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World Cup Daily, Day 25

grantwahl.substack.com

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Re: World Cup Daily, Day 25

#71

Post by cm2187 »

vermilingua wrote: post #57
cm2187 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because no one dies at work on big infrastructure projects in western countries?

Because in most western countries, insurance and workers compensation laws result in safer working conditions.

Not really a story I have followed but the numbers I see after a quick search suggest this is another bullshit story.

This website (first result on google, I don't particularly vouch for it [1]) suggests in 2020, 340 workers died every day from hazardous working conditions in the US. If you scale it to the population of Qatar, that's about 3 per day, or 20 per week. The guardian claims 12 migrant workers died per week in Qatar the last decades [2]. Not exactly out of proportion.

[1] https://aflcio.org/reports/death-job-toll-neglect-2022

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/23/r...

Re: World Cup Daily, Day 25

#72

Post by stereolambda »

donatj wrote: post #26

Maybe I am just cynical, but I highly doubt many leaders would actually care about a worker’s death. Most would like have the decorum and PR experience to feign shock, but I doubt you’d get more than an empty “oh that’s terrible“ from most in power. To me the fact that anyone would find this shocking is the most shocking part as it implies people are believing politicians facades.

I think a reasonable reading here is that workers dying is a systemic issue (also related to their overall conditions), not a series of just unfortunate accidents. We may expect the ruling class to do something to make people die less, and this would start with communicating that this is important matter.

OTOH caring in front of camera is of course a pretty trash signal about the rulers actually doing anything, especially if said rulers are authoritarian and all they have to care about is strong police. An elected politician in representative democracy has a little more incentive to be half-truthful at least some of the time.

You can be cynical all you want. These regime-type considerations are separate from whether we think the culture should value preserving life of people, and not saying "well it's just how things are for thousands of years, good thing I am hereditary elite".

Re: World Cup Daily, Day 25

#73

Post by zepn »

BurningFrog wrote: post #61
m12k wrote: post #10

It seems pretty obvious that a totalitarian petrostate, that bribed its way into using a global sports event as a massive PR push, doesn't care. What matters is whether we care that they don't care. What matters is whether we care that our sports institutions are massively corrupt.

Everyone knows FIFA is a deeply corrupt organization. There is also not much anyone can do about it. But I don't think "we need to care more" is a good mental model for the issue

Surely there are, say, British, European or American FIFA representatives who can be tried for taking bribes, or for being part of an organisation which takes bribes? Why are those people immune? They're complicit.

Re: World Cup Daily, Day 25

#74

Post by twobitshifter »

sphinxster wrote: post #30
m12k wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Even a single preventable death on a job site is one too many. We are doubling down on safety precautions and training to prevent any further workplace hazards. While complete safety is impossible to achieve on a project of this scale, we are using our massive wealth to ensure our construction sites follow international best practices in this area. We value the lives and wellbeing of our workers and will take every…

There are 1+ million migrant workers in Qatar. Roughly, the average human mortality rate is about 1% per year. In a given population of 1 million, you could expect about 27 to die, on average each day . (0.01x1000000)/365 = 27 Sure, more elderly people make up the 1%, and if accounting for the workers ages maybe you'll have half that figure. Or a quarter. The point is, in context, one worker dying out of a million on…

You shouldn’t use the entire country, use the number of workers working on the World Cup.

Re: World Cup Daily, Day 25

#75

Post by BurningFrog »

somrand0 wrote: post #21
HorizonXP wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, as much as I’d like to lean into the conspiracy theories here, I think this post highlights the likely cause of his death. Won’t stop people from speculating though.

the conspiracy here, is the way this system of employees and companies pretends that it's very different from masters and slaves. the real difference is that a slave has one master, but an employee is some sort of partial-slave that is shared amongst many masters in a way that the employee gets to chose who gets to tell them what to do and that's it.

You really need to learn more about slavery.

We all hate our jobs from time to time, but keep it in perspective.

Re: World Cup Daily, Day 25

#76

Post by jdminhbg »

zepn wrote: post #73
BurningFrog wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone knows FIFA is a deeply corrupt organization. There is also not much anyone can do about it. But I don't think "we need to care more" is a good mental model for the issue

Surely there are, say, British, European or American FIFA representatives who can be tried for taking bribes, or for being part of an organisation which takes bribes? Why are those people immune? They're complicit.

This does occasionally happen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Blazer

Re: World Cup Daily, Day 25

#77

Post by shawabawa3 »

HorizonXP wrote: post #17
tpmx wrote: post #6

https://grantwahl.substack.com/p/world-cup-daily-day-22 My body finally broke down on me. Three weeks of little sleep, high stress and lots of work can do that to you. What had been a cold over the last 10 days turned into something more severe on the night of the USA-Netherlands game, and I could feel my upper chest take on a new level of pressure and discomfort. I didn’t have Covid (I test regularly here), but I we…

Honestly, as much as I’d like to lean into the conspiracy theories here, I think this post highlights the likely cause of his death. Won’t stop people from speculating though.

Couldn't his feeling unwell (potential heart attack?) be caused by poison?

This doesn't necessarily contradict the conspiracy theory

Re: World Cup Daily, Day 25

#78

Post by Swenrekcah »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #46
m12k wrote: post #10

It seems pretty obvious that a totalitarian petrostate, that bribed its way into using a global sports event as a massive PR push, doesn't care. What matters is whether we care that they don't care. What matters is whether we care that our sports institutions are massively corrupt.

What seems pretty obvious is all the globalist institutions, everything from FIFA to the UN Human Rights Council, which are happy to take bribes from unashamedly totalitarian petrostates and worse, don't care. That's what gets me. Qatar can Qatar in Qatar, but the disgusting, corrupt, hypocritical ruling class who would preach to me and claim to be the "experts" on how I should live my life and to be my moral superio…

So, putting FIFA aside since it’s not a public institution, you’re saying that because some institutions have a problem with some of their workings, that they should be abolished?

We need to strengthen our democratic institutions and of course also be more demanding of honesty from their leaders.

Just saying they’re evil and we need to put an end to them sounds like people saying the police is evil and should be abolished. A really bad idea in my opinion.

Re: World Cup Daily, Day 25

#79

Post by paulgb »

isthisthingon99 wrote: post #62
paulgb wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working conditions in the US have improved dramatically over the last century because politicians and leaders took action to improve them. Your position seems to be that it doesn’t matter what leaders and politicians say if they don’t believe it in their heart. I think that’s less relevant than their actions. (And FWIW, yes, usually when a worker dies on the job in the US the company does sponsor a memorial)

Ah, so you are projecting your own society's ideals onto another which wasn't always how it was. Which society told you the way to do it was to create laws to deal with it? Was it your own? Have you perhaps considered that just because US society might be a few decades ahead in certain types of rights, that maybe that's just a fluke of nature and doesn't give the US any moral standing? Edit: can't respond any more, s…

> Ah, so you are projecting your own society's ideals onto another which wasn't always how it was.

To the extent that those ideals are “migrant worker’s lives should not be treated as expendable”, hell yes I am. (FWIW I’m Canadian, not American)

Your attempt at positioning that as some sort of cultural chauvinism is weird.

Re: World Cup Daily, Day 25

#80

Post by harimau777 »

themitigating wrote: post #31
m12k wrote: post #10

It seems pretty obvious that a totalitarian petrostate, that bribed its way into using a global sports event as a massive PR push, doesn't care. What matters is whether we care that they don't care. What matters is whether we care that our sports institutions are massively corrupt.

We care but do we care enough to do something and what would that be?

We could refuse to participate in their sporting events.
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