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It really bothers me when people take advantage of workers who do manual labor for what we privileged would consider "little." Talking with an acquaintance, sh

• anigbrowl 12y ago
  A great example. People in low-wage jobs who face situations like that usually lack two things the know-how to set business terms and conditions like cancellation fees, and the leverage to enforce them (when losing a client could be financially very painful). People who are poorly educated, illegal aliens, parolees and others often have difficulty learning about or asserting rights they might have under city, state or federal labor laws. Now, I know that the original goal here was to find better ways to empower poor people with technology, not to set up an additional social service. I thought the example in the article of an app that helped people submit an application for food stamps (saving many hours of standing in line at an office) was right on point. One idea that occurred to me since I wrote the grandparent comment last night (and forgot to post before I went to bed) was to flip an existing concept on its head. The article mentioned a tool for people in Mexico who were outside the regular financial system to establish some sort of credit profile that would allow them access to lower-cost cellphone plans. Maybe a useful thing for poor people in the US with smartphones would be a parallel 'client credit report' that would let casual and informal workers alert each other about problem clients who attempt to evade payment or behave abusively, as well as hooking them up with other resources, eg there are probably people with paralegal experience who would be happy to draft a demand letter for a small fixed fee. Think LinkedIn for low-income people as a way to vet potential clients and avoid persistent troublemakers. The best thing about NeatStreak (the author's app) was not the housecleaning-specific stuff (although that's helpful) but automating the booking/billing process, which is something that a lot of casual/informal workers need. Of course an approach like this turns up some interesting legal questions, because reversing the usual top-down direction of economic influence is politically loaded and would upset some people. But I think sooner or later there will be demand for such functionality; the 'sharing economy' we are moving into matches buyers to sellers effectively for many casual services, but the firms that establish such new markets are typically also seeking to be monopolistic brokers and their economic interests are not necessarily aligned with those of the people who actually provide the services; to the extent that the latter are organized, it could disenfranchise the job brokers. I think it's only a matter of time before established players attempt to capitalize on that, so that the SEIU attempts to organize Taskrabbit workers or the Teamsters try to sign up Uber and Lyft drivers, and I'm not so enthused about that because I think unions can often end up as rent-seeking organizations themselves. Perhaps technology has the potential to provide low-income workers with more practical organizational benefits by automating the information-brokerage function of trade unions without the administrative overhead.
• thrill 12y ago
  She looked at me like I was a Martian. It wasn't your $100 you were trying to get her to spend.