61–70 of 155 posts
"Lose this workforce structure—either by a wave of class-action lawsuits, intervention by regulators, or through the collective action of disgruntled workers—and you lose the gig economy." Hang on, lemme get my tiny violin to properly eulogize the loss of an opportunity for VCs to get rich on the backs of low-wage workers. Won't you please think of the billionaires?
Ah, you mean "Using capitalism as a cudgel to undo the social advances from the 1930's". I shed no tear if Uber and the likes of companies that use 1099 to destroy employee rights. For those that believe that Uber and the like are good for the US and the economy, I have a question for you: 1. What happens if we have 10% unemployment? We already have; this answer is simple. 2. We turn the screws of automation and comp…
One of the very, very few proven formulas for rapidly generating concentrated wealth is: centralize (privatize) the profits, distribute (socialize) the risks and costs. Once you start looking for this meta-pattern, you'll see it a lot. A chemical company concentrates the profits from synthesizing a useful compound, but diffuses the risks and costs of pollution and disease into the commons. A social network distribute…
The rules, such as they are, seem fairly straightforward. If, in the case of outfits like Handy and Uber and Instacart, the "employer" is laying down rules, requiring certain performance, setting the price, and enforcing metrics, they are an employer and the person doing the work is an employee who should be treated as such. If, in the case of outfits like Redbeacon, the site is collecting leads and distributing them…
you say it seems straightforward, but your first standard for the case of a de facto employer matches what you explicitly list under a true contractor: First you state: >If, in the case of outfits like Handy and Uber and Instacart, the "employer" is laying down rules , requiring certain performance, setting the price, and enforcing metrics, they are an employer and the person doing the work is an employee who should…
"Readbeacon DOESN'T require that the contractor who I hire to paint a room show up in Redbeacon attire, only do work through Redbeacon, charge what Redbeacon dictates, and follow Redbeacon's rules for how the work is done."
"Lose this workforce structure—either by a wave of class-action lawsuits, intervention by regulators, or through the collective action of disgruntled workers—and you lose the gig economy." Hang on, lemme get my tiny violin to properly eulogize the loss of an opportunity for VCs to get rich on the backs of low-wage workers. Won't you please think of the billionaires?
There needs to be a decentralized marketplace that gets out of the way and doesn't have everyone at the mercy of its platform. But that's hard to build. Once it's built, the two sides can compete on reputation, cost, or whatever else, crafting their own strategy and the overall wealth of the system will go up. The gatekeepers often hold the system back - even the ones who built the system. I believe that platforms sh…
There is a project working on true decentralized markets, http://openbazaar.org , it's already in beta.
This is a very touchy area. Firms can pay $20 an hour for cleaning services precisely because they're not paying for sick days, health insurance and the like. If they have to pay all that, then the wages go down. This is one of many reasons why a large company will pay a company like Accenture two or three times the salary compensation of it's own employees. (There are other reasons too, like having someone to blame…
> Firms can pay $20 an hour for cleaning services precisely because they're not paying for sick days, health insurance and the like. If they have to pay all that, then the wages go down. Or they could, you know, charge more. The problem with "let the market solve it" is that customers are generally extremely price-sensitive, and if all the other cleaning companies are getting away with misclassifying their workers, t…
Not necessarily. The price for these services probably settles at an equilibrium relatively quickly due to competition, and a company charging above the equilibrium for the same service won't be able to stay in business for long. They could seek to have higher quality workers and then indeed they could charge more. But at that point it's not even the same product and so what are we even talking about?
Eventually, these models have to change. Someone is going to start writing open data layers that replace key value points in these businesses. The companies that operate on these "gig" models do a few things that sum to a greater whole: 1) Marketed web front-end for consumers 2) Confidence aggregation / metrics for both parties 3) Payment gateway / escrow service 4) Insurance and (sometimes) materials I think we'll s…
There have to be real consequences for gaming search/ratings/matchmaking sites. If the government is interested in policing this sort of fraud, then 1-4 above will be easier to commoditize, but in the meantime, companies need to enforce discipline and professionalism among the people filling gigs.