it's the economy, stupid.
normal people have so little income that working multiple jobs to get by is mainstream.
this is a bad thing. it means that the people of our country are poor. defend it however you want.
“Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse
21–30 of 148 posts
Re: “Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse
#22Call 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…
> And if you don't want to do any of the above, that's fine too Most people have no choice on this. They have to work and it's just to subsist. Typical of hacker news that this would be the most up-voted comment. Regarding tech, the main change tech has brought is to allow very accurate tracking of debt. Most debt is created through land. Surplus value goes to the landlords and banks. Before this was not completely e…
Not everybody is struggling out there... tech has some of the highest salaries for any industry. It is workers that are not in tech like traditional taxi drivers which are losing out badly to these innovations.
Re: “Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse
#23Call 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…
If someone wants to fight the "unending hamster wheel of capitalism and technology", then certainly shutting up is a bad strategy. The reasons for making noise about this given in the article are not personal, but ideological. Presumably, it works as intended if it feels annoying.
Re: “Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'd like to see a Gig Economy Union myself. This is called "labor law". I'm personally looking forward to the IRS reaping its pound of flesh from Uber for contractor misclassification and the hundreds of millions of dollars in employer payroll back taxes and penalties that will be due.
Is it irony that, if this comes to pass, the government will use that money, made on the backs of mostly poor people in the USA, to drop bombs on mostly poor people on the other side of the world?
I'm hopeful the money will end up having to shore up social security or Medicare.
Re: “Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse
#25Most of the "mom-tech" could also be described as "nobility-tech", which allows the old services for the nobility to be bought at a fee. Anyway... > Mommy used to clean my room. A: Handy. > Mommy used to do my laundry. A: Flycleaners. You'd be surprised how desirable this is when you have Significant Life Issues and you don't want your home to be a disaster. While the "side hustle" being mandatory is not a good place…
I'm not sure what life issues you are referring to, but I sometimes find that when things are crazy in my working life, it helps to just switch it all off and do the laundry and clean the house. Standing out in the yard, pegging my shorts to the clothes line, surrounded by leafy trees and chirping bird can be nice.
And that's great for you.
When I get to the end of a stressful ten hour workday, personally, I'd rather not stare down the barrel of another 3-4 hours of house chores that have piled up due to the aforementioned ten hour work days.
And that's just normal life. Anyone living as a caregiver, for example, would probably love to do away with your idyllic vision of pegging clothes on the line in lieu of, say, taking a breath and going for a walk...
Re: “Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse
#26What the article misses is that consumers drive startups like Seamless and Uber up the totem pole. Sure, some have more money than others, but clearly, if Seamless is succeeding then it must've hit a nerve. I mean I don't live in NYC, but whenever I'm there, I honestly hate it. It feels like the biggest concentration of assholery in the entire US. And I'm not saying this like some hippie pot-smoking LA liberal (becau…
Or the massive price subsidies/market dumping allow them to outcompete local competitors in a era of longer hours and decreasing wages.
Re: “Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse
#27I... don't really think this is a good read, for a few reasons. Let's look at (what I think is) the thesis:
> Unfettered capitalism doesn’t give you time back or freedom or relaxation. It drills every orifice you have until a few more pennies drop out so the Q4 numbers look good for shareholders.
The article then moves on to (albeit articulately) name "gig economy" companies as the vehicle for this exploitation.
But are they? Without even thinking too hard, I think can of monstrous entities which are enemies of any notion of free market and which are far more easily understood as the machina of this phenomenon:
* We have 2 million people in prison in the United States. Many of them have done nothing wrong, at least in any common sense set of definitions. It's not a stretch to say that many of them, while in prison, are victims of torture and intentional emotional and mental destruction. Even those that aren't are marked with a scarlet letter essentially for life. And thus they are left unable to be anything but victims of this corpratocratic predation upon their release.
* The "health care" industry, empowered (in fact sustained almost entirely) by state-enshrined gatekeeper complexes and IP holdings, restrains these same people who "need a side hustle" from becoming healthy and independent of pharma, insurance, and hospitals.
* The US government debt is about to hit $20 trillion, leaving these folks holding a bag they never agreed to pick up.
* People are afraid to protest, much less disrupt, the above treatment. Police brutality, endemic and senseless state surveillance, the (accurate) sense that action in the streets is typically fruitless - these and other causes have people feeling lonely at home instead of realizing how common their dreams are.
I just don't think that the gig economy is any harbinger of horror, not does it exist today in an environment of "unfettered capitalism" - not that I advocate such a thing.
Nevertheless, with the elements I've named (and a dozen more like them) removed, these people looking for a "side hustle" might also be able to enjoy the fruits of the labor pool of which they're a part.
I'm actually quite optimistic that that insurgent companies and methodologies are a sign that we will overcome these hardships. We have an utterly impotent incoming president, faith in government nearly nonexistent, and at the same time, incredible innovation and radical thinking. This doesn't seem like a formula for continued exploitation to me.
Re: “Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse
#28Anyone who needs a title as dramatic as that is trying to sell you something.
Re: “Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it irony that, if this comes to pass, the government will use that money, made on the backs of mostly poor people in the USA, to drop bombs on mostly poor people on the other side of the world?
I'm hopeful the money will end up having to shore up social security or Medicare.
Dream on...
Re: “Side Hustle” as a Sign of the Apocalypse
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
While for the individual, this may seem true in the short term, fostering a perpetually desperate underclass tends to have quite negative long term consequences for everyone's health and safety. From what I've seen of California, the well-off are fine with this tilt towards Central American-style stratification. But at some point, this trajectory comes at the cost at allying themselves with some grotesque form of thu…
I'd like to see a Gig Economy Union myself. Sure I can hire an Uber, get my laundry handled, my shopping done, but I want to know the poor s.o.b. doing the work has benefits and a decent wage, and isn't being screwed over by the app-company-of-the-month.
I'd like to think that a startup in this space structured around profit sharing would quickly outcompete their competitors by attracting all the best laborers. But I think the reality is that some more feudal tech entity would do whatever it takes to destroy them. Structuring working relationships this way is as deeply ideological as it is opportunistic. At some point we're going to have to realize that this isn't just cutthroat Capitalism, but the explicit way some people want this to be.