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>Alan B. Krueger, a former chief economist to President Obama, and Seth D. Harris, a former deputy labor secretary, argued in a paper released this week that ma

>Alan B. Krueger, a former chief economist to President Obama, and Seth D. Harris, a former deputy labor secretary, argued in a paper released this week that many workers in the so-called online gig economy should have more rights and protections than most do now. At the same time, they wrote, “forcing these new forms of work into a traditional employment relationship could be an existential threat to the emergence of online-intermediated work.” It would be brutal to Uber's profitability, titanic valuation and possibly even their existence, but online-intermediated work is here to stay. Since their profitability is largely predicated on maintaining the current upward transfer of wealth (from drivers who create the wealth to shareholders who don't), they would, of course, prefer to keep treating their drivers as independent contractors who can be kept precariously employed.

ProAm 11y ago
> but online-intermediated work is here to stay Here to stay but may be soon regulated.
UK-AL 11y ago
If it was transferring wealth from drivers to shareholders, they wouldn't do the job. They chose to do the job, so it is at least better than the alternative options they could do.
- cryoshon 11y ago
  The "wealth" that is getting transferred is a bit more abstract than money going directly from the worker's pocket into the shareholder's. Instead, it looks more like the worker's personal vehicle being worn down over time by work done for the purposes of the company rather than personal purposes. The worker's capital is depreciating more rapidly than during personal use, and the profits generated by this erosion of asset are going to the shareholders, not the worker. The worker receives pay for his labor, but receives nothing for the gradual depreciation of his capital that results from the terms of the gig labor.
  - UK-AL 11y ago
    I'm fairly sure money received from doing business with uber is meant to account for both depreciation and salary. If you pay money to a company you don't pay separately for labour and deprecation of assets. You pay a single price, it's up the company how to split it. If the company doesn't set aside the money for depreciation and renewal of assets , they will soon realise and stop doing that activity if its unprofitable. Stop treating uber drivers like children.
    - dasil003 11y ago
      Depreciation not deprecation.
  - AJ007 11y ago
    As far as we the public know right now, the only wealth transfer Uber has produced is from investors to drivers and other parties.
    - crdoconnor 11y ago
      From investors to customers, perhaps. Definitely not investors to drivers though. Uber are subsidizing rides in the hopes that they can squeeze out the competition, at which point they will jack up prices and milk their monopoly as hard as they can. Whether there is an actual wealth transfer going on depends on whether Uber's bet will be successful. That in turn depends upon whether they can keep classifying drivers as contractors.
      - leereeves 11y ago
        For this reason, as consumers, it's in our long-term interest to use Uber competitors instead of Uber.
  - AJ007 11y ago
    As far as we the public know right now, the only wealth transfer Uber has produced is from investors to drivers and other parties.
- deleted 11y ago
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- deleted 11y ago
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- crdoconnor 11y ago
  >If it was transferring wealth from drivers to shareholders, they wouldn't do the job. > >They chose to do the job, so it is at least better than the alternative options they could do. You've hit upon the reason why austerity is so 'popular': it artificially constrains aggregate demand for labor, reducing available options, which allows businesses to suppress wages for workers, despite them creating the same amount of wealth they were before. There simply don't exist jobs in which workers get to keep the vast majority of the wealth they create. You can't choose to do them. They aren't an option. There just exist jobs where you get to keep relatively more or less. Uber is in the latter category, and people take it because they have fewer options.
  - ethbro 11y ago
    Cooperatives / employee-owned collectives? Say what you want about efficiencies, but there are absolutely alternatives, especially in non-capital intensive industries.
    - crdoconnor 11y ago
      Cooperatives still need to pay rent, purchase raw materials and have access to the capital. All of those factors are ways in which the wealth created by the cooperative's labor can be diverted to the 1%. That said, ride sharing cooperatives would be vastly superior alternative to Uber. If cities mandated that ride sharing organizations had to be cooperatives, that would be one way in which they could stem the outflow of wealth and provide a decent middle class job to their citizens.
      - ethbro 11y ago
        Granted. But just because we can't realize the final solution to the capitalist bourgeoise swine isn't a reason against an ownership structure that promotes more employee equity. ;) The honest argument is probably access to capital. When you boil it down, why would a capital owner trust a structure that was fairly antithetical to him or her and their pals? It's starting off with a fairly big black mark. And then of course there's the "too many leaders, not enough followers" issue. I'd love any links that pointed to whether anyone has come up with a good solution to the tension between the efficiencies of centralized control and the equality of diffuse control in a general manner. I thought Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars idea of a truly randomly elected legislative body was interesting. Jury duty for legislature, in essence. Albeit you'd probably need a separate body to develop professionalism.
- kevinskii 11y ago
  Indeed. A couple of my distant in-laws are now full-time Uber drivers in a medium sized city. They're making comfortable middle clas incomes--far more than they've been able to earn to date anywhere else.
cryoshon 11y ago
Regarding your comment on the upward transfer of wealth: that's the "gig economy" for you. In reality, the gig economy is a feature of late capitalism's final race to the bottom wherein information technology has enabled businesses to access previously untapped small private capital (cars or whatever else) to be utilized by the owners as an adjunct/prerequisite to selling their labor. Thus, the small private capital is requisitioned at large scale for the purposes of the large capital business owner, allowing them to avoid paying the cost of actually onboarding and maintaining the small capital purchases. The labor bought by the business owner is expendable and limitless, thanks to information technology; the entire venture is only possible by trading a pittance of labor costs and getting both steady labor and the use of small capital items in return. The gig economy allows the rich to take value from the small amounts of capital that are readily and equally distributed among the working class in the form of their cars or whatever else. Paying for the labor and getting both labor and capital is brilliant, but people don't realize that they're consenting to an economic situation that looks a lot like robbery.
- ethbro 11y ago
  Side question: at least in the US tax code, can you not write wear and tear on your Uber vehicle off as depreciation? https://ttlc.intuit.com/questions/2722277-what-can-an-uber-driver-deduct https://ttlc.intuit.com/questions/2722277-what-can-an-uber-d...
- jackcosgrove 11y ago
  The gig economy is caused by a surplus of labor from very high birthrates 20-40 years ago. It will disappear in the future because of falling birthrates around the world.
jfoster 11y ago
Even from the point of view of Uber differentiating in terms of customer experience. Any driver at the moment who gets too many 1-star or 2-star ratings will be cut off. That's a great thing for customers; it means you can expect a usual experience that's really good. From an employment perspective, it would seem less certain. For example, are customers being fair & balanced, free of any racism, sexism, and so on in their ratings? Being able to fire drivers due to low ratings seems essential to keep high standards, but there's also the possibility that it allows for customers who are not fair to cause drivers to be cut off through no fault of their own.

ProAm 11y ago

> but online-intermediated work is here to stay Here to stay but may be soon regulated.

UK-AL 11y ago

If it was transferring wealth from drivers to shareholders, they wouldn't do the job. They chose to do the job, so it is at least better than the alternative options they could do.

cryoshon 11y ago
The "wealth" that is getting transferred is a bit more abstract than money going directly from the worker's pocket into the shareholder's. Instead, it looks more like the worker's personal vehicle being worn down over time by work done for the purposes of the company rather than personal purposes. The worker's capital is depreciating more rapidly than during personal use, and the profits generated by this erosion of asset are going to the shareholders, not the worker. The worker receives pay for his labor, but receives nothing for the gradual depreciation of his capital that results from the terms of the gig labor.
- UK-AL 11y ago
  I'm fairly sure money received from doing business with uber is meant to account for both depreciation and salary. If you pay money to a company you don't pay separately for labour and deprecation of assets. You pay a single price, it's up the company how to split it. If the company doesn't set aside the money for depreciation and renewal of assets , they will soon realise and stop doing that activity if its unprofitable. Stop treating uber drivers like children.
  - dasil003 11y ago
    Depreciation not deprecation.
- AJ007 11y ago
  As far as we the public know right now, the only wealth transfer Uber has produced is from investors to drivers and other parties.
  - crdoconnor 11y ago
    From investors to customers, perhaps. Definitely not investors to drivers though. Uber are subsidizing rides in the hopes that they can squeeze out the competition, at which point they will jack up prices and milk their monopoly as hard as they can. Whether there is an actual wealth transfer going on depends on whether Uber's bet will be successful. That in turn depends upon whether they can keep classifying drivers as contractors.
    - leereeves 11y ago
      For this reason, as consumers, it's in our long-term interest to use Uber competitors instead of Uber.
- AJ007 11y ago
  As far as we the public know right now, the only wealth transfer Uber has produced is from investors to drivers and other parties.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
crdoconnor 11y ago
>If it was transferring wealth from drivers to shareholders, they wouldn't do the job. > >They chose to do the job, so it is at least better than the alternative options they could do. You've hit upon the reason why austerity is so 'popular': it artificially constrains aggregate demand for labor, reducing available options, which allows businesses to suppress wages for workers, despite them creating the same amount of wealth they were before. There simply don't exist jobs in which workers get to keep the vast majority of the wealth they create. You can't choose to do them. They aren't an option. There just exist jobs where you get to keep relatively more or less. Uber is in the latter category, and people take it because they have fewer options.
- ethbro 11y ago
  Cooperatives / employee-owned collectives? Say what you want about efficiencies, but there are absolutely alternatives, especially in non-capital intensive industries.
  - crdoconnor 11y ago
    Cooperatives still need to pay rent, purchase raw materials and have access to the capital. All of those factors are ways in which the wealth created by the cooperative's labor can be diverted to the 1%. That said, ride sharing cooperatives would be vastly superior alternative to Uber. If cities mandated that ride sharing organizations had to be cooperatives, that would be one way in which they could stem the outflow of wealth and provide a decent middle class job to their citizens.
    - ethbro 11y ago
      Granted. But just because we can't realize the final solution to the capitalist bourgeoise swine isn't a reason against an ownership structure that promotes more employee equity. ;) The honest argument is probably access to capital. When you boil it down, why would a capital owner trust a structure that was fairly antithetical to him or her and their pals? It's starting off with a fairly big black mark. And then of course there's the "too many leaders, not enough followers" issue. I'd love any links that pointed to whether anyone has come up with a good solution to the tension between the efficiencies of centralized control and the equality of diffuse control in a general manner. I thought Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars idea of a truly randomly elected legislative body was interesting. Jury duty for legislature, in essence. Albeit you'd probably need a separate body to develop professionalism.
kevinskii 11y ago
Indeed. A couple of my distant in-laws are now full-time Uber drivers in a medium sized city. They're making comfortable middle clas incomes--far more than they've been able to earn to date anywhere else.

cryoshon 11y ago

Regarding your comment on the upward transfer of wealth: that's the "gig economy" for you. In reality, the gig economy is a feature of late capitalism's final race to the bottom wherein information technology has enabled businesses to access previously untapped small private capital (cars or whatever else) to be utilized by the owners as an adjunct/prerequisite to selling their labor. Thus, the small private capital is requisitioned at large scale for the purposes of the large capital business owner, allowing them to avoid paying the cost of actually onboarding and maintaining the small capital purchases. The labor bought by the business owner is expendable and limitless, thanks to information technology; the entire venture is only possible by trading a pittance of labor costs and getting both steady labor and the use of small capital items in return. The gig economy allows the rich to take value from the small amounts of capital that are readily and equally distributed among the working class in the form of their cars or whatever else. Paying for the labor and getting both labor and capital is brilliant, but people don't realize that they're consenting to an economic situation that looks a lot like robbery.

ethbro 11y ago
Side question: at least in the US tax code, can you not write wear and tear on your Uber vehicle off as depreciation? https://ttlc.intuit.com/questions/2722277-what-can-an-uber-driver-deduct https://ttlc.intuit.com/questions/2722277-what-can-an-uber-d...
jackcosgrove 11y ago
The gig economy is caused by a surplus of labor from very high birthrates 20-40 years ago. It will disappear in the future because of falling birthrates around the world.

jfoster 11y ago

Even from the point of view of Uber differentiating in terms of customer experience. Any driver at the moment who gets too many 1-star or 2-star ratings will be cut off. That's a great thing for customers; it means you can expect a usual experience that's really good. From an employment perspective, it would seem less certain. For example, are customers being fair & balanced, free of any racism, sexism, and so on in their ratings? Being able to fire drivers due to low ratings seems essential to keep high standards, but there's also the possibility that it allows for customers who are not fair to cause drivers to be cut off through no fault of their own.