Mechanical Turk Stations for the Urban Poor

I could categorise 50 images in 2-3 minutes. It'd take me 1-2 minutes to get out my wallet, get the right credit card and enter the info if I were to pay manually.

I ran the idea past two employees (neither homeless...) who both seemed to think they'd consider a quick spot of Turking in exchange for a digital good.

1. "I don't consider actively exploiting the poor as "not improving their lives enough"." and "Neither do I consider marginal benefit a positive if it comes at the cost of exploitation."

You've framed the debate as "exploiting the poor" and "exploitation" yet do not give any reason for this other than an implicit claim that sub-minimum wage is exploitation. Let's say the minimum wage is $X/hr and this project allows these people to earn $(X - 0.01)/hr. Is that still exploitation? Why do you assume just because something MIGHT not be minimum wage that it's exploitation? Minimum wage and exploitation are only slightly correlated subjects.

All the original author is suggesting is to OFFER people jobs at a rate that the economy identifies as a sustainable employment opportunity. Kids selling gum at school might earn below minimum wage but it's their choice and their life to do. Nobody is FORCING anybody to take those jobs, therefore this is not exploitation and your dramatic and emotionally overloaded choice of words really does not help you make your point. You need to take a moment to define exploitation and I think in doing so you will see your argument is flawed.

2. "I don't see anyone moving from selling drugs to doing menial mechanical turk work" OK but that's your opinion and minimum wage laws block verifying what the reality of the situation is.

3. "By all means - go and try to turn America's poor into Silicon Valley's drones rather than invest in their future"

Why do you constantly resort to such emotive, overloaded language? There's no conspiracy here; nobody is trying to "turn" anybody into anything. What people ARE saying is "Hey here's a way some people can make some money, maybe some will find it acceptable" and people like you are saying "No I refuse to let anybody explore this possibility because I'm uncomfortable with a society where people are earning less than I think they should because of my beliefs about what people should earn, and I believe that my beliefs override freewill".

Notice that your argument, as far as I can tell after filtering out the emotion, is pretty much all about your beliefs about work and society, and has nothing to do with (a) the actual state of the economy at a given point in time or (b) the actual people out there who might benefit from the proposed arrangement.

Except this is simply not true. Germany, where workers enjoy generous terms and privileges even for Western Europe, has no minimum wage, and its labour unions vocally oppose introducing one. Countries such as the US and UK with minimum wages have higher unemployment, and things are more precarious even for those in employment.

And I don't need to win an argument here - I've already won. The simple fact is that people earning below average (or, rather, below median) in America are worse off than almost anywhere else in the western world. And that's the majority of the population. I was simply expressing my amazement that a certain world outlook - which I'm not even trying to argue 'cause this is not the place - that has traditionally been common among certain American social groups, has taken hold of SV entrepreneurs. I find this surprising because Northern California has had, for a long time, much sympathy for the counter-culture movement and to ideas of social justice. I also find it interesting that it seems like this approach is expressed here not because of some deeply held beliefs, some ideological values, but simply because of a technical, mathematical way of looking at the world. I was amazed and saddened at the dehumanization expressed here.

Now, I wasn't trying to change anyone's mind on politics, but just in case someone was expressing his views simply because he's grown accustomed to looking at the world through equations and algorithms, I was hoping maybe my words could jar him out of his technical sleep. Saying "Hey here's a way some people can make some money, maybe some will find it acceptable" without considering whether or not the idea is ethical, whether or not it is humane, seems so... callous. Of course someone will find it acceptable - like I said someplace else, someone will find it acceptable to sell his own organs for money; someone will agree to go into slavery so that he'll have something to eat - but that doesn't make it right. And I'm not even saying you should take my definitions for right and wrong. Use your own. But the first question you should ask yourself is "is this right?" and not, "will this work?"

(All of this is not to say that I cede the "rational" argument, or agree that unregulated free-market capitalism has actual economic merit - I don't. It's just more important for me to address the lack of ethical thinking, or the precedence of economic thinking to it rather than argue economics)