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Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All

nytimes.com

121–130 of 249 posts

Re: Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> really hard to do because of catch 22 To expand on what mrtksn means: in the UK, it is difficult to get a bank account without proof of address. It is also difficult to rent a flat without a UK bank account. There are a few ways around this: - Have a friend put you on their water bill and use this as proof of address. I suspect this is illegal. - Join a flatshare without getting on the lease, pay for your portion o…

As of 2016, Lloyds bank offered a "Welcome to the UK" current account that you could open without proof of address.

A combination of the "hostile environment" and AML has probably ended this by now.

Re: Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All

#122

It's easy to get cynical about the gig economy. But I try and remember that the original spirit of it has been largely successful. The promise of the app economy was that you could take an idea like "I wish I could drive people around for extra money" and make it real, and now it's only real, but for people like my driving-averse mom it's revolutionary. But distortions to the dream have come from all sides. Customers…

That's completely revisionist history. No one was going around thinking, "I wish I could drive people around for extra money." No one. You literally just made that up. If you wanted to drive people around for money you became a taxi driver or got a passenger carrier permit and became a private limo driver. Back in 2008 no one was thinking about how great it would be to drive random strangers around for minimum wage while assuming massive amounts of personal liability and destroying their car in the process.

Uber started as a way to fill the downtime that professional drivers had between clients and jobs. They said, "Hey, there is a workforce with 50% of it s hours idle. I bet we can turn the into cash." It was a brilliant idea. Airbnb started with a similar proposition. It was a derivative of couch surfing—find some excess supply and monetize it. People are doing this for free, I bet we can do it better and make a few bucks. And then in morphed into the abomination we have today.

It wasn't until Lyft and the competitive market saw what was happening and people thought, "What if we just ignore safety regulations and licensing by declaring that we are in a new industry? There's money to be made there." That's what the gig economy ended up being. It wasn't intentional. It was a way to avoid COSTS by ignoring safety, training, benefits, licensing, insurance, zoning and minimum wage laws. And that's where 90% of the value comes from. If these companies had to play by the same rules as everyone else they wouldn't exist because there wouldn't be enough money to be made.

Re: Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All

#123
post #42

When I first arrived in London my English was not good enough to speak on the phone, I had no idea what the London job market for developers looked like, I had no idea where should I live and where should I settle. So for the first 3-4 months, I did some wine waiting as a gig(agency work, no fixed place or hours. Like with Uber, you provide your own gear - like uniforms, bottle openers etc.) at the finest, the most i…

> really hard to do because of catch 22 To expand on what mrtksn means: in the UK, it is difficult to get a bank account without proof of address. It is also difficult to rent a flat without a UK bank account. There are a few ways around this: - Have a friend put you on their water bill and use this as proof of address. I suspect this is illegal. - Join a flatshare without getting on the lease, pay for your portion o…

Can anyone comment on why this is the case? It seems ridiculous on it's face.

Re: Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All

#124
post #42

When I first arrived in London my English was not good enough to speak on the phone, I had no idea what the London job market for developers looked like, I had no idea where should I live and where should I settle. So for the first 3-4 months, I did some wine waiting as a gig(agency work, no fixed place or hours. Like with Uber, you provide your own gear - like uniforms, bottle openers etc.) at the finest, the most i…

> really hard to do because of catch 22 To expand on what mrtksn means: in the UK, it is difficult to get a bank account without proof of address. It is also difficult to rent a flat without a UK bank account. There are a few ways around this: - Have a friend put you on their water bill and use this as proof of address. I suspect this is illegal. - Join a flatshare without getting on the lease, pay for your portion o…

my mate opened a back account in 2010 because he ordered Burton catalogue and he got a letter with the address.

Re: Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

bring back unions

Are individuals incapable of making decisions on their own? Why shouldn’t the individual have the choice to drive or not drive as well as making decisions about their economic situation? Nobody is forced to drive. Nobody is forced to work for less than they value their labor. Unionizing Uber means dramatically high prices, which means less demand. There isn’t a magic pot of money just waiting to be distributed. If co…

I don't think your examples paint the picture you intended here, instead it comes across as entitled and lacking in empathy.

> "...he thinks he deserves $20."

Who said anything about deserving? You said as much that you'd drive yourself when it came to a $20 ride; you wouldn't drive yourself if it was $10. This more or less suggests the only reason Uber provides value to you is because it charges less than what you'd charge if you were providing it, because you think you deserve $20. In that instance it's not unfair to say that you get value out of Uber undercutting the competition.

> "Those that think they should earn more can quit..."

I suppose they just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps too? Not many of us can enjoy the privilege of quitting our jobs because we know we're worth more than we're getting. I have that privilege and I use it often, like many of us do in tech. For as long as we value low prices at all costs, there will always be someone who is forced into taking on this kind of job because they don't have the luxury of choice that we do. They can't quit because it's either the $10 you want to give them, so you can save $10 for yourself, or nothing.

It's been clear enough for a long time that those who enjoy the services from others won't really advocate for them, and neither will their employers, so unions and regulations are there to sort that out.

Re: Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All

#126
For most people (not highly sought after programmers), its an erosion of what paltry remnant of their workers rights remains.

Last time wealth inequality peaked, the robber barons had strike breakers and whatnot. This time (with wealth inequality continuing to soar to historically unprecedented heights) they have the 'gig economy'.

Re: Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All

#127

It's easy to get cynical about the gig economy. But I try and remember that the original spirit of it has been largely successful. The promise of the app economy was that you could take an idea like "I wish I could drive people around for extra money" and make it real, and now it's only real, but for people like my driving-averse mom it's revolutionary. But distortions to the dream have come from all sides. Customers…

Offloading all of the costs and risks on to your unorganized "independent contractors" is the whole point of the gig economy from the business side. You can't disrupt things if you behave responsibly.

Re: Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All

#128

For most people (not highly sought after programmers), its an erosion of what paltry remnant of their workers rights remains. Last time wealth inequality peaked, the robber barons had strike breakers and whatnot. This time (with wealth inequality continuing to soar to historically unprecedented heights) they have the 'gig economy'.

but it's a free market! workers are free to not participate in the gig economy.

/s

Re: Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> really hard to do because of catch 22 To expand on what mrtksn means: in the UK, it is difficult to get a bank account without proof of address. It is also difficult to rent a flat without a UK bank account. There are a few ways around this: - Have a friend put you on their water bill and use this as proof of address. I suspect this is illegal. - Join a flatshare without getting on the lease, pay for your portion o…

Can anyone comment on why this is the case? It seems ridiculous on it's face.

It's a UK thing -- everything has to not work in the most ridiculous way possible.

This also applies to anti-money-laundering stuff: it's better to affect loads of people really badly who are most certainly not money laundering as long as it does not affect the people who are money laundering at scale.

That said, there are people who don't really understand that people on social media paying you for access to your bank account are probably money laundering.

This is in a country where it is perfectly permitted to open several stores of the same chain of gambling establishments in the same street with fixed-odds betting machines and no questions of where the large sums of cash being handed over come from.

Re: Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All

#130
post #5

It did reshape it. Turns out you can offload your costs to your 'employees' that hardly will organize and project costs and earnings to the future (like a competent business). I've talked with bunch of car sharing drivers who were bamboozled with car loans, get hit by traffic infractions, costs of maintenance and the list goes on and on. I feel that the gig economy preys on people who have not developed that risk man…

The gig enconomy's innovation was offloading risk entirely onto the "employees" who aren't employees, but "independent contractors" with no rights or recourse. This is a wealth consolidation practice yet again. The gig runners make money off the independent contractors because they take all the risk.
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