[pron]

Sure. Pretty soon I bet we'll hear some suggestions - all backed up by hard data, mind you - to reinstate slavery, only this time around it will be voluntary. After all, slave owners fed and clothed their slaves. It will certainly be an improvement over the way some people are living now, so that's a win-win, right? Then some people will say that slavery is wrong, plain wrong, whether it's voluntary or not, and whether it is beneficial to the slaves or not, only to be rebuffed by those in this forum who'll say there's simply not enough evidence to support the necessity of ethics, and others will say: well, that's just the way of the world.

Until that happens, we have before us the suggestion to build working-booths for the poor, where they can simply walk in and work for us, and get paid directly by a money dispenser so that we won't even have to see them or talk to them. And they won't even have to commute - we'll build those hi-tech sweatshops right in their slums. We won't even know their names, and if one of them gets sick - well, someone else will take his place and we won't even have to know about it because we can't really be bothered by poor people and their problems. They should be thankful that we need cheap labor so much that we're even willing to employ them (as long as they don't have to come into the office) - it's certainly better than whatever they must be doing now; selling drugs, probably - after all, that's what poor people do, right? All we have to think about now is how to prevent them from cheating us and stealing our money.

How come people are so sure they can revolutionize the world with some stupid web or mobile app, sure that they can disrupt the market and unseat market leaders, but when it comes to social issues some of those very same people sound like slaves to power themselves? How come hackers who are supposedly able to "think outside the box" sound like old, bitter, fatalist, soulless conservatives?

[ChrisNorstrom]

I understand your concern and it's really nice to know there's warm hearted people like you out there. But you're either a perfectionist, or have no contact or experience with anyone living in poverty. Keeping people who are impoverished out of trouble and giving them a job no matter how demeaning is the most important first step. Believe me, I live in St. Louis, We're tied with Detroit for having the most violent crime in the whole United States. Poor people living the ghetto are not all the "poor souls being taken advantage of" that you think they are. Those people need discipline, a job, and ANY kind of income. No one will hire them for a reason. They're not just well behaved people sitting around hoping for a miracle. They have serious behavioral problems that really hurt their ability to have ANY kind of job. And a mechanical Turk solution is the last hope for many of them.

Also, in your attempt to achieve "perfect" you will end up achieving nothing.

I understand your thought process and it DOES make sense but we are not living in a perfect world, we are living in capitalism. And if you don't pay poor people in America a few pennies to type in "cat" next to a picture of a cat, that business owner will go to another country and get them to type "cat" next to a picture of a cat.

In the perfect world this wouldn't be an issue, there would be a world wide minimum wage but there isn't. So we have to stick with what works, not what's perfect. Not what's right. Not what's correct. But what works at the moment. That's what the world was built on.

[yummyfajitas]

...to reinstate slavery, only this time around it will be voluntary.

Go look up the definition of slavery. Your post is internally contradictory.

[Drbble]

Even if entered into voluntarily, without an opportunity to exit slavery is still the correct term.

[yummyfajitas]

As far as I'm aware, to exit the turk-booth you simply need to click "logout". Has someone proposed something different?