"It has 0% poverty among its citizens"
I've been re-reading the Draka series recently so I have to ask: "What about the serfs?".
I don't disagree with the rest, I just think we've both been smoking the same stuff tonight.
(
jonbob loves you, Thu 22 Dec 2022, 2:38,
Reply)
ha! with me it's more I've got a tiny bit of work to do before christmas but prefer this procrastinating. I'll have a relax later
I was careful to say citizens, a cop out I know. But even the foreign workers it's little more complex than it seems. Most of the exploitation comes from labour hire firms, who are almost exclusive south Asian run. They recruit in places like pakistan, and most of the documented abuses have come from them rather than qatari managed companies, though the qataris themselves certainly do little to enforce standards. These aren't people being kidnapped and forced into prostitutions. It's a long established foreign worker trade, and most pakistani workers do it with full knowledge of conditions, knowing that theyll still take home far more pay than what they could earn in their home countries. And if you've seen old women in india carting rocks all day in the hot sun, and for some reason that escapes me a lot of the road work is done by women there, you'll know work conditions and pay are not a step down in qatar.
so it's that moral equivalence, harms and consequences point again. yes it makes you feel bad, it would be nice if they got western style pay and conditions. but they could also not hire them at all, and those workers would stay on the subcontinent where half a billion people make less than a dollar a day and live in squalor. would that make your conscience feel better, or do you stop caring when it's not a foreign villian doing the exploiting? (by you I mean people who arc up about it, rather than you personally, jonbob)
(
cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Thu 22 Dec 2022, 3:53,
Reply)