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Adam Smith began his wealth of nations with a description of the division of labor and an essay on how this division leads to an increase in productivity. Speci

• mmastrac 9y ago
  Piecework (and Mechnical Turk!) probably makes more sense in an environment with Basic Income. That gives the employee a chance to decide if the effort is worth the $/piece without compromising on their health and welfare.
  • pmlnr 9y ago
    This is exactly what I tried to describe to a non-engineer, and failed.
  • photojosh 9y ago
    Yep. Basic income means we can do away with minimum wage. Now let's see how much poorly-regarded jobs (like janitorial) end up paying when the free market really does decide.
    • sokoloff 9y ago
      My prediction is "not that different from today, perhaps a little less". The chief skills required are reliability and work ethic. People getting UBI of $600-800/mo aren't going to see janitorial work as "beneath them".
    • atemerev 9y ago
      Basic income is financially impossible. Even retirement schemes are barely sustainable and constantly under pressure these days.
      • rljy 9y ago
        Financial impossibility is a strange thing. Is if physically impossible for just %20 of the population to work? We have so much amazing technology, we should be able to attain that. Why let money get in the way of what is physically possible? Its just paper. Its not even paper. Its an integer.
        • atemerev 9y ago
          All right, why not give a billion dollars each tomorrow? It's just integers (OK, decimals) in bank accounts. Let's do that and solve our economic problems for good! /s Monetary supply/demand is a tiny bit more complicated than that.
    • Tsagadai 9y ago
      It would probably increase the value of such work. If I get $600/mo I am going to want a lot more than that to work full time doing something messy. Anything that was previously paying below the basic income amount would have to increase the wage to get anyone to take it up. This is already an issue in countries with an actual welfare system, you can't really pay below the dole rate and expect anything other than illegal workers who are going to do the absolute minimum. This isn't a downside of basic income, there is always a floor on the amount you can pay for labour. If you pay below what the market expects you are only going to get the truly inept to do it.
• rl3 9y ago
  >Would it be unethical to apply AI to solve Mechanical Turk tasks? Effectively AI doing QA work on data used to train other AIs, that would be amusing.
• chirau 9y ago
  *piece work
  • timthelion 9y ago
    Fixed, thanks
• jnwatson 9y ago
  Piecework is perfectly legal in the US: https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/industrialhomework https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/industrialhomework
  • rljy 9y ago
    No it is not. You are allowed to pay by the peice, but you must pay at least minimum wage, you must pay sick leave, you must pay health insurance, you cannot fire for unjust cause (at least in Europe). That marks the definitive end to piece work as we knew it in Adam Smith's time when a stranger could show up at the factory door and be paid by the piece for one day or one afternoon, something which really was even common in the era before the "Fair Labor Standards Act" was passed [1]. To quote from your linked article on the Act "All individually covered homework is subject to the FLSA's minimum wage, overtime, and recordkeeping requirements. Employers must provide workers with handbooks to record time, expenses, and pay information." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piece_work#Minimum_wage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piece_work#Minimum_wage
    • Obi_Juan_Kenobi 9y ago
      Setting a floor for piecework pay isn't the same as making it illegal. There's still payment according to widgets produced in all other cases. I agree that it does change some of the incentives for piecework, and perhaps you could argue that it's effectively prohibited, but piecework per se is nevertheless perfectly legal.
      • sverige 9y ago
        It is the basis for pay for most over-the-road truck drivers, who are paid by miles driven.
      • Qwertious 9y ago
        The point is that if you're receiving a minimum of the minimum wage, then by definition you're getting a wage. If you're getting a wage, then you're being paid per hour. If you're being paid per hour, then you're not being paid piecework and OP owes his/her employer another 38 hours per week.
• ruricolist 9y ago
  The problem with piece work (in an agricultural context, at least) is that is reveals a wide discrepancy in productivity between workers. The most productive workers are usually about 8x as productive as the average. Employers balk at the prospect of paying that much extra, so they create various kinds of mixed schemes that cap the worker's pay regardless of how much actual work they do. So the practical result of piece work is simply to punish below-average workers, without actually doing anything to incentivize above-average work.
  • LeifCarrotson 9y ago
    Do you have a source for that 8x figure? I have heard the term tossed about in the context of engineering, but agriculture is a surprise! When I picked blueberries as a summer job there certainly wasn't an 8x difference between workers. Perhaps between us and the you-pick people?
    • taneq 9y ago
      I'd guess no matter the original context, once you're being 8x more effective than your colleagues, it's due to some kind of engineering. So in agriculture, your 8x hay mower is the one who's built himself a scythe instead of using a hand knife.
      • frostymarvelous 9y ago
        In that case, should he tell his employer he mechanized his work?
    • sidek 9y ago
      I've worked jobs with such a disparity. For a govt census job, the top two workers out of 20 visited 3x the dwellings per hour and had a ~4x success rate per dwelling compared to the average, so they were literally doing as much as the other 18 employees.
      • LeifCarrotson 9y ago
• jgamman 9y ago
  everyone knows that quote but I doubt you've read WofN - about 1 paragraph later he says that this will drive the worker insane and may literally lead to the collapse of society: "The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgement concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life... But in every improved and civilized society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it."
  • timthelion 9y ago
    I'll admit, that I didn't finish it. I got to the part where he starts going on and on about the proper price of things and the relationship to the price of gold, and "the torpor of my mind rendered me not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgement concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life." WoN is a LONG book! But I did get past that paragraph, and it seems to have flown out the other ear.
    • dredmorbius 9y ago
      I encourage you to read it. Pick up a copy (or get one of the many electronic versions), and go through it a bit at a time. The book is well organised, though Smith is Very Wordy. Realise that he's building an argument, based on a great deal of observations, conversation, correspondece, lectures, and study. He's not a perfect guide, but he's a good and early one. He's also been tremendously mis-cast by a great many others, and reading Smith in his own words is very often an antidote to that. I'm working my way through various economic works, in a bit of a hop-scotch. There are a few good histories of thought -- The Worldly Philosophers, by Heilbronner, was popular in my uni days (1980s). Backhouse's The Ordinary Business of Life is more comprehensive, though exceedingly dry. I found Arnold Toynbee (the elder), Lectures on the Industrial Revolution, to be fascinating. I'm going through a bit of John Stuart Mill (both he and his father wrote economics texts), and want to work through Marshall and Keynes. I have a sense that the state of economic theory around the turn of / early 20th century was important. For more recent theory -- I'm pretty disappointed in economics (it was my major field of study) -- but suggest a mainstream textbook as at least an anchor. Steve Keen, Herman Daly, Nicholaus Georgescu-Roegen, W. Brian Arthur, and the chap at Oxford University I can't think of right now (Eric? Nick?) are interesting. Ah: Erick Beinhocker. http://www.worldcat.org/title/worldly-philosophers/oclc/989415485 http://www.worldcat.org/title/worldly-philosophers/oclc/9894... http://www.worldcat.org/title/ordinary-business-of-life-a-history-of-economics-from-the-ancient-world-to-the-twenty-first-century/oclc/255164085 http://www.worldcat.org/title/ordinary-business-of-life-a-hi... https://www.ineteconomics.org/research/experts/ebeinhocker https://www.ineteconomics.org/research/experts/ebeinhocker
• throwaway91111 9y ago
  > Would it be unethical to apply AI to solve Mechanical Turk tasks? Well, you'd have to use mechanical turk to train it, so maybe you should just ask the trained turk.
• dredmorbius 9y ago
  You might be interested in what this commentator on economics had to say about piecework: "Some workmen, indeed, when they can earn in four days what will maintain them through the week, will be idle the other three. This, however, is by no means the case with the greater part. Workmen, on the contrary, when they are liberally paid by the piece, are very apt to overwork themselves, and to ruin their health and constitution in a few years. A carpenter in London, and in some other places, is not supposed to last in his utmost vigour above eight years. Something of the same kind happens in many other trades, in which the workmen are paid by the piece; as they generally are in manufactures, and even in country labour, wherever wages are higher than ordinary. "Almost every class of artificers is subject to some peculiar infirmity occasioned by excessive application to their peculiar species of work. Ramuzzini, an eminent Italian physician, has written a particular book concerning such diseases. We do not reckon our soldiers the most industrious set of people among us; yet when soldiers have been employed in some particular sorts of work, and liberally paid by the piece, their officers have frequently been obliged to stipulate with the undertaker, that they should not be allowed to earn above a certain sum every day, according to the rate at which they were paid. Till this stipulation was made, mutual emulation, and the desire of greater gain, frequently prompted them to overwork themselves, and to hurt their health by excessive labour. "Excessive application, during four days of the week, is frequently the real cause of the idleness of the other three, so much and so loudly complained of. Great labour, either of mind or body, continued for several days together is, in most men, naturally followed by a great desire of relaxation, which, if not restrained by force, or by some strong necessity, is almost irresistible. It is the call of nature, which requires to be relieved by some indulgence, sometimes of ease only, but sometimes too of dissipation and diversion. If it is not complied with, the consequences are often dangerous and sometimes fatal, and such as almost always, sooner or later, bring on the peculiar infirmity of the trade. If masters would always listen to the dictates of reason and humanity, they have frequently occasion rather to moderate, than to animate the application of many of their workmen. "It will be found, I believe, in every sort of trade, that the man who works so moderately, as to be able to work constantly, not only preserves his health the longest, but, in the course of the year, executes the greatest quantity of work." -- Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1776. Book 1, Chapter 8 https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/Chapter_8 https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_... Emphasis added.
• ehnto 9y ago
  I did not realise piece rate was outlawed in so many places. In vineyard work in Australia, workers are often paid per vine or per bucket and it is labelled piece rate so it's not like it's a sneaky work around.
• gpvos 9y ago
  It was still legal in 2015 in the Netherlands: http://www.nu.nl/economie/4142545/inspectie-adviseert-minister-asscher-stukloon-af-schaffen.html http://www.nu.nl/economie/4142545/inspectie-adviseert-minist... . Looking at the German Wikipedia ("Akkordlohn"), it is still legal in Germany in specific circumstances.
• usrusr 9y ago
  > Would it be unethical to apply AI to solve Mechanical Turk tasks? The buyer pays for having a human in the loop, you claim to put a human in the loop but don't. Fraud, plain and simple. Would it be unethical to sell "I can't believe it's not" as actual butter?
• dghf 9y ago
  > In Europe, I'm not sure when it was outlawed, but it is illegal here as well. It wasn't in the UK ~20 years ago. I did agricultural piece-work as a summer job, and made way more than I would have done in a shop or fast-food restaurant (and got much more exercise and fresh air).
• lerpa 9y ago
  It would if you were explicitly told to do it without automation. Otherwise you're paid to do a job, and you did it, so all good.
• nickcon12 9y ago
  Piecework is not illegal in the US. They may structure it in a particular manner so that it uses a loop hole in the law but I know of a number of companies that pay by the piece.