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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

#121

Post by closeparen »

jacobush wrote: post #49
whack wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're doing it because they don't have any other good alternatives. So champion proposals that would grow the economy, create more jobs, increase the median hourly wages, and/or improve the social safety net. I don't see how vilifying Uber or AirBNB is going to help accomplish any of the above. P.S. There is no way for you as an individual to be a supplier on the Seamless, but that still hasn't spared them the au…

Can't we rant and wail a bit about how increasingly broken shit looks? Why always champion a proposal to fix things? But thanks for the idea that vilifying Airbnb is not going to help anyone. I agree. They exist only because we let them fill that particular part of the biosphere. Maybe we shouldn't let them.

Who do you think is made better off by keeping that role in the biosphere vacant?

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

#122

Post by aphextron »

iamdave wrote: post #65

The take-away about Seamless I overheard in real time in a frightening way. Sitting in the smoking area, waiting for a coworker to come grab me for work, two of my neighbors were talking about how they actively avoided becoming friends with other neighbors, they just didn't want that kind of connection and preferred that neighbors just stayed in their lane as people who ostensibly share a dwelling in the same high-ri…

>People now actively avoid those kinds of relationships.

Let's not act like people haven't avoided these kinds of 'polite' relationships forever. Most people in cities do not know nor do they want to know their neighbors. I personally feel no interest whatsoever in forcing social interaction between some people I happen to live in physical proximity to. Seamless has nothing to do with that.

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

#123

Post by knieveltech »

ComradeTaco wrote: post #57
jly wrote: post #6

This article is spot on, in my view. More technology in our current economic system only reduces the overall number of 'good' jobs available, creating more inequality and increasing the divide of the haves and have-nots. Technology may not be inherently a bad thing, but when you combine it with an open global economic model built on unchecked capitalism, it will eventually create a distressing situation for many.

I personally enjoy uber and use it frequently. However, after reviewing my Uber receipts, I realized how awful the drivers side of the deal was. Take gas, car milage, Ubers cut and then you have literally a fraction of minimum wage with no health insurance or 401k. Then I start to think, well heck, if this kind of gig economy displaces traditional employment, a lot of people will be one crisis from poverty. The futur…

That ship sailed. Here's what working class prospects looked like decades ago:

- Stable lifetime employment with a single firm was not unusual.

- Plentiful well-paying work was available for individuals with a grade school education.

- Overtime pay kept work over 40 hours in a week to a minimum and it was considered unusual bordering on pathological to take work home.

- Retirement pensions were a common company benefit.

- Interests rates on savings routinely beat inflation.

- Strong organized labor held even non-unionized employers in check.

To summarize: a highschool grad with a modicum of luck could land an entry level job at a firm, work their entire life for that company, and retire without having to worry about eating cat food to pay for medicine.

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

#124

Post by _andromeda_ »

adrienne wrote: post #118
_andromeda_ wrote: post #110

>This unending hamster wheel of capitalism and technology is driving us all to the brink of insanity Things have gotten so much better over the years because of capitalism and more so because of technology. Without capitalism and technology, I dare say that majority of the 7 billion of us who are alive now would be dead. No jokes. Dead. There'd be no antibiotics, sufficient food production, infrastructure to move pro…

You do know that "technology" and "capitalism" are not synonyms, right? And that a whole lot of technological advances have occurred outside of a capitalist context? It serves the interests of the powerful to pretend like we have to have both, but it's just not true.

>And that a whole lot of technological advances have occurred outside of a capitalist context?

Please enlighten me on when such instances have occurred.

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

#125

Post by ardivekar »

diyorgasms wrote: post #92

I just took an uber ride where the driver told me she left her granddaughter's birthday party to drive people. Maybe she has different priorities than I would, but I think it's more likely that she's economically desperate enough that she has to miss those moments to make ends meet. As much as I like the service uber provides, I don't think we should pretend people are working for uber without duress.

I mean, sure, but how is that Uber's fault? The same lady would have to have otherwise worked at McDonalds if Uber didn't exist. And if Uber paid its drivers more, it wouldn't be able to hire as many drivers, which means that the lowest level of worker has an implicit denial of a job.

Minimum wage sucks, but when there's an excess of supply, it's the unfortunate truth.

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

#126

Post by tmuir »

_andromeda_ wrote: post #116
tmuir wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a counter argument to all of your points: Superbugs have evolved to be resistant to all antibiotics. Industrial scale food production is a huge strain on the environment, and in many cases pretty terrible conditions for the animals. Capitalism exploits consumers' ignorance through information asymmetry. Think of how many businesses would be destroyed if deceit of all kinds were outlawed, and everyone had the t…

>capitalism and technology don't have unintended consequences is intellectually dishonest Well argued. I respect that line of thought but I don't think I'm being 'intellectually dishonest'. The benefits of technology and capitalism greatly outweigh any negative consequences. It is almost trivial, negligible.

Where there is nuclear power, there is a nuclear bomb. Where there is air travel, there are hijackings. Where there are smartphones, there are intelligence agencies vacuuming up their data. Where there is easy access to your own financial information, there is easy access to other's financial information. Where there is instant access to the worlds information, there is instant access to easy marks for charlatans and con artists.

For every action there is a equal and opposite reaction.

For every feature, there is an attack vector.

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

#127

Post by candiodari »

dlss wrote: post #106
branchless wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rents are set by wages, prices by credit. http://i.imgur.com/oWxV1po.jpg People live in one home, whether we work 3 or 7 days. You are confusing cheaper products garnering more demand with a flat need. This is why we should tax land: the supply is constant. Demand is up due to financialization of housing by the banks and greedy landlords are their foot soldiers. Edit can submit no more due to the usual HN censorship…

> Rents are set by wages, prices by credit. NO. Prices are set by supply and demand. No one is being forced to take out a loan, and if they could buy a given home with a lower loan, they would. Hence the loan is only enabling demand. You could say the same thing about employment, or inheritance, or tax breaks. The only reason prices change is because supply or demand changes. You are basically saying that you'd like…

> Hence the loan is only enabling demand.

> The only reason prices change is because supply or demand changes.

We are living in year 16 of the era of government pushing loan prices lower than the market would set them. 8th year since they've been pushing the loan pricing down VERY hard (ie. essentially to the zero bound, where you're only paying for the (also artificially lowered) risk of the banks, admin (ie. people employed to check payment and tax and ...) and a small profit margin for the banks).

While of course it is not really known how high the market would set loan prices, it seems the long term average is 4%. Since we've been below that for a while, let's call it 6%. Add the 3%-4% of risk, admin, tax and bank profit and mortgage rates should be somewhere between 8% and 10%, if you have really good credit.

What would house prices be with 9% interest rates instead of 3% ? That's quite normal a rate for mortgages, long term. My back of the envelope calculation says that they'd be, with the same monthly payment, a bit more than double what they should be, in market prices. Prices should be 60% less, or put it another way houses are 120% overvalued.

At a very optimistic 7% (the long term average), house prices would be about 45% less, or they're 75% overvalued.

(example calculation: with 3% mortgage payment, a 4000$ monthly payment will get you 1.12 million dollars, at 9% it will get you 0.52 million dollars, or a little less than half. At 7% it will get you 0.8 million dollars, or 45% less)

Hence I strongly disagree with your notion that house prices are determined by supply and demand. House princes are as high as the government can get them, and damn the consequences.

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

#128

Post by wycx »

branchless wrote: post #83
neffy wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Close, but not quite. > Banks scale up fiat money creation in response The US money supply approximately doubles every 10 years, it's remarkably consistent modulo the occasional hiccup. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2 You're right, that that the markets will reprice very quickly, and roughly speaking the more there is (stuff, workers, etc.) the lower the price will be. This would be much less of a problem if mo…

I think we should cut this at the source. I never like taxing bad things where alternatives exist, let's just stop banks creating money. They should be intermediaries of funds not creators. https://bankunderground.co.uk/2015/06/30/banks-are-not-inter... I think it's not possible to stop land speculation so it should be taxed to pass the gains onto the people. As most money is issued against land let's have a land val…

Indeed.

I imagine a system where all capital gains associated with land (not the structures on the land) outside of the real inflation rate were captured via capital gains tax.

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

#129

Post by zeroer »

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…

> Personally, that sounds like hell to me.

Vive la différence!

There's never been a time in human history where moving to bumfuck nowhere has been a better or more stimulating option.

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

#130

Post by edoceo »

ohnotthatguy wrote: post #70

Great post. I had been working on a pitch for Uber for Wet Nurses but didn't realize my target demographic was actually 20's to 30's white males. Maybe I should crunch the numbers again. Now to counteract the 'Seamless effect', we should build an Uber for Companionship & Human Contact, you know.. like an Uber for 'Dating'. We can reap a percentage of the income the companion makes from the date...

Yea, like a pimp!
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