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Comment by adamhowell | Hacker News Reader

"... thanks to tens of thousands of part time guides who work from their homes for an average wage of $2.50/hour. It’s not much, but they do it voluntarily, so they must think it’s a reasonable deal."

This is ridiculous, how long until crowdsourced pay becomes regulated?

Taking advantage of people b/c they allow it under their own volition doesn't make it right. This is why we have minimum wage.

People who let themselves be taken advantage of like this aren't using the same judgement and resources to make their decisions as those who know better.

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I think you're forgetting why unions and minimum wage and child labor laws came into being. It's because people were locked into their seats at the mill, working 10-12 hours a day, and fired when they got sick.

Now, you have people working in the comfort of their climate-controlled home. A homemaker used to get bored to tears taking care of kids, feeling utterly dependent on a spouse for income. Now both parties can feel productive, and each gets the work best suited.

Minimum wage had nothing to do with bad working conditions. Bad working conditions brought about standards in work safety and unionization -- not minimum wage.

Now, you're right about child labor and minimum wage being connected. Minimum wage was first enacted in Australia and New Zealand for the sole reason of preventing businesses and the market from unfairly exploiting workers -- expressly women and children -- by paying them non-living wages.

As far as I can tell we have the same exact thing happening here. Just because a woman is working from "the comfort of [her] climate-controlled home" doesn't make $2.50/hour fair.

(Also, I should state that I'm only concerned here w/ US employees being paid $2.50/hour. I think offshoring/outsourcing is another topic entirely.)

1. Homemaker != woman. Highly correlated, but don't assume.

2. Contractors can either work per hour or per job. And if both people agree on a job and a price, and each job is slightly different, and you don't know a priori how long it's going to take, how do you reprice the jobs?

Oh, definitely, I only used "woman" to tie together my previous sentence a/b the beginnings of minimum wage.

In a perfect world Chacha should have to readjust their per search payment until their average hourly wage was minimum wage. Several hundreds or thousands of people doing contract work online from home shouldn't escape the kinds of regulations other businesses have to meet.

If the alternative is soap operas or Farmville and $0/hour, why isn't $2.50/hour "fair"?

Not every casual, part-time, voluntary, done-at-your-own-pace-on-your-own-terms activity should have to pay a "living" wage. That sort of standard doesn't "protect" people -- it destroys potential.

"Exploitation" is not a matter of first-world absolute watermarks (like a statutory minimum wage) of the value of people's time. It's a matter of what their other options are. If they have to work for $2.50/hour or starve, that could be a problem. If they choose to work for $2.50/hour rather than watch TV, then something other than exploitation is happening. (And besides the immediate but less-than-minimum-wage benefits, the person could also be building knowledge and skills towards an eventual higher-paid job.)

And if you only prohibit American workers from taking such casual voluntary work, why is it better for the $2.50 to go overseas?

Your classification of what people would do if it weren't for the grace of Cha-Cha paying them is offensive -- "soap operas", "Farmville", "watch TV". It's easier for you to make your argument if you color these people as "do nothings" who are lucky to get whatever work is offered to them.

If businesses should be able to pay certain people living wages and others whatever they work for, should McD's pay high school kids $2.50 and single moms more? Also, the work I do is at my own pace, does that mean my company should pay me less since I'm not being forced to produce?

The simple fact that it's work done from home doesn't mean the rules that regular businesses must follow need not apply.

Also, $2.50/hr overseas isn't $2.50/hr, it's whatever the conversion rate is. That's why that conversation is much more complicated. And I'm not a protectionist, so I have no problem with the notion of offshoring.

You're straining to take offense, and so imagining slights against these people that weren't present or intended.

Really, many of the people doing online piecework, like Cha-Cha answers or MTurk tasks, aren't even looking for a real clock-in job. They're just engaged in a diversion, and happy to be making a little on the side. If they weren't doing the piecework, they would be Facebooking, IM'ing, TV-watching, gaming -- something else they can do in dribs and drabs at home. In fact, they may be doing all those things simultaneously!

If your preferred crackdown was enacted -- abolishing their current arrangement -- many wouldn't even look for one of your "fair" regulated minimum-wage jobs, clocking in at some office or fast-food-joint.

I respect them to make their own decisions. You "color these people" as if they were helpless victims "who let themselves be taken advantage of" and "aren't using the same judgement and resources to make their decisions as those who know better". That's more denigratory to voluntary at-home pieceworkers than anything I've said.

$2.50 for a 2000 hour work-year would be $5000. There are billions of people who live in countries with a per capita GDP less than that. By 2020, most of these people will have broadband.

This sort of crowdsourcing is likely to become a big industry.

Read my comment below (which I made b/c I assumed someone would bring this up). I'm not talking here a/b people working in countries outside of the US.

The cool thing about this opinion is that you don't have to care about the consequences. Chacha wouldn't exist without cheap labor; the people who work for them wouldn't have jobs without Chacha. You get to make everyone worse off, while you feel better.

Oh, jeez, personal attacks already? Now I'm, what, a left-wing do-gooder who hates business and wants a welfare state? Awesome.

I didn't accuse you of any of those things. I just pointed out that you were objecting to their low wages, and presumably you felt that this was the moral position, even though you don't lose any workers, and you don't lose your job. You might be a right-wing do-badder who loves business and hates a welfare state--I have no idea. I do wonder about your opinion. Can you clarify.

Do you think that a) workers will be better-off if they're not allowed to take the jobs they want if those jobs don't pay as well as you'd like? b) Chacha would be better off if they didn't hire super-unskilled laborers?

Yes, he made a personal attack, but he also made a legitimate critique of your original post. How does eliminating low wages help anyone?

How is this in any way taking advantage of people? Cha Cha is offering an opportunity to make money from doing simple online tasks. People wouldn't do it if they thought the money wasn't worth the time.

As a side note, the evidence against minimum wage as an effective policy is staggering. The only reason it persists today is because it is politically convenient.

> As a side note, the evidence against minimum wage as an effective policy is staggering

You realize that 197 countries use a minimum wage, right, not just us?

Of course there's evidence against it -- just like there's evidence for it -- and the fact that it's a hot-button topic should have made me realize before the fact that people would go through and downvote all my comments. I really couldn't care less if HN supports the idea of paying US citizens $2.50/hr. I'm certainly done arguing about it.

The tone of all of your comments makes it clear that your beliefs about minimum wage are unchangeable. My guess is that people wouldn't downvote you if came across as more willing to hear another side.

This is clearly something you feel very strongly about (which is interesting to me personally, because I see no substance to the argument in favor of minimum wage), but discussion is more productive if you are open-minded.

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