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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
by 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 agoThe 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 agoMaybe 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 agoI'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 agoI'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.