Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor
chrismaury.com
Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor
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Re: Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor
#2This would be a great kickstarter project. You may want to modify it though so the station just prints a check or some other instrument other than cash or you will end up with a lot of broken Mechanical Turk Stations.
Re: Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor
#3This would be a great kickstarter project. You may want to modify it though so the station just prints a check or some other instrument other than cash or you will end up with a lot of broken Mechanical Turk Stations.
Yea, broken machines or people getting mugged right after cashing out are both concerns. But the people who would benefit most from something like this would be least likely to have a bank account.
Re: Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor
#4What this article is effectively advocating, but can't or won't say outright, is that America needs the ability to pay people less than the minimum wage.
Someone working all day at mechanical turk, is likely to fall below the federal minimum wage rate in terms of what they're pulling down per hour. Is it ok for companies to utilize mass scale labor at what becomes in reality a sub minimum wage rate? Particularly if mechanical turk stations were to become wide spread.
Obviously mechanical turk is a per unit pay system, not a job with an hourly pay rate. However, if you're doing it full time, I call bullshit on that difference. If you had 100,000 people working on mechanical turk 40 hours per week, making $6 per hour, those are very much jobs paying sub minimum wage.
It would be no different than if a thousand companies banded together to source labor below minimum wage by paying per task, and sharing that labor around rather than employing each laborer in a "job" (eg in a metro area with high population density). Those companies would be paying for net full time labor, while evading the minimum wage responsibility.
One solution to this legal boundary, would be to require that mechanical turk style tasks pay at least equivalent to minimum wage based on the time they take. I expect in any large scale adoption of mechanical turk, this issue will jump to the forefront.
Re: Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor
#5This would be a great kickstarter project. You may want to modify it though so the station just prints a check or some other instrument other than cash or you will end up with a lot of broken Mechanical Turk Stations.
Yea, broken machines or people getting mugged right after cashing out are both concerns. But the people who would benefit most from something like this would be least likely to have a bank account.
Tons of businesses cash checks without a bank account. Another concern is kiosk hacking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSu8z3vrfcY
Re: Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor
#6That is actually brilliant! I was thinking about something similar, how maybe a poor country could create jobs for its citizens online (and they'd be happy with much less than $7/hour). But this is actually a great idea for poor people in any country...
Re: Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor
#7What this article is effectively advocating, but can't or won't say outright, is that America needs the ability to pay people less than the minimum wage. Someone working all day at mechanical turk, is likely to fall below the federal minimum wage rate in terms of what they're pulling down per hour. Is it ok for companies to utilize mass scale labor at what becomes in reality a sub minimum wage rate? Particularly if m…
People already work for less than minimum wage... if they can find a job! This would just bring more employment opportunities to those who need it.
Re: Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor
#8"found that you can make about $7/ hour."
As someone who turks occasionally, you can't consistently make $7 an hour unless you have some skill that you could probably use on the job marketplace. $3-$4 is more like it.
Re: Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor
#9What if the person doing the Turking was submitting crap data? It seems like you'd have to wait at least a couple days in order for the data to be validated.
Re: Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor
#10What this article is effectively advocating, but can't or won't say outright, is that America needs the ability to pay people less than the minimum wage. Someone working all day at mechanical turk, is likely to fall below the federal minimum wage rate in terms of what they're pulling down per hour. Is it ok for companies to utilize mass scale labor at what becomes in reality a sub minimum wage rate? Particularly if m…
So what you also need is more businesses to use mechanical turk or similar services. There's a huge opportunity in that for startups. The biggest is probably bridging the physical and digital worlds. Controlling robots through mechanical turk. Every factory robot, cnc machine, or 3d printer needs someone to keep an eye on it in case anything goes wrong so that the machine can get shut off.
Also, cashiers and receptionists. Is it really necessary for person to be there in person.
And marketing. Testing which ads/videos work best.