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'The Gig Economy' Is the New Term for Serfdom

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Re: 'The Gig Economy' Is the New Term for Serfdom

#121

Post by madengr »

xvire wrote: post #93
WhompingWindows wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it though, or is it in stocks? And even if he cashed in on that 4.8 bln, what would he do with it? Surely not put it all as a bolus into the economy, no CEO does that, they'd place their funds into bonds or other stocks. He will likely still buy 1 pair of jeans, 2 pillows, and 1 ice cream like the rest of us. The true way to put that 4.8 billion into the economy is to give the consumers, the drivers and riders the…

Yes, but stocks/bonds is basically giving money to companies so they can do useful stuff with them. So, they are still in the economy.

Well, the IPO is giving money to the company. The rest is speculation and dividend income.

Re: 'The Gig Economy' Is the New Term for Serfdom

#122

Post by privacypoller »

refurb wrote: post #14
gambiting wrote: post #3

I was mostly agreeing with the article until this part: "His medallion, once worth $1.1 million, had plummeted in value to $180,000. The dramatic drop in the value of the medallion, which he had hoped to lease for $3,000 a month or sell to finance his retirement, wiped out his economic security. He faced financial ruin and poverty. And he was not alone." The medalions are stupid and shouldn't exist. Relying on their…

To be honest, I actually feel bad for medallion owners, even if the medallion system is a bad one. The gov't sets ups a system, tells you the rules and says "if you buy an expensive medallion, you can drive a cab and make a living". The value of the medallion is purely based on the gov't promise to maintain the system. So you buy one (or many) and a few years later someone does a work around and the gov't says "oh we…

In a loose sense this seems to be what's happening with fiat money and cryptocurrencies.

Re: 'The Gig Economy' Is the New Term for Serfdom

#123

Post by grasshopperpurp »

reading-at-work wrote: post #88
api wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Consumed by greed, rendered numb to human suffering by a life of hedonism and extravagance, devoid of empathy, incapable of self-criticism or self-sacrifice, surrounded by sycophants and leeches who cater to their wishes, appetites and demands, able to use their wealth to ignore the law and destroy critics and opponents, they are among the most repugnant of the human species." This psychological shift toward delusio…

Sure, but in the context of this article it's just embellishment to whip up the reader's anger at the supposed injustice of Uber and Lyft. It doesn't contribute to any fact-based arguments and it shows the author as incredibly biased against big business in general.

Well, which parts do you disagree with? Or, do you just disagree with the sensationalist language?

Re: 'The Gig Economy' Is the New Term for Serfdom

#124

Post by 345655433 »

spacehome wrote: post #101
fergie wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many good reasons to licence taxi(driver)s, and cap their number. For example: - to keep traffic down - to ensure a minimum standard of vehicle - to ensure safe, well-trained and responsible taxi drivers. - to ensure a fair level of income - etc. However the main problem with the medallion system is that they can be traded, speculated on, and used to extract "rent" from workers further down the chain. This…

None of your reasons besides keeping traffic down necessitate restricting the number of licenses. And a "fair" wage will be determined by the market.

No, the market will determine an efficient wage, not a fair one.

The efficient wage often means the cost of someone who doesn't pay tax or insurance, sleeps in his car or in a dosshouse, parks on residential streets near airports, littering them with food wrappers and bottles of piss, and takes coke, meth or qat to work longer shifts in the undermaintained car he rents from the mafia. In this case medallions are a (bad) way of enforcing all the other types of regulation which are necessary.

Re: 'The Gig Economy' Is the New Term for Serfdom

#125

Post by vinniejames »

I mostly agree with the sentiment of the article. However, it's a shame for its entire focus to be on the cab industry. Driverless cars are coming, and coming soon, those cab driver hours could likely be cut to zero. Unfortunately, the economy changes and people need to adapt. The horse shoeing industry took the same toll when then car was invented.

That's not to say the article doesn't have merit. There are a ton of other industries ripe for disruption by the gig economy. Platform providers need to think deeply about how this could affect the lives of those relying on them for work. Hopefully, going so far as to ensure a decent live wage, and plausible options for health and other benefits.

The internet was partially built to facilitate these types of working relationships. It is up to us to define how these relationships should play out in practice, to ensure everyone involved is able to live an acceptable quality of life.

Re: 'The Gig Economy' Is the New Term for Serfdom

#126

Post by JulianMorrison »

nathan_long wrote: post #108
sokoloff wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a living wage? $30K/yr? How many Americans are there (or just American adults)? 325M / 250M What's those two figures multiplied together? 9.8T / 7.5T What's the total federal tax revenues in 2016? 3.5T To what multiple would we need to raise taxes to pay for such a program? Raise to 3.8x current taxation levels / raise to 3.1x current taxation levels. All that assumes that basic prices wouldn't rise in an envi…

> All that assumes that basic prices wouldn't rise in an environment where money metaphorically fell like manna. Also, surely some percentage of taxpayers would stop working if they didn't need to work to live, so taxes would have to be raised even further. And the higher the taxes go, the less point there seems to be in working. This could lead to more people dropping out of the workforce, which requires higher taxe…

What you lose on some people stopping working, you're likely to gain because Einstein isn't working three minimum wage jobs and barely able to eat. And because people can work their passions and be better at them than at makework 9-to-5s.

Also automation, and taxes on automatically earned productivity.

Re: 'The Gig Economy' Is the New Term for Serfdom

#127

Post by rdlecler1 »

gambiting wrote: post #3

I was mostly agreeing with the article until this part: "His medallion, once worth $1.1 million, had plummeted in value to $180,000. The dramatic drop in the value of the medallion, which he had hoped to lease for $3,000 a month or sell to finance his retirement, wiped out his economic security. He faced financial ruin and poverty. And he was not alone." The medalions are stupid and shouldn't exist. Relying on their…

I was riding in a NY taxi in 2015. The driver owned his medallion since the 80s. He had never heard of Uber. I told him about it and suggested that this was the time to sell. I doubt he did, but the point is, is that this wasn’t an overnight event. Technology and markets change. If they didn’t the next generation would never get their chance.

Re: 'The Gig Economy' Is the New Term for Serfdom

#128

Post by Cthulhu_ »

refurb wrote: post #14
gambiting wrote: post #3

I was mostly agreeing with the article until this part: "His medallion, once worth $1.1 million, had plummeted in value to $180,000. The dramatic drop in the value of the medallion, which he had hoped to lease for $3,000 a month or sell to finance his retirement, wiped out his economic security. He faced financial ruin and poverty. And he was not alone." The medalions are stupid and shouldn't exist. Relying on their…

To be honest, I actually feel bad for medallion owners, even if the medallion system is a bad one. The gov't sets ups a system, tells you the rules and says "if you buy an expensive medallion, you can drive a cab and make a living". The value of the medallion is purely based on the gov't promise to maintain the system. So you buy one (or many) and a few years later someone does a work around and the gov't says "oh we…

Yup, in this case I'd be inclined that on the one side, the government dropped the ball by not banning Uber / "black market taxis" outright; on the other, they created artificial scarcity with the medallion system, creating a trade product that only the super rich could afford to own, which they could in turn lease out to make a profit over decades.

I can see why they needed the system though, to prevent a flooding of taxi drivers. And they were proven right, because now with gig economy drivers, the floodgates have been opened and the market has been flooded with drivers in a race to the bottom.

Probably also because for a lot of people there's no other work. This is in part because of the local economy, and in part by the US education system, which is (from an outsider's perspective) a system that ensures highly educated / rich families stay rich, and prevents social mobility - unless someone expresses some special ability and gets a scholarship, probably from a commercial party e.g. sports.

Re: 'The Gig Economy' Is the New Term for Serfdom

#129

Post by 345655433 »

walterbell wrote: post #105
iliketosleep wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there's a massive trend towards centralization where it's winner takes all, almost like unregulated private monopolies. Government regulation can't keep up and these corporates get richer and more powerful, at the expense of the businesses they "serve". We do seem to have reached a peculiar extreme of capitalism.

What’s stopping a metasearch engine for food delivery services, with various attributes, including the restaurant’s preferred service ranking? Google Maps has started quoting ride-hailing pricing, which is a step in that direction.

Two things:

a) The current players would refuse to cooperate. Making web services accessible to end-users but impossible to scrape efficiently is a solved problem.

b) You're hungry and tired and you're about to spend $30-$50 on takeout food rather than cook yourself. Do you care that much about a $.50-$1 saving that you search for food search engines on your meta food search engine search engine?

In insurance, a market where people are much more price conscious, there are several different price comparison sites which all aggregate slightly different subsets of the insurers.

Re: 'The Gig Economy' Is the New Term for Serfdom

#130

Post by MrFantastic »

refurb wrote: post #14
gambiting wrote: post #3

I was mostly agreeing with the article until this part: "His medallion, once worth $1.1 million, had plummeted in value to $180,000. The dramatic drop in the value of the medallion, which he had hoped to lease for $3,000 a month or sell to finance his retirement, wiped out his economic security. He faced financial ruin and poverty. And he was not alone." The medalions are stupid and shouldn't exist. Relying on their…

To be honest, I actually feel bad for medallion owners, even if the medallion system is a bad one. The gov't sets ups a system, tells you the rules and says "if you buy an expensive medallion, you can drive a cab and make a living". The value of the medallion is purely based on the gov't promise to maintain the system. So you buy one (or many) and a few years later someone does a work around and the gov't says "oh we…

Rent Seeking sometimes creates losers.
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