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“Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse

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Re: “Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse

#11

Post by whack »

Call me a crank, but personally, I'm getting annoyed by people who love to blame tech companies for everything. "This unending hamster wheel of capitalism and technology is driving us all to the brink of insanity" Maybe that's true, but instead of blaming tech companies and brogrammers, maybe try taking a look in the mirror. You want to escape the rat race? Pack up your bags, move to bumfuck nowhere, and spend all your time reading medium blog posts. I guarantee you, you don't need a whole lot of money to do that. Or if that sounds too drastic, just sit at home for the holidays, take the subway, cook your own meals, and clean your own house.

Personally, that sounds like hell to me. I like traveling to other cities and staying in people's homes. I like taking an uber to get around sometimes. I like ordering food on seamless and hiring house cleaners on Handy, so I'll have more time to do the things I actually enjoy. And if you don't want to do any of the above, that's fine too. Just pretend all of the above companies don't exist and do what you want with your life, instead of complaining about tech companies and "brogrammers" providing services that cater to other people besides yourself.

Re: “Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse

#12

Post by trevyn »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #3
pnathan wrote: post #2

Most of the "mom-tech" could also be described as "nobility-tech", which allows the old services for the nobility to be bought at a fee. Anyway... > Mommy used to clean my room. A: Handy. > Mommy used to do my laundry. A: Flycleaners. You'd be surprised how desirable this is when you have Significant Life Issues and you don't want your home to be a disaster. While the "side hustle" being mandatory is not a good place…

I'm not sure what life issues you are referring to, but I sometimes find that when things are crazy in my working life, it helps to just switch it all off and do the laundry and clean the house. Standing out in the yard, pegging my shorts to the clothes line, surrounded by leafy trees and chirping bird can be nice.

Maybe that's why all of these services come out of San Francisco, where nobody has a yard. :-)

Re: “Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse

#14

Post by toomuchtodo »

pnathan wrote: post #10
alphonsegaston wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While for the individual, this may seem true in the short term, fostering a perpetually desperate underclass tends to have quite negative long term consequences for everyone's health and safety. From what I've seen of California, the well-off are fine with this tilt towards Central American-style stratification. But at some point, this trajectory comes at the cost at allying themselves with some grotesque form of thu…

I'd like to see a Gig Economy Union myself. Sure I can hire an Uber, get my laundry handled, my shopping done, but I want to know the poor s.o.b. doing the work has benefits and a decent wage, and isn't being screwed over by the app-company-of-the-month.

> I'd like to see a Gig Economy Union myself.

This is called "labor law".

I'm personally looking forward to the IRS reaping its pound of flesh from Uber for contractor misclassification and the hundreds of millions of dollars in employer payroll back taxes and penalties that will be due.

Re: “Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse

#15

Post by branchless »

whack wrote: post #11

Call me a crank, but personally, I'm getting annoyed by people who love to blame tech companies for everything. "This unending hamster wheel of capitalism and technology is driving us all to the brink of insanity" Maybe that's true, but instead of blaming tech companies and brogrammers, maybe try taking a look in the mirror. You want to escape the rat race? Pack up your bags, move to bumfuck nowhere, and spend all yo…

> And if you don't want to do any of the above, that's fine too

Most people have no choice on this. They have to work and it's just to subsist. Typical of hacker news that this would be the most up-voted comment.

Regarding tech, the main change tech has brought is to allow very accurate tracking of debt. Most debt is created through land. Surplus value goes to the landlords and banks.

Before this was not completely efficient, now banks can react to productivity changes much faster. Prices are set by the highest bidder. Tech has enabled "side jobs" which means they can outbid others for rent / mortgage (renting fiat money from a bank). Banks scale up fiat money creation in response. Other workers must respond and they too need a side job.

If we all worked 3 days a week it would be enough to pay the rent. If we all worked 7 days a week it would be enough to pay the rent.

But we cannot coordinate this as workers. Tech is working against workers. Economic rent extraction is now fully efficient.

Re: “Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse

#16

Post by Animats »

For a better take on this, see "Hyper-reality".[1] (If possible, at 1080 line resolution.) This is augmented reality for the job monkey.

It's not that far to this from the apps that tell the drones of Uber, TaskRabbit, and DoorDash where to go and what to do.

Machines should think. People should work.

[1] https://vimeo.com/166807261

Re: “Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse

#17

Post by branchless »

pnathan wrote: post #2

Most of the "mom-tech" could also be described as "nobility-tech", which allows the old services for the nobility to be bought at a fee. Anyway... > Mommy used to clean my room. A: Handy. > Mommy used to do my laundry. A: Flycleaners. You'd be surprised how desirable this is when you have Significant Life Issues and you don't want your home to be a disaster. While the "side hustle" being mandatory is not a good place…

These are two separate spheres. Rich people love having these, poor people hate having to work all hours to subsist.

Re: “Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse

#18

Post by dvt »

What the article misses is that consumers drive startups like Seamless and Uber up the totem pole. Sure, some have more money than others, but clearly, if Seamless is succeeding then it must've hit a nerve.

I mean I don't live in NYC, but whenever I'm there, I honestly hate it. It feels like the biggest concentration of assholery in the entire US. And I'm not saying this like some hippie pot-smoking LA liberal (because I adore LA), but as a European that is used to the hustle and bustle of city life. I was born in a small European city where people greeted each other and the streets were busy, etc. I grew up in Romania in the late 80s/early 90s.. I'd prefer living in the dilapidated Eastern Bloc to living in New York. Unless I was Donald Trump or something, but that misses the point.

If people are riding in Ubers and if people are working for Uber, then, hey, maybe it's not such a terrible "soul-sucking" idea. I mean God knows I'm no Uber fanboy (I think their skirting of regulations and squeezing out markets is pretty dodgy at best), but maybe something needed to wake up the taxi companies and make cities take a serious look at their public transit systems.

Silicon Valley may not always be a beacon of hope and joy, but Uber and Seamless are hardly the problems. If the author argued against companies like Theranos, he'd have a much better argument imo.

Re: “Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse

#19

Post by alphonsegaston »

zimablue wrote: post #7
alphonsegaston wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While for the individual, this may seem true in the short term, fostering a perpetually desperate underclass tends to have quite negative long term consequences for everyone's health and safety. From what I've seen of California, the well-off are fine with this tilt towards Central American-style stratification. But at some point, this trajectory comes at the cost at allying themselves with some grotesque form of thu…

Disintermediation itself isn't tied to the creation of an underclass, rapid technological innovation destroying jobs might be but that's something we need to solve with welfare (and Americans are really going to have to get over their brainwashing that accepting government aid makes you scum). Literally the alternative to redistribution is making everyone poorer and manipulating the system so that factory workers can…

What constitutes "rapid technological innovation" these days is just exceptionally bright people acting as middlemen to concentrate wealth into a new class of financiers. It's not structurally different from Wall St. UBI is just a story being peddled to keep the engineers on board because they're (right now) more moral and science fiction optimistic than their investment banker counterparts. Americans will gladly embrace (maybe have) authoritarianism before they'll abandon the just world fallacy of Capitalist individualism.

Re: “Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse

#20

Post by jMyles »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #14
pnathan wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see a Gig Economy Union myself. Sure I can hire an Uber, get my laundry handled, my shopping done, but I want to know the poor s.o.b. doing the work has benefits and a decent wage, and isn't being screwed over by the app-company-of-the-month.

> I'd like to see a Gig Economy Union myself. This is called "labor law". I'm personally looking forward to the IRS reaping its pound of flesh from Uber for contractor misclassification and the hundreds of millions of dollars in employer payroll back taxes and penalties that will be due.

Is it irony that, if this comes to pass, the government will use that money, made on the backs of mostly poor people in the USA, to drop bombs on mostly poor people on the other side of the world?
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