Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The guy accepted the $2 raise. Taking advantage of naivete doesn't excuse them from being scumbags. You can worship scumbag employment practices if you like, or claim that it's his "fault" somehow for not understanding the value of what he was doing. I prefer to reward people at least SOMEWHAT proportional to their contribution, as opposed to proportional to their business acumen. In your world, the 1% get richer, t…
The guy didn't care enough to ask for more than $2, why should I care on his behalf? The problem I have with your rant is that you're implicitly segregating the population into two groups, one which knows better and one which needs the other group to take care of it. Of course you're placing yourself in the group that knows better... I have enough work taking care of myself. If saying, "That guy can look out for hims…
No? Why is that different than taking advantage of someone too young to know better?
If I sell you a car that has a hard-to-detect problem deep in its engine that I know will cause the engine to need to be rebuilt at a cost of nearly half the price you're paying, and I fail to tell you about it because I'm sure you'll never know that I knew, is that OK?
No? Why is that different?
I'm NOT saying that you should be "taking care of" that guy. Frankly you're not part of the equation between him and his employer.
I AM saying that, if he were to do business with you, as an employee or otherwise, and the relationship were based in part on lies (even if they were lies-by-omission), then yes, THAT would make you a scumbag. I hasten to add that I am not accusing the real YOU of being a scumbag, just the hypothetical "you" that would take advantage of someone to that extreme.
Capitalism doesn't have to be about screwing the other guy when you can get away with it. It often IS, but it doesn't have to be.
Sometimes the value of an unproven kid really is low, because the odds of them doing a good job aren't very high, and so you're amortizing the cost across a number of hires -- but he was a proven value to the company (to the point that they fired 10 other temp workers), and so their behavior was blatantly unethical. (Aside from the fact that most temp worker contracts prohibit you from hiring the worker directly without giving the temp agency a fee, and by the description they almost certainly sidestepped any such clause, which is itself a probable unethical contract violation.)