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I think the concept of "informed consent" is applicable here. Are the workers informed? Much like the question of whether Uber drivers properly factor in the

I think the concept of "informed consent" is applicable here. Are the workers informed? Much like the question of whether Uber drivers properly factor in the cost of maintenance, it's possible that workers do not have the right expectations of what they will earn, so articles like this are helpful in adding context and information. Let it get around that these tasks make you less than minimum wage. Do the workers consent? Obviously they consent in at least some sense, so comparisons to slavery (as in the comments to the original article) are overblown. These workers are free to seek other options. However, it's also possible that they are correctly concluding this is their best option, due to lack of opportunity in their area, health reasons that make them immobile, etc. In that case, then two cheers for MTurk for improving their lives, to at least some extent.

jakelazaroff 8y ago
I take issue with your conclusion that "if the workers are correctly concluding this their best option, then cheers to Mechanical Turk for improving their lives to some extent". A less generous interpretation is that Amazon has identified a cohort of people with limited employment options and found a way to effectively pay them less than minimum wage. Is any job better than none to an unemployed person? Maybe — but we need money to live, and labor laws exist precisely to prevent employers from exploiting that.
- twerpy_d 8y ago
  The same wage that's a slap in the face to an American can be quite lucrative to someone in a lesser developed nation. Hits for pennies are a god send to those folks.
  - jakelazaroff 8y ago
    Maybe so, but the article, parent comment and my comment are all referring to people for whom microtasks are not a lucrative source of income.
- satyrnein 8y ago
  I'd guess it was less intentional than that. Amazon created the market, but I don't think they'd regard it as a failure if the equilibrium price were above minimum wage.
  - jakelazaroff 8y ago
    I'd guess that as well, but that doesn't make it any more laudable. If a job market is such that the equilibrium price of labor is below the minimum acceptable threshold that we as a society have agreed upon, something needs to change.
s73v3r_ 8y ago
"Consent" is tricky in this situation, because for many, it's do this or starve.
- fwip 8y ago
  Yeah, consent doesn't really exist in the context of wage slavery. While it's certainly true that if these jobs were forced to pay a reasonable minimum wage there would be some less work to do, most of the world has already conceded the point that pure supply-and-demand is not an acceptable way to negotiate wages - we agree that some minimum wage is useful to protect those without other options. If I weren't already off-topic, this is where I would veer into advocating for basic income.
  - satyrnein 8y ago
    While I don't agree about consent (see my other comments), I could see basic income and no minimum wage. If people were taken care of, there would be nothing wrong with people earning extra dollars at whatever their market rate was (although they might be less inclined to bother, if it's low).
  - a008t 8y ago
    When you say "we agree" - does that include the people that end up unemployed because the expected value of their work is less than the minimum wage? Whereas had they been allowed to work for less than minimum wage, they would have been able to build a track record of reliability, reducing the risks of hiring them in the future and thus increasing the expected value of their labour? I would love to see the data, but in my experience of growing up in a very poor neighborhood, getting a foot in the labour market is the difficult part; once you are in, moving up is relatively easier.
    - s73v3r_ 8y ago
      I'm sorry, but I absolutely reject that argument. No business is not hiring someone because they can't pay them below minimum wage.
emodendroket 8y ago
I feel Sarah Bagley, a Lowell factory worker, wrote essentially the definitive answer to this line of argument in the 19th Century: > Whenever I raise the point that it is immoral to shut us up in a close room twelve hours a day in the most monotonous and tedious of employment, I am told that we have come to the mills voluntarily and we can leave when we will. Voluntary! Let us look a little at this remarkable form of human freedom. Do we from mere choice leave our fathers’ dwellings, the firesides where all of our friends, where too our earliest and fondest recollections cluster, for the factory and the Corporations boarding house? By what charm do these great companies immure human creatures in the bloom of youth and first glow of life within their mills, away from their homes and kindred? A slave too goes voluntarily to his task, but his will is in some manner quickened by the whip of the overseer. > The whip which brings us to Lowell is NECESSITY. We must have money; a father’s debts are to be paid, an aged mother to be sup- ported, a brother’s ambition to be aided, and so the factories are supplied. Is this to act from free will? When a man is starving he is compelled to pay his neighbor, who happens to have bread, the most exorbitant price for it, and his neighbor may appease his conscience, if conscience he chance to have, by the reflection that it is altogether a voluntary bargain. Is any one such a fool as to suppose that out of six thousand factory girls of Lowell, sixty would be there if they could help it? Everybody knows that it is necessity alone, in some form or other, that takes us to Lowell and keeps us there. Is this freedom? To my mind it is slavery quite as really as any in Turkey or Carolina. It matters little as to the fact of slavery, whether the slave be compelled to his task by the whip of the over- seer or the wages of the Lowell Corporation. In either case it is not free will, leading the laborer to work, but an outward necessity that puts free will out of the question.
- satyrnein 8y ago
  I appreciate it rhetorically, but a job is not chattel slavery. The ability to quit, to run away, to keep your children is worth at least something.
  - emodendroket 8y ago
    Well, sure, true enough. But the main point is a good one -- a free choice between degrading labor on one hand, and penury and starvation on the other, is hardly a choice at all.

jakelazaroff 8y ago

I take issue with your conclusion that "if the workers are correctly concluding this their best option, then cheers to Mechanical Turk for improving their lives to some extent". A less generous interpretation is that Amazon has identified a cohort of people with limited employment options and found a way to effectively pay them less than minimum wage. Is any job better than none to an unemployed person? Maybe — but we need money to live, and labor laws exist precisely to prevent employers from exploiting that.

twerpy_d 8y ago
The same wage that's a slap in the face to an American can be quite lucrative to someone in a lesser developed nation. Hits for pennies are a god send to those folks.
- jakelazaroff 8y ago
  Maybe so, but the article, parent comment and my comment are all referring to people for whom microtasks are not a lucrative source of income.
satyrnein 8y ago
I'd guess it was less intentional than that. Amazon created the market, but I don't think they'd regard it as a failure if the equilibrium price were above minimum wage.
- jakelazaroff 8y ago
  I'd guess that as well, but that doesn't make it any more laudable. If a job market is such that the equilibrium price of labor is below the minimum acceptable threshold that we as a society have agreed upon, something needs to change.

s73v3r_ 8y ago

"Consent" is tricky in this situation, because for many, it's do this or starve.

fwip 8y ago
Yeah, consent doesn't really exist in the context of wage slavery. While it's certainly true that if these jobs were forced to pay a reasonable minimum wage there would be some less work to do, most of the world has already conceded the point that pure supply-and-demand is not an acceptable way to negotiate wages - we agree that some minimum wage is useful to protect those without other options. If I weren't already off-topic, this is where I would veer into advocating for basic income.
- satyrnein 8y ago
  While I don't agree about consent (see my other comments), I could see basic income and no minimum wage. If people were taken care of, there would be nothing wrong with people earning extra dollars at whatever their market rate was (although they might be less inclined to bother, if it's low).
- a008t 8y ago
  When you say "we agree" - does that include the people that end up unemployed because the expected value of their work is less than the minimum wage? Whereas had they been allowed to work for less than minimum wage, they would have been able to build a track record of reliability, reducing the risks of hiring them in the future and thus increasing the expected value of their labour? I would love to see the data, but in my experience of growing up in a very poor neighborhood, getting a foot in the labour market is the difficult part; once you are in, moving up is relatively easier.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    I'm sorry, but I absolutely reject that argument. No business is not hiring someone because they can't pay them below minimum wage.

emodendroket 8y ago

I feel Sarah Bagley, a Lowell factory worker, wrote essentially the definitive answer to this line of argument in the 19th Century: > Whenever I raise the point that it is immoral to shut us up in a close room twelve hours a day in the most monotonous and tedious of employment, I am told that we have come to the mills voluntarily and we can leave when we will. Voluntary! Let us look a little at this remarkable form of human freedom. Do we from mere choice leave our fathers’ dwellings, the firesides where all of our friends, where too our earliest and fondest recollections cluster, for the factory and the Corporations boarding house? By what charm do these great companies immure human creatures in the bloom of youth and first glow of life within their mills, away from their homes and kindred? A slave too goes voluntarily to his task, but his will is in some manner quickened by the whip of the overseer. > The whip which brings us to Lowell is NECESSITY. We must have money; a father’s debts are to be paid, an aged mother to be sup- ported, a brother’s ambition to be aided, and so the factories are supplied. Is this to act from free will? When a man is starving he is compelled to pay his neighbor, who happens to have bread, the most exorbitant price for it, and his neighbor may appease his conscience, if conscience he chance to have, by the reflection that it is altogether a voluntary bargain. Is any one such a fool as to suppose that out of six thousand factory girls of Lowell, sixty would be there if they could help it? Everybody knows that it is necessity alone, in some form or other, that takes us to Lowell and keeps us there. Is this freedom? To my mind it is slavery quite as really as any in Turkey or Carolina. It matters little as to the fact of slavery, whether the slave be compelled to his task by the whip of the over- seer or the wages of the Lowell Corporation. In either case it is not free will, leading the laborer to work, but an outward necessity that puts free will out of the question.

satyrnein 8y ago
I appreciate it rhetorically, but a job is not chattel slavery. The ability to quit, to run away, to keep your children is worth at least something.
- emodendroket 8y ago
  Well, sure, true enough. But the main point is a good one -- a free choice between degrading labor on one hand, and penury and starvation on the other, is hardly a choice at all.