Technology is not always the solution. If your employer asks you to affirm something, and you do that, and then cheat (because, let's say, cheating is technologically trivial), then you take a huge risk. A lot of people will not take that risk. It's enough to make example of 1 or 2 people who are caught, and the rest will fall in line in no time.

Is my opinion, the company is cheating the employee by paying them less for the same work just because they live somewhere else.

One side fully presented the terms at the start. The other lied. If you don't like the terms, don't accept them. It isn't like facebook is the only employer.

It has never worked differently. If you want to average out the pay you'll be paid much more closer to Bangladeshi pay than to SV one.

It’s more a legal thing. Companies have to follow the local labor laws and pay taxes to the appropriate states.

Not sure the courts will really care about your opinion when there was an employment contract in place?

'Nobody forced them into slavery, why didn't they just go somewhere else?'

Slavery, by its very definition, involves force. From Merriam-Webster's dictionary:

Someone who is legally owned by another person and is forced to work for that person without pay

That's the point I was trying to make. Generally employees do not actually have much of a choice, if any. Especially if they have families to provide for so the distinction is rather moot

Employees can find another job. Or they can choose to have no job, and potentially starve to death etc. But the latter is the default of the human condition, and has little to do with the whims of corporations.

Ah yes they can just choose to starve to death! Couldn't slaves make the choice to be beaten to death or executed for not working? Thank you for proving my point

If you're suggesting that human beings are "slaves" to the natural condition, yes. Work or starve has been the default state of humanity (and all forms of life on Earth) since the dawn of time. It's not "slavery" or "capitalism" or anything else, it's the default state of being.

Oh my apologies, I guess that excuses paying people so little that they can't survive off the wages and need food assistance from the government. Capitalism truly has all the answers!

Companies were in a race to the bottom for wages, and many still are. People working these jobs sure maybe they can get an education, or get a foot in somewhere else. What about the next person to fill the shitty role they left? It's a continuous cycle of shitting on the lowest paid people in society and it needs to stop

Does an unskilled laborer have options in silicon valley? What options are those?

Seems like goalposts, wasn't the thread about Facebook monitoring it's employees'? What unskilled labor is that?

The post I initially responded to was about employers in general, and that post was responding to something about Facebook. This transitioned the conversation to the overarching theme of employer/employee relationship and pay

Slavery isn't just chattel slavery, it comes in many forms, including wage slavery.

The abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass had this to say on the subject[1]:

> [E]xperience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other

From Wikipedia[1]:

> Douglass went on to speak about these conditions as arising from the unequal bargaining power between the ownership/capitalist class and the non-ownership/laborer class within a compulsory monetary market: "No more crafty and effective devise for defrauding the southern laborers could be adopted than the one that substitutes orders upon shopkeepers for currency in payment of wages. It has the merit of a show of honesty, while it puts the laborer completely at the mercy of the land-owner and the shopkeeper"

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery#History

Working at FB isn't wage slavery, though, is it? If they can work there, cant they go get a similar job?

The issue goes far beyond Facebook and extends to nearly all US companies. It seems disingenuous to suggest otherwise

People actually were forced into slavery, and actually are not forced to work for Facebook.

Do you often exploit slaves as a rhetorical tool?

Have you heard of the concept of 'wage slavery'?

People at the lowest paid tiers of society do not have a choice

You and the company still needs to know/decide which locale you get taxed in and which regulation to follow.

Even in California, SF has different payroll taxes and regulation than other cities in the area. Massachusetts requires employers to open a unemployment account in state. If the employee moves to a state the employer doesn’t have a employees previously, you need to register in the state and it might mean you have to now pay sales taxes on revenue in the state.

So unless you become an independent contractor and deal with this things yourself, the employer needs to know where you live most of the tax year.

More and more remote companies use PEOs. No need to incorporate in 50 states, you just pay someone else to.

We use it too, but doesn't change the fact the the employer needs to tell the PEO where the employee is located. PEO also have limits, like MA example, the company still needs to open the unemployment accounts directly with the state. Sales tax is another thing that you have to do directly.

My point was that main reason companies need to know where the employee is compliance, employment law, taxes and potentially IP protection. While the employer wouldn't care about the location because of pay scale, they still need to know for other reasons.

Until we can all live in some United Kingdom of the Internet, the unfortunate fact is that local laws apply to companies and employees when the employee resides in the jurisdiction.

I worked at a company that switched to a PEO, people seemed weirdly outraged.

Playing games with your employer probably isn't the best idea if you're looking for a long term relationship with them.

It's not just the company caring for their own purposes (although there's that as well), there are external requirements which depend on the employee location which force them to need to know. Such as which taxes and how much they are required to deduct and even which health plan choices are available.

Facebook probably has really good data on IP geolocation, probably much much better than anyone, both through data users willingly provide and data from attackers they are certain to be fending off constantly. They'll know you're on a VPS.

I wouldn’t be so confident as to think Facebook won’t catch me lying for years.

Don't you have to give them your legal address when you start working for them?

I believe Facebook could catch them if it wanted.