Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How the gig economy is making life harder for North American workers

macleans.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 151 posts

Re: How the gig economy is making life harder for North American workers

#91

Post by candiodari »

randycupertino wrote: post #73
aphextron wrote: post #16

Have you eaten in at a take out place lately? It's literally nothing but ageing, disheveled looking people who could barely operate a smartphone running in and out desperately, working either Uber Eats, Doordash, etc. stacking orders, getting stressed out over maybe making $3. It's the most depressing fucking thing I have ever seen. Maybe there's an argument to be made that these people are better off than they would…

Totally agree- have seen the vibe you describe above at numerous restaurants lately. The part that saddens me is the food recipient tends to take it out on the delivery person, "Food was cold!! ZERO STARS, NO TIP!!" when in actuality that person was given an impossible task- to deliver more food per hour than the laws of physics over time and distance would allow without teleportation. I work in property development…

Sssshhhh, or you'll come up with another very real factor: the utter inability of people to accept the slightest compromise on anything. Quality, nope. Price, nope. Even just taking the delivery person's job into account a bit, nope.

Perhaps I should stop being surprised when hearing about people going into the emergency room because they have a scratch on their leg, then yelling and even attacking medical personnel to the point they get arrested when prompt treatment is not provided.

And then apply that attitude to actual people. Needless to say, they complain about that too, yet do nothing.

Re: How the gig economy is making life harder for North American workers

#92

Post by candiodari »

aninteger wrote: post #32
tetromino_ wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The allure of gig jobs is the ability to turn an arbitrary number of your unproductive hours and an idle car into money. Sometimes you really need that money. I know some people who landed in hard situations where their usual day job would not be enough to cover rent + food + bills. But working the day job and spending 5-6 nights a week driving Uber would be enough. Granted: that's at the expense of not sleeping, not…

This is very sad. The last thing someone wants is a tired, exhausted driver driving them around.

See this is the problem. People just don't see giving other people a chance at a livable life as a factor in any decision.

Yes, it's probably less than ideal that tired drivers do this.

But, mostly, it's a very good thing that this person was able to survive and prevent another homeless family.

Let me guess, "the government should just provide for them ?" (without, of course, raising your taxes).

Re: How the gig economy is making life harder for North American workers

#93

Post by cornholio »

njarboe wrote: post #82
visarga wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually consider gig economy as a possible replacement for UBI and jobs, but not in this centralised form (Uber, etc). Instead, communities or social networks of people without corporate jobs could become self reliant by working for each other, to solve the community needs on the whole. When corporations take our jobs we still have our needs and lots of free time - and our needs create jobs or gigs. We can still w…

Funny how this utopian sounding idea is just a regular market economy without sales and income tax. Like the US before 1913. Too bad every time one interacts with someone else people with guns and prisons demand about 50% of the transaction. Set income and sales tax to zero and this could easily happen everywhere. It would be cool if some decent sized country would try it and use a land tax to fund the government.

A land tax trickles down as increased agricultural and housing prices. So it's strongly recessive, that is, it affects the poor to a much greater proportion than the rich.

The US before 1913 was a largely agricultural nation with strong equality due to fair capital allocation, free land distributed to homesteaders, manifest destiny and all that. Dispensing current means of income redistribution would mean reverting to a much more feudal, almost primitive state. The vast majority of people would have no agricultural property and no capital, just wages paid by immensely wealthy global capitalists that wouldn't owe any taxes.

Re: How the gig economy is making life harder for North American workers

#94

Post by cornholio »

rosser wrote: post #90
cornholio wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we are literally able to imagine the implications of an economic scenario where the market clearing wage for toilet cleaning is $200.000, with current purchasing parity (that is, every janitor could buy the equivalent of a nice suburban home, every year, or accumulate the equivalent of 100 acres / 40 hectares of land in capital, every year). That world would have more to do with a Star Trek episode than…

>>>> I was imagining a scenario where... Isn't the point of an imagined scenario not to be like current society in some way?

Sure, my point is that we are not really imagining it. It's like a 12 old imagining he could do his homework by tapping a magic wand, not realizing that possessing such a magic wand would make the whole concepts of homework, school or teachers irrelevant.

Re: How the gig economy is making life harder for North American workers

#95

Post by [deleted] »

wh313 wrote: post #45
dredmorbius wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the supple-side version of caveat emptor? How do you mean? "Employer beware" would be cave dico . Provider beware, provisor cave . Though it's not clear what dynamic you're pointing to.

Actually employer beware would be "cave conductor". Dico means "I say". Provisor comes from the verb vidi, and means "one who sees ahead," but I suppose you can use "patronus" instead to mean provider. So provider beware should be "cave patrone".

[deleted]

Re: How the gig economy is making life harder for North American workers

#96

Post by mamon »

gruez wrote: post #89
dionidium wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of drivers failed to adequately budget for the maintenance costs of their car Nearly every car owner fails to adequately budget for (or even understand) the full cost of ownership of their car :) Edit: I forgot my audience for a second. Guys, college-educated engineers and 1% developers aren't typical . People routinely fail to properly account for the TCO. The entire auto-sales mode…

>The entire auto-sales model is centered around tricking people into accepting terms worse than the perceived TCO. how? you mean long auto loan periods?

Rather, warranty that comes with mandatory technical inspections at authorized repair shops that cost you fortune, original spare parts that cost you another fortune, not to mention things like upgrading maps in your built in navigation system for 300 USD.

Re: How the gig economy is making life harder for North American workers

#97

Post by vinceguidry »

FundThrowaway wrote: post #52
maxxxxx wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gig economy is already bad enough for workers but in the US it's even worse due to the health care situation. We should get rid of any advantages corporations have over individuals like health insurance.

Do you have the scourge of zero hour contracts in the US? Basically a person can be contractually obligated to work when demanded but with no guarantees of minimum hours or salary.

No, I think at-will employment is the principle that makes that illegal. No judge or jury would hold up such a contract as binding.

Re: How the gig economy is making life harder for North American workers

#98

Post by magicbuzz »

FundThrowaway wrote: post #48
marsrover wrote: post #6

> On average, it estimated they were making $10.75 per hour in the Houston area, $8.77 per hour in Detroit, and $13.17 in Denver, which was slightly less than Walmart’s average full-time hourly rate in 2016 I'm not saying this is ok, but I think there are also more intangible things that come into play here. Working for Uber gives you the freedom to work when you want. You don't have to call in sick or find someone t…

I wonder how much the true cost is to the driver, not only are they having to pay fuel costs but the more miles a car does the less it's worth. It's almost like swap deal, swapping the future value of your car in return for cash today.

Factor in wear and tear on the seats/interior as well, that driving aro7nd by yourself wouldn’t normally occur (unless you have kids)

Re: How the gig economy is making life harder for North American workers

#99

Post by TomMarius »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #36
peterwwillis wrote: post #8

The gig economy is literally a product of a lack of economic security. As I've mentioned before, if suddenly people had enough money or assistance that they didn't need to gig to make ends meet, businesses like Uber and Lyft would have no more "independent contractors". They'd probably fold or have to raise prices above that of Taxis.

Maybe it's a different situation in other countries, but in New Zealand, a lot of uber drivers are actually former taxi drivers. They (at least used to) make more money driving for Uber than driving a taxi. Taxis have always been a gig economy, it's just that you used to have a big sticker on the side of your car. Taxi drivers have never been paid a wage.

Not true, many taxi firms pay their drivers a wage. It's not as usual though.

Re: How the gig economy is making life harder for North American workers

#100

Post by jexah »

flashman wrote: post #53
bryanlarsen wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be the other away around. The gig economy should only be for people that have economic security. If you've got food & rent covered some other way but want some extra cash for luxuries, it's nice to have the option to pick up a few gigs. Much of the marketing for Uber drivers implies this fantasy. Maybe BI will make this fantasy a reality.

> The gig economy should only be for people that have economic security. This would be a form of scabbing: taking jobs away from people that don't have economic security, to give disposable income to people that do .

Employers will hire the best for the job. Don't mistake meritocracy for scabbing, nobody is entitled to somebody else's money. Employment is, after all, a consensual trade between two parties.
Post reply on HN