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“Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse

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Re: “Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse

#131

Post by ohnotthatguy »

whack wrote: post #11

Call me a crank, but personally, I'm getting annoyed by people who love to blame tech companies for everything. "This unending hamster wheel of capitalism and technology is driving us all to the brink of insanity" Maybe that's true, but instead of blaming tech companies and brogrammers, maybe try taking a look in the mirror. You want to escape the rat race? Pack up your bags, move to bumfuck nowhere, and spend all yo…

You know I did pack my bags, bailed on Silicon Beach, (Silicon Beeeeyaaatch!!!) and moved to bum-fuck nowhere. It actually cost me a considerable amount of money to sew up all my affairs. (cancel contracts, get rid of a lease, make arrangements) It's incredibly cost-prohibitive to break a routine in an American city, and relocate. It took some clever bureaucracy hacks, negotiating a complex sea of contingencies, and ultimately a good deal of material sacrifice to make it happen. The 'rat race' is not exactly 'designed' at all. As an inadvertent consequence, it is not designed to allow one to leave it easily.

It seems that you view these services, which are luxuries, as options for the people that have to provide these services in order to survive in the modern American urban environment. They generally can't afford these luxuries. Nobodies blaming, or complaining about tech companies providing services. People are blaming tech companies and complaining about the effects of tech companies arbitraging value from economic systems that already existed, further increasing the concentration of wealth (which is ostensibly access to resources) among those who can already afford to invest in building the mechanisms to arbitrage said value. And, quite frankly, some of us are getting annoyed with people who defend companies that actually influence legislature on local and national levels to enable this arbitrage to the detriment of the citizenship of these regions, while shoving advertising, and news stories in our faces, labeling this arbitrage as the quintessential if not sole definition of human progress.

Also, this article was comedy, and hilarious.

Re: “Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse

#132

Post by manigandham »

iamdave wrote: post #65

The take-away about Seamless I overheard in real time in a frightening way. Sitting in the smoking area, waiting for a coworker to come grab me for work, two of my neighbors were talking about how they actively avoided becoming friends with other neighbors, they just didn't want that kind of connection and preferred that neighbors just stayed in their lane as people who ostensibly share a dwelling in the same high-ri…

That has nothing to do with Seamless. People avoid each other if/when they want to and there are thousands of factors that play into this.

Everyone's different. Find the neighborhood that you're comfortable with.

Re: “Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse

#133

Post by ohnotthatguy »

edoceo wrote: post #130
ohnotthatguy wrote: post #70

Great post. I had been working on a pitch for Uber for Wet Nurses but didn't realize my target demographic was actually 20's to 30's white males. Maybe I should crunch the numbers again. Now to counteract the 'Seamless effect', we should build an Uber for Companionship & Human Contact, you know.. like an Uber for 'Dating'. We can reap a percentage of the income the companion makes from the date...

Yea, like a pimp!

If only there was a way to pimp people who were providing a legal service, like giving people rides, or delivering food, or providing lodging...

Re: “Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse

#134

Post by adrienne »

_andromeda_ wrote: post #124
adrienne wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do know that "technology" and "capitalism" are not synonyms, right? And that a whole lot of technological advances have occurred outside of a capitalist context? It serves the interests of the powerful to pretend like we have to have both, but it's just not true.

>And that a whole lot of technological advances have occurred outside of a capitalist context? Please enlighten me on when such instances have occurred.

Oh my fucking god.

Re: “Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse

#135

Post by _andromeda_ »

adrienne wrote: post #134
_andromeda_ wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And that a whole lot of technological advances have occurred outside of a capitalist context? Please enlighten me on when such instances have occurred.

Oh my fucking god.

Simple question. No need for profanity. Just seeking further clarification.

Re: “Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse

#136

Post by jacobush »

closeparen wrote: post #121
jacobush wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't we rant and wail a bit about how increasingly broken shit looks? Why always champion a proposal to fix things? But thanks for the idea that vilifying Airbnb is not going to help anyone. I agree. They exist only because we let them fill that particular part of the biosphere. Maybe we shouldn't let them.

Who do you think is made better off by keeping that role in the biosphere vacant?

To keep the analogy, some species we remove from the biosphere and replace with others. Airbnb and Uber etc look like the fast spread of an invasive species.

Re: “Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse

#137

Post by dlss »

candiodari wrote: post #127
dlss wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rents are set by wages, prices by credit. NO. Prices are set by supply and demand. No one is being forced to take out a loan, and if they could buy a given home with a lower loan, they would. Hence the loan is only enabling demand. You could say the same thing about employment, or inheritance, or tax breaks. The only reason prices change is because supply or demand changes. You are basically saying that you'd like…

> Hence the loan is only enabling demand. > The only reason prices change is because supply or demand changes. We are living in year 16 of the era of government pushing loan prices lower than the market would set them. 8th year since they've been pushing the loan pricing down VERY hard (ie. essentially to the zero bound, where you're only paying for the (also artificially lowered) risk of the banks, admin (ie. people…

I mean, in some sense you're right. The literal USD figure is determined that way. However, if you doubled the number of dollars in circulation, and so "doubled the cost" of every home... you've also changed nothing in terms of real cost to consumers. As you say, they're still working just as many hours on the job, still giving the same percentage of their labor to the lender, and they still end up with a house at the end of ~xx years.

If the banks weren't giving the same risk adjusted rates to everyone, you can at least make the argument now that you've got two consumers (the bank is essentially donating money for the purchase to the buyer). But I don't see where that gets us here.

Re: “Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse

#138

Post by _andromeda_ »

tmuir wrote: post #126
_andromeda_ wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>capitalism and technology don't have unintended consequences is intellectually dishonest Well argued. I respect that line of thought but I don't think I'm being 'intellectually dishonest'. The benefits of technology and capitalism greatly outweigh any negative consequences. It is almost trivial, negligible.

Where there is nuclear power, there is a nuclear bomb. Where there is air travel, there are hijackings. Where there are smartphones, there are intelligence agencies vacuuming up their data. Where there is easy access to your own financial information, there is easy access to other's financial information. Where there is instant access to the worlds information, there is instant access to easy marks for charlatans and…

People die on roads everyday. Should we stop using vehicles?

Re: “Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse

#140

Post by branchless »

dlss wrote: post #137
candiodari wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hence the loan is only enabling demand. > The only reason prices change is because supply or demand changes. We are living in year 16 of the era of government pushing loan prices lower than the market would set them. 8th year since they've been pushing the loan pricing down VERY hard (ie. essentially to the zero bound, where you're only paying for the (also artificially lowered) risk of the banks, admin (ie. people…

I mean, in some sense you're right. The literal USD figure is determined that way. However, if you doubled the number of dollars in circulation, and so "doubled the cost" of every home... you've also changed nothing in terms of real cost to consumers. As you say, they're still working just as many hours on the job, still giving the same percentage of their labor to the lender, and they still end up with a house at th…

Nope. They change lending from 3 times primary income to way over 3 times household income. People are literally working longer for the same pile of bricks.

The cost of carry remains associated with wages just as rent does because we have to pay more, however as the cost of other items falls (due to efficiency / progress) the bankers hoover up the rest.

http://imgur.com/XS99m5v.jpg

We work longer, we work harder, and the bankers kick back.

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