Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All

Or they can outsource the contract to a 3rd party, let that company deal with coming up with hired guns, liability, etc, and just hope it all works out. And if it doesn't, it's a lot easier to fire a contract company and find a new one, than to fire actual employees.

But more broadly… it depends whether someone is a dogmatic free-marketer fundamentalist or just someone who was swayed by the arguments from that dogma. For the fundamentalists, forget it.

For those actually open-minded, take the scientific argument. Start with confirming agreement that you're both pro-social instead of anti-social (you both actually want what maximizes overall flourishing and well-being and don't prioritize some other value or dogma). Then get them to acknowledge that the free-market argument is a model that needs to be backed by empirical evidence to be accepted as actually describing reality instead of being just an untested hypothesis.

If you can get them to thus at least accept that understanding the complex factors in play is daunting and we can't just take an elementary principle and blindly apply it to any situation conclusively… well, then you can have a discussion with them over the next couple years about behavioral economics, psychology, culture, power…

My general go-to is emphasizing that employer power comes largely from being organized. It's not like each interviewer completely makes their own decision about hiring anyone with no rules or restrictions from the company (unless the interviewer is a sole-proprietor themselves hiring one other employee or contractor). The power in the corporation comes specifically from the organized structure of the company. The individuals on the other side of a contract are divided. They use things like unions and government to have power in solidarity, and without that, they can never have comparable power in negotiations.

So, either we accept the impulse for workers to build organizations or use government for solidarity or we insist that companies shouldn't exist either and need to just be free-market masses of independent actors too or we drop the pretense that we're describing some sort of equal-enough, voluntary free-market negotiation.

Good luck!

I am a Software Developer with a decent salary for where I live. I got offered a job a couple of years ago, where 3/4 of my wage was through an international company and the rest through a normal Spanish one. When I saw the amount going into my account every month, I thought I had hit the jackpot as it was way more than I expected.

A while later when I got converted to a full Spanish contract, and my manager advised me to make sure I wasn't getting screwed. It was only then that I realized I hadn't actually been getting the pension payments on the 3/4 of my international contract up until then. What looked like a good deal hadn't actually been one at all.

I would be surprised if people less educated than me would understand all the hidden costs.

If I lay a trap, and you fall into it, and I offer to release you if you give me your bank details, are you free?

If it's a disaster and I charge $10000 for a bottle of clean water, are you free?

If a society requires you to work in order to live but only offers you poor options for work, are you free?

We generally talk as though, as long as there is no specific person intentionally coercing you, you're free to choose. But those particular elements don't actually make much difference to your freedom. It seems to me that being set up with only unfavorable options is different from being really free to choose.

What most people seems to think is happening is that as information (and related technologies like communication) has become abundant it also became really important. And that people working in the "gig economy" is adapting to this reality.

I don't think that is how things work. When something becomes abundant it is the other things that become important. As information has become abundant things like housing, education, security, recognition and contacts is what lets you leverage the abundance of information to create opportunities.

People working in the "gig economy" isn't adapting to a new reality, they are victims of the people who are now favored because of their access to housing, education and security.

This is of course counter to what should be happening. Any nation who want to take advantage of the abundance of information should make those other things readily available instead of letting them be captured by rent-seekers.