41–50 of 59 posts
The really stupid part is that keeping the delivery workers safe is ALSO keeping the wealthy consumers (and owners of those businesses) safe! If you're holed up at home and SARS-CoV-2 strolls in your front door on the outside of your toilet paper then you might as well have just taken the risk and gone shopping yourself! Such painful short-sightedness.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ...all too often an outcome of a large bureaucracy > If the US had universal healthcare, this would be less of a problem. Italy's socialized healthcare apparently didn't cut it. There are plenty of examples of the existing U.S. healthcare bureaucracy royally screwing up in the covid response. Do I'm not buying the logic that an even bigger bureaucracy is the solution to Kafkaesque bureaucracy, at least not for this…
In the US, the borked healthcare system is a root cause of poverty. That's where universal health care would help with this. There would be fewer people living hand to mouth.
There was a recent article on HN about nurses being evicted from their homes for being nurses because of the pandemic. So it's really honest to god not just gig workers who are getting shafted here and treated like "lepers" so to speak. Some of the stuff described in the article is really unfortunate and all too often an outcome of a large bureaucracy. That doesn't make it okay. They need to come up with better proce…
> ...all too often an outcome of a large bureaucracy > If the US had universal healthcare, this would be less of a problem. Italy's socialized healthcare apparently didn't cut it. There are plenty of examples of the existing U.S. healthcare bureaucracy royally screwing up in the covid response. Do I'm not buying the logic that an even bigger bureaucracy is the solution to Kafkaesque bureaucracy, at least not for this…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really hate dealing with comments like this. I've already written and deleted one upset reply. With 60 percent of the population impaired to some degree, it doesn't work for the world to say "Only the hail and hardy people should work." I didn't qualify for disability. I still don't. I had a corporate job. I quit it so I could prioritize my health. Like many people, my job was harming my health. In contrast, gig wo…
Again I'm not talking about you in particular and I'm sorry if I upset you, I'm glad it helped you but I'm convinced that in the grand scheme of things it isn't a net positive for the world.
I've said that for years. I don't harp on it, but I do feel a personal need to give another take on it. If they start outlawing gig work, as California more or less has done, this negatively impacts me.
Thankfully, I had already left California before that happened. But I've heard from someone still in California how much it has put them to n a world of hurt.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I began doing gig work while deathly ill and homeless. > 60 percent of people are at least moderately handicapped. Most downplay it and don't want to wear the label "handicapped" or "disabled." Such people benefit enormously from having more control over their lives I don't know you nor your story and this isn't a comment about you personally, but writing that kind of sentences with a straight face to defend the gi…
I really hate dealing with comments like this. I've already written and deleted one upset reply. With 60 percent of the population impaired to some degree, it doesn't work for the world to say "Only the hail and hardy people should work." I didn't qualify for disability. I still don't. I had a corporate job. I quit it so I could prioritize my health. Like many people, my job was harming my health. In contrast, gig wo…
This really struck me. There's an interesting stain of American progressivism that sees a bad situation and, in earnestly attempting to address it, makes the problem worse. See the death of SROs and various forms of actually affordable housing: a veneer of compassion justified restrictive zoning ("nobody deserves to live in conditions like that!"), but without a suitable replacement occupants often just ended up on the street. Same effect with asylums: horrible abuses spurred public interest in dismantling them, but absent a replacement you just end up dumping the patients on the street without their meds. Sex work? Nobody should have to sell their body to survive! Therefore, let's persecute Backpage and force sex workers back out on the street where they can't meaningfully vet clients! Oh...
There's a pattern here. This history makes me apprehensive that well-intentioned (or not, just wearing the mask) attempts to reform gig work will end up being a huge fuck you to the people actually impacted by them. That's not to say the gig economy doesn't enable abuses - it absolutely does, but any action should at minimum involve a lot of genuine consultation with those affected and, preferably, address root causes rather than symptoms, e.g. a workable solution to lack of job-provided healthcare probably shouldn't involve reenforcing our already-fucked system of employer-provided healthcare serfdom.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ...all too often an outcome of a large bureaucracy > If the US had universal healthcare, this would be less of a problem. Italy's socialized healthcare apparently didn't cut it. There are plenty of examples of the existing U.S. healthcare bureaucracy royally screwing up in the covid response. Do I'm not buying the logic that an even bigger bureaucracy is the solution to Kafkaesque bureaucracy, at least not for this…
In the US, the borked healthcare system is a root cause of poverty. That's where universal health care would help with this. There would be fewer people living hand to mouth.
On the one hand classism purports to be a motivator: if people just work harder, they can improve their class standing and buy more stuff; on the other, it's just a variation on aristocracy: some people are better than others, and they are wealthy people, it's an indisputable fact of their superiority that they can buy more and better versions of the basic things that we claim form a civil society.
If public institutions are incompetent in a democracy, how is it the culture isn't also incompetent? Incompetency and aristocracy are not civil institutions, yet we've managed to institutionalize them both by just making excuses for them.
There was a recent article on HN about nurses being evicted from their homes for being nurses because of the pandemic. So it's really honest to god not just gig workers who are getting shafted here and treated like "lepers" so to speak. Some of the stuff described in the article is really unfortunate and all too often an outcome of a large bureaucracy. That doesn't make it okay. They need to come up with better proce…
> ...all too often an outcome of a large bureaucracy > If the US had universal healthcare, this would be less of a problem. Italy's socialized healthcare apparently didn't cut it. There are plenty of examples of the existing U.S. healthcare bureaucracy royally screwing up in the covid response. Do I'm not buying the logic that an even bigger bureaucracy is the solution to Kafkaesque bureaucracy, at least not for this…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really hate dealing with comments like this. I've already written and deleted one upset reply. With 60 percent of the population impaired to some degree, it doesn't work for the world to say "Only the hail and hardy people should work." I didn't qualify for disability. I still don't. I had a corporate job. I quit it so I could prioritize my health. Like many people, my job was harming my health. In contrast, gig wo…
> Saying impaired people shouldn't have to work and from there arranging a world where they aren't allowed to work is a nightmare scenario where any defect cuts you out of the system entirely. This really struck me. There's an interesting stain of American progressivism that sees a bad situation and, in earnestly attempting to address it, makes the problem worse. See the death of SROs and various forms of actually af…
They've essentially outlawed gig work in California. I left California to get back in housing. I spent three years researching where I could move to make my life work. There isn't any place else I can go. If I get evicted, I'm screwed.
I can't go back to California and wouldn't want to, but no place else has similarly dry, temperate weather. Washington is much colder and wetter.
I have no car and no driver's license. If my life cones unraveled, there isn't another town where I can make it work.
The pandemic is causing a lot of homeless shelters and soup kitchens to close. They've also closed coffee shops and restaurants and libraries. There's no place for a homeless person to go sit and eat, plug in and get on the wifi.
If I got evicted, I would be facing a nightmare situation with no solutions.
I'm trying to chalk the dream up to insomnia and stress, but I grew up with really poisonous ideas that "if you dream it, it absolutely will come true" and I'm completely freaked out today.
We've spent decades tearing down SROs and not building anything that works as a viable solution at that price point for people. Then we claim our homeless problem is just a bunch of junkies and isn't about a lack of affordable housing options.
It's nigh impossible to live without a car in the US. Gig work is one of the few things that worked for me while the entire world was all too comfortable metaphorically stepping over my body in the gutter.
I've spent a lot of years fighting the good fight while getting no real support and being told it's somehow my fault my life is in the toilet. I've spent years trying to educate HN about reality for the masses in this country and being told there is no housing crisis, it's just a personal problem, the homeless are all junkies, get a real job, etc.
When the pandemic first hit, my life was only minorly impacted. I already live like a hermit because of my medical situation and I already do remote work even though I'm dirt poor and not one of the privileged few.
But if I got evicted, I'm not sure I wouldn't just kill myself. It looks so impossible to cope with at this point and the world doesn't want to change. Everyone is in a hurry to get back to "normal" and it's like, hello!, Normal isn't working well for a lot of people and is probably why we have a pandemic.
But no one is going to listen to me. I've tried to promote gig work as a solution for homeless people and lifestyle interventions for health issues for years and been dismissed as a kook. I can't get traction.
I think our problems could be solved. But I'm beginning to think they won't be solved.
The world would literally rather die than take advice from me and I'm not seeing other sources providing better solutions. I'm finally starting to get very concerned.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ...all too often an outcome of a large bureaucracy > If the US had universal healthcare, this would be less of a problem. Italy's socialized healthcare apparently didn't cut it. There are plenty of examples of the existing U.S. healthcare bureaucracy royally screwing up in the covid response. Do I'm not buying the logic that an even bigger bureaucracy is the solution to Kafkaesque bureaucracy, at least not for this…
Any idea how Canada is fairing during this crisis?