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The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

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Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#161

Post by thatcat »

readittwice wrote: post #140
hellofunk wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Holland, everyone takes off 4 - 6 weeks in the summer to travel the world. This is so different than Americans: 1) In the U.S. you can work for years at a company before getting more than 1 or 2 weeks paid vacation. 2) Most Americans don't travel much outside their own state or region, let alone country. Most don't even own passports. 3) Even when not on the job, either at night, on the weekends, or on vacation, A…

Why should Americans bother to have a passport? Their country is so huge, probably more than you could visit in a lifetime. Deserts, mountains, cities, ... In Europe countries and the continent are smaller, Vienna for example literally has 3 other countries in commuting distance. It is quite obvious that you are more likely to need a passport here in Europe. A much fairer comparison would be to only count Europeans t…

It's a lot of land, but the culture is basically homogeneous so every where you go is very similar aside from the geographical differences and a few accents.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#162

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Ntrails wrote: post #143
oblio wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that there's no perfect __anything__ shouldn't stop us from trying to improve the status quo.

Agreed, so my question is why the OP is declaring 2 party system as "worse" when all current systems have drawbacks. Worse is subjective in this arena. So what are your metrics? What do you define as better? I'm not terribly keen on prop rep, for example - I think it actually gives too much power to extreme parties. Maybe you disagree. Maybe you think it would be better? If so, why?

This is a common argument. For example, many people in the UK's Labour party said this would be the case if the UK moved away from FPTP to AV. The conservatives wouldn't even allow the choice of real PR, limiting the vote to either what they wanted or a crap choice that no-one wanted in an attempt to get their policy choices rubber stamped with a false sense of public approval. This "worked" for that vote, and for Scottish Independence (not allowing further devolution as an option which would have won handily) and failed catastrophically with Brexit.

Notably, Brexit was caused by the small party UKIP stealing votes from the Conservatives, and then by Lib-Dem voters fleeing to Labour because they previously teamed up with the Conservatives. So a leftward shift of voters, sent the result rightward, giving the Conservatives a clear victory which meant they had to deliver a referendum that they never thought they'd have to.

Too late now to change it, but it seems likely the UK wouldn't be tearing itself apart at the moment with a better system.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#163

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

rmc wrote: post #65
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.

It surprises me that Americans don't even get Christmas (or the “holidays”) off. Would the religious right not support that?

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#164

Post by thenomad »

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.

In Scotland, the opinion of Uber amongst its drivers (and their general mood), from the ones I've talked to (a dozen or so), seems to be somewhere between "decent" and "very good".

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#165

Post by splike »

rick_cheese wrote: post #120
thw1438383 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atleast they get paid relatively more than in the EU. In Japan you're expected to work mad hours (read 11-12 hrs) for what is barely above minimum wage in the US! Add to that Tokyo is hecka expensive. I was quoted a salary of $ 30k for a deep learning position. Now that is third world.

Tokyo isn't all that expensive unless you're trying to live in luxury and a fair percentage of that 11-12 hrs would be spent appearing busy, CYA, napping or waiting for your boss to leave so you can go home. Speaking from experience the Japanese work ethic is as much about show as it is about actual hard work. It's a brutal culture behind a facade of politeness.

Spending 11-12 hours doing that every day sounds like a horrible existence

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#166

Post by wordpressdev »

While I agree to the points made in the article that workers in a gig economy have little rights and less benefits than doing a full time employment, gig economy was never supposed to be exact replacement of a permanent job.

If you live in a Western country, gigs like driving an Uber, doing a task through TaskRabbit or providing service at Fiverr / Upwork can be considered a modern day equivalent of waiting tables or babysitting. Obviously, if you consider the later as full time jobs then you have to burn your a-- to make the ends meet.

For those living in the developing countries, the gig economy is a gift from skies. More and more people from Asia, Africa and parts of Europe are joining the gig economy to supplement their income. Considering the cost of living in these areas, they are even in a position to generate full time living from doing these gigs. Not to mention the digital nomads who are escaping the stressful lives in the US / Europe and traveling to less expensive regions - living off gig economy.

Looking at the positives; gig economy gives you freedom to live your life. You do not have to spend precious hours of the day in commute, waste time in useless meetings, bear office politics and bend over to get a raise. Reduce your expenses, get a few well paying clients, work when you feel like it and enjoy your life.

All hail the Gig Economy ;)

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#167

Post by CPLX »

ycombinete wrote: post #155
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.

Literally every Uber driver I've spoken to was happy. In fact many of them have actually quit other jobs, to drive an Uber.

And literally every person who has carried bags to my hotel room has seemed pleased to serve me.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#168

Post by gjjrfcbugxbhf »

collyw wrote: post #124
cyphunk wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hardest thing for me to explain to my American family, as someone living in the EU, is that a tax or burden that is evenly distributed has near 0 negative impact on collective productivity. A society where everyone is missing one leg will still function and be largely productive, up until they have to compete with a society where everyone has two legs. That leg is something like health care, maternaty leave, vaca…

Don't Europeans pay similar levels of tax to Americans?

Short answer.The spending priorities are different. We get a much smaller military for example.

Long answer (includes speculation). One primary function of the nation state is to provide its people security. I think most European societies include healthcare and unemployment in their concept of security. This means that spending on these things is seen (by a majority) as a primary function of the state in European cultures. Whereas in US culture these things are seen by a majority as outside the primary scope of the nation state's role in providing security to its population. (NB the UK falls somewhere in between and these things are in flux all the time.)

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#169

Post by tracker1 »

alkonaut wrote: post #132
trome wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. Would a law requiring guns to be safely stored (i.e. in a safe ) be acceptable? I assume the gun lobby would scream at the thought, but what would the majority think? Likewise, would a national register and limits (i.e. every serial number is boun…

The U.S. is particularly sensitive to government encroachment... registries are a hard no-go, never will be accepted, I'm frankly somewhat surprised the sex offender registry exists (think of the children), despite its' flaws. Also, they don't tend to work well for home defense when locked in a safe (as you mention). I don't own a gun, but am very pro the right to do so.

I consider myself a pragmatic Libertarian, so my personal political views don't really align with either of the major parties, but are definitely more conservative in terms of limited federal government than most of the rest of the world view, exceptions to essential infrastructure, which to me includes water, power, communications/internet, transportation, preserving public lands, and education (though in need of some revision). As to corrupt local governments... those are easier for local citizens, and even states to address. Of course historically that hasn't always worked out so well.

In the end, what keeps Germany from being corrupted vs. Belgium... the States in the U.S. are slightly more coupled than the EU nations, but it's not too dissimilar, discounting the same language for the most part here.

Re: The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

#170

Post by pyrale »

Pyxl101 wrote: post #118
wiz21c wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you describe about really winning/loosing is inequality. I generally think that inequality is bad for populations (you may disagree, but usually, those in favor of inequality are those on the right side of it)

I recommend reading: http://paulgraham.com/ineq.html Inequality is the result of people earning different amounts, such being compensated in proportion to the value they generate - rather than everyone earning the same irrespective of that. Inequality is the result of reaping the rewards of your own work: someone is more effective, so they earn more. Why is it bad? How can any market economy even function without it?…

> Inequality is the result of reaping the rewards of your own work: someone is more effective, so they earn more. Why is it bad? How can any market economy even function without it?

Let us make an experiment and drop Paul Graham in a rainforest to see how much value he manages to extract.

Then, once he has starved to death or died from some random infection, let's think again what makes IT jobs more valuable than garbage collector jobs.

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