In the US, a dishwasher costs ~$900 with install and lasts ~10 years (not even considering electricity costs). Hiring a disabled person legally at $1.75 for half an hour per week costs the same $910 over 10 years. Same price, but one supports a machine; the other supports a human being. Why fund metal and smart Wi-Fi appliances when you can empower someone’s life?

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t-3 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

> Why fund metal and smart Wi-Fi appliances when you can empower someone’s life?

Because it's illegal to pay so little, and nobody would do it for that price anyway, except for maybe your own children, who do it for that price plus the negative incidence of an asswhooping. If it were affordable for common people to have servants or slaves, they totally would. Machinery priced slaves out of existence. The next frontier is for value-added centralized industrial manufacturing to be priced out by distributed manufacturing and recycling, not a return to the days of domestic servitude.

	▲	gruez 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		>Because it's illegal to pay so little, and nobody would do it for that price anyway He mentions mentally disabled people specifically, who have lower minimum wage levels in some jurisdictions. https://archive.is/DcQeM

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msgodel 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's hilarious, I never thought to actually do the numbers. We've gotten so bad at manufacturing and trading it's likely cheaper and possibly easier to hire someone to do the thing.

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rvnx 5 days ago | parent [-]

It’s also satire of the working conditions of disabled people in the US

	▲	thih9 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		Poe’s law[1] is a thing, perhaps consider adding “/s”, “;)”, or similar. Replies will increase ambiguity and eventually people will misunderstand. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

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jacknews 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> with install

You just connect a couple of hoses and power, surely? And I'll bet the install fee eats a huge percentage of that price.

	▲	toast0 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		I recently replaced a dishwasher, and while the old one just had a cable to plug in, the new one needed some power box, so I had to mount that, and the existing holes for cables and hoses weren't big enough, so I needed to enlarge those. Not a big problem for me, I'm handy, but a lot of people aren't comfortable making holes in things. Physically moving the machines wasn't that hard, but I have plenty of dollies and what not. I was lucky and someone was interested in the old one to try to fix it, or to swap parts and make their current one look nicer, so I didn't have to haul the other one away to the dump, but that's something the installer will typically do.

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micromacrofoot 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"supports" - this is satire right

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4ndr3vv 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

_Hiring a disabled person legally at $1.75 for half an hour per week_

...but morally?

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gruez 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

>Why fund metal and smart Wi-Fi appliances when you can empower someone’s life?

/s ?

	▲	thih9 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		Author claims it is satire, as replied here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44489170