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Service for Some, Slavery for Others

gerrymcgovern.com

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Re: Service for Some, Slavery for Others

#31

Post by baq »

seibelj wrote: post #26
toomuchtodo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most ridesharing drivers are ignorant of the expenses they're incurring, and therefore the effective wage they're receiving. Just because you know how to survive doesn't mean you know how to calculate the return on your time and vehicle investment (clearly, as American personal finance education is woefully inadequate). I find arguments such as that put forth as deeply disingenuous, that most people are rational, exc…

> I'm disgusted really, at arguments... that attempt to insinuate that most people are rational See - this is where we fundamentally disagree. I don't think that "most" lower-income people are exploited, drooling idiots who get taken for a ride by corporations, the rich, or whatever villain you want to point to. I do believe most people rationally make decisions, even if you disagree with those decisions. Banning peo…

In my experience this kind of argument is usually given by people who don’t understand what does it mean to be poor. Poverty incapacitates the rational mind; economic reason is replaced by survival instinct. There was a paper not that long ago that said that people are only rational when they’re concentrating on the decision at hand. If you live paycheck to paycheck and have to make decisions like food or medicine daily, your mental reserves are depleted.

Whether Uber drivers are this poor is an open question; I’d wager some are.

Re: Service for Some, Slavery for Others

#32

Post by [deleted] »

baq wrote: post #31
seibelj wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm disgusted really, at arguments... that attempt to insinuate that most people are rational See - this is where we fundamentally disagree. I don't think that "most" lower-income people are exploited, drooling idiots who get taken for a ride by corporations, the rich, or whatever villain you want to point to. I do believe most people rationally make decisions, even if you disagree with those decisions. Banning peo…

In my experience this kind of argument is usually given by people who don’t understand what does it mean to be poor. Poverty incapacitates the rational mind; economic reason is replaced by survival instinct. There was a paper not that long ago that said that people are only rational when they’re concentrating on the decision at hand. If you live paycheck to paycheck and have to make decisions like food or medicine da…

[deleted]

Re: Service for Some, Slavery for Others

#33

Post by simonebrunozzi »

atemerev wrote: post #3

Uber is making life of Uber drivers better, by giving them the option to be an Uber driver and providing customers and rules of engagement. It creates new means of earning a living, instead of taking it away. What is even the question? It is not the best job in the world, but surely beats no job at all.

With the same thinking, you should also praise sweat shops in developing countries - better to earn $0.10/hour than no income at all, right?

Re: Service for Some, Slavery for Others

#34

Post by atemerev »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #33
atemerev wrote: post #3

Uber is making life of Uber drivers better, by giving them the option to be an Uber driver and providing customers and rules of engagement. It creates new means of earning a living, instead of taking it away. What is even the question? It is not the best job in the world, but surely beats no job at all.

With the same thinking, you should also praise sweat shops in developing countries - better to earn $0.10/hour than no income at all, right?

If nobody forces people to go there and artificially limit their options and competition, yes, these are better than the alternative (dying from starvation). Is there anything wrong with the logic there?

Re: Service for Some, Slavery for Others

#35

Post by exelius »

atemerev wrote: post #21
exelius wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I vehemently disagree with this. It was maybe true in the beginning when payouts were subsidized by VC, but the most recent rounds of driver payout cuts have led to a situation where a lot of drivers are recent immigrants who “lease” cars on a daily basis (at a rate around 75% of what they make a day). Many speak next to zero English; but that’s ok because Google Maps is localized in their native tongue. I’d say most…

Yes, and yet people still do that voluntarily. Because it beats staying in their home countries. It provides them with the means to adapt to the new place of living, and then move to a better job. Without this step on the ladder, they would live much more miserable lives.

So that means we should encourage low-wage slavery?

Re: Service for Some, Slavery for Others

#36

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

gfodor wrote: post #13

I hate "analysis" like this, which is divorced from data or trends over time to make fair comparisions. Here are some actual questions worth answering, and likely could be, based upon data: - What income levels are Uber drivers (and others being paid by these companies) within their region? How do these wages compare to other non-skilled, non-physical labor? - When asked, what do these workers say about their working…

When asked, what do these workers say about their working conditions?

My sample is quite small, but from quick chats with Uber drivers they seemed to like it.

You won't become a millionaire driving Uber, but it's better than being a deli clerk in a grocery store next door.

Re: Service for Some, Slavery for Others

#37

Post by atemerev »

exelius wrote: post #35
atemerev wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and yet people still do that voluntarily. Because it beats staying in their home countries. It provides them with the means to adapt to the new place of living, and then move to a better job. Without this step on the ladder, they would live much more miserable lives.

So that means we should encourage low-wage slavery?

I am an immigrant, from Russia to Switzerland. I don’t have any right to Swiss social security and welfare (despite paying taxes here). I am happy that I have at least something by default if I won’t be able to work in my profession for any reason anymore. Uber is my safety net — if I still can drive a car, I can sustain my living. It works the same for other immigrants.

And yes, I much prefer driving an Uber here to living and working in Russia.

Re: Service for Some, Slavery for Others

#38

Post by pariahHN »

seibelj wrote: post #6
caprese wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The person driving your Uber likely chose that to make money, rather than all the other ways they could have made money, because they prefer it. or didn't perceive the other ways, or didn't have resources for other ways, or wasn't approved for the subset of other ways that they both perceived and had resources for

You assume that uber drivers are ignorant. I assume that people know how to live their own lives. They had the resources to acquire a car and a driver's license. There are many, many worse jobs out there than driving a car.

Something I learned very, very rapidly when I started building things that other people actually used: one of the absolute worst things you can do is assume that the people using what you make either 1) know what they are doing 2) skimmed the manual/docs 3) are capable of doing anything that isn't explicitly stated in their list of things to do.

There are of course underlying reasons for these issues - lack of sleep, the marathon of raising children, the struggle of staying on top of bills, too many things to do in too few hours - but that does NOT invalidate them and you cannot design a system that ignores those issues and depends in part on human interaction and expect it to actually work consistently and properly.

A couple things I have read this past year suggest that mainstream economists are finally waking up to what people in tech support have known for decades. Never assume someone is acting rationally/has all the information/doesn't have extenuating circumstance, because you will probably be wrong.

Re: Service for Some, Slavery for Others

#39

Post by EnderViaAnsible »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #36
gfodor wrote: post #13

I hate "analysis" like this, which is divorced from data or trends over time to make fair comparisions. Here are some actual questions worth answering, and likely could be, based upon data: - What income levels are Uber drivers (and others being paid by these companies) within their region? How do these wages compare to other non-skilled, non-physical labor? - When asked, what do these workers say about their working…

When asked, what do these workers say about their working conditions? My sample is quite small, but from quick chats with Uber drivers they seemed to like it. You won't become a millionaire driving Uber, but it's better than being a deli clerk in a grocery store next door.

I wonder how their feelings might change when the maintenance costs come home to roost, when their frequent driving involves them in an accident their insurance company refuses to cover (because they have personal use insurance), and now they have neither car nor job, etc.

Basically, it seems to me that there is a lot of deferred cost and risk and that people are, in general, very bad at assessing. Perhaps the job is not worth it if you factor in these long term factors, but most people have not yet had to factor them in. (As our OP said, data would be nice here. When do these costs come home for drivers? What do they say then?)

One thing I will say. Professionalization and licensure certainly brings its own hazards, but one thing it almost always does is drive up wages for the licensee. The taxi market in NYC is wacked out, but taxi drivers can usually enjoy a decent standard of living in major metros with licensed taxi systems.

Re: Service for Some, Slavery for Others

#40

Post by EnderViaAnsible »

seibelj wrote: post #2

Good customer support agents are highly valued by many tech companies where support is a key value-add to their solution. Three of the companies I have worked for paid very well for top-tier CX employees. Just like some developers are treated by their companies as an expense, other companies highly value developers and pay them well. This is the same with customer support, and good support agents who are feeling mist…

Perhaps your assertion that we worry about this too much is true, but I do take issue with your hidden assumption that merit is directly proportional to effort. That is, the org chart you present presupposes that only lazy, ill-motivated people stay at the bottom.

But the truth is that some people are not very good at anything, and many people will never be the best at anything, no matter how hard they try. Some people are born mentally slower, more socially inept, physically weaker than others. Some people are born into bad circumstances (and a bad childhood can screw your whole life up at worst), others are dealt a shit hand by fate. (Your insurance company can pay for your back surgery if you're rear-ended, but they can't guarantee it's fixed, or even bearable...)

None of the people in these categories are less motivated or more responsible for these problems than others...although, indeed, we tend to despise laziness more if the person is already bad at their job, and it is easy to mistake incompetence for a moral issue. (After all, why the cliché about malice and stupidity if not?)

So yes, all of the talented, motivated people with prolonged bouts of stable home lives, good backgrounds, good health, etc., will rise to the top and get paid accordingly.

Some of those talented and motivated people will be left behind by the system. Personally, I do think it matters what the system does in moderate case.

Most systems that work at all correctly reward and punish best cases and worst cases. But what about the middle? People who are not especially talented or especially qualified or especially stable or especially healthy? When these people enter the system, what happens to them?

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