Who Pays the Price for Selling $10 Bills for $5? • Hacker News Board

Re: Who Pays the Price for Selling $10 Bills for $5?

#51

Post by username223 » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 12:56 PM UTC

golergka wrote: post #17

So, in the end, the analogy breaks: turns out, the companies found out a way to procure $10 bills for ~$6 and then (after initial growth phase) to get it as low as ~$3-4 and finally make a profit. Now, the logical question is to ask, why is anyone willing to provide this $10 bill for such a low price to begin with? Or, to switch from the analogy back to the subject matter, why are people singing up for the gig econom…

> why are people singing up for the gig economy jobs?

Despair and deception. Companies have figured out how to shift costs onto their employees, then claim that those employees are "independent contractors." Uber is a global taxi company that pays millions of employees starvation wages. It sells itself as an SV "technology" company that pays a few thousand employees a few hundred thousand dollars a year to convince people to wear out their cars for less than minimum wage.

Re: Who Pays the Price for Selling $10 Bills for $5?

#52

Post by howeyc » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 12:57 PM UTC

fabricexpert wrote: post #41

countryqt30 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, nobody forces you to do this so what's the point?

Do you really think people doing gig economy jobs have alternatives? It's not a "lifestyle choice", it's literally looking around and saying what can I do that will pay my bills, today. And if these are the only options available this is what you "choose".

Right, but without the gig economy jobs they'd have less possibilities for income.

Re: Who Pays the Price for Selling $10 Bills for $5?

#53

Post by js2 » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 12:58 PM UTC

deweller wrote: post #16

I genuinely don't understand the argument that tech companies are hurting society by providing lower paying gig-economy jobs. By providing more jobs, these companies are increasing options for workers looking for jobs. No one is forcing Uber drivers to drive passengers. If there is a shortage of labor, then the prices paid to workers will increase due to market forces. If there is not a shortage of labor, then people…

You will always find someone willing to work for less money or in worse conditions. It’s why we have minimum wage and workers’ rights regulations.

To the extent that existing minimum wage and workers’ rights regulations haven’t caught up with the gig economy, these jobs looks like capital exploiting labor by having found a loophole in the rules.

http://fortune.com/2015/07/30/freelance-vs-full-time-employe...

Re: Who Pays the Price for Selling $10 Bills for $5?

#54

Post by ian0 » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 1:00 PM UTC

neom wrote: post #3

A fun thought experiment: how could you go from selling $10 bills for $5 to selling $10 bills for $15?

Easy:

- Step 1: Switch to selling $11 (2 x $5 bills + $1 coin) for exactly one $10 bill, cutting your net loss per trx by 80% and showing how serious you are about going profitable. But its just a ruse, what your really doing is capturing the market supply of 10$ bills.

- Step 2: Once you have this, you can now start selling branded $1000 laptops for $10 (bills). Increasing the value of $10 bills and allowing you to offload your existing stock of $10 bills for $15 (or more).

At this stage you now have (a) an incredibly profitable 10$ bill business, (b) a spectacular growth story in the consumer electronics space with (c) proven ability to reach profitability.

Stockprice ++

Re: Who Pays the Price for Selling $10 Bills for $5?

#55

Post by bryanlarsen » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 1:01 PM UTC

howeyc wrote: post #52

fabricexpert wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think people doing gig economy jobs have alternatives? It's not a "lifestyle choice", it's literally looking around and saying what can I do that will pay my bills, today. And if these are the only options available this is what you "choose".

Right, but without the gig economy jobs they'd have less possibilities for income.

Without the gig economy jobs they could get welfare. But they don't qualify for welfare because gig economy jobs are available.

Re: Who Pays the Price for Selling $10 Bills for $5?

#56

Post by _red » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 1:02 PM UTC

fabricexpert wrote: post #21

deweller wrote: post #16

I genuinely don't understand the argument that tech companies are hurting society by providing lower paying gig-economy jobs. By providing more jobs, these companies are increasing options for workers looking for jobs. No one is forcing Uber drivers to drive passengers. If there is a shortage of labor, then the prices paid to workers will increase due to market forces. If there is not a shortage of labor, then people…

It’s not the volume of jobs, it’s the quality. Driving a taxi or delivering food is a pretty bad job, doing it as a self employed contractor is almost criminal. You have to cover all your own expenses and have no guarantee of work, with zero progression (ever heard of an Uber driving saving up and staring their own minicab business?). It’s a terrible economic decision. The market does not correct for this as it is en…

>It’s not the volume of jobs, it’s the quality.

Perhaps we should allow another 10M 'undocumented' worker in? That should help, right?

Re: Who Pays the Price for Selling $10 Bills for $5?

#57

Post by scarface74 » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 1:02 PM UTC

joosters wrote: post #46

deweller wrote: post #16

I genuinely don't understand the argument that tech companies are hurting society by providing lower paying gig-economy jobs. By providing more jobs, these companies are increasing options for workers looking for jobs. No one is forcing Uber drivers to drive passengers. If there is a shortage of labor, then the prices paid to workers will increase due to market forces. If there is not a shortage of labor, then people…

What about the people in the industries being 'disrupted' by the strategy of flooding the market with unsustainably-cheap products or services (e.g. taxi drivers being undercut by Uber) ?

I honestly have no idea how much taxi fares are and have only used a Taxi when I was in New York in 2012. Before Uber, I would rent a car at the airport.

How many people use Uber for the convenience and are not price sensitive? How many people use Uber who have cars but use it so they won’t risk getting a DUI? Heck we use it just when we don’t feel like going through the hassle of parking and dealing with traffic when we go into the city center from the burbs sometimes.

Re: Who Pays the Price for Selling $10 Bills for $5?

#58

Post by jondubois » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 1:03 PM UTC

Gig workers are not the only losers.

Any small business which doesn't receive VC funding is also disadvantaged because they aren't able to give consumers the same kinds of deals that these consumers have gotten used to.

What some of those big VCs have been doing is criminal and has been hurting both workers and value-producers for over a decade. I hope that they'll end up in jail after it all goes belly up because this is very serious.

It's not hard to see what's really happening; VCs are shoving investors' money into each others' pockets and then dumping the bi-product on the public market so that the public foots the bill... A lot of which ends up taking a chunk out of regular people's retirement funds.

The crime is made even worse by the fact that many of those who end up footing the bill don't even have a choice. If I have a compulsory retirement fund like 401k or Superannuation, then I often don't have much say about where my money is invested... Maybe it goes to an index fund; part of which goes to big corps like Google which then use the money to acquire worthless VC startups from people who are friends with executives.

Re: Who Pays the Price for Selling $10 Bills for $5?

#59

Post by scarface74 » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 1:05 PM UTC

neom wrote: post #3

A fun thought experiment: how could you go from selling $10 bills for $5 to selling $10 bills for $15?

Isn’t that what credit cards do but in the reverse for merchants who accept credit cards? $10 on a card is worth less than $10 in cash.

Re: Who Pays the Price for Selling $10 Bills for $5?

#60

Post by barry-cotter » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 1:05 PM UTC

countryqt30 wrote: post #32

fabricexpert wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the volume of jobs, it’s the quality. Driving a taxi or delivering food is a pretty bad job, doing it as a self employed contractor is almost criminal. You have to cover all your own expenses and have no guarantee of work, with zero progression (ever heard of an Uber driving saving up and staring their own minicab business?). It’s a terrible economic decision. The market does not correct for this as it is en…

Again, nobody forces you to do this so what's the point?

It’s like zoning. Some people honestly believe that no one is both willing, able and perfectly happy to live in a small, cramped apartment or without a kitchen, or in a group house. Other people understand perfectly well that making all those lifestyle choices illegal through zoning increases the value of their property by making it impossible to be poor and live in that area. If you make living in an area while poor impossible only the middle class and wealthy will live there and you’ll have lower crime and the schools will have good results because they’re full of the children of people who’ve made it.

By the same token many people of the “I’m middle class and I think this choice should be illegal.” persuasion genuinely think they’re making lower class people’s lives better by setting a minimum floor of some sort. They don’t think poor people can really make informed choices. It’s the same mindset as whorephobic feminists from Sweden or Iceland “protecting” women.