Comment by exidy
2 days ago
> The country effectively runs on a slave class.
I really wish people would not throw this word around so casually, it is disrespectful to the many millions of people over the course of human history (and today!) who were forced under threat of violence or death to labour without remuneration.
Of course Singapore's migrant worker system is open to criticism, but every single one of those workers can resign tomorrow and get a free plane ticket home, and the same applies to domestic helpers as well.
Migrant workers work in Singapore because it's their most rational economic choice. They pay no income tax, room and board is provided and the wages are sufficient to house, feed and educate their family back home, almost certainly to a better standard than would otherwise be possible had they remained in their home country.
tl;dr migrant workers have agency!
The comment about cars is unintentionally hilarious. “A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation.” and the public transportation in Singapore is very good indeed.
The argument against allowing migrant workers seems to boil down mostly to 'out of sight, out of mind'. Or in more sophisticated terms: The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics.
See https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/QXpxioWSQcNuNnNTy/...
Interesting article, and thanks for the introduction to "philosophy bro". I think the Copenhagen interpretation of Ethics is really a misnomer. In quantum physics, a particle can exist in a superposition of states until you observe it. The ethical equivalent would be "a problem can be viewed as moral or amoral until you observe it", which is not really what the author is explaining. Additionally, I think the problem the author describes mostly boils down to how one interprets the intention behind each example. For instance: paying a homeless person $20 a day (plus donations) can be viewed as charitable (a homeless person gets to earn money and be treated as a human being) or exploitative (you underpay a worker). Same with the price surging: you can view it as a incentive for drivers to compensate for demands or price gouging. I'm not saying either is right or wrong, but that these are the opposed views are coexisting in different people's head. For this, it would make more sense to call this scenario a "Reverse Copenhagen interpretation" where one observation lead to two coexisting interpretations.
There are different degrees and institutions of slavery, and Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist and former chattel slave himself, had this to say[1] about that sentiment:
> The abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass initially declared "now I am my own master", upon taking a paying job. However, later in life he concluded to the contrary, saying "experience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other"
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery#History