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'The Gig Economy' Is the New Term for Serfdom

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Re: 'The Gig Economy' Is the New Term for Serfdom

#101

Post by spacehome »

fergie wrote: post #45
gambiting wrote: post #3

I was mostly agreeing with the article until this part: "His medallion, once worth $1.1 million, had plummeted in value to $180,000. The dramatic drop in the value of the medallion, which he had hoped to lease for $3,000 a month or sell to finance his retirement, wiped out his economic security. He faced financial ruin and poverty. And he was not alone." The medalions are stupid and shouldn't exist. Relying on their…

There are many good reasons to licence taxi(driver)s, and cap their number. For example: - to keep traffic down - to ensure a minimum standard of vehicle - to ensure safe, well-trained and responsible taxi drivers. - to ensure a fair level of income - etc. However the main problem with the medallion system is that they can be traded, speculated on, and used to extract "rent" from workers further down the chain. This…

None of your reasons besides keeping traffic down necessitate restricting the number of licenses. And a "fair" wage will be determined by the market.

Re: 'The Gig Economy' Is the New Term for Serfdom

#102

Post by vinceguidry »

In 1575 the Danish king gave Tycho Brahe an island and funding for an observatory in order to keep him in Denmark. This transformed the land from a Crown property to a feudal domain, of which Brahe was the lord.

Tycho took control of agricultural planning, requiring the peasants to cultivate twice as much as they had done before, and he also exacted corvée labor from the peasants for the construction of his new castle. The peasants complained about Brahe's excessive taxation and took him to court. The court established Tycho's right to levy taxes and labor, and the result was a contract detailing the mutual obligations of lord and peasants on the island. Source Wikipedia

Serfs have rights under the law. Gig workers have none. The only thing they can do in order to earn rights is to sue to be treated as an employee.

The article gets it wrong. Traditional employment is an evolution on the master-serf relationship. Gig employment is lower status, akin to wandering laborers with no land or family. Gig workers wish they could be serfs.

Re: 'The Gig Economy' Is the New Term for Serfdom

#103

Post by [deleted] »

refurb wrote: post #14
gambiting wrote: post #3

I was mostly agreeing with the article until this part: "His medallion, once worth $1.1 million, had plummeted in value to $180,000. The dramatic drop in the value of the medallion, which he had hoped to lease for $3,000 a month or sell to finance his retirement, wiped out his economic security. He faced financial ruin and poverty. And he was not alone." The medalions are stupid and shouldn't exist. Relying on their…

To be honest, I actually feel bad for medallion owners, even if the medallion system is a bad one. The gov't sets ups a system, tells you the rules and says "if you buy an expensive medallion, you can drive a cab and make a living". The value of the medallion is purely based on the gov't promise to maintain the system. So you buy one (or many) and a few years later someone does a work around and the gov't says "oh we…

[deleted]

Re: 'The Gig Economy' Is the New Term for Serfdom

#104

Post by api »

bbddg wrote: post #91
api wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Consumed by greed, rendered numb to human suffering by a life of hedonism and extravagance, devoid of empathy, incapable of self-criticism or self-sacrifice, surrounded by sycophants and leeches who cater to their wishes, appetites and demands, able to use their wealth to ignore the law and destroy critics and opponents, they are among the most repugnant of the human species." This psychological shift toward delusio…

If that's true shouldn't we try to create an economy that doesn't actively reward those behaviors?

That's harder than just shifting the economic system. The problem is that human beings (or at least a lot of them) willingly and almost instinctively follow psychopaths and narcissists. As long as that's the case then these behaviors will be rewarded in any and all economic systems. The rules for how money moves around do not change human psychology.

Re: 'The Gig Economy' Is the New Term for Serfdom

#105

Post by walterbell »

iliketosleep wrote: post #90
amelius wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The underlying issue is that these VC backed companies break the law to gain a business advantage and face no real consequences You don't even need to break the law to gain a business advantage. Just making a large pile of money can be sufficient to start dominating a market. Take for example Uber-eats. Small restaurant owners suddenly had to give up control over their sales channel to a big player, and are now for…

Yes, there's a massive trend towards centralization where it's winner takes all, almost like unregulated private monopolies. Government regulation can't keep up and these corporates get richer and more powerful, at the expense of the businesses they "serve". We do seem to have reached a peculiar extreme of capitalism.

What’s stopping a metasearch engine for food delivery services, with various attributes, including the restaurant’s preferred service ranking? Google Maps has started quoting ride-hailing pricing, which is a step in that direction.

Re: 'The Gig Economy' Is the New Term for Serfdom

#106

Post by gringoDan »

amelius wrote: post #69
iliketosleep wrote: post #41

The underlying issue is that these VC backed companies break the law to gain a business advantage and face no real consequences, especially if they are successful. But if individuals and small companies attempt to break these very same laws they get crushed. It's almost as though if you've been to Stanford and are backed by well-connected VC's, you're able to recklessly break the law in the name of "disruptive" techn…

> The underlying issue is that these VC backed companies break the law to gain a business advantage and face no real consequences You don't even need to break the law to gain a business advantage. Just making a large pile of money can be sufficient to start dominating a market. Take for example Uber-eats. Small restaurant owners suddenly had to give up control over their sales channel to a big player, and are now for…

Restaurants don't pay a large up-front cost to be on these food delivery services. All of the services make money by taking a percentage of the revenue (generally 15-30%) from the orders they fulfill.

As long as the revenue from delivery exceeds the food cost (marginal cost of preparing an order) it is beneficial for restaurants to be on AS MANY of these delivery services as possible. This is why you'll walk into some places and see 5 iPads next to the register - they're working with not only UberEats, but DoorDash, Eat24, Postmates, GrubHub, etc.

I do have many issues with these food delivery services, but the restaurants aren't getting the short end of the stick here - the drivers are.

Re: 'The Gig Economy' Is the New Term for Serfdom

#107

Post by JulianMorrison »

sokoloff wrote: post #71
JulianMorrison wrote: post #40

If we get a universal basic income set equal to a living wage, then the "gig economy" can go back to being actual gigs, that is, people doing a bit extra to get a bit extra.

What's a living wage? $30K/yr? How many Americans are there (or just American adults)? 325M / 250M What's those two figures multiplied together? 9.8T / 7.5T What's the total federal tax revenues in 2016? 3.5T To what multiple would we need to raise taxes to pay for such a program? Raise to 3.8x current taxation levels / raise to 3.1x current taxation levels. All that assumes that basic prices wouldn't rise in an envi…

A living wage can be defined as: enough money in the particular location to rent an apartment suitable for human habitation, pay all necessary bills for heating, water, power, phone etc, eat nutritious if simple food, drink safe water, buy cheap but functional clothes and ordinary groceries, commute to work, and have a little over for leisure. If your locality is barbaric enough to charge money or require insurance for healthcare, that is included too. Automatically tracking for the price of any of the above with no political input permitted.

And make it a pull tax system. Tax take = cost of UBI. Tax sources = income, financial transactions, static wealth and savings, land value, job-replacing automation.

Re: 'The Gig Economy' Is the New Term for Serfdom

#108

Post by nathan_long »

sokoloff wrote: post #71
JulianMorrison wrote: post #40

If we get a universal basic income set equal to a living wage, then the "gig economy" can go back to being actual gigs, that is, people doing a bit extra to get a bit extra.

What's a living wage? $30K/yr? How many Americans are there (or just American adults)? 325M / 250M What's those two figures multiplied together? 9.8T / 7.5T What's the total federal tax revenues in 2016? 3.5T To what multiple would we need to raise taxes to pay for such a program? Raise to 3.8x current taxation levels / raise to 3.1x current taxation levels. All that assumes that basic prices wouldn't rise in an envi…

> All that assumes that basic prices wouldn't rise in an environment where money metaphorically fell like manna.

Also, surely some percentage of taxpayers would stop working if they didn't need to work to live, so taxes would have to be raised even further.

And the higher the taxes go, the less point there seems to be in working. This could lead to more people dropping out of the workforce, which requires higher taxes on the remainder, and the cycle continues.

I don't know that it would happen this way, but if it did, it would destroy the economy.

Re: 'The Gig Economy' Is the New Term for Serfdom

#109

Post by jillesvangurp »

How can you write an article like this without bringing up self driving cars? The end game for Uber is to get drivers out of the loop completely. So, this is just a temporary problem. It's going to get a whole lot worse if your plan in life is to drive vehicles around to make money.

This is not about the gig economy but simply about a lot of jobs becoming commodities before being automated away completely. Anyone with decent navigation solution in their car can compete with whatever awesome skills this medallion used to represent in terms of geographical knowledge. It's an outdated concept that dates back to the days that actually taxis were horse & carriage and it was kind of helpful to have some guarantees that the driver knew where to go. Not a thing any more.

Re: 'The Gig Economy' Is the New Term for Serfdom

#110

Post by icebraining »

api wrote: post #84
reading-at-work wrote: post #67

"The reign of the all-powerful capitalist class has returned with a vengeance. The job conditions of working men and women, thrust backward, will not improve until they regain the militancy and rebuild the popular organizations that seized power from the capitalists." ... "The ruling capitalists will be as vicious as they were in the past. Nothing enrages the rich more than having to part with a fraction of their obs…

"Consumed by greed, rendered numb to human suffering by a life of hedonism and extravagance, devoid of empathy, incapable of self-criticism or self-sacrifice, surrounded by sycophants and leeches who cater to their wishes, appetites and demands, able to use their wealth to ignore the law and destroy critics and opponents, they are among the most repugnant of the human species." This psychological shift toward delusio…

For a further exploration of this topic, I recommend the film Can Dialectics Break Bricks.
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