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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

#51

Post by chrmaury »

shingen wrote: post #4

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…

There is a really good talk by Jonathan Zittrain on the dangers of crowd sourcing. I think it speaks to your point.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw3h-rae3uo

Re: Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor

#52

Post by philwelch »

ajays wrote: post #44
yummyfajitas wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 j…

> Stores will just pass on the costs to the consumers.

Which just eats up the increase in minimum wage.

Re: Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor

#53

Post by newhouseb »

This is very similar to what Samasource (http://samasource.org/) does except in a different demographic of poverty (in third world countries). The general idea is that in many places, such as refugee camps, no one has any money and there really aren't any jobs to act as segues to help people rise up out of poverty, if you build computer clusters in these areas, they can do mechanical turk style work, make a lot more money than they could otherwise and be supervised such that quality can be more controlled than a bunch of random people on the internet. Unfortunately they run on a different proprietary alternative to Mechanical Turk (presumably with some tweaks to fit their model).

Re: Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor

#54

Post by URSpider94 »

I've been sitting here for 10 minutes or so trying to find the right way to critique not just the article, but also the tone of the discussions here. I think the best thing that I can say is that this experiment flies in the face of everything that pg, Steve Blank and the other leaders of Lean Startup methodology are teaching.

If the customer here is a member of the "urban poor" (or what some commenters have decided to call "bums"), then I'd suggest that we start with some customer research. Do the jobless urban poor want to stand at a terminal in the street and perform menial tasks for spare change? Would this solve real problems for them on a daily basis? What happens when it's cold and snowy out? How many of them know how to use a computer, or read?

Buying into this concept as a way to solve urban poverty is no different than some Marketing VP sitting in her 50th floor corner office, thinking that she knows what her customers want from her company's web site without ever asking them. Before you start throwing out solutions to urban poverty, you might want to at least talk to one or two of the people whose problems you are trying to solve.

Re: Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor

#55

Post by notatoad »

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…

"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?"

just because somebody is not looking for a structured job, doesn't mean they won't do tasks for money. think about the homeless guy who wanders around with his shopping cart collecting discarded cans all day. the only social issue i see with a turk kiosk is that it would essentially be a "do things in exchange for drugs" terminal.

Re: Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor

#56

Post by pron »

wilfra wrote: post #50
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).

There's a market for everything: human organs; hit-jobs. But you know what, I'm not even arguing the merits of the free market. I'm simply amazed at the fact that most comments here simply discuss the efficiency of the process, as if this were an algorithm or a development methodology, rather than something involving real living people, and not any people, but the weakest in society.

I'd like to suggest that instead of building work booths for the poor where machines will pay them money, perhaps the big companies should do everything in their power to make sure these people have a chance at a proper education, so that some day they could have jobs that would give them some dignity. Jobs that the mechanical-turk mega-farmers would wish for their children.

Re: Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor

#57

Post by pron »

URSpider94 wrote: post #54

I've been sitting here for 10 minutes or so trying to find the right way to critique not just the article, but also the tone of the discussions here. I think the best thing that I can say is that this experiment flies in the face of everything that pg, Steve Blank and the other leaders of Lean Startup methodology are teaching. If the customer here is a member of the "urban poor" (or what some commenters have decided…

Finally, some humanity here. Although I see that you've chosen to disguise it in a way "entrepreneurs" would understand. Market research? Alright :)

As long it makes some people think what it's like to grow up poor. Me, I would suggest learning some history and philosophy before the monumental works of the "Lean Startup methodology".

Re: Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor

#58

Post by stroboskop »

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…

You are being downvoted because most people on Hacker News disagree with you. Also, because your tone may be perceived as slightly hysterical.

I doubt young age of commenters is the reason for their stance and for many intentions are as good as they pay. Crucially, most people here imagine themselves as (future) bosses and do not empathize with the poor operating mechanical turks. Also consider that many here unconsciously are mechanical turk operators while believing they are entrepreneurs.

There are of course others here as well. But look at the brightness of your comment and you will find out who is the majority.

Re: Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor

#60

Post by pault »

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 disagree; this form of welfare is increasingly common here in the states. We call it prison.
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