Wife and I were watching Handmaid’s Tale last night and for some reason this hypothetical popped into my mind.
You are presented with a choice at age 18. The choice is, you are gifted unimaginable wealth and can live your life any way you please, and you and your friends and family will never need to worry about money again. But this is conditional. You have to accept as a personal assistant someone pulled from poverty at age 18 who will be required to work for you until they reach retirement age. You can pay them any salary you’d like, provide any benefits you’d like to them and their family, provide the best working conditions imaginable, but they are obligated to you for 40h per week, every year from age 18 through 65 and they cannot leave the job. The candidate is selected randomly from an impoverished 3rd world region and in the hypothetical they will be capable and pleasant to work with. They will not have a say in whether they are assigned to you and once they are they are obligated to you for the next 47 years of life, and their day to day work life will be entirely determined by you.
Does the capacity to give someone who would otherwise likely die in poverty a lifestyle they could hardly imagine outweigh the moral offense of depriving them of their freedom of self determination in that one aspect (choice of employment, location, etc), and does the fact that you would personally benefit from doing so affect that answer?
My wife took the meta view of everyone being beholden to an economic system in one way or another and accepting the proposition would increase the amount of prosperity in the world and in your immediate influence. She leans yes. I remain on the fence.
If I am gifted unimaginable wealth, it would seem that I could pay them generational wealth. I could also require them to learn a skill.
Just because they have to be in your employ doesn’t mean that they would be restricted from achieving nor denied the satisfaction of knowing their family and extended generations would be taken care of.
You could. But they have to treat their job like a job and be available to you. What they do after 5pm is their business.
You could pay them $1M annually, provide them whatever vehicles they choose, pay their mortgage, tuition for their children etc. Unlimited benefits could convey to them except freedom to choose the job or leave.
Just because they have to be in your employ doesn’t mean that they would be restricted from achieving nor denied the satisfaction of knowing their family and extended generations would be taken care of.
Correct. The cost is their personal right to self determination.
It is immoral. You can’t justify involuntary servitude by saying it’s still an upgrade for that person. Some people have tried to justify slavery with that style of argument. Your hypothetical is not slavery, but the loss of autonomy is still quite strong.
The superior alternative is to use your US affluence to lift someone out of poverty without stripping them of their freedom. Maybe you won’t be wealthy enough to make them rich, but lifting one person in a poor country is not very hard.
Not sure about the morality or otherwise. Your scenario is probably theoretically beneficial for all parties.
But there is a big problem (as shown in the handmaid’s tale, and as shown in life): such an arrangement is toxic in its effect on 99% of humans–the humans in power. And the arrangement will never ever be as idealistic as you portray in your theoretical scenario, it will 99% of the time end up in a hellish existence for the person in servitude.
Power is incredibly effective in its ability to corrupt the person wielding it.
Wife and I were watching Handmaid’s Tale last night and for some reason this hypothetical popped into my mind.
You are presented with a choice at age 18. The choice is, you are gifted unimaginable wealth and can live your life any way you please, and you and your friends and family will never need to worry about money again. But this is conditional. You have to accept as a personal assistant someone pulled from poverty at age 18 who will be required to work for you until they reach retirement age. You can pay them any salary you’d like, provide any benefits you’d like to them and their family, provide the best working conditions imaginable, but they are obligated to you for 40h per week, every year from age 18 through 65 and they cannot leave the job. The candidate is selected randomly from an impoverished 3rd world region and in the hypothetical they will be capable and pleasant to work with. They will not have a say in whether they are assigned to you and once they are they are obligated to you for the next 47 years of life, and their day to day work life will be entirely determined by you.
Does the capacity to give someone who would otherwise likely die in poverty a lifestyle they could hardly imagine outweigh the moral offense of depriving them of their freedom of self determination in that one aspect (choice of employment, location, etc), and does the fact that you would personally benefit from doing so affect that answer?
My wife took the meta view of everyone being beholden to an economic system in one way or another and accepting the proposition would increase the amount of prosperity in the world and in your immediate influence. She leans yes. I remain on the fence.
Do you accept the proposition?
I’m the employer? I would totally accept that proposition easily because I also know I/wife would not be abusive. There are easy rationalizations.
My employment of them is better than their otherwise being doomed to a lifetime struggling with poverty. And they’re free after 5pm From a Maslow hierarchy of needs perspective, high-falutin concepts of freedom and self-determination matter only after basic needs of food and shelter get met. Wife and I would would be great employers - none of the oppression and demeaning aspects, but respect for them as people, which is not incompatible with us employing them.
This isn’t too different from the situations in 3rd world countries already - where the wealthy essentially have this setup with their hired help/staff. Some are good employers, some are abusive.
You could. But they have to treat their job like a job and be available to you. What they do after 5pm is their business.
You could pay them $1M annually, provide them whatever vehicles they choose, pay their mortgage, tuition for their children etc. Unlimited benefits could convey to them except freedom to choose the job or leave.
… and from the other pov as an employee. So, someone can pay me $1MM annually, I can be totally free outside core working hours of 9-5, but otherwise on call for a job which by the way has lifetime job security?
That’s a better deal than what many working folks have today.
Wife and I were watching Handmaid’s Tale last night and for some reason this hypothetical popped into my mind.
You are presented with a choice at age 18. The choice is, you are gifted unimaginable wealth and can live your life any way you please, and you and your friends and family will never need to worry about money again. But this is conditional. You have to accept as a personal assistant someone pulled from poverty at age 18 who will be required to work for you until they reach retirement age. You can pay them any salary you’d like, provide any benefits you’d like to them and their family, provide the best working conditions imaginable, but they are obligated to you for 40h per week, every year from age 18 through 65 and they cannot leave the job. The candidate is selected randomly from an impoverished 3rd world region and in the hypothetical they will be capable and pleasant to work with. They will not have a say in whether they are assigned to you and once they are they are obligated to you for the next 47 years of life, and their day to day work life will be entirely determined by you.
Does the capacity to give someone who would otherwise likely die in poverty a lifestyle they could hardly imagine outweigh the moral offense of depriving them of their freedom of self determination in that one aspect (choice of employment, location, etc), and does the fact that you would personally benefit from doing so affect that answer?
My wife took the meta view of everyone being beholden to an economic system in one way or another and accepting the proposition would increase the amount of prosperity in the world and in your immediate influence. She leans yes. I remain on the fence.
Do you accept the proposition?
have not read other responses, but that’s easy.
and then I pay them Oh $5 million dollars a year, their job, is to enjoy life, pass along their good fortune to others maybe head some company we set up, that will improve life in their corner of the world.
You could. But they have to treat their job like a job and be available to you. What they do after 5pm is their business.
You could pay them $1M annually, provide them whatever vehicles they choose, pay their mortgage, tuition for their children etc. Unlimited benefits could convey to them except freedom to choose the job or leave.
Sorry still don’t get it.
I am employing them to live a great life, they are free to take other jobs, like I said, maybe we work togeather to create some work in their country and they can be the boss of that place.
You could. But they have to treat their job like a job and be available to you. What they do after 5pm is their business.
You could pay them $1M annually, provide them whatever vehicles they choose, pay their mortgage, tuition for their children etc. Unlimited benefits could convey to them except freedom to choose the job or leave.
… and from the other pov as an employee. So, someone can pay me $1MM annually, I can be totally free outside core working hours of 9-5, but otherwise on call for a job which by the way has lifetime job security?
That’s a better deal than what many working folks have today.
To me, a key part of the hypothetical is – as I understand it – that the person has no choice about being your employee. That was compelled. If the hypothetical instead is that the job is posted and people can freely apply for it, knowing that there is no freedom during the work day, then it’s quite a different hypothetical.
I left off somewhere around season 4 of brooding June.