isn’t a contradiction in an addict deciding to destroy themselves in continuing an addiction, and this decision is no more or less legitimately made than an addict deciding to cease their addiction. In all cases it is theirs alone to make.
Many of my friends have made each choice. It is always theirs to make, and neither is correct and neither is incorrect—unless it is forced upon them against their will!
It’s not a matter of “vulnerable”, or “decriminalization”, or “regulation”, or of markets. It is the basic philosophical premise that you don’t get to make these decisions for others unless you are willing to declare yourself their master and dominate them, using some handwaving excuse (e.g. "addiction") as justification for substituting your wishes for theirs—over their own body or choices.
The fact that you may have widespread opinion supporting “people shouldn’t get addicted to drugs and destroy themselves” is irrelevant. No person can legitimately claim this power over another in any circumstance, especially and most importantly the extreme ones. Self-destruction of any kind, but, to use an example, euthanasia, is not only legitimate in the case of terminal illness, or when loved ones agree and empathize with it. It is every person's own right to determine what happens physically to their own body, at all times and in all circumstances.
You’re using a lot of words and emotional context to dodge this plain and simple (and perhaps inconvenient) fact; the truth is, unfortunately, that such arguments have no moral basis, and are fundamentally immoral in that they violate consent.
Our bodies are our own to destroy and mutilate in any way we see fit. To use force to impose your will over top of their own and prohibit someone from exercising that basic right of self-determination is the blackest of crimes against an adult human being; it is logically equivalent to raping them, in my view of the violation of consent that it opts to impose upon them.
Please abandon this way of thinking, that you (or anyone else, or "society", or "government") are entitled to choices over the body of another person—for any reason, including and especially the ones you find disgusting, destructive, distasteful, or repugnant.
This is a feels-good paragraph, but it does not apply to the real world we live in.
Full and unlimited self-determination implies that all contracts made in any situation by an individual are valid. But not every contract is well-analyzed and well-considered and made in perfect information.
If you are arguing that all contracts made by individuals are valid, even when in imperfect information, when not right of mind, etc, then I disagree with you. It may be a fundamental philosophical difference, but all your feels good "oh dont violate my right to self determination" seems weak if that person can't even properly comprehend the transaction they are making.
If you are not arguing this then your entire argument falls apart: once we care about being right of mind, we can speak of restricting addicts or drunks from certain transactions. Once we care about imperfect information, we can restrict or remove usurious loans. Indeed, these basic ideas of what is a "valid" transaction give credence to to the language of "vulnerable people" and laws that aim to protect them from predatory transactions.
No court would consider the exchange you describe as consensual. The addict wouldn't be judged as having the capacity to provide consent.
These issues should be decided by courts, after deliberating on the facts of individual cases, and not narratives that spread throughout the public due to the virality
of simplistic generalizations that appeal to emotions.
People need to be protected from themselves sometimes. Just because someone is an adult, doesn’t mean they will always make correct decisions. Plus, you are never sure if they are doing it without being coerced and silenced at the same time by some powerful mafia.
> Just because someone is an adult, doesn’t mean they will always make correct decisions.
It is impossible for you to substitute your definition of correct for another person’s own when it comes to their body and their life without denying them agency and declaring yourself their superior, and in the process violating their rights to self-determination.
If they are harming no one but themselves, you have no moral basis to deny them their freedom to do so, unless you deem yourself competent to be their parent or guardian simply on the basis of that single decision of theirs, which is not reasonable by any stretch of the imagination.
> People need to be protected from themselves sometimes.
The only protection that most people want is protection from people who think this way about their lives, myself included.
That’s why society as a whole makes that decision about what they consider correct and what they consider incorrect through laws and ethical standards. Unless you are in a dictatorship, laws and ethical standards are representative of the majority.
“Society as a whole” cannot decide anything, as “society” is an abstraction, and a leaky one at that.
If an individual can’t decide for another, no assemblage of individuals can legitimately claim that authority either.
I certainly don’t want to live in a place where it takes hundreds of years for the majority to finally decide that, for example, racial minorities really do deserve equal protection under the law (or a hundred years to reach the point where it is not legal to enslave them).
Ultimately the law of the land is might makes right. In a democracy that tends to lie with masses of people (sometimes counter balanced by protective laws), in other instances it tends to rest in the hands of the few.
Ultimately power has to rest somewhere. If it's nowhere then someone will come and take it.
The modern alternative isn't some panacea. It's the corporation and the indifference of rights so long as it doesn't negatively impact the bottom line.
But even countries which aren’t under dictatorship have laws to protect people against themselves. Even those who are on top of the list of most democratic countries.
> "Nobody knows better than me what is better for myself and mine."
Smokers and anti-vaccination also use the same argument. Even though their actions are also dangerous to other people(kids). I am sure they felt oppressed when public smoking was banned. Smokers will tell you that smoking isn’t different to dangerous sports or unsafe sex. Yet, dangerous sports/unsafe sex isn’t banned.
This is completely different. Smokers and anti-vaxxers are harming the public in a significant way. I wouldn't care for smokers if they could only do it in a hermetically sealed room where no smoke escapes from. Neither would I care for anti-vaxxers who are completely segregated from society so they don't hurt herd immunity.
The argument against banning smoking in public is that it forces others to inhale the smoke against their will simply by sharing space, not that the person doing the smoking has no right to put it into themselves. In a sense, it is an anti-pollution law.
I agree with that. But I also think there is other reason for anti-pollution laws, which is in addition to saving people, also saving the Earth, too, which is also important (independently of if the people are saved; some people want to do so for the people but I think that is only a part of it).
And if someone does have a hermetically sealed room no smoke will escape from, I suppose that is OK, so shouldn't be illegal except forcing someone to do against their will.
A libertarian might argue that that falls under restricting an individual's right to harm others. They might believe that individuals don't have the right to increase the risk to people who can't vaccinate for heath reasons, and they might believe that parents don't have the right to harm their children by depriving them of their health.
Maybe we shouldn't protect people from themselves, but we should definitely protect people from the consequences it others disastrous mistakes. I don't need my idiot neighbors playing with fireworks.
That’s why I said sometimes. It isn’t all the time that you need to protect people but kids needs to be protected. People who are mentally ill must be protected from themselves. In some cases, even forcefully put them in mental hospitals. There is always a grey area.
Laws should not protect people from themself (education should do that instead). It can protect people and animals and trees from some bad stuff some people are doing (e.g. fireworks, as message 21620305 mentions), while trying to not be so restrictive. I think even mentally ill people should not be protected from themself (unless the condition is temporary).
> It’s not exploitation if adults, without coercion, agree to it of their own free will.
This is the only moral stance to take. It is amazing how people, with totally incomplete information and no matching life experience, decide they can decide for others. Popular example: payday loans are bad. Well sometimes they are the last line of defense between having a working car and being able to go to work vs loosing everything. Just ask them, people may have better reasons than you can imagine.
Its the same kind of folks who think that Facebook should be outlawed/heavily regulated because it caused all the ills in the world ("Trump"). No it didn't, stop thinking of other people as gullible idiots and yourself as the one with all the smart ideas.
Abortions are “bad”. Chemotherapy is “bad”. Payday loans are “bad”.
In many cases, the “bad” is less bad than the alternative; I’m opposed to restrictions on freedom of informed choice in general.
I would love for the rate of all three of those things to be reduced to zero by effective interventions upstream. Until they are though, I want all of those things to be available options.
I'm saying that payday loans are bad because there is a better alternative today, yes. We could replace payday loans overnight if the government provided decent welfare.
So, that's what we should do. It seems like you agree, so hopefully you are contributing to the political/democratic will to do this.
That clearly doesn't apply to the other two cases. I also disagree that "interventions" are necessarily preferable.
Payday loans are a bit different, because someone signs a bad contract by mistake, and then government has to use force to ensure the contract is maintained.
Banning payday loans seems like a noble thing to many people, but that simply ignores the real question, which is: what to do if someone signs a stupid contract and then wants to annulate it.
As a society, we should put measures in place to make sure no-one ever has to make this decision (easily accessible food banks, state support etc).
And we should make sure anyone making that decision is aware of the alternatives (and implications) and not suffering from a medical condition which is impairing their ability to make decisions.
But the fundamental choice should be down to the adult in question.
My original comment (above) made it pretty clear that I believe we should be doing everything we can to ensure people don't have to make these kinds of choices.
But the way to do this is by adding new, better options, not by restricting existing, 'bad' options.
Sure, but that is an utopia that I hardly believe we will ever reach. No question hundreds of years in the future.
Lets allow people to get exploited because it might not be a problem in the distant future? Or, work from both ends. By restricting bad options at the same time as we add, best we can, the good options.
Your argument makes sense when you view such transactions as a decision problem with a single actor and no temporal element.
But such transaction happens within a lifelong game with at least two players. Changing the rule of the game can influence their game tree and their behavior, far before they get into a situation where the change applies.
For the kidney trade, banning it might discourage potential organ-buyers from 'check-mating' people into selling their kidneys. It also might nudge parents to work harder since they have one less things to sell off.
I acutually have no opinion over banning organ trade. I'm just saying that it could make some sense.
"free will" is sort of a red herring in this situation. the choice should probably be considered to be made under duress, because the person's children are starving. but you don't really help the person by preventing the sale; the family is still starving. if you really don't want people selling kidneys, you need to give them enough food to eat.
Person A1 and A2 are compelled by circumstance to compete. The nature of this competition forces A1/A2 to prioritize their values according to the cost to retain them (eg., suppose X = privacy in living quarters, and retaining X costs $100/day)
The impact of X being unaffordable is equal on A1/A2, ie., equally traumatic. But A1 is more able to compete than A2 (ie., retain their values) due, eg., to having more money.
Are we saying that A2 is free when she "decides" that $100/day is too expensive? And therefore has to abandon X (eg., dignity)?
Should we instead, rather, regard these circumstances suspiciously. Circumstances in which people are compelled to throw-away their values and race-to-the-bottom.
If A1/A2 never enters these circumstances they both retain X, if they do, only one does. Do we wish for dignity, privacy, (...) to be so circumstantial?
We can regulate to prevent this (and routinely do, very successfully) -- if society bares additional costs for its members retaining X (eg., via taxation to provide welfare/housing), then so be it.
Circumstances routinely bring people into competition where success requires abandoning values such that all participants would have preferred never to have been in that competition -- but when in it, abandon them.
The libertarian view of the mind is deeply naive -- it takes behaviour as always based on desire. We are more complex: we endure the trauma of not being free to act on our preferences when circumstances overwhelmingly incentivise behaviour contrary to those. Freedom is not mere action, it is acting according to our desires.
Addiction is a paradigm case, but extreme competition for resources is of the same kind: we sincerely wish not to do what we are compelled to do by external incentives that destroy our sense of self, will, freedom.
That's because you have a peculiar (and I think) false view of psychology.
Any person can be made into a slave through "abusive freedom": overwhelming financial incentives (eg., blow up this building and ill give your very poor family $1mil); overwhelming social incentives (eg., take drugs or you wont be our friend); overwhelming constraints; ...
A person is a deeply malleable thing and circumstances change people, they traumatise and abuse them. A person can be arbitrarily reduced to an arbitrarily murderous/desperate/slavish state.
The libertarian notion of freedom mystifies this and prevents us from recognising it.
We need to distinguish between those cases where people change through learning, growth, development (ie., value their X differently due to learning more); and those cases were people are caused to abandon freedom-preserving, dignity-preserving, life-preserving values.
We oughtnt regard all behaviour as "expression of true desire", and all changes to what we desire as being of the same kind. When the very poor are provided with an overwhelming incentive to abandon their dignity (ie., here, essnetially free housing) we should regard the effects of these incentives as harming those people.
And that harm isn't theoretical: it is abusive to live without privacy; it is traumatising. That people do it does not mean they desire to, it does not mean they want to. This is a vicious misunderstanding of human psychology.
People are trapped in circumstances of abuse "freely" and routinely. So much for that notion of freedom.
If society feels that people below a certain level of income don't have enough freedom, the correct solution to this problem is to give them more money.
Further constraining their freedom by forbidding them from making their own decisions about what is most important to them will only make their lives worse. They know more about what tradoffs (even difficult ones!) are worth doing in their own lives than you do.
No one is talking about forbidding people from deciding something. Regulation prevents the circumstances of that decision arising.
> They know more about what tradoffs
This just seems like an ideological presumption. Empirically it is obviously, routinely, false. There are very many cases where people make self-injurious decisions that post-decision they wish they would not have made; and were obvious to everyone they shouldn't have made it.
The relevant political question is: in what cases should "society" regulate to prevent those cases arising?
If we say "every case" then we end up in a tyranny, and a very terrible one, because "society" is unlikely to get every case right. If we say "no cases" then we permit widespread abuse and manipulation.
A modern casino is a skinner-box designed by psychologists to maximize your merely impulsive behaviour (ie., non-free behaviour). Should we regulate to prevent people from ever entering? I'd say so.
A human being is not 'master of their own house'; they are not 'acting under their own will' much of the time. We are pigeons whose animal nature is easy to exploit: society should act to preserve our willful capacity to act under reason and preference.
I love casinos. I went to Vegas all the time when I lived on the west coast. Sadly, not so much since I moved east and had a kid, but what are you gonna do?
I'm a grown man with my own money who has always been responsible with it. Spending a few hours playing cards isn't merely impulsive behavior, it's something I find entertaining. I know more about my own money and my own desires then you do.
Yes, because you have a greater capacity to retain your values despite overwhelming incentives not to do so.
Gambling in this way destroys people and their families, much like drug addiction. You might say those people are "vulnerable" in some special inherent way, but really, they just happen to be in different circumstances than you.
My view is that your enjoyment here has a cost: it preserves environments we know cause human animals to change for the worse. I don't see that as, empirically, a controversial point.
Casinos take a healthy rat in, and frequently, an unhealthy rat leaves.
Behind all this "decision making" is the reality of human psychology, and of abuse, trauma, and health. And it is no hidden thing that gambling, opioid over-prescription, prostitution... as environments take in healthy desperate animals and exist deeply unhealthy ones.
This transition preserves "freedom" in the libertarian sense -- and it is my view therefore that this sense is pathological and misunderstands people.
What you are saying is that pre-post casino you retain your freedom (in the intuitive, healthy sense). Alas very many people do not.
When environments cause people to give up on values that keep them healthy, those environments are sick and make people sick. Humans are not blank slate masters of everything: we're animals. And what we need isnt arbitrary and different and unique and special.
There are some values so essential that when we see people giving them up, we ought regard the perpetrators of that changes as abusive manipulators; or at least, naively engaging in abuse.
I realize this is nitpicking since you were just reaching for examples to list, but a plethora of research and even the WHO has suggested that criminalizing sex work primarily just makes things even more dangerous for sex workers. This is part of what makes the efforts by law enforcement to rebrand their battle against prostitution as a battle against "human trafficking" especially insidious. Regardless of how a trafficked human got where they are, making sex work illegal only makes it harder for those workers to practice their work safely. A perfect example of this is whatever that American law was that made Backpage take down what was effectively their adult services section, there was a fairly substantial outcry at the time from members of the 'industry' because this had been a tool that allowed at least some minimal way to vet clients.
What if you turn this around though and rather than the hotel owner take 100% of the profit (assuredly from ads as the article mentions), create a fungible digital token that tenants “earn” when staying at the hotel and stake interest against speculation in the token, therefore sharing the profit with those that are part of generating it - the actors so to speak.
Of course this doesn’t apply to sex trade but I’m just curious on picking your brain here.
Would love a bit of engagement into the idea rather than just downvotes. Specifically into the idea of how to create mechanisms by which the free market could produce ethical outcomes at least moreso than current practices.
How about let courts decide if it's not genuine consent, after carefully deliberating on the facts of the case, and not social activists having knee-jerk emotional reactions based on a very low resolution view of the situation - often based only on a headline.
>>Without those laws, those who are most desperate will be able to act in desperation, to someone else’s benefit, with society doing nothing to stand in the way.
A law prohibiting it doesn't solve the problem of them being desperate. It only takes away an option that they perceived as the best one available to them, all so that you can be sure no one is profiting from an exchange that exposes the inequality that exists in the world.
Funny, I just watched "We Live in Public" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0498329/) the other day, where Pseudo was giving people free _everything_ (room/food/drugs/shooting range/etc.), but their entire lives had to be recorded (one hundred people were living in this place together).
People are saying it's like Facebook IRL, but it's not. Facebook used to let you post your private life online as much as possible and hide to you all the advertisement business.
This, in contrary, is very open about its business model and you are warned upfront. It also means everyone on internet can make sure the management of the hotel is done right.
You are guaranteed that the room has been cleaned and no one can steal your things.
This is an example of how recording everything can lead to reducing risks for both the host and the guests. (I'm not saying we should start recording everything everytime)
The article specifically mentions that sex acts are prohibited if you take the owner up on the offer. This is presumably to satisfy Japan's strict sex censorship laws.
He should charge guests and extra $1 to livestream their stay (on top of the regular price). Some people like to voyeur; others like to be on camera. Charging to be seen makes it seem less creepy (than - "normal price $10... but only $1 if people can watch you"), and engenders the idea of scarcity (for $1 you can be featured on a popular livestream). I see wannabe 'influencers' seeking out such an opportunity.
Perhaps if the channel got popular enough then that might make sense, but at this stage I think that would be a terrible move. Charging extra to be livestreamed changes the whole dynamic from "cheapest hotel ever, with one odd condition" to "what kind of idiot pays extra money for a hotel room to be livestreamed?"
$1 hotel is cool and something you want to share with your friends and stay in for the experience. Having to pay extra money on top of the room fare for the "privilege" of being livestreamed does not sound attractive and would probably generate outrage (though to be fair, outrage is still attention). Also as a viewer, I'd be less interested in watching people so desperate for attention that they're willing to pay extra money to be livestreamed - I'd assume they're one of those "wannabe influencers".
If staying in a cheap hotel was cool, why don't I ever hear people bragging about the low budget roadside motel they stayed in? Travelers who randomly wander in might submit to being livestreamed, if presented that option. But people who go there, specifically, are doing so for the unique experience of being livestreamed", not for the experience of paying $1. Again, just an opinion.
Also, which seems like it would generate more outrage...
(1) A hotel where people can pay to be livestreamed on youtube.
(2) A hotel for people who don't actually want to be filmed in the privacy of their hotel room, but can't afford the room otherwise.
But you are right, it shouldn't cost extra. It should be a free experience (with the option to have it promoted somehow - for a small fee ;)
People brag about getting bargains all the time. That's like one of the core themes of the "digital nomad" community.
The (2) option you specified is not the case. And if people can only afford a $1/night hotel room, then I think there are more productive places to direct that outrage.
> "if people can only afford a $1/night hotel room"
Yes, they exist. They are called poor people.
As it is, the business model seems partially based on there being (1) a group of men on the internet who want to voyeur hotel rooms, and (2) working class women who reluctantly consent to their hotel room being live-streamed for a discounted rate. If it's not textbook, it certainly has some of the symptoms of exploitation.
It's a hotel room, not a permanent residence. The responsibility for providing affordable housing doesn't rest on the owner of a small guesthouse. Also this is Japan, not a city like San Francisco with a homeless epidemic and tents on the sidewalks.
> (1) a group of men on the internet who want to voyeur hotel rooms, and (2) working class women who reluctantly consent to their hotel room being live-streamed for a discounted rate.
Uh...what? Have you looked at the videos on their Youtube channel? You're really stretching to find a reason to be outraged here.
Sure, people brag about getting a good deal, no matter what it is. But it's usually a brag about finding value, a good bang for the buck, not simply paying less for less. Most airbnb brags I hear are similar to: 'I found a fabulous downtown loft with a view of the city for the same price as a vanilla hotel room.' That is quite a bit different than: 'just got a great deal at the Scranton Motel 8 for agreeing to stay in the room with the peep hole.'
I'm just trying to say that the livestreaming part of staying at the hotel will be a whole lot easier to market if it's not something people have to do to get the deal but something they want to do (and is in fact the reason they came there). Otherwise you are just reinventing the timeshare (that shitty meeting our parents had to sit through while we were out skiing). But i concede, the youtube channel will need to be quite popular already.
Honestly, would any of you stay there? It doesn't appeal to me at all; but then again, I don't have an instagram account.
Everyone places a different value on the livestream piece. For most people I'd imagine even $0/night wouldn't be enough to justify the invasion of privacy of being livestreamed. For me personally I don't care as much and think it's a cool concept with no real downside (assuming I don't do anything stupid on the stream I'd later regret, which I think is a fairly low bar), so I'd probably do it for a night if only for the story.
That a budget hotel offers discounted rooms isn't what's making this newsworthy. It's specifically what you must do to get the discount that piques people's interest. I doubt we would be reading this story on HN if it were about a hotel that offers a substantial discount for changing bedsheets for an hour.
Depending on the terms, I would probably subject myself to it so I could drum up interest in the art project I’m working on (as I would be working on it live). This kind of seems like a win-win (assuming the hotel actually comes out ahead somehow.. which doesn’t seem possible)
This isn't much unlike livestreaming on Twitch. It's a novelty and if you want to do it you want. People livestream themselves doing weird stuff all the time.
The article ending makes me feel very icky for some reason:
> So, besides the opportunity to have thousands of strangers watch your REM cycle on the internet, what's the incentive to head to Fukuoka?
Plenty -- so much that CNN Travel named Fukuoka one of its must-visit destinations for 2019.
The pretty seaside city is known for its incredible food. In addition to local, freshly-caught seafood, Fukuoka is also the birthplace of the popular Ichiran chain, home of yummy pork tonkotsu ramen. Also, the acclaimed Fukuoka Art Museum reopened in early 2019 following three years of renovations.
That's pretty cheap of them. In Toronto there was a very large building where gay people would stay rent free and get paid if they live-streamed their lives. This was in '97.
Reminds me of Big Sister [1], a brothel where customers could use the women's services for free, subsidized by paying Internet viewers, DVD sales & such.
Yep, but there the business model is (was) clear, there is no doubt that there is a (vast and lucrative) market for voyeurs and (streaming) porn, what is missing here is the lack (I presume) of a market for people wanting to see strangers sleep.
Maybe there is a subset of feticism about it, but are the numbers big enough?
tbh his ordinary, struggling budget hotel has given a handful of guests a discount, and in return he's got worldwide press coverage. I suspect that's the bit that matters more than the sustainability of the model.
Yep, but if he had an online shop, I would understand that, I simply (maybe it is just me) cannot see how/why anyone (being in Fukuoka) would choose that hotel over the competitors (paying the "full" rate I mean) so - maybe - he is increasing the number of people willing to stay there (watched) for 1 $ per night, i.e. something on which the hotel will loose money.
I don't see the business plan there. $1 a night won't pay the rent. Not even the costs that an owner has to pay. Looks like a stunt for something else.
i imagine its one room in a certain hotel, the rest will be normal, this is just a way of getting advertising cheaply as its gotten them on countless worldwide news sites
im actually in japan now and my budget is running low but when you can snag a guest house for like £5-6 a night its probably not worth being on the net, my budget isnt that low
That's correct, but not applicable to this case. You can't make up in volume what you're losing in margins for the same product. In this case there are two products:
1. Hotel room (100Y, loss margin) x 1
2. Live stream (whatever CPM he can get on YouTube) x many
It still seems like it would be a struggle to make this profitable though. How many viewing hours would be needed per day? Most of the time it's going to be an empty room or have the light off. The rest of the time probably not much of interest is going on.
If he's savvy, he's not really intending to make it up with ads or perhaps even keep this room deal. It's a promotion that takes the ryokan from "just another place to stay" to at least having some notability. Not sure it actually makes more people stay there, but perhaps it's worth a shot.
Same but without sarcasm. If the deal is known and people are completely aware of the terms... why not? As long as you can ensure nobody is streamed without permission, I'm sure there's a number of people who are cool with it (livestream channels like that existed decade(s?) ago). And on the other side, there's going to be quite a few people interested in watching (big-brother-style reality tv pretty much validated that). And you can be sure some people staying there will try to push the "lewd act" boundary for fun, bringing in more views.
Ultimately, this will be a better advertisement for that hotel than comparable money can buy online.
You don’t have to extrapolate far to get into dystopian territory. “Get 50% off your rent if you agree to be live-streamed all the time!”
This is also the business model that powers most of the web. “Let us spy on you and get our service for free!” Then brands pop up offering privacy for a price, and the result is that only rich people get to live their lives unsurveilled.
This hotel example seems harmless because it’s mostly a gimmick, but we need to stop this train in its tracks. Privacy should be a human right.
I don't understand. If I live stream my life on twitch or youtube or my own servers how is that different? Youtube pays, twitch pays, so effectively they'd be paying me to live stream my life. But it's my choice to do it.
Are you saying it should be illegal to post live video of yourself for money?
I'm mixed on this because while I 100% agree with you, I also don't really think that it will take off beyond a few novelty places where the Hotel + rooms are specifically designed to accommodate an entertaining stream. Think specific amenities meant to encourage silliness, items in the room for entertainment value that a regular hotel wouldn't use, product placement, and so on.
The number of non-tech people who still bother with a strip of tape over their laptop's webcam is encouraging enough for me to believe that likely a hotel experience like this really will never grow beyond a curiosity for a select group of people who wouldn't mind such an experience, and I think that our paranoia over physical privacy likely will keep this pretty constrained.
Even more - there's bound to be someone testing the boundaries. This is one example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Ringley was another one. Someone has to either express/define or demonstrate what's extreme for the rest to have an opinion on what's ok.
It will be an issue if this idea becomes a norm. But it's normal that it's an extreme novelty.
I always hate to say this kind of thing but if this is your belief then you are probably quite wealthy. A lot of people would jump on this opportunity and I don't think it should be kept from them because you're concerned about their privacy.
You can make this same argument against labor laws, payday lending regulations and prohibitions on organ donations. "A lot of [poor] people would jump on the opportunity to get paid for their organs and I don't think it should be kept from them because you're concerned about their bodies."
> And you can be sure some people staying there will try to push the "lewd act" boundary for fun, bringing in more views.
> Ultimately, this will be a better advertisement for that hotel than comparable money can buy online.
Until someone does go too far, and the hotel finds out that they're expected to police these livestreams to ensure certain meeting certain standards that are wide and seemingly arbitrary, and the hotel becomes liable for the behaviour of one of their guests.
Japan has a lot of rules and regulations around what can be seen, produced, etc. for sexuality, just as a small example.
Yup. There was a famous/notorious comedy TV show that livestreamed a guy living in an apartment stark naked, subsisting entirely on what he could win from magazine sweepstakes contests. The TV producers had to hire a video editor 24/7 to keep a little eggplant emoji over his privates.
I actually remember this show. This was prior to reality TV shows and arguably before movie 'The Truman Show'. I did not had the honor to see this on TV, but I was been told and then checked out some Japanese websites (more like blogs, but before they were been called that) that provide text and photo updates on Nasubi's progress.
A quick search today, here are the articles that archives its history:
If they don't monitor, delay, and edit the result - yes, they will run into issues. If they really stream it live, not just say so for novelty, that's definitely an issue.
One reason why not is that they're experimenting with product-ifying customers in an industry where the majority of profits are made off of 15% of customers. Sure, hotels will pretend like they want money from some rando who's only going to stay one weekend and then never return but the real money comes from regular repeat customers. If the math works out, you could be looking at a future where it's impossible to get a private hotel room without participating in some kind of loyalty program.
Every decent hotel I’ve been to requires identifying information to stay. Once they already have that , what’s the difference in participating in loyalty programs or not, other than one gets a little bit back with rewards?
For the private room loyalty program, you would have to meet a quota, x number of stays in order to make yourself worthwhile to the hotel for them to forego selling you to voyeurs.
Cause some people feel that if they can pick apart someone else's life, it makes their own look less pathetic. It's like guy weighting 300lbs calling the 350lber fat. All these people want to do is watch until they can find something to shame the other person. Society is better off without any of these people. Unfortunately 99% who probably agree with my statement watch reality TV which is no different than what this hotel is doing.
They must get some credit for full disclosure and giving you a discount for it. Unlike Airbnb which is charging you normal fee and still live-stream your stay. The other thing good about this hotel is that you can put measures in place to minimise exposure of your genitals because you know it is livestreamed.
In some places in Europe, like here, you can film in public places but robots can't. Security cameras must come with warning signs, and their complete FOV must be private property. Similarly, car video recorders are banned, for the same reason, privacy.
EDIT: If someone wants to link some laws that's be useful.
For the downvoters: I am clearly NOT saying it's okay to hide cameras in an AirBnB. But it's probably not a criminal offence. The police have no power here. I'm NOT saying it's lawful -- the AirBnB owners are probably violating Irish data protection laws. But again those are not enforced by the police. In the UK it's not a criminal offence unless it meets the definition in the sexual offences act 2003, and putting cameras in the living room but not the bedroom probably gives the owners enough deniability to avoid prosecution. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/67
I’m not sure why you are seemingly so certain that it’s not a crime. You are talking about the UK but Ireland is not the UK and you yourself are not bringing up anything relating to Ireland that would convince one that no crime was committed.
So yeah, now we know the laws in two European countries that are not Ireland and they are different. How does that help us with Ireland? Not at all.
Either way, I think calling the police in such cases is exactly the right thing to do. If in doubt they can tell you whether it’s likely there was a crime committed and they can also likely help you at least figure out what remedies you have. Because I think we can very clearly agree that no matter whether this is a crime in your jurisdiction or not, nobody would think it absurd if this were a crime.
I am not certain that it isn't a crime, which is why I asked "what law is being broken?". It's not an unreasonable question. People have made some assumptions that this reprehensible behaviour is obviously illegal, based on their knowledge of laws in their country. But it might not be illegal in Ireland.
Clarity about law is important. It allows people to campaign for changes to the law.
Here's an old article about Ireland where someone planted hidden cameras in toilet cubicles for the purposes of sexual gratification. He was not successfully prosecuted under the Irish law. I don't know if there's been any newer law implemented to cover this.
No, absolutely not "obviously". It's not a criminal offence in the UK to film people without their knowledge. It breaks data protection law (civil); there are regulations (RIPA) for public authorities but these do not apply to members of the public ; and there is criminal law that covers covert recording if done for sexual gratification, but those may not apply if the cameras have not been placed in toilets or bedrooms.
Can you link any of these laws please? Especially for Ireland. I can't find anything for Ireland that would make this a criminal offence.
Again, I'm not defending it. I think it's an awful thing to do. But "why didn't they call the police?" is answered by "maybe they did and the police told them it's not a police matter".
Okay, not obviously and I should have elaborated. In my country, Finland, watching or recording people without consent, in situations where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy, is a crime punishable by a fine or up to a one-year prison sentence. This includes homes, hotel rooms, changing or fitting rooms, toilets, and similar locations, but also ”upskirt” style photography in public places.
Unethical, immoral, obviously. Criminal? Not at all. Starting with different laws in different jurisdictions, over the difference of criminal acts and civil offenses to the point where an AirBnB is your private home and not a hotel ("obviously" you're allowed to film your own home right?).
If it's criminal or not is not a matter of simple opinion, but of the laws in that jurisdiction. DanBC doesn't deserve the downvotes.
It’s exactly the same argument for laws against the most vulnerable types of sex work, or selling body organs donated by the living. Without those laws, those who are most desperate will be able to act in desperation, to someone else’s benefit, with society doing nothing to stand in the way.
It’s probably time ad-tech was re calibrated on this spectrum before we race to the exploitative-bottom there as well, and build a shopping mall that we don’t want on the open common land that we do.