dbreunig:

Christina Cacioppo on why Cherry, an iPhone app that lets you order an an immediate car wash, is compelling:

Like Opez, Cherry enables car washers to become freelancers. They don’t need to work for a car-washing shop and so can retain more of the profits generated by their work.

Historically, one service provided by a car-washing shop has been finding, staying in touch with, and retaining customers. The internet’s made it relatively easier for anyone – from a solo car washer to a car-wash shop manager – to find and retain customers: Angie’s List, Yelp, Groupon, foursquare .. the list of tools goes on and on. (And will continue to go on and on.) A motivated individual can use these tools by himself or herself or can rely on a lighter-weight solution (like Cherry) for the heavy lifting.

We’ll see more of services supporting newly liberated workers.

Spot on. But this is a fine line to walk…

Think of your workplace. How much of what exists around you is maintenance and support for the real reason you’re there? What percentage of your day do you use the talent which makes you valuable?

Car washes and data-verification (which is what we’re seeing Mechanical Turk being used for) are low hanging fruit. These are low skill, low support tasks. If companies continue to keep their focus tight on these menial tasks, the future looks rather bleak. But once their gaze widens to more skilled work, it becomes less about businesses avoiding paying overhead and more about workers optimizing their need to be at a desk 9 hours a day.

Which leads you to reforming how salaries are structured, what health care looks like, what offices are, what a career actually is… It’s a tough nut to crack, both culturally, ethically, and technically.

I’ve been thinking about Christina’s post about Cherry for the past week and I like where Drew takes it, especially by pointing out that the ultra-democratization of labor will run up against some very interesting ethical questions.

Many of the “inefficiencies” evident in large organizations that manage low-skilled labor exist to create more humane working conditions. Salaries, access to training, access to capital goods, access to health care, et cetera aren’t just niceties or fair compensation. They help keep the populace sane.

I’m a fan of creative destruction, but we should be mindful of the stress we put upon individuals as we disrupt old sclerotic institutions (like car washes!).