[presidentender]

In the aftermath of the Bubonic plague in Europe, the shortage of labor led to higher wages for serfs, eventually ending any semblance of what we'd call 'feudalism.'

I'm not advocating a mass die-off of human beings, but any other means of limiting the supply of low-quality labor would have the same effect. If some sort of back-to-the-land subsistence thing became popular among the youth, those who didn't partake might find that a McJob paid more by virtue of there being fewer people willing to do it. Sort of a "shrug" by the lower-class Atlas instead of the elite.

[scythe]

>If some sort of back-to-the-land subsistence thing became popular among the youth

This won't become popular because it means accepting a drastic decline in living standards: you lose Internet access, public transportation, access to a variety of goods, the rural area you move to might have a corrupt government or an underfunded police department -- why do you think gun ownership is so popular in small towns? -- you experience a lot of social isolation, etc.

This idea that people should move "back to the land" can only originate from the deepest misanthropy and ignorance of the plight of the lower classes -- or perhaps the most starry-eyed technocratic utopianism, if you think that society can somehow provide poor people in disparate areas with a modern lifestyle -- and I'm not holding my breath. Of course, we could just kick poor people to the curb like this; it seems to be our policy already, city councils won't approve new housing for them, they won't approve the construction of a Wal-Mart, expansion of transit services is always opposed by a chorus of veiled racists, etc.

[Loughla]

Gun ownership is popular in my particular small town because of hunting. What other reason would there be? Roaming bandits? Marauding biker gangs?

[presidentender]

I am a gun owner from a small town. What do I know?

[dctoedt]

> I am a gun owner from a small town.

That comment plus your handle ('presidentender) might get you a visit from the Secret Service ....

[VLM]

I would imagine enforcement of minimum wage laws on mturk might take care of that.

The turk is so rarely updated there is probably some kind of disruptive startup opening for someone to set up a middleman service paying an hourly wage to carefully tracked humans.

This might put a stop to the horrible turk habit of claiming a 20 minute survey only takes 2 minutes or writing some kids term paper only takes 30 minutes, which is technically true if you spend no time thinking about it and can type at 250 WPM, but for almost everyone else its a bit unrealistic.

Some communities have sprung up on reddit to highlite great HITs but they're very realtime and seems like as soon as a great HIT is posted to the reddit group, in seconds its gone, used up. A better marketplace dynamic could be set up. Clearly HITs and turkers are not really commodites after all in practice, so commodity market tools do fail. Tools that better match the market would be better for all participants, and the market maker skimming off the top, so its mystifying why they put no effort into it.

[jjoonathan]

If mturk becomes too successful, it'll draw political attention and suddenly minimum wage laws will apply and the business model will implode. Leaving it in a state of neglect until Amazon figures out how to fix that problem would be a strategic solution to that problem.

[pjc50]

Subsistence farming is something that almost the entire world tries to get away from as soon as possible, because apart from the food it's near-total poverty.

Also, what land? There isn't a vast reserve of untapped productive land lying around. It's all owned (capital) by someone who won't want you farming on it.

The only humane approach to too many people is a low birthrate movement, which requires universal free contraception. Something which a lot of Americans don't want to see happen.

[ChrisNorstrom]

"The only humane approach to too many people is a low birthrate movement"

That's not a solution, that's another problem. Japan, Europe, most of the USA, and even parts of Africa already have birth rates so low that they're below the replacement level. This causes workforce shortages, requires mass immigration, and causes several new problems in both host and guest countries. Japan itself is in a nose dive. Adult diapers outsell infant diapers. Less people = less customers = less money = less jobs.

"what land? There isn't a vast reserve of untapped productive land lying around."

That's what I thought. But there is. It's in Africa. A large swath of land the size of France got grabbed up during the 2007 Great African Land Grab which no one seemed to notice or care about other than the Oakland Institute. Communal lands were bribed and bought up for as little as 18 cents a hectare with the promise of infrastructure improvements and jobs. Few of which came into fruition.

[dragonwriter]

> The only humane approach to too many people is a low birthrate movement, which requires universal free contraception.

No, it doesn't require that: without universal free contraception, economic development and, particularly, strong social safety nets reduced birthrates in much of the developed world to below replacement levels. Note that this is less true of the USA than much of the modern developed world because while the USA has good aggregate economic output, it has fairly weak and unreliable social support systems for a developed country.

People have more children when children are your insurance against poverty due to age, disability, etc. -- as they have been for most of human history. When that becomes less true, they have fewer children.

[Loughla]

This is called idolizing the pastoral. The Pastoral was/is a popular literary genre/device.

Essentially, when we get disconnected from 'the simple life', we glorify and idolize it.

Having come from back-woods, subsistence farming to a white-collar, higher education job, I can tell you that (a) very few people understand the amount of stress and work required to survive in subsistence farming, (b) seriously, stress; you can starve, or (c) how much it sucks to do without modern conveniences like computers, internet and electricity.

Ever wonder why current day subsistence farmers aren't well known for their poetry or art? Because they spend all of their time finding and growing food.

In the future, I think we'll see a combination of McJob and responsibility for one's own future, much as we've seen for every generation before. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

[presidentender]

I didn't say that opting out of the economy would benefit the people doing it. I said it would increase demand for labor by the workers who remained.