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Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor

chrismaury.com

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Re: Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor

#41

Post by yummyfajitas »

ajays wrote: post #30
shingen wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I disagree that you would have to mandate hiring. The local Walgreens needs 5 people to man the store. Do you think they'll just close up shop? Of course not. They'll have to pay more to their employees, and we (the customers) will have to pay an additional, say, 5%. 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;…

Do you think they'll just close up shop? Of course not.

Some stores on the margin will be driven bankrupt by the increased costs, and these stores will close up shop.

Re: Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor

#42

Post by ajays »

anamax wrote: post #33
ajays wrote: post #16

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…

> On another note: I think minimum wage should be much higher; say, $20/hour. This may not sound like a good idea, but think about it: it should be high enough that a freeloader has serious economic incentive to get off his ass and look for work! Another way to look at it is: I would much rather pay more for something, and have that extra money directly go to a worker's pocket; than route the money circuitously throu…

> How about work as the incentive?

Here's how I look at it. You can either apply force (by making the urban poor work at some crappy job) ; or you can apply attraction, and have them move themselves (by offering a significant economic incentive to work). Ye old carrot and stick solution. :)

I believe the former (stick) has been tried many times, and it doesn't work quite as well. People just don't like others telling them what to do.

But by giving a significant incentive (a carrot), you make the person themselves affect change; and it is more sustainable.

Anyways: these are just ideas that I'm hoping can spur some discussion. Looking at the number of urban poor, the current system isn't working.

Re: Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor

#43

Post by orbitingpluto »

wavephorm wrote: post #26

This resonates a lot with Henry Ford's innovations of conveyor belt assembly lines. Ford found out how to humans into an early form of robot, and once technology caught up these jobs inevitably were replaced with actual robots. Even if this Turk Station idea works, how long will it be until AI replaces any need for Mechanical Turk? About 10 years I'm guessing? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_line#Ford_Motor_Com…

Henry Ford also thought it was important that his workers be able to purchase the product that they are making in order to drive the economy. Turking isn't even going to feed you.

Re: Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor

#44

Post by ajays »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #41
ajays wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that you would have to mandate hiring. The local Walgreens needs 5 people to man the store. Do you think they'll just close up shop? Of course not. They'll have to pay more to their employees, and we (the customers) will have to pay an additional, say, 5%. 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;…

Do you think they'll just close up shop? Of course not. Some stores on the margin will be driven bankrupt by the increased costs, and these stores will close up shop.

But every store in that business would see their labor costs rise proportionately, so the net effect would be zero. If Walgreens' costs go up by 5%, so will Rite Aid's, CVS's, etc. Stores will just pass on the costs to the consumers. Plus, the labor cost of stores like Walgreens are very small compared to the merchandise costs. And the high-paying jobs (Pharmacists, etc.) would not be affected anyways, since you're just raising the minimum wage.

Other than Walmart, you'd be hard-pressed to find a business where the minimum-wage employees are a significant cost item in the budget.

Re: Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor

#45

Post by ajays »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #36
ajays wrote: post #20

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…

You can either take away welfare benefits; or you can give much more rewards for working. A third, mostly unexplored option, is to reduce the status/luxuries of people accepting welfare. I.e., instead of receiving housing vouchers and money to buy food/clothing, they could receive dormitory rooms (no TV or XBox), healthy dormitory meals and government issued grey jumpsuits. Under such a system, there would be a signi…

I think building dorms to house the population would be a significant obstacle to this approach.

Re: Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor

#46

Post by pron »

OMG! You guys! Aside from a few, most comments here are discussing how to actually do this efficiently. I think this might be forgivable as I assume many of you are quite young, but are you really suggesting exploiting poor populations for menial work w/o social benefits, without dignity, suggesting they walk into some booth, put in a few hours of work without even the physical presence of co-workers and bosses that can appreciate their work?

Again, I'd like to attribute the responses to the commenters' young age, and I trust your good intentions, but hackers, engineers and all entrepreneurs should really learn something about work-relations, social policy and ethics.

Re: Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor

#47

Post by zdw »

rmc wrote: post #34

For all the success that micro-lending has had in India and other countries, we haven’t really seen those benefits in American Urban areas. I thought the USA had "micro-lending", but they were called "payday loans"?

Payday lenders have a significantly higher interest rate - on the order of 500-2000% of the principle per year. The purpose of it is to put the screws on people who aren't able to get loans elsewhere.

Micro lending has more of a humanitarian goal - most organizations tend to lend at reasonable rates (3-15%/year).

Re: Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor

#48

Post by wilfra »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #28

This is a non-starter for several reasons, mostly relating to spam. 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, the…

It is not a non-starter for those reasons, it may just require some modification if they become problems or if it is deemed they are obstacles too big to even try to overcome.

When getting instant, reliable cash is the result, people will jump through an enormous number of hoops - and even pay money themselves the for opportunity.

For instance, you could require users to create an account on mturk and/or w/ the mturk shop so they can be tracked. If it is simple to do and prompted it should be fast an easy. If they can't even figure this out, they probably aren't qualified to be doing the work anyway.

Re: Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor

#49

Post by [deleted] »

pron wrote: post #46

OMG! You guys! Aside from a few, most comments here are discussing how to actually do this efficiently. I think this might be forgivable as I assume many of you are quite young, but are you really suggesting exploiting poor populations for menial work w/o social benefits, without dignity, suggesting they walk into some booth, put in a few hours of work without even the physical presence of co-workers and bosses that…

[deleted]

Re: Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor

#50

Post by wilfra »

pron wrote: post #46

OMG! You guys! Aside from a few, most comments here are discussing how to actually do this efficiently. I think this might be forgivable as I assume many of you are quite young, but are you really suggesting exploiting poor populations for menial work w/o social benefits, without dignity, suggesting they walk into some booth, put in a few hours of work without even the physical presence of co-workers and bosses that…

Pretty sure every libertarian (I am not one), regardless of age, would disagree with you.

If people are willing to do the work for a given wage, the free market should be able to pay them (or so Libertarians believe).

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