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The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

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Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#61

Post by Ntrails »

oblio wrote: post #34
trome wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

58% of Americans would prefer a federally funded healthcare system[0], akin to healthcare in Canada. We only feel alone because both parties are bought and owned by multi-nationals, and don't give a shit about what most people want. First Past the Post ensures a 3rd party will cause carnage if it ever did rise, splitting the vote and not electing the candidate most voters would prefer. Look at Wolf PAC in Connecticut…

You badly need a multi party system. Your current system is too polarized. There's no way to represent nuances. What if I like guns but I want universal healthcare? What if I want a smaller government but I also want great environmental policies? The US system was ok in the 18th century but now it's a relic. Some things don't age well.

Do you retain first past the post, switch to AV, move to proportional representation?

What are the consequences of each of these choices and who is the right person to make them? There is no perfect voting/political system - all of them have side effects.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#62

Post by iaskwhy »

bildung wrote: post #29
pavlov wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced that Protestant traditions are to blame. The Nordic countries have had an extreme Protestant majority ever since the Reformation. In 1950s Finland, 95% of the population was a member of the national Lutheran church! That's practically everyone. At the same time, these 95% Protestant societies were heavily unionized, built up strong social safety nets, and offered long vacations, public health care a…

AFAIK protestant work ethics are rooted in Calvinism, which heavily influenced many sects in the U.S., but not or to a lesser degree the northern european countries.

Can you guys expand on this? It's something I'm usually interested in but being raised in a Roman Catholic country doesn't make it obvious what differences might exist between Calvinism and Protestantism.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#63

Post by Applejinx »

cbanek wrote: post #2

Seems like in America it's hard to win. Either get paid not nearly enough and struggle to make ends meet, or get a high paid high stress job, still work all day and all night. Maybe we just have too much of that protestant work ethic?

If Fiverr is going on about "beating the trust-fund kids", that is inadvertently exposing a severe unpatched exploit which has nothing to do with protestant work ethic.

It is currently more profitable to have very large sums of capital itself (and invest this in other capital, financial instruments etc), than to work, no matter how hard you work.

As such you have to work even harder than that or drop out of the game entirely. Systemically, the correct winning strategy is already to have huge sums of capital. I'm not sure if there's a half-measures strategy for starting with only a little capital: perhaps it's primarily luck, as it is for most/all big investors?

But there's certainly no strategy for beginning with only sweat equity and having that turn efficiently into capital, so the 'protestant work ethic' is a mighty sad and inappropriate thing to have right now. I think the combination of this ethic and huge capital holdings is largely a thing of the past, and can hold people back from larger wealth because they're looking for ways to expand that involve work, and this competes against more efficient, purer capital strategies based around pure capital manipulation (which is strongly incentivised, for instance with tax incentives).

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#64

Post by jamesblonde »

rick_cheese wrote: post #23

Yet all of these companies weave a wonderful narrative about changing the world, empowering people, giving them freedom and independence. Clearly the business models are based on exploitation of the downtrodden and uneducated. Due to clever PR many actually believe this is cool.

This is a classic such example from Lyft: http://creativity-online.com/work/lyft-junelife-is-better-wh...

Goebels would be proud. The granny is a lyft driver (1) by choice (2) it helps with her loneliness (3) she gets affirmation of her value to society.

Of course, the reality is that drivers drive Lyft through necessity, and it is lonely job much of the time.

The real kicker, though, is that the advertisement is not even to try and get more drivers. It's used to asuage middle-class guilt who are underpaying for the labour of one of their peers. Middle class people should think 'Hey, these people drive by choice, and it's fun. Win win!'

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#65

Post by rmc »

seanhandley wrote: post #59

As a European (used to free healthcare, statutory maternity leave, and 25 days paid leave per year) it shocked me on first visiting America how third-world it actually feels regarding what people consider a "normal" work/life balance. People work incredibly hard, long hours and often with very little to show for it. It's surreal.

And many of them think that people in Europe have it worse. That the economy would just collapse into African-levels of poverty if there was mandatory paid holidays.

This is a danger of American TV shows and movie studios remaking shows for the American audiences. They don't get to see that Europe is mostly a developed place.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#66

Post by archevel »

cbanek wrote: post #2

Seems like in America it's hard to win. Either get paid not nearly enough and struggle to make ends meet, or get a high paid high stress job, still work all day and all night. Maybe we just have too much of that protestant work ethic?

> Several large studies of mobility in developed countries in recent years have found the US among the lowest in mobility. One study (“Do Poor Children Become Poor Adults?") found that of nine developed countries, the United States and United Kingdom had the lowest intergenerational vertical social mobility with about half of the advantages of having a parent with a high income passed on to the next generation.

The above quote from wikipedia article on mobility in the US [1] highligts an important point. The US as the land of opportunity is clearly a false image, since you have a lower chance of climbing out of poverty there than in a lot of other countries.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the...

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#67

Post by rmc »

cbanek wrote: post #2

Seems like in America it's hard to win. Either get paid not nearly enough and struggle to make ends meet, or get a high paid high stress job, still work all day and all night. Maybe we just have too much of that protestant work ethic?

> Maybe we just have too much of that protestant work ethic?

The UK has Protestantism as an official state religion and yet it has the NHS, mandatory paid holidays etc.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#68

Post by raverbashing »

willdotphipps wrote: post #47

...you see even IF Uber prohibit drivers from using their own app between rides, if they all just agree, they can just go fuck it, we've had enough. anyone here ever spoken to a happy Uber driver? Me neither. Wife...family..kids meanwhile Kalanick gets his $6bn...NICE.

Actually the Uber drivers I talked to seemed to be doing ok on the platform.

(though those were in Europe)

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#69

Post by Terr_ »

NTDF9 wrote: post #5
cbanek wrote: post #2

Seems like in America it's hard to win. Either get paid not nearly enough and struggle to make ends meet, or get a high paid high stress job, still work all day and all night. Maybe we just have too much of that protestant work ethic?

>> Seems like in America it's hard to win. Either get paid not nearly enough and struggle to make ends meet, or get a high paid high stress job, still work all day and all night. A consequence of worshipping money. Even a human is valued by the amount of money they make or what they can afford. Other societies have agreed that there are some fundamental things that they will all share the burden for collectively and…

> A consequence of worshipping money.

I disagree -- if money was truly worshiped, why would discussing salary be taboo? I think it has more to do with things like a just-world hypothesis [0] run amok, a long-term political trend in decreasing union power, and a lack of awareness about exactly how much surplus value is being siphoned away before the average person sees any of it.

I mean, "stop worshiping money" almost feels like victim-shaming. To the extent that the average person worships it, it's because they didn't have it in the first place.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#70

Post by trome »

oblio wrote: post #34
trome wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

58% of Americans would prefer a federally funded healthcare system[0], akin to healthcare in Canada. We only feel alone because both parties are bought and owned by multi-nationals, and don't give a shit about what most people want. First Past the Post ensures a 3rd party will cause carnage if it ever did rise, splitting the vote and not electing the candidate most voters would prefer. Look at Wolf PAC in Connecticut…

You badly need a multi party system. Your current system is too polarized. There's no way to represent nuances. What if I like guns but I want universal healthcare? What if I want a smaller government but I also want great environmental policies? The US system was ok in the 18th century but now it's a relic. Some things don't age well.

> You badly need a multi party system. Your current system is too polarized.

Definitely we need to get rid of First Past the Post, but while our parties are polarized, they are both far to the right of the vast majority of voters.

> What if I like guns but I want universal healthcare?

That is actually fairly common. Gun control can be done in a nuanced way, and we can have more guns with few instances of gun violence esque Switzerland if we train our populace to properly secure and disarm their guns when not being actively used.

Comparatively, people like my great grandfather thought it was fine to leave a dozen or more loaded guns of varying types all throughout the house. Not great when a shotgun falls out from behind the stove and nearly gets ya.

> What if I want a smaller government but I also want great environmental policies?

Hard to do, small gov't = small town corruption if you look at areas that take this approach.

> The US system was ok in the 18th century but now it's a relic. Some things don't age well.

Definitely, we need to update our antiquated political system.

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