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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   20373 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 27, 2026

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I know it's not the point of your post, but I just want to say that I've always found the whole "jobs nobody wants to do" argument infuriatingly obtuse and borderline offensive.

While nobody (that I am aware of) literally follows the argument up with "...and that's why the abolition of slavery was a bad thing" that is kind of what they are implying. What they are saying in effect is that people who do {dirty job} do not deserve to be compensated in such a way that someone would work {dirty job} voluntarily because {dirty job} is sub-human.

What they are saying in effect is that people who do {dirty job} do not deserve to be compensated in such a way that someone would work {dirty job}

I don't think this is is quite a fair summary; the implication is that it is impossible to compensate someone enough that they will work {dirty job} - either literally impossible, or at the very least economically infeasible to do at scale.

While nobody (that I am aware of) literally follows the argument up with "...and that's why the abolition of slavery was a bad thing"

Slavery was economically inefficient, as Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, Bastiat, and many other early capitalist/capitalist aligned thinkers would point out. And therefore anyone who tried to argue "the economy is why the abolition of slavery is a bad thing" would be incorrect from the very start.

A free market of goods and labor however is economically efficient, and therefore any protectionist argument against that has to showcase why any claimed moral gains are worth the economic tradeoffs. There might be some things where that's true, but they aren't the same.

do not deserve to be compensated in such a way that someone would work {dirty job} voluntarily

They are doing it voluntarily. It's just that they are voluntarily doing it for wages that some people believe are too low. It's basically "the myth of consensual employment".

You know what drives me apeshit? I've worked on a dairy farm, and an orchard. Sure, it's hot, dirty, and uncomfortable work, but it wasn't really any worse than a dinner rush in a commercial kitchen on a Friday night. I really get the impression that a lot of people assume manual labor is worse than the ninth circle of hell.

I don't think that's what they are implying, they mostly see it as a way to imply white people are too lazy, and since those mean right wingers won't let them import hundreds of millions of better, hardworking brown people permanently and legally then they have to settle for bringing them illegally or temporarily. The lack of legal protections afforded to legal residents is only a feature in so far as it enables them to enlist the help of capital for this venture, they don't like it either.

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