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Shipt’s algorithm squeezed gig workers, who fought back

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Re: Shipt’s algorithm squeezed gig workers, who fought back

#151

Post by tacocataco »

renewiltord wrote: post #141
mistrial9 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

applied Game Theory in real human history a.k.a. wealth-building, has shown that the biggest empires with the most wealth and the best armies are built with slavery. So slavery did win, again and again and again. I don't think most modern people have any idea how deep and wide the history of slavery is .. Game-theory is fun when you get good at it for designing markets and products, but let us not lose sight of the c…

Obviously bullshit since the US has no slavery and became a world empire 100 years after abolishing slavery.

> The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_...

Re: Shipt’s algorithm squeezed gig workers, who fought back

#152

Post by perryizgr8 »

pertymcpert wrote: post #128
lmm wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll sap the range of any kind of vehicle, but refilling an EV is a whole lot cheaper, so higher speeds are more economic for an EV than a petrol car. (Assuming you don't reach the point of running out in the middle of a shift of course)

Actually no that’s not how it works. ICEs being inefficient actually reduces the relative impact of increasing drag vs EVs.

Even for a combustion car, 110mph is fast enough to be past the efficient range of speeds. Unless you're driving a Ferrari or something.

Re: Shipt’s algorithm squeezed gig workers, who fought back

#153

Post by lmm »

pertymcpert wrote: post #128
lmm wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll sap the range of any kind of vehicle, but refilling an EV is a whole lot cheaper, so higher speeds are more economic for an EV than a petrol car. (Assuming you don't reach the point of running out in the middle of a shift of course)

Actually no that’s not how it works. ICEs being inefficient actually reduces the relative impact of increasing drag vs EVs.

How's that? The increase in work required is the same, unless the ICE somehow gets more efficient at those speeds (in which case it's been geared pretty badly) the impact is going to be the same. If anything it'll be worse as an EV powertrain is efficient across a broad range of speeds whereas an ICE can only operate efficiently in a narrow rev range.

Re: Shipt’s algorithm squeezed gig workers, who fought back

#154

Post by Brian_K_White »

casercaramel144 wrote: post #146
Brian_K_White wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not one of those reasons constitutes a valid excuse. Holy cow. "Surely in a hotly competitive market" there is no need to hypothesise about what "surely" would happen according to some wishful thinking. We know from countless past observation exactly what happens in any market of low skill low investment labor, wages go straight to the level of the most desperate willing to be slaves and make nothing at all, because…

This is straight up an unfair characterization. It's not "slaves making nothing at all", its fair value for their labor as decided by supply and demand. The issue you're highlighting shouldn't be solved by trying to legislate the market to oblivion which always introduces side effects. Just hand everyone a UBI payment a month and be done with it.

I didn't go far enough. Wages don't go right to the poverty line, they go right past it.

Because there are not only always people willing to work for net-nothing, there are actually enough people willing to work for net negative, because they manage to survive in various ways ranging from charity to theft. Mooching off someone else to live without rent or having to buy food, under the table jobs, minor crime, obviously health insurance is completely out of the question. As long as those exist, the market says that this work is worth this cost. The market doesn't know or care how that happens.

Unfair is a funny word to try to apply to the power-wielding benefit-collecting side of this dynamic.

Re: Shipt’s algorithm squeezed gig workers, who fought back

#155

Post by simoncion »

harimau777 wrote: post #135
robocat wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as well as a reasonable profit to cover both expected future support and future R&D for improvements and/or new products. That would be a weird definition of profit. Profit is what is left after expenses (like future support and R&D). But I will admit R&D is an oddball (there a taxation difference between R&D, compared against earning profits then investing the profits into a startup). Do you have a pension, or own…

That's why they said "reasonable profit" not just "profit". Most people regard it as unfair or even immoral to charge dramatically more than how the parent describes "reasonable profit". People probably regard excessive profits as immoral for a variety of reasons: There are situations where people have little choice but to accept a deal. E.g. imagine someone requiring a drowning person to agree to pay a million dolla…

> Encouraging innovation and hard work is one of the primary justifications given for capitalism.

Yep. And it's very important that the folks managing our generally-capitalist economy to force businesses to act against their own self-interests and engage in innovation and hard work, rather than milking cash cows for perpetuity. [0]

> Society's operation is often based on the assumption that things will be priced perfectly.

Did you mean to say "priced imperfectly"? If so, then I agree. The same goes for enforcement of laws, actually... which is why largely-unrestricted superhuman surveillance and information correlation powers are such a threat.

> The rich hurting the poor in order to become even more rich is considered immoral in almost all philosophies.

You don't even have to get questions of morality involved.

1) Soaking people for every penny they have means that folks don't have money to buy anything else, which makes it dreadful hard for anything new to enter "the market", because with what money would anyone purchase it? (Not to mention, how the hell can you handle emergency expenses if everyone else is soaking you for all of your money?)

2) People who don't have money for some luxuries are unhappy people. People who don't have money for emergency expenses are very unhappy people. If you have enough people unhappy for long enough, they're going to behave drastically. Maybe they're going to drop out of your system. Maybe they're going to forcefully upend your system.

[0] To be clear, there are products out there that are high quality and need no improvement. It's fine for a company to sell the same solid product or service at a reasonable price from now until the end of time. That's -IMO- the ideal situation for a company to be in. What's NOT fine is if that company prevents other companies from selling similar (or functionally identical) products/services, OR if that company suddenly decides that they need to massively increase the price, decrease the quality (or both) of the product/service.

Re: Shipt’s algorithm squeezed gig workers, who fought back

#156

Post by simoncion »

robocat wrote: post #130
simoncion wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [W]e hate being charged what something is worth to us. I'll rephrase this in a way that's more straightforward and clear: > We hate being charged every penny we could conceivably pay for a given thing. In part because many ordinary folks believe that a fair deal is for businesses to cover the cost of R&D for the thing and the cost of getting it to us, as well as a reasonable profit to cover both expected future sup…

> as well as a reasonable profit to cover both expected future support and future R&D for improvements and/or new products. That would be a weird definition of profit. Profit is what is left after expenses (like future support and R&D). But I will admit R&D is an oddball (there a taxation difference between R&D, compared against earning profits then investing the profits into a startup). Do you have a pension, or own…

> That would be a weird definition of profit.

That's fine. I'm using layman's definitions of these words so that we can avoid the "What do you mean you don't want my business to make a profit?!?! What sort of MONSTER are you??" style of soundbites. Jargon has its place and can be very, very, very valuable. However, in the realm of economics, jargon obscures far more often than it illuminates.

> But yeah, people think they pay too much for everything...

Some people do, yes. If you're of the opinion that businesses working together to ensure that they extract every penny possible from all of their customers would not result in people consistently paying too much for everything, then I ask you why you're not taking the amount of money that you're underpaying for each and all of your goods and services and donating that (whether to charity, or directly to the businesses that are undercharging you). [0] Don't forget to structure your donations so that you have to choose between having the occasional luxury or maintaining a very small emergency savings fund... after all, all of that consumer surplus needs to be captured, doesn't it?

[0] Assuming that you're not already doing this, of course.

Re: Shipt’s algorithm squeezed gig workers, who fought back

#157

Post by pertymcpert »

lmm wrote: post #153
pertymcpert wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually no that’s not how it works. ICEs being inefficient actually reduces the relative impact of increasing drag vs EVs.

How's that? The increase in work required is the same, unless the ICE somehow gets more efficient at those speeds (in which case it's been geared pretty badly) the impact is going to be the same. If anything it'll be worse as an EV powertrain is efficient across a broad range of speeds whereas an ICE can only operate efficiently in a narrow rev range.

The EV is more efficient, but the energy density of the battery is much, much lower than gasoline. The ICE wastes most of its fuel energy as heat with a fraction going into actually providing drive. An EV being 99% efficient has its range being entirely dominated by air & rolling resistance, whereas for an ICE car the relative impact is lower.

Re: Shipt’s algorithm squeezed gig workers, who fought back

#158

Post by pertymcpert »

perryizgr8 wrote: post #152
pertymcpert wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually no that’s not how it works. ICEs being inefficient actually reduces the relative impact of increasing drag vs EVs.

Even for a combustion car, 110mph is fast enough to be past the efficient range of speeds. Unless you're driving a Ferrari or something.

I'm not saying it's an efficient range, but in relative terms to EVs the range impact of doing that speed is lower.

Re: Shipt’s algorithm squeezed gig workers, who fought back

#159

Post by toss1 »

alwa wrote: post #92
toss1 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YES. If Shipt is actually trying to incentivize better performance, it seems the best way is to be completely transparent about the rewards algorithm. "Short high-value trips are now somewhat de-rated, and trips requiring more effort now have improved rewards, specifically ..." or whatever. This "communications team" approach did everyone a disservice if Shipt mgt were really trying to improve results. OTOH, if the a…

Although as far as that graph reflects the the study’s results, the new distribution looks almost perfectly balanced: even more people experienced a “10%+” bump than a 10%+ reduction post-update. By what mechanism do you suggest the worker-screwing is happening here?

I'm not suggesting it is happening, the article is.

I'm pointing out that whether or not the mgt is trying to screw the workers, the opaque approach with the "Communications Team" generated only suspicion about both what was happening and the intent of management.

Let's assume you are correct and the entire adjustment was pay neutral - the total payout to workers for an identical set of deliveries was identical to the penny, only redistributed favoring/disfavoring different mixes of cargo and mileage. Why is it to anyone's advantage to hide that fact?

In fact, if you are trying to incentivize different behaviors, the best thing to do is to provide ALL the information on the reward structure, so the drivers can immediately read and analyze it and immediately adjust their selections to implement the new system.

Instead, the only thing management generated was confusion, ,mistrust, and poor implementation of their goals. For me, this raises a legitimate question of whether management is simply incompetent, or if they are trying to hide something (i.e., they're taking money off the worker's table and trying to avoid telling them).

Re: Shipt’s algorithm squeezed gig workers, who fought back

#160

Post by lmm »

pertymcpert wrote: post #157
lmm wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How's that? The increase in work required is the same, unless the ICE somehow gets more efficient at those speeds (in which case it's been geared pretty badly) the impact is going to be the same. If anything it'll be worse as an EV powertrain is efficient across a broad range of speeds whereas an ICE can only operate efficiently in a narrow rev range.

The EV is more efficient, but the energy density of the battery is much, much lower than gasoline. The ICE wastes most of its fuel energy as heat with a fraction going into actually providing drive. An EV being 99% efficient has its range being entirely dominated by air & rolling resistance, whereas for an ICE car the relative impact is lower.

> The ICE wastes most of its fuel energy as heat with a fraction going into actually providing drive.

But that fraction is constant however big the drag is. If there's twice as much drag etc. then you're going to burn twice as much fuel and your engine will run hotter, it's not like the heat is some fixed overhead.

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