531–540 of 572 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I offer you $2 to deliver a piece of food, have I fucked you over? Where exactly in the pipeline does the "fucking over" happen?
In the part where I have to deliver it 10km away ($3 in gas round way), and if I reject your kind offer you’ll blacklist me from ever being offered a job again?
It's becoming abundantly clear the real innovation from on-demand services (including ride-sharing companies), is their ability to transfer more money from labor to capital with complex pay structures. For many if not most of these companies, its their only means towards profitability. For instance, any rise in revenue Uber experienced in the last 3 years was exclusively due to cuts in pay for drivers. Tech has long…
I expected to see something like this here. I had a period where I wasn't doing any class work but didn't have my degree and couldn't get a job because of that. The ability to trade time and tires for some of the extra VC money was kind of awesome honestly and I'd imagine it gives people who are in worse situations options they really need (essentially borrowing against car components.) I know in a few years it will…
I can't believe I have to point out that most of the people being affected negatively by this aren't by-and-large "wealthy" or "secure" people to begin with.
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I don't think the system will fix itself by banning tips. That doesn't help anyone. What society should do is require a decent base pay (regardless of tip). That way I know that my server can make ends meet if I tip them or not, and tipping them becomes a curtesy, not a necessity.
I think a lot of people making comments like this don't realize that the market price of waitstaff's labor is probably similar to fast food or other retail work--$10/hour, maybe a bit more. With tipping, waitstaff can make really good money, to the point that any efforts on the part of a restaurant owner to replace tipping with higher wages tends to result in the entire staff quitting. My point: If "society" "require…
the qualifications for FOH vs BOH staff are really not that different, except that you have to speak decent english to be a server. either one you can get hired on the spot with no experience if youre willing to start on the low end. ask any cook whether they would rather do the server's job and they'll probably say no.
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These businesses could still survive, but prices are going to have to start raising as subsides (Private Equity mainly) pull back. The next question will be, is the $6 dollar burger still worth it when it costs $14 to deliver?
Nope. Last-mile, on-demand delivery will never be economically viable if humans have to be paid to do it. There’s just not enough economic value there to compensate a human for their time. Sorry I should qualify that statement. Obviously for certain niches it has been viable for a long time (e.g. pizza delivery) but it seems like delivery is already baked into (pun intended) that business model. Perhaps it only works…
It's becoming abundantly clear the real innovation from on-demand services (including ride-sharing companies), is their ability to transfer more money from labor to capital with complex pay structures. For many if not most of these companies, its their only means towards profitability. For instance, any rise in revenue Uber experienced in the last 3 years was exclusively due to cuts in pay for drivers. Tech has long…
I expected to see something like this here. I had a period where I wasn't doing any class work but didn't have my degree and couldn't get a job because of that. The ability to trade time and tires for some of the extra VC money was kind of awesome honestly and I'd imagine it gives people who are in worse situations options they really need (essentially borrowing against car components.) I know in a few years it will…
Can't say I'm surprised -- having people in food delivery (read: waitstaff) work for virtually nothing and hoping to make it up in tips is entirely consistent with the American restaurant experience. Although at least restaurants are theoretically supposed to guarantee minimum wage, and don't exploit the car maintenance and depreciation of their workers.
They still "exploit" it but not as much. Every restaurant worker (and workers in other industries) still needs to get to and from work. They are either paying for public transportation or their own vehicle, expect when they are lucky enough to live close enough to walk. They are also not being paid for their time going to and from work.
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"However, if a worker rejects too many jobs too frequently, they may receive fewer job offers as a result." They take those jobs because they lose all access to the chance of profitable jobs otherwise. The people working for door dash aren't exactly the sort of person with the ability to fully understand probabilities and statistics either. I'd say it's fair to assume their business model works by bullying the same p…
> The people working for door dash aren't exactly the sort of person with the ability to fully understand probabilities and statistics either Yet the same person featured in the article has 3 children. I just don't understand why we allow this. China at least had the 1 child policy so there is only so much damage an incompetent person can do.
It's becoming abundantly clear the real innovation from on-demand services (including ride-sharing companies), is their ability to transfer more money from labor to capital with complex pay structures. For many if not most of these companies, its their only means towards profitability. For instance, any rise in revenue Uber experienced in the last 3 years was exclusively due to cuts in pay for drivers. Tech has long…
I recently got into EconTalk and burned through a few of their podcasts [0]. Roberts mentions his 'distain' for the minimum wage a fair bit during the shows. Many economists do not like the minimum wage at all for many reasons. However, with these gig economy jobs, there effectively is no minimum wage. Yes, things are murky here about the definitions of wage, employee, boss, etc. But the effective hourly rates are al…
Usually it boils down to simply believing that "standard of living" is a silly concept.
It's true, the demand for labor is essentially infinite, but having a minimum wage effectively puts a cap on the number of actual jobs. If people could hire maid services for $1 per hour, there'd be a lot of maid service jobs and nearly everyone would have clean homes.
But the standard of living would hit the floor.
Eliminating minimum wage would eliminate unemployment, for sure. But it would also mean rising homelessness or people cramming 5+ people into 400 sq foot studio apartments as the people at the bottom could no longer afford to pay rents on their own. And let's not pretend that only minimum wage workers would be affected, people near minimum would likely wage cuts as well.
Eliminating minimum wage creates a race to the bottom for low-skill jobs as people become more and more desperate for money.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I recently got into EconTalk and burned through a few of their podcasts [0]. Roberts mentions his 'distain' for the minimum wage a fair bit during the shows. Many economists do not like the minimum wage at all for many reasons. However, with these gig economy jobs, there effectively is no minimum wage. Yes, things are murky here about the definitions of wage, employee, boss, etc. But the effective hourly rates are al…
It turns out, that number is very low, so low that most people aren't rationally taking those jobs. Factoring in depreciation, I often hear that they loose money to work (not always, but damn close). This is simply hard to believe. There are over a million driving for Uber. An overwhelming majority of them must be making money, because the idea that any significant fraction of a million of people is in the red at the…
> This is simply hard to believe. There are over a million driving for Uber. An overwhelming majority of them must be making money, because the idea that any significant fraction of a million of people is in the red at the end of a year simply is ludictious.
I think the error you're making is the assumption that everyone in the market is a rational actor with good information and understanding, so that evidence of particular market behavior is evidence that it's rational and beneficial to the person doing it.
It's very believable to imagine gig economy jobs where the workers typically lose money doing them, but it takes them a a long time to figure that out, because the pay is obvious but much of the expense is obscured. Fresh, naive marks take over for those workers who get wise and drop out, maintaining the population of workers. The combination of corporate marketing and desperate hope then help maintain a supply of fresh, naive marks.
Yeah, f ck DoorDash. DoorDash is the worst of all of these types of gig services. They are expensive, late, forget to grab items from the restaurant and they are not careful with food. After a few times using them (and getting a different delivery person every time) a chilling thought occurred to me. There is nothing preventing a driver from either eating part of your food or tampering with it. Think about that. A to…
I am never dealing with them again.