Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 249 posts

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

#191

Post by neilwilson »

Magmatic wrote: post #169
ShabbosGoy wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A dead-end job is still a job. Unemployment rates are historically low. In the future, most people will become “gig” workers of some sort due to ubiquitous automation.

Giving everyone a job is not, and should never be, the goal of a society. In the early twentieth century American workers were killed fighting for the right to support themselves working 40 hours a week but for much the population that option has evaporated. I know people in the bay area working 70 hours a week at dead end jobs barely making ends meet; a fact I consider unacceptable given the wealth they are surround…

It has to be the goal of society - assuming you expect other people in society to continue working to provide a surplus to support you rather than, say, taking Friday off. We trade lifetime with each other. It may take less and less lifetime to produce a loaf of bread, but it still requires some people somewhere to be there babysitting a machine. There has to be a mechanism by which you can give up your time for the benefit of others, so that others will continue to give up their time for the benefit of you. Even if that is done via the mechanism of public goods (clean street, flowers on lampposts, better libraries, community centres, active church, etc.)

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

#192

Post by neilwilson »

perfmode wrote: post #128
everyone wrote: post #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'.

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

That's the failing of the 'free market'. There is no alternative. And you fix that by making an alternative. As Beveridge put it (in 1944): "The labour market should always be a seller's market rather than a buyer's market. For this, on the view of society underlying this Report - that society exists for the individual - there is a decisive reason of principle. The reason is that difficulty in selling labour has consequences of a different order of harmfulness from those associated with the difficulty in buying labour. A person who has difficulty in buying labour suffers inconvenience or reduction in profits. A person who cannot sell his labour is in effect told that he is of no use. The first difficulty causes annoyance or loss. The other is a personal catastrophe."

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

#193

Post by neilwilson »

collyw wrote: post #146
perfmode wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

My friend used to use this argument when I complained that Uber / Deliveroo were a bag of crap. I didn´t have a great counterargument, I just mumbled something about workers rights. What is a convincing argument that this line of thinking is wrong?

Beverdige: difficulty in selling labour has consequences of is a different order of harmfulness than those associated with difficulty in buying labour.

Essentially firms only hire if they can make a profit, where has an individual has to get hired to eat and have a sense of long-term usefulness in society.

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

#194

Post by neilwilson »

DrJones1098 wrote: post #170
autokad wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "dogma" You have a dogma yourself. that's ok, just be aware that you have one, and are espousing one. > "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." The free market is one of the most tested ideas out there. > "They use things like unions and government…

It's ironic. The free market requires a form of socialism to actually work. Education, Infrastructure, Military, etc. All socialistic enterprises funded by the general fund. Free enterprise does not work without a socialistic framework to support it. For a pure unregulated free market see Ethiopia.

In the same way that a nuclear reactor doesn't work to provide power without an engineered containment vessel and control rods.

If we want the nuclear power of capitalism without the boom, we need to engineer an appropriate containment vessel.

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

#195

Post by joncrane »

kbenson wrote: post #45
lalos wrote: 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…

> 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've seen a lot of the people that some cases of people that do it that are future minded and care about running the numbers just rent a car for the day. All of a sudden, you've abstracted away a lot of those variable costs to a third party. Unfortunatel…

This fleet maintenance outfit would be a perfect candidate to pivot to driverless car sharing when the technology becomes available.

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

#196

Post by theamk »

chc wrote: post #158
collyw wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend used to use this argument when I complained that Uber / Deliveroo were a bag of crap. I didn´t have a great counterargument, I just mumbled something about workers rights. What is a convincing argument that this line of thinking is wrong?

If I put a gun to your head and say "Your wallet or your life," are you free? 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 a…

I always considered "free" as lack of "coersion", where "coersion" has an agent/subject that can be removed to make situation better. Under that definition, the answers are:

> If I put a gun to your head and say "Your wallet or your life," are you free?

No -- the subject is you and your gun, if you remove them the situation improves.

> 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?

No -- the subject is your trap, if you remove it the situation improves.

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

Yes -- while there is a subject (you), removing it will not make situation any better at all.

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

Depends?

In USSR, with exit visas and "social parasitism" laws, no. Agent is state, and removing will make a situation better -- yes, you would still be hungry, but at least they would not arrest you, and you could try your luck in another country.

In USA, mostly yes. There is nothing you can remove to get better options for work, or to allow living without work. There are some exceptions -- like anti-vagrnacy laws and job licensing -- but they do not affect most people.

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

#197

Post by neilwilson »

GabrielBen wrote: post #180
DrJones1098 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's ironic. The free market requires a form of socialism to actually work. Education, Infrastructure, Military, etc. All socialistic enterprises funded by the general fund. Free enterprise does not work without a socialistic framework to support it. For a pure unregulated free market see Ethiopia.

> It's ironic. The free market requires a form of socialism to actually work. Its not ironic, the requirement is called rule of law, and its a foundational stone from the philosophers that brought that royalty and religion from the State. The recognition of private property has been recognized as a necessity from the get go in classical philosophy and economics.

It needs more than that if you have a labour market based around money and full time jobs. Odd as it may sound, full time jobs are essentially what cause involuntary unemployment because you are not market testing your position on a daily basis. But of course you need full time jobs to have any sort of efficiency in a business using labour - and to have any stability in the customer product market where it uses debt (housing for example) or fixed pricing rather than auctions. The gig economy is an attempt to deskill working to such an extent that individuals can be hired and fired on a daily basis - which would correct for involuntary unemployment if everybody is hired and fired on that basis and everything is bought and sold at auction.

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

#198

Post by closeparen »

chc wrote: post #158
collyw wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend used to use this argument when I complained that Uber / Deliveroo were a bag of crap. I didn´t have a great counterargument, I just mumbled something about workers rights. What is a convincing argument that this line of thinking is wrong?

If I put a gun to your head and say "Your wallet or your life," are you free? 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 a…

Does the existence of the gig economy eliminate good options? If the gig economy were regulated to zero tomorrow, who would find better options, and why aren’t they finding those options now?

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

#199

Post by fgheorghe »

mrtksn wrote: 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…

Thats odd. Went to London as well and didnt have to work in restaurants and had absolutely no issue opening an account.

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

#200

Post by GabrielBen »

Kalium wrote: post #190
conanbatt wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see an economist defending this assertion.

You won't. An economist would point out that capital owners are also consumers and often employees, meaning that there's really only one class of people. Which parent would not agree with, as they are offering a straightforward Marxist reading.

Even Marx separated consumers from workers.
Post reply on HN