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Exposing the ills of minimally-regulated contract labor isn't forcing anyone to do anything. If amazon benefits from MTurk, it's not going to shut it down if it

Exposing the ills of minimally-regulated contract labor isn't forcing anyone to do anything. If amazon benefits from MTurk, it's not going to shut it down if it can help it. If laborers have no other option between earning a fraction of minimum wage for an hours work and going hungry, they'll probably keep working. But calling that a "choice" is like saying the mafioso holding a gun to your head is giving you the freedom to decide to follow his orders.

jstanley 8y ago
Except in this case nobody is holding a gun to anyone's head. Amazon aren't saying "work on MTurk or we'll do some harm to you", they're saying "work on MTurk if you think the money is worth it".
- danans 8y ago
  If the best option for these workers is earning sub-minimum wage via MTurk to pay for life's basics, then society, through its income distribution patterns, not Amazon, is threatening them harm. Which makes it society's responsibility, through regulatory mechanisms, to improve the workers options.
  - jstanley 8y ago
    Regulating MTurk away will do nothing to improve their options, it will just remove their current best option.
    - danans 8y ago
      I didn't suggest regulating MTurk away. There are other ways of giving people options. UBI is an example, but there are likely others, for example, a sovereign wealth fund as found in Alaska and Norway.
      - a008t 8y ago
        Why not start UBI on a small, voluntary scale, and demonstrate its success? Every one advocating for UBI could go to a poor neighbourhood / country, pick a poor person (or several), and start transferring them a portion of their income every month...
        danans 8y ago
        > Why not start UBI on a small, voluntary scale, and demonstrate its success? That's what YC is doing: https://basicincome.ycr.org/ https://basicincome.ycr.org/ They have 100s of millions to experiment with ... the average person does not. > Every one advocating for UBI could ... Advocacy (and voting) are the most power tools for shaping the future direction of society. It's very effective as a way of bringing change, and we have many examples in recent history of this being true. If it weren't, you wouldn't see huge amounts of money being given to Super PACs to advocate for political positions. > start transferring them a portion of their income every month... This is a rehash of the very tired, and baseless, cliche against higher taxes that says that those who support higher taxes should write a check to the IRS. It's a fallacious argument, because redistribution only has societal impact when operating on a society-wide scale. The most significant example of this, the Great Society (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society) wasn't built on voluntary contributions to the government. Individuals of normal means making marginal contributions does little to move the needle on the relevant societal problems in any significant way, whether those problems are infrastructure, poverty, health care, education, etc. These things, if they are done at all, have to be done at a societal scale, and that means via government methods of finance.
      - PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
        But what happens when we pass laws in our country that takes away the job in another when there is no realistic chance of them implementing some safety net to help? For example, when western countries put pressure on east Asian sweat shops to stop using child labor, they did, but the local governments didn't offer anything to help the children who depended upon those jobs to have enough to feed themselves, and as such many of the children transitioned into even more dangerous jobs or worse. It would be nice if their government made up for the gap, but int he real world we have to deal with the possibilities they won't. So one has to deal with the ramifications of their choices that shouldn't and wouldn't happen in a good world but do happen in our world.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  And the economy at large is saying "do this, or starve". For people working for such pay, it's not a voluntary transaction between them and Amazon. The larger system is screwed up.
  - nkrisc 8y ago
    To quote Catch-22 from hazy memory: "The men don't have to sign Pilchard and Wren's loyalty oath if they don't want to, but I need you to starve them if they don't."
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  "Except in this case nobody is holding a gun to anyone's head." No, I flat out reject that notion. The fact that one must have a job to survive in this world removes the ability to chose "not having a job". The illusion of choice does not mean that all employment agreements are purely consensual, and as such there need to be many safeguards in place to prevent exploitation.
PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
>But calling that a "choice" is like saying the mafioso holding a gun to your head is giving you the freedom to decide to follow his orders. Yes, but hunger, not Amazon, is the one holding the threat over the person, and as of yet we have not found a way to change these fundamental aspects of nature/reality. You aren't going to remove threat, you are going to just make it become realized. Think of how some areas where child labor was reduced but the reasons behind children working weren't fixed resulted in children turning to far more dangerous and illegal labor that would near universally be considered a far worse option than sweat shop work.

jstanley 8y ago

Except in this case nobody is holding a gun to anyone's head. Amazon aren't saying "work on MTurk or we'll do some harm to you", they're saying "work on MTurk if you think the money is worth it".

danans 8y ago
If the best option for these workers is earning sub-minimum wage via MTurk to pay for life's basics, then society, through its income distribution patterns, not Amazon, is threatening them harm. Which makes it society's responsibility, through regulatory mechanisms, to improve the workers options.
- jstanley 8y ago
  Regulating MTurk away will do nothing to improve their options, it will just remove their current best option.
  - danans 8y ago
    I didn't suggest regulating MTurk away. There are other ways of giving people options. UBI is an example, but there are likely others, for example, a sovereign wealth fund as found in Alaska and Norway.
    - a008t 8y ago
      Why not start UBI on a small, voluntary scale, and demonstrate its success? Every one advocating for UBI could go to a poor neighbourhood / country, pick a poor person (or several), and start transferring them a portion of their income every month...
      - danans 8y ago
        > Why not start UBI on a small, voluntary scale, and demonstrate its success? That's what YC is doing: https://basicincome.ycr.org/ https://basicincome.ycr.org/ They have 100s of millions to experiment with ... the average person does not. > Every one advocating for UBI could ... Advocacy (and voting) are the most power tools for shaping the future direction of society. It's very effective as a way of bringing change, and we have many examples in recent history of this being true. If it weren't, you wouldn't see huge amounts of money being given to Super PACs to advocate for political positions. > start transferring them a portion of their income every month... This is a rehash of the very tired, and baseless, cliche against higher taxes that says that those who support higher taxes should write a check to the IRS. It's a fallacious argument, because redistribution only has societal impact when operating on a society-wide scale. The most significant example of this, the Great Society (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society) wasn't built on voluntary contributions to the government. Individuals of normal means making marginal contributions does little to move the needle on the relevant societal problems in any significant way, whether those problems are infrastructure, poverty, health care, education, etc. These things, if they are done at all, have to be done at a societal scale, and that means via government methods of finance.
    - PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
      But what happens when we pass laws in our country that takes away the job in another when there is no realistic chance of them implementing some safety net to help? For example, when western countries put pressure on east Asian sweat shops to stop using child labor, they did, but the local governments didn't offer anything to help the children who depended upon those jobs to have enough to feed themselves, and as such many of the children transitioned into even more dangerous jobs or worse. It would be nice if their government made up for the gap, but int he real world we have to deal with the possibilities they won't. So one has to deal with the ramifications of their choices that shouldn't and wouldn't happen in a good world but do happen in our world.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
And the economy at large is saying "do this, or starve". For people working for such pay, it's not a voluntary transaction between them and Amazon. The larger system is screwed up.
- nkrisc 8y ago
  To quote Catch-22 from hazy memory: "The men don't have to sign Pilchard and Wren's loyalty oath if they don't want to, but I need you to starve them if they don't."
s73v3r_ 8y ago
"Except in this case nobody is holding a gun to anyone's head." No, I flat out reject that notion. The fact that one must have a job to survive in this world removes the ability to chose "not having a job". The illusion of choice does not mean that all employment agreements are purely consensual, and as such there need to be many safeguards in place to prevent exploitation.

PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago

>But calling that a "choice" is like saying the mafioso holding a gun to your head is giving you the freedom to decide to follow his orders. Yes, but hunger, not Amazon, is the one holding the threat over the person, and as of yet we have not found a way to change these fundamental aspects of nature/reality. You aren't going to remove threat, you are going to just make it become realized. Think of how some areas where child labor was reduced but the reasons behind children working weren't fixed resulted in children turning to far more dangerous and illegal labor that would near universally be considered a far worse option than sweat shop work.