[HN Gopher] In a deadly mountain pass, a tiny hotel is a lifeline
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In a deadly mountain pass, a tiny hotel is a lifeline
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 94 points
Date : 2023-04-15 21:05 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| bookofjoe wrote:
| https://archive.ph/KpQDB
| rendall wrote:
| Wow. That caption. _" Young boys who work at the hotel."_ Just
| put out there, casually, like child labor is no big thing.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| If you're American there are certainly kids working in your
| community. not even illicitly. It's generally legal for kids of
| any age to work for their parents if the parents own the
| business. For example, if a family owns a B&B, they might put
| their kids to work doing simple chores around the business.
| usefulcat wrote:
| I suspect that child labor is relatively low on Afghanistan's
| list of problems.
| 55555 wrote:
| Here's a good documentary on a bigger problem:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWeRAlJQI0c
| aynyc wrote:
| You never worked while you were young? Like deliver papers or
| McDonald's or even tutoring?
| jacquesm wrote:
| In many countries it isn't.
| rendall wrote:
| I know. I think it just shocked me. I would like to live in a
| world where childhood is universally the time in everyone's
| life for play and education.
| BlackFly wrote:
| Throughout human history, children were seen as supportive
| to the labor of the parents. I recall reading articles
| recently that were pointing out that this cultural change
| in attitude towards children may be what is driving
| declining birthrates: children have changed from assisting
| in life (in a limited capacity) to being a liability like
| an expensive pet. A child will not help out in an office
| job like a child can help in a family run corner store,
| restaurant or farm.
|
| Certainly I mowed the lawn, washed dishes, cooked, weeded
| gardens, fed livestock and pets, painted the house, and
| many more chores. I am not sure I was a net positive even
| with all that. My parents certainly didn't exploit me, and
| my parents had worked a lot harder on their parents farms
| without it being exploitive.
|
| Childhood is universally a time of newness and innocence.
| There is no need to shelter children from the reality of
| this world and I think society does a huge disservice by
| trying to maintain ignorance (while characterizing it as
| innocence) in children and then suddenly laments how
| irresponsible they are at 18.
| jacquesm wrote:
| There's that and there is the simple fact that children
| are now expected to live so there isn't as much need for
| 'redundancy' to put it bluntly. Up to my grandparents
| generation it wasn't rare at all to lose one or more
| children.
| f6v wrote:
| I was selling fruits to tourists at about 9 or 10 during
| summers. Tought me a lot. Not to make an argument from my
| personal anecdotes, but not all "child labor" is bad.
| netsharc wrote:
| I mean, won't kids in your imaginary world have chores?
| Learning to cook or clean is also education (the
| alternative would be: ever heard of the anecdote of young
| adults who go to college and don't know how to do
| laundry?). Sadly for this remote part of Afghanistan in the
| next few years, practical education is probably going to be
| more useful compared to book education.
|
| And maybe I'm just romanticizing the concept, but I imagine
| the kids would be mostly running around playing on the
| hotel grounds, and once in a while a bunch of travellers
| would show up, and the hotel caretaker would then yell for
| the kids to help prepare tea or food for them.
| speakfreely wrote:
| OP lives in a fantasy world where every culture should be
| bulldozed to make way for endless middle class cul-de-
| sacs and McMansions. It's perfectly normal in most of the
| world for children to be involved in family businesses or
| even working to help support the family, rather than
| living in some entitled bubble where they're the center
| of everything.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| Hey, that's where I live!
| jryle70 wrote:
| How do you know they are all family and not child labor
| working to help their families? After all child labor
| isn't a foreign concept in Afghanistan:
|
| https://www.npr.org/2022/12/31/1143143252/afghanistan-
| taliba...
|
| I find it strange that child labor invokes such a strong
| feeling in any article about EV, being associated with
| cobalt mining, yet it receives such a glove treatment in
| this discussion.
| netsharc wrote:
| Since I joined in on this thread, my "glove treatment"
| might be romanticizing it, but "helping out" in a quiet
| hotel/guest house in the mountains is surely a lot more
| kid-compatible than a coalmine. The top commenter's
| comment that the article glossed over the fact that kids
| were made to work in such a place feels overblown. Hey
| maybe the reality of this hotel work is a bit harsher,
| but since the reporter didn't shine a light on it, I'd
| assume she also judged the same way.
|
| If the article was about a coal mine and the NYT just
| glossed over the fact of child labor, then I would agree
| with such a comment; an article glossing over child labor
| in a coal mine would be shitty.
|
| Edit to add: I like your angle about "It must be an anti-
| EV brigade!" though, keep on investigating, you're on to
| a conspiracy! /s
| jacquesm wrote:
| You could have made your point more effectively without
| the insults and the sleights.
| davidw wrote:
| From my understanding, recently, "getting enough food" has
| been the biggest worry for children in Afghanistan, not
| whether they're doing some work or not.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Looking at the population pyramid of Afghanistan, it has about
| as many youngsters under 18 as people in the 18-60 age bracket.
|
| https://www.populationpyramid.net/afghanistan/2023/
|
| With a population structure like this, you don't really have
| any choice but to tap at least part of the under-18 population
| into the workforce. Western societies at the same level of
| development did precisely the same.
| jpollock wrote:
| Even in the USA kids are allowed to work, either paid or
| unpaid. There is insufficient information to decide if this is
| exploitative labor or not.
|
| I'm guessing you don't have many friends that grew up rural?
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| What is the view on Girl Scouts selling cookies? Or Boy
| Scouts selling popcorn?
| lighthazard wrote:
| They're not really working in that scenario - they are fund
| raising for their group which may be considered an exercise
| in interacting with other people, marketing, selling, and
| the value of money that helps their organization. This may
| sound similar to working but one is for fun and the other
| is more for survival and sustenance.
| marketerinland wrote:
| You're saying the definition of working is not tied to
| the activity but rather the motive?
| rendall wrote:
| You're right. It just surprised me.
| vinhboy wrote:
| I was expecting a story about an eccentric recluse, but it turns
| out to be a story about a failing government. Good read
| nonetheless.
| webwielder2 wrote:
| There's a French documentary series about the shit people go
| through living in areas with bad roads that is my favorite thing
| on YouTube. Here's an episode about Afghanistan
| https://youtu.be/a-QHgZYmfpM
| js2 wrote:
| Have you seen _The Wages of Fear_? I would imagine it would be
| your favorite movie.
| dekhn wrote:
| And Sorceror.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| Sorcerer is really quite an audio-visual treat. Then on top
| of that, all the historically-relevant backstories. And Roy
| Scheider's perceptive POV slowly going off the rails. It's
| really amazing.
|
| It also reminds me of some of the worst scouting trips I
| ever went on as a kid. A sense of zero control while an
| adult wheeled the van over loose gravel around a drop-off
| corner on a one-lane logging road.
|
| Or, just driving around the backroads in various mountain
| ranges from the cascades to the uintas.
|
| That experience you get to have when you feel like you have
| reached what might be a turn in the road, but you are going
| uphill at quite an incline and can't see over your car's
| hood.
|
| So you're at 12K feet and glad your car is in good running
| shape, but you have to roll down your window and lean your
| upper body outside to check that you're not about to drive
| your family off a cliff. As the car gently noses over when
| you finally reach the turn, the first landform you see is a
| 10K+ peak about 15 miles away. Then you see the valley full
| of cities 8K feet below you.
|
| Rinse and repeat on the cliffs of highway 1 near the lost
| coast, dodging landslides and massive rock falls in the
| coastal ranges during rain storms just before you have to
| stop to lose your lunch, arriving at the perimeter of your
| camp site to find the highway bridge was lost to the river,
| etc.
|
| Just unpacking some road memories here I guess :-)
| DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote:
| I just got sucked in a watched the whole thing. Near the end,
| "On the other side of the world, they are trying to get to
| Mars! And just look at how we are living here."
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| A friend of mine was stationed in Afghanistan during the US
| occupation. He said there was a well-understood eco system. The
| US would pay local businessmen, say, $10k to fix a section of
| road. In the meantime, rebels/terrorists/freedom fighters would
| blow up a section of road for, say, $1k. Lather, rinse, repeat.
| 55555 wrote:
| Try explaining the broken window fallacy to a guy who just
| bought a new Porsche from breaking and repairing windows.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Amazing, thank you.
| groestl wrote:
| > my favorite thing on YouTube.
|
| Off topic, but can we have a thread about our favorite things
| on YouTube? I also have one, and I'd like to see more like this
| exact thing above!
| OoooooooO wrote:
| Just create an "Ask HN: " thread?
| moralestapia wrote:
| I will support it :D
| vetelko wrote:
| what about [paid] in such links?
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