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I live in Vermont, running an open source Patreon project that isn't designed to maximize capital. I know lots and LOTS of minimum wage or near-minimum-age peop

I live in Vermont, running an open source Patreon project that isn't designed to maximize capital. I know lots and LOTS of minimum wage or near-minimum-age people, and a good selection of much wealthier people. Right now I'm substantially below minimum wage as a sole proprietor, but managing it. Obviously I cannot hire in these conditions, so I don't. I see NO correlation between that and intelligence, verbal proficiency, articulateness: indeed, if you're smart enough to recognize the obvious purpose of the exercise you'll self-edit until you sound even more like a PR agency, lest you have to return to picking boxes full-time rather than getting to compose tweets for part of your time. One caveat: if you're poor and desperate, your bandwidth will be taxed (see 'Scarcity: a talk for people too busy to attend talks'). That doesn't compromise people so badly that they appear unintelligent and uneducated, though, and if it's your job to seem glib and intelligent you'll work at it. tl:dr; do you seriously assert that poor people are too stupid to write and speak well? I sure hope not.

walrus01 8y ago
No, what I was trying to say is that an average actual non astroturfing warehouse worker wouldn't answer questions like a trained PR lackey. Read the tweets, the sentence structure, phrasing and uniformity in writing styles between supposedly distinct individuals is obvious.
- Applejinx 8y ago
  What do you think Amazon's requirements are for this paid position, and do you think they would be sloppy and tolerant of bad performance here and nowhere else? Anybody doing this is already a good speaker and writer, and understands what's expected of them. Otherwise they wouldn't be allowed to do it. Again, I know large numbers of poor people who are perfectly capable of this erudition. If you've got a masters in English Literature, it's probably this or Wal-Mart or death.

walrus01 8y ago

No, what I was trying to say is that an average actual non astroturfing warehouse worker wouldn't answer questions like a trained PR lackey. Read the tweets, the sentence structure, phrasing and uniformity in writing styles between supposedly distinct individuals is obvious.

Applejinx 8y ago
What do you think Amazon's requirements are for this paid position, and do you think they would be sloppy and tolerant of bad performance here and nowhere else? Anybody doing this is already a good speaker and writer, and understands what's expected of them. Otherwise they wouldn't be allowed to do it. Again, I know large numbers of poor people who are perfectly capable of this erudition. If you've got a masters in English Literature, it's probably this or Wal-Mart or death.