If you wish to understand why people in these countries feel compelled to undertake this mentally damaging a d unsafe work then you should read up on the first industrial revolution and why people who were originally farm hands and hand spinners in the North of England felt compelled to move into the cities to take on the physically damaging and unsafe work on the cotton machines.
One observer at the time, Dr Andrew Ure, said this:
“In my recent tour, through the manufacturing districts, I have seen tens of thousands of old, young and middle-aged of both sexes, many of them too feeble to get their daily bread by any of the former modes of industry, earning abundant food, raiment, and domestic accommodation, without perspiring at a single pore, screened meanwhile from the summer’s sun and the winter’s frost, in apartments more airy and salubrious than those of the metropolis in which our legislative and fashionable aristocracies assemble. In those spacious halls the benignant power of steam summons around him his myriads of willing menials, and assigns to each the regulated task, substituting for painful muscular effort on their part, the energies of his own gigantic arm, and demanding in return only attention and dexterity to correct such little aberrations as casually occur in his workmanship.”
From his perspective, for many the suffering was worth the wage. But others at the time were more, as they put it, horrified by what they saw such as Dr. John Kay:
“Whilst the engine runs the people must work - men, women and children are yoked together with iron and steam. The animal machine - breakable in the best case, subject to a thousand sources of suffering chained fast to the iron machine, which knows no suffering and no weariness.”
This is why history is a vital part of education because by god am I seeing so much modern shit rhyming with a victorian tune!
My source for the quotes: The Peterloo Massacre - Robert Reid.
Ok so how do you square that with your original comment of “so… don’t do it”?
Isn’t reducing a nuanced situation down to “money” going to lose sight of a lot of factors?
If any job was just about money then why, for example, do people choose to remain in teaching when they know they’re being poorly paid, overworked, and undervalued in society when they could leave and get more money in a less stressful job?
Context is king and if you want to understand more deeply why people are willing to work jobs because of or lack of financial incentives you need to also understand the wider context such as the time period it’s taking place in, the economic state of the region, the social constructs of the society, the technology being used, or any other lens you could look at it through.
Looking at the past, present, and possible futures get far more interesting when you do that.
The why is not important. The point is if there were better opportunities, they would take them. If this job didn’t exist they would either be at a worse job, or no job.
And the bigger point is that this is not an AI problem, this is a societal problem.
And the bigger point is that this is not an AI problem, this is societal problem.
You clearly present the hypothesis that the the “why” is because these happen to be the best paid jobs and therefore people take them which is a societal problem.
Please can you explain why the “why” isn’t important and you then go onto give the “why” as “societal problem”?
Perhaps it might be useful to ask “why are these the better paid jobs in these regions?” because that adds additional context which might, as you indicate the need for, start pointing in the direction of solutions to this problem other than just broadly gesturing to everything going “society”.
They do these jobs for the same reason textile manufacturing is located in similar countries; it is a shit job but it competes with the alternatives.
Exactly
If you wish to understand why people in these countries feel compelled to undertake this mentally damaging a d unsafe work then you should read up on the first industrial revolution and why people who were originally farm hands and hand spinners in the North of England felt compelled to move into the cities to take on the physically damaging and unsafe work on the cotton machines.
One observer at the time, Dr Andrew Ure, said this:
“In my recent tour, through the manufacturing districts, I have seen tens of thousands of old, young and middle-aged of both sexes, many of them too feeble to get their daily bread by any of the former modes of industry, earning abundant food, raiment, and domestic accommodation, without perspiring at a single pore, screened meanwhile from the summer’s sun and the winter’s frost, in apartments more airy and salubrious than those of the metropolis in which our legislative and fashionable aristocracies assemble. In those spacious halls the benignant power of steam summons around him his myriads of willing menials, and assigns to each the regulated task, substituting for painful muscular effort on their part, the energies of his own gigantic arm, and demanding in return only attention and dexterity to correct such little aberrations as casually occur in his workmanship.”
From his perspective, for many the suffering was worth the wage. But others at the time were more, as they put it, horrified by what they saw such as Dr. John Kay:
“Whilst the engine runs the people must work - men, women and children are yoked together with iron and steam. The animal machine - breakable in the best case, subject to a thousand sources of suffering chained fast to the iron machine, which knows no suffering and no weariness.”
This is why history is a vital part of education because by god am I seeing so much modern shit rhyming with a victorian tune!
My source for the quotes: The Peterloo Massacre - Robert Reid.
I do know. It’s the same reason anyone takes a job; money.
Ok so how do you square that with your original comment of “so… don’t do it”?
Isn’t reducing a nuanced situation down to “money” going to lose sight of a lot of factors?
If any job was just about money then why, for example, do people choose to remain in teaching when they know they’re being poorly paid, overworked, and undervalued in society when they could leave and get more money in a less stressful job?
Context is king and if you want to understand more deeply why people are willing to work jobs because of or lack of financial incentives you need to also understand the wider context such as the time period it’s taking place in, the economic state of the region, the social constructs of the society, the technology being used, or any other lens you could look at it through.
Looking at the past, present, and possible futures get far more interesting when you do that.
The why is not important. The point is if there were better opportunities, they would take them. If this job didn’t exist they would either be at a worse job, or no job.
And the bigger point is that this is not an AI problem, this is a societal problem.
So within the same comment you go from
To then say
You clearly present the hypothesis that the the “why” is because these happen to be the best paid jobs and therefore people take them which is a societal problem.
Please can you explain why the “why” isn’t important and you then go onto give the “why” as “societal problem”?
Perhaps it might be useful to ask “why are these the better paid jobs in these regions?” because that adds additional context which might, as you indicate the need for, start pointing in the direction of solutions to this problem other than just broadly gesturing to everything going “society”.
“Societal problem” is not the “why”, it’s the “how”.