The post above sets up a chain of sarcastic “paradoxes” that collapse once you understand what people actually mean when they say “hiring is exploitation.” The problem isn’t that billionaires give people jobs — the problem is what those jobs look like under capitalism, who controls them, who profits from them, and who bears the cost.
Let’s break it down, point by point:
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1. “If hiring is bad, firing is good!” — False Logic
“If hiring workers is exploitation, then we should be glad whenever Amazon fires people…”
This argument assumes that people who criticize wage labor want fewer jobs, or that losing a job somehow “frees” you. That’s a misrepresentation.
The critique isn’t that working is bad — it’s that being paid less than what you produce while someone else keeps the difference is exploitative. The worker creates value, but only receives a fraction of it. The boss, who doesn’t do the work, collects the rest.
Firing someone doesn’t “free” them from exploitation — it just strips them of income in a system where survival requires a wage.
Simplified:
• Hiring under unequal conditions = exploitation.
• Firing under capitalism = harm.
• Neither is “good.” The problem is the system where people must work to survive, but don’t control the value they produce.
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2. “So is hiring immigrants good or bad?” — Both, under capitalism
“Hiring foreigners is bad because hiring them is exploiting them. But also bad because it means not hiring domestic workers…”
Again, this tries to set up a contradiction that only exists if you ignore context.
Hiring immigrants is not bad in itself. What’s bad is how companies deliberately exploit vulnerable workers — often immigrants — because they can be paid less, threatened with deportation, and denied basic rights.
The result? Bosses use immigrant labor to undercut domestic wages, then turn around and blame immigrants — dividing workers against each other.
In plain language:
Hiring immigrants is often exploitative not because they’re immigrants, but because bosses know they can get away with paying them less and treating them worse.
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3. “If wages are slavery, then firing workers frees them?” — Word games
“If wages are slavery, then firing workers is like freeing slaves…”
This is either rhetorical trolling or a fundamental misunderstanding of what wage slavery means.
“Wage slavery” is a critique of the condition where a person must sell their labor to survive, not because they love their job or want to contribute, but because they will starve, be homeless, or lose healthcare if they don’t.
Firing someone doesn’t “free” them — it throws them deeper into dependence and poverty. In fact, the fear of being fired is what forces workers to accept poor conditions, low wages, and overwork.
David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs:
“The threat of misery is used to make people do things they would otherwise never agree to.”
Translation:
Being unemployed under capitalism isn’t freedom — it’s punishment.
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4. “If automation is bad, then hiring is good?” — No, the issue is ownership
“They buy robots to replace workers, and we get mad about it.”
Yes, people are upset about being replaced by machines when the profits go to someone else, and they get nothing in return.
Automation should be good. It should make life easier. But under capitalism, when labor gets replaced by technology:
• The owners keep all the gains.
• The workers lose jobs, income, and security.
Karl Marx, Grundrisse:
“The real wealth of society is disposable time.”
Easy version:
Automation is only a problem when it throws people into poverty instead of giving them more freedom and rest.
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5. “If it’s bad for billionaires to underpay, is it bad that I don’t hire anyone?” — Misunderstanding scale and power
“Most people could start businesses and pay workers. Why is not doing that more defensible than not hiring?”
This pretends that everyone has equal opportunity and access to capital, and ignores the power imbalance between a billionaire like Bezos and the average person.
Most people don’t own factories, fleets of trucks, patents, or real estate. They don’t control capital. And because of that, they aren’t in a position to profit off the labor of others.
Billionaires, on the other hand, do hire workers on a massive scale and extract huge profits by paying those workers less than the value they produce. That’s why they get criticized.
Put simply:
You not owning a business isn’t exploitation.
A billionaire turning your labor into billions in profit while you struggle to pay rent — that is.
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6. The Real Issue: Control and Value
People aren’t angry that billionaires hire workers. They’re angry that:
• The workers do the labor, but don’t get paid its full value.
• The profits go upward — to the person who owns, not the person who works.
• When labor gets replaced by machines, the worker gets laid off — but the owner gets richer.
• And when immigrants are hired and underpaid, it’s used to divide workers instead of uniting them.
Hiring someone doesn’t make you a saint. Firing someone doesn’t make you moral. The structure of work under capitalism is built around the idea that profit comes from labor — but that profit is taken by people who didn’t do the labor.
That’s exploitation. And you don’t need to be a Marxist to see it — just honest.
