Inside Amazon's clickworker platform
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I think this can be fixed simply by measuring companies on employment they generate and median tax payed per employee apart from the corporate tax. If they fall behind on these metrics, their products should be taxed heavily. If companies don't agree, they lose access to the market which will allow for local responsible companies to emerge and compete.
I am just wondering if my thinking is simplistic or this is a problem our leadership does not want to solve this issue?
[1] http://www.livemint.com/Sundayapp/bAgZIMlCQu8weSTF7j750L/Sig...
edit: grammer
Not to nitpick but what you described is happening today. If companies are measured on all of the metric then I how do they escape. If they move their work to contracting firms, won't they also be evaluated on the same metrics.
The problem becomes when globalisation occurs, and those companies are no longer competitive against foreign car companies. The Australian government tried to bail out the automotive industry, twice, and it still collapsed. There are no longer any cars manufactured in Australia with Holden (GM), Ford and Toyota all leaving in recent years.
Yes, you can introduce metrics of number of employees (direct and indirect), tax paid per employee, etc etc. But consumers won't pay double just because the car created a job in their country.
If a global company is only selling imported product produced elsewhere shouldn't they be paying higher taxes which will make the play ground even. I don not think they would like to lose access to a market just because taxes are higher. After all they too need consumer to sell products too.
In current state globalization is able to produce cheap services by exploiting worker from both sides of globe developed and developing. You can see that in Amazon(developed) and Flipcart(India). In the trend continues purchasing power of masses will erode to a point of no return.
Secondly true costs are hidden so if a company is selling cheaper cars by not using proper waste and environment management. They are essentially discounting the future to provide cheap services today.
And you are right this is not possible without having a global governance with a long term view.
This statement describes a problem I have with a lot of the Republican/Libertarian outlook. A lot of deregulation is just risking the future on today. If the EPA goes away all will be fine and dandy until we're all underwater. Consumers will choose the cheap option with no regard for the future.
You know a WHOLE LOT of people would rather make 500k a year than 300k even if it means their employees are damn near homeless and malnourished. See: any biz with min wage employees in the US.
Plus you're not bound by the same labor laws if you hire from overseas, only public outrage if the public ever finds out.
edit: that is to say, instead of thinking of it as "the price has adjusted", we can think of it as "greed is no longer constrained by the difficulty of overseas communication". Our laws can't contain greed, if we can just export it to where we have no jurisdiction.
Nah, sorry. That's just over the top and not true. I worked two separate minimum wage jobs before I was 20, and both had owner / operators who made no where near that kind of money. One was an entrepreneur who was losing money every year, but believed he had a good product that could grow with franchises (and it did). The other ended up having his collection of businesses go under due to Netflix (they were video stores).
Minimum wage does not imply improperly priced labor. While it is not a living wage in much of the United States, to assume it is purely exploitive is also an overdramatized statement.
I'm not exceptionally well versed in minimum wage theory, so my opinions are based on listening to numerous Econtalk podcasts on the subject (https://goo.gl/IbKS1F). Some argue for an elimination of the minimum wage, others for a vast expansion at the federal level, others for a broader expansion at the state level.
My personal observation is that the minimum wage discussion is interesting, but mostly just the tip of the ice berg and serves as more of a distraction around more meaningful conversations. 1. Minimum wage accounts for less than 2% of the hourly workforce in the United States (https://goo.gl/Q9S2Mf). Looking at it on a state by state basis, that number increases; however, let's focus on the federal wage for now. 2. There are more than seven times more people in the United States (14M+) who are either unemployed (seeking but can't find work) or underemployed (have work, but are seeking more) :: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS13327709 3. There are over 60M Americans who work hourly jobs in the United States, and 4.6M will have to find new work each year due to regular turnover in the market (I don't have my citations handy for this one, have it in a document that is missing the citation, but I'm confident on the figure).
For a worker working 32 hours at the 8.25 minimum wage, they can expect to make $264 / week. Give them a 10% raise, and they're at $9.075, or $290.40 / week. Or, alternatively, let's give that worker better access to full employment, and they reach 40 hours, but only make $8.25 / hour, or $330 / week.
Given an average number of weeks of 52.1429 per year our example workers can expect to make:
Fully Employed Minimum Wage: $17,207.15 Under Employed Higher Wage: $15,142.29
In this very simple example (with some assumptions that are admittedly contrived), the fully employed minimum wage worker is in fact, better off. They are still impoverished, they still have a tough life and will not be able to have many luxuries; however, full employment, in this example, is more optimal when purely looking at salary.
Full employment, mixed with increasing wages, and decreasing prices of goods and services, is the combination we should all be striving for.
Have you read anything about the McDonalds and other franchises paying their employees in cards which carry transaction and withdrawal fees ON TOP OF the fact they're already making min wage?
Even if you make $10/hr which isn't min wage, and you're fully employed, you're still probably not breaking even with rent/food/car/insurance/medical, you'll be sharing a duplex with some other miserable bastard or living at home, or getting a subsidy from the government because apparently it's someone other than your employers job to see that you can afford to pay your rent!
Do you know that 40% of workers in America earn under $20K/yr? If your rent is $900/mo, then over half your income (haha we didn't even consider taxes yet) goes to rent, and you still haven't payed for power or food or anything.
You keep telling yourself it's fine not to pay people a fair wage, or that we should be struggling to lower prices or to employ people for more hours -- whatever you have to do to dance around the fact that we should be paying people a fair wage.
Every job I ever had before I started serious software as a freelancer paid fuck all ($10/hr or less, after 2000) regardless of how much the owner made. Many jobs, many different industries, same story -- and that's not anecdotal, this is happening to the entire country, see again the stat of how many Americans earn under 20K.
It's not like it's impossible to pay a living wage. I could go on and on with statistics about profit margins and wealth concentrating and everything -- we as a society are choosing to damn ourselves and our neighbors JUST IN CASE we ever happen to get rich ourselves, or we are already rich. We're greedy.
Also, what is the total income of those who work min. wage? (So what are the other sources of income, or the monetary equivalent of regular support they receive?)
It's also fine to pay just a security guard and rent a machine that can make burgers and pay the franchise mothership delivery service a tiny bit more to not just unload the cargo but to load it into the burgermachine.
Yes, we ought to pay people a fair wage. People should look after people a lot better than we do today.
And please do, show us that the majority of those making under 20K/year work somewhere where the company is making huge profits _and_ that the work they do is AI-hard.
And of course we're greedy, just look how many people are still clinging to concepts such as nation, fate, hard work and so on.
FOUR HUNDRED!
Now I don't know the exact wording of minimum wage law, but I'm pretty sure if you hire an independent contractor through a 3rd party staffing company, let's say to clean houses. And then you set a fixed price on the service, say you will pay $20 for each house cleaned, knowing it takes 4 hours on average to clean a house. And then you let anyone who wants it take the job. This would be illegal.
So, I honestly don't know how mTurk is allowed to operate the way they do. American companies should not be able to hire American workers to perform labor at below minimum wage, just because they use an API to do it.
I'm willing to bet if someone was willing to spell it all out in front of the right AG or the right class action legal team that there would be significant settlements to be had.
there's a whole section of society that minimum wage laws simply don't apply to and everyone looks the other way while enjoying the benefits.
someone like bezos basically just enjoys complete non-accountability and even high praise and wealth for putting an api in front of literally everything he can think of, including illegal labor practices.
To be covered by the Federal minimum wage, one must be a "covered nonexempt" employee. There are two ways in which an employee can be covered by the law: "enterprise coverage" and "individual coverage." [1]
Enterprise Coverage
Employees who work for certain businesses or organizations (or "enterprises") are
covered by the FLSA. These enterprises, which must have at least two employees, are:
(1) those that have an annual dollar volume of sales or business done of at least
$500,000
(2) hospitals, businesses providing medical or nursing care for residents, schools and
preschools, and government agencies
Individual Coverage
Even when there is no enterprise coverage, employees are protected by the FLSA if their
work regularly involves them in commerce between States ("interstate commerce"). The FLSA
covers individual workers who are "engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for
commerce."
Examples of employees who are involved in interstate commerce include those who: produce
goods (such as a worker assembling components in a factory or a secretary typing letters
in an office) that will be sent out of state, regularly make telephone calls to persons
located in other States, handle records of interstate transactions, travel to other States
on their jobs, and do janitorial work in buildings where goods are produced for shipment
outside the State.
Or Turkers are covered under FLSA because their work involves commerce between states. Because their work itself is literally commerce between states on its face -- the writen work product is sent over the Internet -- I don't see how you weasel out of that one.
I don't see how Turkers could be exempt from FLSA, but IANAL.
The same thing happens on freelancer sites. Jobs for pennies on the dollar of their worth are fought over by people barely making it in the US, and people who are enjoying a rather livable stream of income in other countries.
To me the answer is to tell yourself that it's not work but a hobby that happens to pay, and at least seek out work that pays minimum wage in your area, if that applies.
But easier said than done I'm sure.
"Places", or "countries" might have low minimum wage compared to US or even below the average of world. But no minimum wage at all seems unlikely.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_count...
I wonder if there is a 18+ check involved.
> To me the answer is to tell yourself that it's not work but a hobby that happens to pay, and at least seek out work that pays minimum wage in your area, if that applies.
But it isn't a hobby; it is paid; hence work.
From Wikipedia: "A Hobby is a regular activity that is done for enjoyment, typically during one's leisure time."
The type of labour on Amazon Turk is extremely repetitive just like (physical) hard labour. The goal also isn't pleasure, and the income isn't a gift; it is part of one's income (I wonder if it is being tracked though).
I also find the name Amazon Turk offensive. I am aware that the word Turk has multiple meanings, but in a good part of the 90s in Europe cheap labour and Turkish people went hand in hand. It was the kind of labour the native Europeans didn't want to do (e.g. garbagemen), it paid very badly.
Now we are at the next step of globalisation and because the competition goes via the Internet the lowest common denominator becomes standard. Which is very bad for those who are unemployed, underskilled, homeless etc in higher civilized countries where the standard of living is higher, but so is things like rent. Heck, I wouldn't even be able to pay my rent with Amazon Turk.
> The same thing happens on freelancer sites. Jobs for pennies on the dollar of their worth are fought over by people barely making it in the US, and people who are enjoying a rather livable stream of income in other countries.
Yes, and fake freelance like Uber and MLM.
But I'd also say having a stated minimum wage, and having a relevant minimum wage are two different things. I come from a country on that list with a stated minimum wage of 1.70$ a day or about 22 cents an hour.
Not only is that incredibly low, I assure you no one is touring villages looking for hawkers with young helpers that aren't getting paid 1.79 a day, when the hawkers themselves can't ensure they're getting 1.79 every single day.
Ironically, it looks like mechanical Turk would actually meet the minimum wage in the country. And I'm sure the country is not alone there. So for someone who has no better source of income, I'm sure even after paying for an Internet cafe they'd come out making income that's livable.
I don't think that it's a bad thing that those wages aren't livable in a country where our hourly minimum wage exceeds the daily minimum wage.
That's why I'd say treat it like a hobby if you're in a country that's like the US.
I'm definitely not calling the work described as fun, but treat it as a hobby in the sense of treating it as something you do because you want to make a few dollars from the comfort of your computer (and for some reason don't want to try something that pays better in the long run like learning a skill, say... programming), not because you have to pay rent next month (again, situation permitting).
You have to remember, even in the US at minimum wage people still struggle with rent, so even if mechanical Turk did pay minimum wage per country, it'd still wouldn't guarantee financial security in many parts of the US
I made a mistake in my post:
> in a good part of the 90s in Europe cheap labour and Turkish people went hand in hand
I meant to say the 20th century, not the 90s. It occurred from about '60s till '80s. I'm also glad I'm not the only one who finds the name offensive, and FWIW I'm not Turkish in any way. Nor do I resent being associated with Turkish people. However for it to change, two people wouldn't be enough. I also wonder if the name is a coincidence, or deliberate. If Amazon were a European company I'd expect the latter, but America doesn't have the same history with Turkey as Europe does.
As for hobby. I'd just call it what it is: "a badly paid job". One you'd replace ASAP if you could. You need to also take into account that one requires a computer which requires maintenance and is going to (partly) die at some point. Sure, internet bill is likely flat fee and paid already, but electricity is going to be higher.
1. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/216770261246901...
Also, does your current setup have any problems (perhaps scaling)?
If the answers are no, yes, no then I'd not change a thing.
Otherwise perhaps look at using Turk for labeling and your working crew as reviewers. It may only take a small number of badly labeled images to cost more than you save.
/Just a human doing a spellbot's job.
/Just another human doing a human's job doing a spellbot's job
Makes you wonder about the quality of the job done on MechanicalTurk.
Redoing supposedly done work is my worst nightmare.
Also, the whole thing makes me think of the original plot of The Matrix - the one where humans are used as co-processors rather than very inefficient organic batteries. The Wachowskis stated that at the time they thought people wouldn't understand the former, so they went with the latter. Today I can absolutely picture farms of people born in pods living in virtual reality where everyone has the equivalent of an AMT job and nobody finds it weird that you're paid to solve made-up problems because duh, everyone does that. Maybe at first 80% of people would work in some sort of management job so the machines can learn how to manage people and then gradually displace them.
I believe this same kind of pathological behavior is what's causing people (like described in the article) to stick with AMT jobs.
I wish I knew a way to break this vicious cycle :(
Is anyone predicting when various jobs will fall to AI? I here about the 3 million truck drivers a lot. However I think some groups like radiologists are still underestimating the speed at which reading x-rays will become mostly a job of double checking computer interpretations.