Certainly, no offense taken :) I recognize that there's often a knee-jerk reaction when thinking about startups that attempt to address social issues in the dev

Certainly, no offense taken :) I recognize that there's often a knee-jerk reaction when thinking about startups that attempt to address social issues in the developing world: it's not easy to separate out work that is ethical and impactful from work that is well-intentioned but harmful, particularly when the technologies involved are as new as crowd computing is. You might be happy to know that we actually do offer opportunities for advancement within the system, and that it's one of our long-term objectives: there's a nascent system of skills and certifications that workers can train towards and develop, and workers can advance from doing very simple work to sophisticated work. Eventually we expect that our workers will be able to develop enough certifications to transition up out of MobileWorks and into the traditional economy -- or better yet, to get to the point where they can build their own business around MobileWorks, as some workers have done. More on our philosophy here: http://mobileworks.com/fairtradework http://mobileworks.com/fairtradework