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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

#181

Post by reading-at-work »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #140
reading-at-work wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm genuinely curious, have you taken a cab lately? Can you honestly say you prefer that experience to what Uber or Lyft provides? I understand what that quote is saying, but I feel it's a false equivalency. There are already cars on the road in NYC. It's not like adding 10,000 horses to Central Park. Overall, the regulations on the taxi industry are the reason Uber and Lyft have been so successful - because they ski…

It / this article / this issue really isn't about the consumer; they'll pick whichever option is cheapest. It's about sustainable employment. Are you comfortable paying, I dunno, $5 for a ride that would normally cost $15, knowing your driver has been working for 16 hours and still hasn't earned enough today to pay rent or pay for fuel? One could make the argument / defense that the driver chose to, nobody made him,…

"knowing your driver has been working for 16 hours and still hasn't earned enough today to pay rent or pay for fuel?"

See, that's the part I take issue with. That's pure assumption. Lots of my drivers have been college students working part-time for some extra cash on the side, not full-time workers trying to support themselves. I usually tip my drivers too since I know the base price isn't much.

That said, I know it's not a perfect system and it has its own problems. Still, I do view it as a voluntary arrangement, and often driving is a better option for people than working at a fast food joint or a similar minimum-wage job.

What type of regulations on Uber and Lyft would you propose?

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

#182

Post by api »

bbddg wrote: post #150
api wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's harder than just shifting the economic system. The problem is that human beings (or at least a lot of them) willingly and almost instinctively follow psychopaths and narcissists. As long as that's the case then these behaviors will be rewarded in any and all economic systems. The rules for how money moves around do not change human psychology.

You don't think the constant drive for profit encourages people to indulge their worst qualities? I'm not saying that people can't be naturally selfish and narcissistic, but people can also naturally be kind, generous, and compassionate. If there was an economic system that didn't put profit above all else I think you would see more of the latter qualities.

All major experiments in full blown socialism have turned into mafia states. The drive for profit exists regardless of political system.

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

#183

Post by turc1656 »

bbddg wrote: post #87
avoutthere wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your workers are doing "fairly basic tasks", why should you be forced to pay them more than their work is worth?

He doesn't pay them how much their work is worth. He pays less, that's how he makes money.

That's how every single profitable business operates. It's not a bad thing, it's a requirement. If a business pays you exactly the value you bring to them, then they do not earn anything from employing you, and have no profits to reinvestment into the business or reward investors for taking the risk of investing in the business. For this reason, not a single person who isn't self-employed ever gets paid "what they are worth". There is "fair market wage", but that is all.

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

#184

Post by emodendroket »

jumbopapa wrote: post #80
reading-at-work wrote: post #67

"The reign of the all-powerful capitalist class has returned with a vengeance. The job conditions of working men and women, thrust backward, will not improve until they regain the militancy and rebuild the popular organizations that seized power from the capitalists." ... "The ruling capitalists will be as vicious as they were in the past. Nothing enrages the rich more than having to part with a fraction of their obs…

I agree. The whole article is basically saying that it's unfair that they have competition now. Sure, cab drivers may not be making as good of a living as before, but in general everyone else has gained a lot in regards to lower fares.

The same process repeating itself across multiple industries would seem, to me, to send us hurtling toward a two-tiered society.

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

#185

Post by reading-at-work »

bbddg wrote: post #169
Fins wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But isn't it at least a little bit curious that any and everyone trying to implement it did an equally terrible job?

Back when people were trying to overthrow monarchies to introduce democracy and capitalism it didn't exactly go smoothly either. Capitalism in America might not have even been possible without the extensive use of slave labor and the genocide of an entire continent of people. There is such an ahistorical bend to anti-socialist rhetoric that is so pervasive in our society it's nearly impossible to see.

"Capitalism in America might not have even been possible without the extensive use of slave labor and the genocide of an entire continent of people"

Rolling my eyes pretty hard at that one. Can you elaborate? Do you really think the whole system would have failed without slave labor? How was the capitalist economy different back then, such that free labor was absolutely necessary for it to be sustained?

"There is such an ahistorical bend to anti-socialist rhetoric"

I would say the same about pro-socialist rhetoric. The whole "let's ignore what happened the last dozen times a country tried full socialism, and try it again" rhetoric is pretty selectively ignorant of history, wouldn't you say?

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

#186

Post by bbddg »

api wrote: post #182
bbddg wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think the constant drive for profit encourages people to indulge their worst qualities? I'm not saying that people can't be naturally selfish and narcissistic, but people can also naturally be kind, generous, and compassionate. If there was an economic system that didn't put profit above all else I think you would see more of the latter qualities.

All major experiments in full blown socialism have turned into mafia states. The drive for profit exists regardless of political system.

I'm not advocating for turning the US into the USSR. There are lessons to be learned, good and bad, from experiments in socialism. The US is turning into an Oligarchy and we can't even get socialized healthcare because people have such a knee-jerk reaction to anything that dares challenge any free market.

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

#187

Post by stillsut »

Lavery wrote: post #138
jillesvangurp wrote: post #109

How can you write an article like this without bringing up self driving cars? The end game for Uber is to get drivers out of the loop completely. So, this is just a temporary problem. It's going to get a whole lot worse if your plan in life is to drive vehicles around to make money. This is not about the gig economy but simply about a lot of jobs becoming commodities before being automated away completely. Anyone wit…

People constantly cite self-driving cars as Uber's salvation, but never really seem to think through the implication. Hypothetically, let's say that self-driving cars are invented next year. Necessarily, these will start in high-end vehicles (as nearly all new car features do) before getting rolled out to the broader ecosystem. Now if you're Uber you face one of two choices: 1) You enter into perhaps the most capital…

In the short term, the autonomous vehicles are 5% of a large market fleets (like NYC). Uber plays around with how to deploy their literal robots (not unreliable contractors) in surge situations. Also they try new flavors of ride hailing: there's cross-country ubers, and wait-for-you-at-pickup-without-getting-mad ubers. These pilot programs give them a chance to learn how to maintenance the fleet with economies of scale.

As the tech becomes cheaper and more available, some people do end up owning an autonomous car. They'll own them mainly for keeping a clean vehicle with their supplies packed into them. But in urban areas, most people chose to rent, which is a pretty tricky business: it's an unsupervised $50k asset you're renting at $5-$10 a pop without a deposit. Very few people are going to want to touch that business, especially when first mover already has a rating on everyone - meaning your first "customers" are the ones uber identified as troublemakers and already banned.

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

#188

Post by humanrebar »

stevenwoo wrote: post #178
reading-at-work wrote: post #67

"The reign of the all-powerful capitalist class has returned with a vengeance. The job conditions of working men and women, thrust backward, will not improve until they regain the militancy and rebuild the popular organizations that seized power from the capitalists." ... "The ruling capitalists will be as vicious as they were in the past. Nothing enrages the rich more than having to part with a fraction of their obs…

This author made the mistake of trying to overgeneralize from the New York taxi industry, but most American job growth since 2005 has been temp work/contracting, Uber/Lyft are just the most visible for one industry - this kind of explains the general unease/longing for the past we saw in a sizeable percentage of the electorate expressed in the 2016 election in both parties. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/m…

Arguably full-time employment is:

* more like serfdom than having several bosses you can replace as needed

* historically more of an anomaly than juggling a few side hustles like fishing and delivering mail and giving boat tours

Besides, it seems like employment law is more to blame for the lack of full time jobs. At least more to blame than companies that hire part time workers. If, economically, we want more full time employment, it needs to be more attractive to workers and employers than lots of part time employment.

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

#189

Post by emodendroket »

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.

But it's an opinion piece in a left-wing publication.

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

#190

Post by emodendroket »

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…

Perhaps so, but we built up a system where that was a retirement plan that made sense and then pulled the rug out from people who were depending on it, and that happened to coincide with the wages for the work plummeting, making it very difficult to pursue an alternate plan.
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