One thing I've always wanted to do (and hopefully will) is to hire one of those cheap online assistants that can handle generic tasks for you, and both streamline what I have to do, and use them to keep me accountable.
Having someone confirm whether you've done certain things as their job seems like something that will help me, and even if it doesn't fully help they can reduce the amount of work I need to do to start on something which is helpful on its own.
I'd be curious to hear if anyone here is doing something like this?
While I don't entirely disagree I have friends who work for < $5/hr (Eastern Europe) who would love to have the option to do this instead.
I also have friends who work for only slightly more on Upwork projects who would hate it if those jobs disappear under the premise that 'they are getting exploited'.
You are not exploiting the person making the garments, you are exploiting the fact that the cost of living in Bangladesh is far below the cost of living in a Western nation.
The fact that the standard of living in Bangladesh is also lower does not mean that you are exploiting the worker. In fact, in many cases (especially employing them directly online as the GP is suggesting) you are helping to improve their standard of living.
Maybe they are just trying to provoke some thought. They did not make any grand claims regarding levels of exploitation... Not sure why there is always someone trying to get ahead of drama and signal how woke they are despite there being no drama at all.
I'm not going to say this isn't exploitative to some degree, but I will say that this is similar to sweatshop conditions: potentially an improvement over what they were previously doing. It's hard to jump from sustenance farming to a large income.
I highly recommend you take a trip to the Philippines. Go out to some of the villages. There are young children starving. That $2-$5 is huge for them. College graduates work in department stores because there are not enough jobs.
Having someone confirm whether you've done certain things as their job seems like something that will help me, and even if it doesn't fully help they can reduce the amount of work I need to do to start on something which is helpful on its own.
I'd be curious to hear if anyone here is doing something like this?