How the gig economy is making life harder for North American workers • Hacker News Board

Re: How the gig economy is making life harder for North American workers

#111

Post by TangoTrotFox » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 10:30 AM UTC

cornholio wrote: post #85

njarboe wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People getting paid $100k/year or $200k/year to do that job? Wouldn't it be cool if robots did most things and people could make good money doing the not-very-fun things the robots can't do.

I don't think we are literally able to imagine the implications of an economic scenario where the market clearing wage for toilet cleaning is $200.000, with current purchasing parity (that is, every janitor could buy the equivalent of a nice suburban home, every year, or accumulate the equivalent of 100 acres / 40 hectares of land in capital, every year). That world would have more to do with a Star Trek episode than…

You just described precisely why your scenario is impossible. Money is fundamentally just a representation of access to resources and labor, which are finite. You can create infinite money but you can't create infinite quantities of that which it represents.

There are about 1.9 billion acres of land in the continental united states. That works out to 5.8 acres per person. If people could afford to purchase 100 acres of land per year, and even a tiny percent of people utilized this - land prices would skyrocket. And a similar story would end up being true of other resources and labor costs.

In describing fantasy scenarios you have to consider the implications on the allocation of limited resources such that everything isn't just completely overwritten by inflation.

Re: How the gig economy is making life harder for North American workers

#112

Post by dahauns » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 10:34 AM UTC

candiodari wrote: post #92

aninteger wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very sad. The last thing someone wants is a tired, exhausted driver driving them around.

See this is the problem. People just don't see giving other people a chance at a livable life as a factor in any decision. Yes, it's probably less than ideal that tired drivers do this. But, mostly, it's a very good thing that this person was able to survive and prevent another homeless family. Let me guess, "the government should just provide for them ?" (without, of course, raising your taxes).

As someone coming from a country whose government sucessfully provides several means to prevent these kinds of scenarios, the idea of seeing this as a fundamentally good thing frankly strikes me as absurd.

Re: How the gig economy is making life harder for North American workers

#113

Post by skate22 » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 10:35 AM UTC

FundThrowaway wrote: post #50

beamatronic wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I happily pay a premium for Uber/Lyft; that’s how awful taxis are. I can’t go back.

Oh yeh me too, even when you use a similar app with taxis the service is awful. At least half the time they call you and cancel as they've just picked someone up on the way to you.

If im somewhere with taxis readily available (like the airport) i just ask the taxi driver if they will match uber's price. Saves me 5 minutes, pays the individual more $

Re: How the gig economy is making life harder for North American workers

#114

Post by mijowi » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 10:37 AM UTC

hkmurakami wrote: post #22

Matticus_Rex wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been in that category of worker and having taken gig jobs, I can promise you that the flexibility of the gig jobs really is a life improvement. I appreciate that you think you're looking out for people, but that kind of sentiment will end up actually harming people because you apparently don't know how we feel about things and can't support policies accordingly.

Erratic shift work in retail is definitely worse than gig work. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-retail-scheduling-2018... “The Kmart in Los Angeles where Noemi Castro works often doesn't post her schedule until a few days before the week begins, she said. Days off frequently change, as do her hours. Last week, she got 26 hours; this week only eight. Sometimes, Castro said, a last-minute change is made to an onl…

I worked in retail...this kind of bad management is everywhere. You expect me to show up when you changed the schedule and didn't tell me? Are you fucking kidding me?

Fuck retail, and food service. Seriously.

Re: How the gig economy is making life harder for North American workers

#115

Post by raducu » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 11:14 AM UTC

cornholio wrote: post #85

njarboe wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People getting paid $100k/year or $200k/year to do that job? Wouldn't it be cool if robots did most things and people could make good money doing the not-very-fun things the robots can't do.

I don't think we are literally able to imagine the implications of an economic scenario where the market clearing wage for toilet cleaning is $200.000, with current purchasing parity (that is, every janitor could buy the equivalent of a nice suburban home, every year, or accumulate the equivalent of 100 acres / 40 hectares of land in capital, every year). That world would have more to do with a Star Trek episode than…

That is a very interesting point you are making. While I'm sure we could(and most likely will) make sure no one suffers from hunger, has access to quality education(in the online form), and quality goods, things that cannot be mass produced/duplicated will become even more expensive-real estate in tourist cities, tropical/scenic places, art and so on.

Re: How the gig economy is making life harder for North American workers

#116

Post by cornholio » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 11:20 AM UTC

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #111

cornholio wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we are literally able to imagine the implications of an economic scenario where the market clearing wage for toilet cleaning is $200.000, with current purchasing parity (that is, every janitor could buy the equivalent of a nice suburban home, every year, or accumulate the equivalent of 100 acres / 40 hectares of land in capital, every year). That world would have more to do with a Star Trek episode than…

You just described precisely why your scenario is impossible. Money is fundamentally just a representation of access to resources and labor, which are finite. You can create infinite money but you can't create infinite quantities of that which it represents. There are about 1.9 billion acres of land in the continental united states. That works out to 5.8 acres per person. If people could afford to purchase 100 acres…

That's precisely why I used the phrases "equivalent land in capital" and "equivalent to a nice suburban home". In context, it should be obvious such a wealth explosion would cause an unfathomable real estate inflation.

While land is limited, wealth and capital are not. It's perfectly possible to posit a society where people own, say, shares of robotic mining companies that roam the solar system for resources. Or that values genuine human sexual intercourse to the tune of one million dollars per act, inflation adjusted. It's much harder to substantiate how such a society would actually look like.

Re: How the gig economy is making life harder for North American workers

#117

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 11:36 AM UTC

gruez wrote: post #89

dionidium wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of drivers failed to adequately budget for the maintenance costs of their car Nearly every car owner fails to adequately budget for (or even understand) the full cost of ownership of their car :) Edit: I forgot my audience for a second. Guys, college-educated engineers and 1% developers aren't typical . People routinely fail to properly account for the TCO. The entire auto-sales mode…

>The entire auto-sales model is centered around tricking people into accepting terms worse than the perceived TCO. how? you mean long auto loan periods?

[deleted]

Re: How the gig economy is making life harder for North American workers

#118

Post by throwaway2048 » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 11:40 AM UTC

cornholio wrote: post #93

njarboe wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how this utopian sounding idea is just a regular market economy without sales and income tax. Like the US before 1913. Too bad every time one interacts with someone else people with guns and prisons demand about 50% of the transaction. Set income and sales tax to zero and this could easily happen everywhere. It would be cool if some decent sized country would try it and use a land tax to fund the government.

A land tax trickles down as increased agricultural and housing prices. So it's strongly recessive, that is, it affects the poor to a much greater proportion than the rich. The US before 1913 was a largely agricultural nation with strong equality due to fair capital allocation, free land distributed to homesteaders, manifest destiny and all that. Dispensing current means of income redistribution would mean reverting t…

The idea that all taxes are ultimately paid for by consumers is dangerous, stupid and misleading. If companies/people could charge you more for whatever you are buying, they would. Taxation is largely paid for by reduced profitability, not increased prices.

Land taxes are one of the only ways to tax non-productive, rentier style wealth that has lots of fixed assets, and merely sits on them extacting money with very little positive economic input. Since it is they who are typically the most responsible for soaring housing and real estate prices (they buy properties and then do nothing with them, often times not even renting them out), to suggest such taxes are "strongly regressive" is pretty much exactly the opposite of reality.

Under a system with strong land taxes, such parties are incentivised strongly to either sell to people who want the land more (can make more money off of it by increasing density, thus pay more taxes) or to do so themselves. In a world without property tax, they are incentivised to just sit on the property forever, and do nothing to it, waiting for a huge payday far into the future.

Re: How the gig economy is making life harder for North American workers

#119

Post by dev_north_east » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 11:41 AM UTC

anovikov wrote: post #64

I never had a full time job, and i think of it as of a very, very odd thing. I know there are areas where it is necessary (say upper levels of management, public servants, and doctors in areas of healthcare where it's all about collective efforts, not private practice). But for the most people, being full time is nothing but a form of psychological exploitation. People were generationally taught to value the (false)…

> the (false) sense of stability it provides

What's false about it?

Re: How the gig economy is making life harder for North American workers

#120

Post by TomMarius » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 12:10 PM UTC

TomMarius wrote: post #99

toomanybeersies wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's a different situation in other countries, but in New Zealand, a lot of uber drivers are actually former taxi drivers. They (at least used to) make more money driving for Uber than driving a taxi. Taxis have always been a gig economy, it's just that you used to have a big sticker on the side of your car. Taxi drivers have never been paid a wage.

Not true, many taxi firms pay their drivers a wage. It's not as usual though.

Huh, did I really got downvoted (can't edit anymore)? I myself co-founded a taxi-like company (city-to-city, operating in the entire Europe) that pays its drivers an hourly wage (https://mydaytrip.com), and I personally know owners of taxi firms that pay hourly wages.