[c0achmcguirk]

I've picked up a few gigs on Mechanical Turk. You pick up the tasks that are worth your time (that you are qualified for). If you don't like the microtask for the price offered move onto the next one.

If the entity offering the microtasks (gig) don't see enough interest in their tasks, they can raise the bid.

I think that's extremely fair. Let the market dictate the price per task. How do you know what the right price should be?

[demarq]

Is the market really dictating anything at that price or is it desperate.

I don't think anyone with the power to dictate would accept a dollar an hour.

The right word for this is exploitation. Google and Figure Eight directly contributing to income inequality.

[ChuckMcM]

Except you have captured the essence of the market, a 'fair' price (in market terms) is one that leaves the seller thinking they got too little and the buyer thinking they paid too much. They were both right at the equilibrium point.

Exploitation occurs when you prevent the buyers or sellers in the market any ability to move. So if these buyers have no other opportunities or ways to change they can be exploited, if the sellers don't have any other buyers they can be exploited.

Neither Crowd Flower (Figure 8) nor Mechanical Turk "exploit" workers because the workers have a choice of tasks, and the option to add skills to open up other tasks. Nor can the workers "exploit" the people offering jobs because they cannot prevent another worker from taking a job at an offered price, even if they personally wouldn't take the job at that price.

What it does do though is allow workers who have a lower cost of living and expense rate to bid lower (or take jobs that pay less) and still cover there costs.

[IggleSniggle]

There is a time limit on securing food and shelter. If you spend 20 hours on being a Turk, that’s time lost doing something that may never sustain you or provide a road to sustaining yourself. But you don’t know that until you spend the time engaging with the system. And you may find yourself stuck, chasing short term prices, having lost your ability to move in the marketplace.

[ChuckMcM]

I don't disagree, that is one of the interesting concepts in the book on scarcity[1]. If you're operating at the limits of your demand for a resource it affects the way to reason about that resource and can lead to counter productive choices.

That said, if you aren't constrained to only doing mechanical turk or figure 8 things, then you have the option of doing something different, or adding in other resource streams. You you trade off the time vs money aspects of different work situations to achieve longer term stability. That doesn't apply of course to people who have extenuating circumstances that cut them off from any other revenue stream and that makes them vulnerable to exploitation.

[1] "Scarcity: Why having so little means so much", Sendhil Mullainathan

[ineedasername]

on right price: I think a livable wage is reasonable. Though market forces should generally push unskilled labor wages high enough to be livable (though no more than the bare minimum)

But for this type of task, that might be performed in poorest parts of the world, $1/hour may be a livable wage for very unskilled labor. So I'm willing to withhold judgement on that.

[kartan]

> Though market forces should generally push unskilled labor wages high enough to be livable

I do not see how the market forces can do that.

In the USA there is a lot of non-livable paying jobs that need to be complemented by public spending. For a person that has nothing, a salary that is not enough to pay for their basic needs is better than nothing. That creates a race to the bottom.

You get the lowest price independently of if people that do the job can make ends meet or not.