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That 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...
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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 receptio…
> Controlling robots through mechanical turk. No one would let a random person on the street control their half a million dollar machine. > And marketing. Testing which ads/videos work best. Urban poor are definitely not the group advertisers are targeting.
So, for example, if the factory robot knocks something over, and there are 10 different people watching a few frames of video, it's pretty likely they'd spot the mistake.
Same goes for ad critiques. You wouldn't ask "is this a good ad". You'd split it up. "Is this actor better wearing a blue shirt than a red shirt" - ask 10 people.
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$20 / hour is a nice thought, but unfortunately what that would do is create massive unemployment and much larger welfare abuse. There's a fine line on just how high you can set a minimum wage (in relation to the economy in question) before you give too much incentive to companies to automate that labor, shrink their business slightly, or offload the costs to the consumer with price increases (net negative result). G…
I understand what you're saying; but the problem here is that 1 state raised the minimum wage. Naturally, jobs will flow to the neighboring states. But what if the Federal minimum wage was raised? You do understand the point I'm trying to make: that there should be _some_ _significant_ economic incentive for people to get off welfare and on to work! Right now the incentive is minimal at best. So how do you create the…
If you want to incentivize with $20 / hour minimum wage, you'd have to mandate hiring, or change the laws governing firing employees. Businesses would rebel against it immediately otherwise.
Bill Clinton & the Republicans worked together in the mid 1990s to successfully overhaul the existing welfare system by altering the terms of how you could get welfare and for how long and so on. Prior to that, the system was largely resulting in a stagnant perpetual welfare cycle, where people went in and never came out. It seemed to work great right up until the big economic implosion of the last few years.
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> Controlling robots through mechanical turk. No one would let a random person on the street control their half a million dollar machine. > And marketing. Testing which ads/videos work best. Urban poor are definitely not the group advertisers are targeting.
It's not as simple as that. It's not one poor guy looking a video feed or judging ads. It would be sophisticated system that pools together many workers in ways to get quality. So, for example, if the factory robot knocks something over, and there are 10 different people watching a few frames of video, it's pretty likely they'd spot the mistake. Same goes for ad critiques. You wouldn't ask "is this a good ad". You'd…
But you're still asking the "wrong" people. And you're asking, instead of observing the actual behaviour.
What 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…
I'm glad someone else is calling this for what it is: a way to get around minimum wage. Another solution would be to use worker reputation (something explored by Panos Ipeirotis @ http://www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/ ) Because MT workers are unreliable, you often need to have several doing the same task. Better workers require fewer checks, and are therefore much more cost effective. Right now MT is a market for le…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_line#Ford_Motor_Compan...
This is a great idea. It would really work if it supplements the welfare checks; it would get people into the mindset of working. Let me explain. Right now, if you're a bum, you make a decent amount of money panhandling + scamming the government ("disability", etc.); let's call this "freeloading". The problem is: the amount of money you can make freeloading is close to minimum wage (if you include everything). So the…
$20 / hour is a nice thought, but unfortunately what that would do is create massive unemployment and much larger welfare abuse. There's a fine line on just how high you can set a minimum wage (in relation to the economy in question) before you give too much incentive to companies to automate that labor, shrink their business slightly, or offload the costs to the consumer with price increases (net negative result). G…
1. should people be made to flip burgers or stand in cashier booths when society doesn't really need that. You can order off amazon for example, or eat healthier food that you make at home. Those burgers flippers could then instead be training to become engineers. It might take them longer than an academically gifted person, but they'd get womewhere if they didn't need to flip burgers everyday.
2. If you increase the price of labor by increasing the minimum wage, more opportunities for automation come into play. If burger's flippers were too expensive, restaurant chains might install robots that did it instead. Over time, burger slipping would be even cheaper than the previous minimum wage burger flipper.
First, you can't just give people cash. They will immediately turn to spamming, and you'll get crap data. You need to do statistics, comparing turks to other turks, and only pay the ones who don't spam. It's highly likely you can't do this in realtime.
Second, you need to track the identity of your turks. If worker X is known not to be a spammer, then you want to assign work to X preferentially. Similarly, if worker Y is a known spammer, you want to refuse him work.
Third, most poor people are not working and are not looking for work. Only 30% or so of poor adults are in the labor force at all. Why would they decide to start working at a mechanical turk station when they seem to have little desire to work anyplace else?
What 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…
This is not the sort of disruption we want in the marketplace. Let's say someone rolls this out, with moderate success. What's to say a company like Wal-Mart wouldn't crowdsource stocking shelves? We already see some people taking advantage of low-income workers (giving less than 36 hours to avoid health insurance coverage, etc). This would be another opportunity to lower costs all around without much of an upside for those doing the work.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I understand what you're saying; but the problem here is that 1 state raised the minimum wage. Naturally, jobs will flow to the neighboring states. But what if the Federal minimum wage was raised? You do understand the point I'm trying to make: that there should be _some_ _significant_ economic incentive for people to get off welfare and on to work! Right now the incentive is minimal at best. So how do you create the…
The same threshold applies whether at the federal or state level in terms of the consequences. Push it too far at the federal level and you'll wipe out a row of cheap labor jobs, that will either be automated or off-shored; and those that can't be either will result in consumer price increases (which just burdens primarily the poor and middle class). If you want to incentivize with $20 / hour minimum wage, you'd have…
As for the welfare reform: people route around obstacles. I think people have been able to game the current system too. "Disability" is one such option; claim a physical disability, and get $1000/month in disability payments (or that's what I've heard). Earned Income Credit is another such option.
My basic point is: just like in any learning algorithm, we need a gradient that will drive people in the right direction. The larger the gradient, the faster the movement. :)