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

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

#81

Post by Fjolsvith » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 2:36 PM UTC

huffmsa wrote: post #45

Razengan wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That gave me another idea which I haven't considered the implications of, but it sounds fun and video game'y: Electronic/Smart bills, that keep track of how many times they've been used to purchase stuff with. After a bill has been circulated N times, it increases in value by Y, and/or unlocks special artwork. Some bills may become highly sought-after collectibles worth far more than their face value. Would it help o…

Well that shifts the value away from the bill being a promissory note and back to being the actually valuable item. Kind of like a commodities backed currency, which most nation's try to avoid.

The amazing thing about currency being actual valuable things (like precious metals or gems) is that it cannot be devalued by "printing" more of it from non-valuable things.

Nations try to avoid this because they can spend freely on a promissory note currency system. It is a recipe for disaster in the long term.

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

#82

Post by ivanbakel » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 2:56 PM UTC

p_roz wrote: post #78

ivanbakel wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Workers should not be at the mercy of an unreliable paycheck. > What if... Can you give an example of what you're talking about?

Think about the demand for tax preparers each year. Higher demand Jan-Apr. Lower demand the rest of the year. Should companies be forced to hire tax preparers full time year round or should they be free to contract for only when they are needed?

That example isn't comparable to the kind of contracts that were originally being discussed. A contract with fixed hours on the scale of months doesn't have the same degree of stress as one with hours varying from day to day, week to week.

Fixed term contracts are allowable, because taking that thinking to the extreme would mean never being able to terminate a worker, even in cases where their employment becomes obsolete.

The issue revolves around "technically being employed" - having a contract which doesn't entail consistent or sufficient hours, and then not even having the choice to work enough to get by. This unfairly pumps employment figures for companies and the government, who can say that they have X workers, while denying an honest representation of how much people are actually able to work.

My original question was - is there an example of a job which could justify these kinds of fluctuations in working hours and subsequent income?

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

#83

Post by username223 » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 3:06 PM UTC

golergka wrote: post #70

username223 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 p…

Uhm, but these are different companies that start with this proposition for workers from the beginning. That's not what's happening: the old and new models of employment are offered by different companies that compete on the same labour market. And new companies that work with the gig model did not create this labour market.

See "deception:" most people underestimate the cost of using their car as a taxi or delivery vehicle. This is also why Uber would be much less profitable if it deployed its own self-driving cars, and probably has to convince "independent contractors" to buy and maintain its fleet.

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

#84

Post by golergka » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 3:28 PM UTC

username223 wrote: post #83

golergka wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhm, but these are different companies that start with this proposition for workers from the beginning. That's not what's happening: the old and new models of employment are offered by different companies that compete on the same labour market. And new companies that work with the gig model did not create this labour market.

See "deception:" most people underestimate the cost of using their car as a taxi or delivery vehicle. This is also why Uber would be much less profitable if it deployed its own self-driving cars, and probably has to convince "independent contractors" to buy and maintain its fleet.

You're talking about costs, but why does this matter at all? It's a market, so you should talk about supply and demand instead. People who decide to work for Uber have plenty of other options: stay without a job, land other low-paying job, etc... Uber is not their only possible employer, nor it is in a cartel with other low-wage job companies. It cannot dictate it terms to employees. If they accept the Uber's offer, it's only because that's what labour market is like.

Trying to blame it at Uber or inventing some kind of evil conspiracies are all futile attempts to omit a simple depressing fact: people working at these low-wage jobs don't have opportunities to do anything that would be more valued by society.

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

#85

Post by nateburke » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 3:29 PM UTC

Remember that we've been here before: Groupon actually ended up BEING a straight-up ponzi scheme that is now worth a small % of what it IPO'd for as a conglomerate of all of its competitors (LivingSocial, etc.).

And do not forget that some % of folks driving for Lyft and Uber are doing so in cars that are financed with subprime debt.

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/02/13/americas-car-centric-...

$1-1.5 T in auto debt is not 2008 subprime mortgage debt, but it's important to remember that a real tie-in to the publicly-chartered banking system exists here beyond whatever LPs put into VC funds.

How I see this playing out, post-ipos:

Wall Street will demand profits, Uber/Lyft will raise fares because it's the only thing they can do, fewer riders will use the apps, causing fewer drivers to drive -- they will have to walk away from their car loans.

GMAC will need to be bailed out again.

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

#86

Post by danaris » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 3:45 PM UTC

p_roz wrote: post #65

onion2k wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're demonstrating a point of view that's tragically common here on HN - you're assuming that people are never desperate, and that they always have an alternative to choose instead. Many people are in the position where they only have one option and have to pick that to earn a living. That's not strictly being forced to work a job that sucks, but the reality is they don't have a choice if the alternative is…

If you remove the opportunity to earn some money with gig work, you are forcing them into their next best alternative, which is starving or losing their home. I don’t see how that makes people better off.

The "gig work" jobs crowd out other, better-paying and/or better-benefited jobs because the companies brokering them (Uber, Lyft, etc) are able to operate without turning a profit.

It doesn't help that these jobs often have an attractive shine to them up front—fast, easy money! all you have to do is drive around!—but hide lots of costs—like massively increased wear and tear on your car—that there's no advertisement about, and no help in covering. If you have to keep driving to keep food on the table, it's also that much harder to take the time required to find a better job (though admittedly, that's not really qualitatively different from most low-end hourly-paid jobs, though it may be quantitatively, if your expenses end up wiping out enough of the income that you're effectively getting less than minimum wage).

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

#87

Post by danaris » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 3:51 PM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #72

joosters wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) ?

Fuck taxi drivers and their entire industry. Fuck their lying about someone being there in 15 minutes for four hours. Fuck their “broken” credit card machine. Fuck hailing a taxi while black. Fuck a regulator that does their best to make filing a complaint impossible. Fuck trying to get s taxi to travel to an area that they are legally required to serve but they just refuse to go to. It is an enormous pity that the t…

But this is not a structural problem with the taxi industry: it is a problem with the current implementation in certain areas.

Other places have recognized the need to make taxi service more modern and less horrible and made changes—having their own ride-hailing apps for the local taxi service, for instance.

Not everywhere is New York City.

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

#88

Post by skrebbel » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 3:55 PM UTC

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #73

jondubois wrote: post #58

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 th…

Everyone is a loser except for the investors. If you really take it to the logical conclusion, the business model is Dumping [1]: capture the market, drive out everyone else, then jack up prices when you are the only show in town. And the winners in the endgame are the investors. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)

I'm not doubting your point, but at the same time I struggle to name an example that did the "then jack up prices when you are the only show in town" step.

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

#89

Post by username223 » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

golergka wrote: post #84

username223 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See "deception:" most people underestimate the cost of using their car as a taxi or delivery vehicle. This is also why Uber would be much less profitable if it deployed its own self-driving cars, and probably has to convince "independent contractors" to buy and maintain its fleet.

You're talking about costs, but why does this matter at all? It's a market, so you should talk about supply and demand instead. People who decide to work for Uber have plenty of other options: stay without a job, land other low-paying job, etc... Uber is not their only possible employer, nor it is in a cartel with other low-wage job companies. It cannot dictate it terms to employees. If they accept the Uber's offer,…

> people working at these low-wage jobs don't have opportunities to do anything that would be more valued by society.

And that same society made Travis Kalanick the 115th richest person in the world. There are two sides to this equation, and shrugging your shoulders and saying "supply and demand" is taking a side.

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

#90

Post by barry-cotter » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 4:12 PM UTC

danaris wrote: post #87

barry-cotter wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fuck taxi drivers and their entire industry. Fuck their lying about someone being there in 15 minutes for four hours. Fuck their “broken” credit card machine. Fuck hailing a taxi while black. Fuck a regulator that does their best to make filing a complaint impossible. Fuck trying to get s taxi to travel to an area that they are legally required to serve but they just refuse to go to. It is an enormous pity that the t…

But this is not a structural problem with the taxi industry: it is a problem with the current implementation in certain areas. Other places have recognized the need to make taxi service more modern and less horrible and made changes—having their own ride-hailing apps for the local taxi service, for instance. Not everywhere is New York City.

Indeed, not everywhere is New York City. Some places are worse, like San Francisco. Possibly there are places that are worse again. Certainly I would never get a taxi in Southeast Asia if I could possibly get an Uber.