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The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

329 points by type4 10y ago

cbanek 10y ago
Seems like in America it's hard to win. Either get paid not nearly enough and struggle to make ends meet, or get a high paid high stress job, still work all day and all night. Maybe we just have too much of that protestant work ethic?
- SwellJoe 10y ago
  Some might say "too much capitalism". I don't know many protestants.
  - WaxProlix 10y ago
    "Too much capitalism" would imply that the people who get money funneled to them at the top don't work hard enough (or take enough risk) to earn that money. Surely you don't believe that? edit: Sarcasm on HN is a bad idea. Obviously earning 400x a worker's wage is bullshit, there's no amount of work that justifies that.
    - sillysaurus3 10y ago
      I believe that. Family connections matter far more than how hard you work. I don't think it's unfair, or that there's too much capitalism, but it's the nature of the system. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig_qpNfXHIU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig_qpNfXHIU edit: Sarcasm on HN is a bad idea. Obviously earning 400x a worker's wage is bullshit, there's no amount of work that justifies that. Well, look at what Steve Jobs did for Apple. Regardless of whether he would've done that if he was paid less, how many workers was he worth? The natural follow-up question is then, why not pay them what they're worth? One reason CEOs are paid so much is to prevent them from making short-term decisions that optimize their stock price at the expense of long-term planning. If their entire compensation is tied to the stock price, there's no incentive for any CEO to try to do better than increase the stock price at any cost.
    - ifdefdebug 10y ago
      Look, while there are enough people getting money funneled to them at the top for sure work very hard. But those are not the seriously rich. Those are the subalterns, they earn about seven or eight figures a year and work hard for it. The seriously rich get to chose how much they want to work, if they want to work at all. Surely you know that? Edit: sarcasm is best perceived when the argument leads ad adsurdum. Now people at the top working very hard and taking risks happens all the time and your "Surely you don't believe that?" could have been just an arrogant attitude, so your sarcasm was hard to spot. But I'm glad to hear it was just sarcasm :)
      - milesrout 10y ago
        'Seven or eight figures' is seriously rich.
    - WalterBright 10y ago
      It's not at all about how hard you work. It's about working smart, i.e. working on the right things.
      - pikzen 10y ago
        Some people don't get to work on the right things. Hell, most people don't get to work on the right things, by virtue of not being born in the right social class, the right skin color, the right neighbourhood, the right family.
    - 4c2383f5c88e911 10y ago
      The issue is not the sarcasm, the issue is that there is now no way to differentiate that sarcasm from a non-sarcastic opinion on HN, because you can find people legitimately believing this.
    - rsync 10y ago
      "Obviously earning 400x a worker's wage is bullshit, there's no amount of work that justifies that." I don't think that's obvious, but let's stipulate that it's true. While there may be no amount of work that justifies it, there is an amount of ownership that justifies it. Not everyone is a up-the-ladder CEO that gets placed into a firm and then rent-seeks for a few years while waiting for a golden parachute. Some people founded their firms and reap the financial gains directly from what they've built - and if that is 400 or 500 or 600x what the janitor makes, so be it.
  - cbanek 10y ago
    Right, I'd agree with that. But my point is that capitalist drive, and that feeling to "work hard and you'll succeed" rather than saying it's who you know and how lucky you are, some historians trace down to the early American protestants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_S...
  - danmaz74 10y ago
    If you mean "too much capitalism" as in "too little taxes for the rich, almost complete destruction of unions, too much power for lobbyists", then I think you're right. "Free market", democracy, government spending and unions are all imperfect, but they are IMHO all necessary counterbalances to the sheer power of money for a capitalist system that benefits most of the population. Instead, for too long the ideology that The Market is perfect and self-regulating and automatically works for the greater good, while Government/taxes/regulations/unions are all evil, has triumphed. Working to find a good balance is so much more difficult and so much less attractive than believing in a very well narrated oversimplification. But, instead of working in that direction (the good balance), lots of people are opting to believe in even worse oversimplifications - the ones that populists all over the West are spreading. Not an easy situation to fix.
    - saiya-jin 10y ago
      when somebody from left mentions taxes it's always to increase them, which makes most people turn their back immediately (me too). what US needs is to be smarter with taxes for the citizens, not more of them (because army/intelligence/state will happily take and consume any amount). don't wage super expensive useless wars that do pure evil in the world for generations to come is a good starter. tax megacorps like apple which laugh in your US face while you worship their products (and super rich if it makes sense too) appropriately. bureaucracy can always be leaner. and so on, we all know the drill
  - JumpCrisscross 10y ago
    > Some might say "too much capitalism" Competition is good. Aristocracies are not [1] [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jena–Auerstedt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jena–Auerstedt
- NTDF9 10y ago
  >> Seems like in America it's hard to win. Either get paid not nearly enough and struggle to make ends meet, or get a high paid high stress job, still work all day and all night. A consequence of worshipping money. Even a human is valued by the amount of money they make or what they can afford. Other societies have agreed that there are some fundamental things that they will all share the burden for collectively and the rich are going to contribute a larger share towards those collective resources. Thus, humans are not reduced to what they make but how they live and what their values are. Happy faces sharing a dining table, celebrating large families and friendships that last a lifetime. It's not protestant work ethic. It's ass on fire, all the time for 70 years (save 18 years before college) and hoping you don't meet a "man-made" disaster like healthcare disaster, divorces, bankruptcies, lawsuits, prisons (completely ignoring natural disasters).
  - cbanek 10y ago
    I'd agree with all of that. The differences between Europe and the US in terms of maternity leave / time off / healthcare are fairly stark. And now we're presently dismantling healthcare as a right in the US. Really hitting at least one disaster in your life seems almost inevitable, and the system is waiting there to profit from you. I'm definitely of the more socialist bent, in that I know that if people around me aren't healthy and safe, everyone is more at risk. But I feel in the minority these days.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - trome 10y ago
      58% of Americans would prefer a federally funded healthcare system[0], akin to healthcare in Canada. We only feel alone because both parties are bought and owned by multi-nationals, and don't give a shit about what most people want. First Past the Post ensures a 3rd party will cause carnage if it ever did rise, splitting the vote and not electing the candidate most voters would prefer. Look at Wolf PAC in Connecticut closing 26 points of a 36 point gap by beating the streets with 500 volunteers[1], or Bernie in West Virginia going to town hall after town hall and talking to people about the very real issues that affect their lives. We can convert the "unwinnable" "red" states if we only dare put in the effort to beat the streets and call people, have one on one interaction and talk about issues that matter. Jobs, healthcare, workers rights, when you connect to people, even if you disagree with a person about "divisive" issues, they can often feel you are out there fighting for a better future for them and their family. So get out there, go join Wolf PAC, Our Revolution/Woke, go to a Womens Day protest, a BLM protest and fight for a better future. If we take action, we can create change! 0 - http://www.gallup.com/poll/191504/majority-support-idea-fed-funded-healthcare-system.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/191504/majority-support-idea-fed-... 1 - http://www.mediaite.com/online/the-message-we-want-to-send-is-the-young-turkss-cenk-uygur-talks-to-mediaite-about-organizing-volunteers-in-local-elections/ http://www.mediaite.com/online/the-message-we-want-to-send-i...
- nefitty 10y ago
  I'm sure there's a happy middle. Obsession with luxuries and consumption play a big part in getting stuck on the hedonic treadmill. Obsession with achievement probably plays a big role in burnout and overwork. Personally, I'm doing my best to get to a point where I can feel good in an outfit I've had for years, feel good with a cheap haircut, feel satisfied reading and meditating to relax and being able to leave work at work and sleep soundly no matter the occurrences of the day. Judge me by the way I treat you not by the number of zeros in my bank account.
- brokenmasonjars 10y ago
  I don't know.. I work about 15 hours a month opening up positions and closing them with my brokerage account. Have been doing this for a good 12 years or so now. Granted the earlier years were fraught with hard learned lessons that any newbee would make without proper mentorship. To me, it just seems like too many see that initial hamster wheel and jump on without thinking much about things. Then again, they lack proper education. I'm not even sure if it's about teaching them how to trade and invest, instead people need to be taught how to think critically and break out of the victimization trend. Then again, I'm not sure if that will help things much either.
  - pyrale 10y ago
    You do realize your way of life can never become mainstream, right ?
    - brokenmasonjars 10y ago
      It can act as an additional revenue source thus allowing you to cut on the hours you work per week. If you can train yourself, or find a proper mentor. Though I think a proper mentor is the real bottle neck, so too many try to train themselves and lack the proper knowledge for where to start; too many go to CNBC to start.. If it became mainstream it would just mean more volatility which for me.. volatility is a good thing. Yet were not even close to that, not many trade. Which is fine too, adaptability is key. I think the "you can't" stuff really flows out to other areas of the economy, e.g. starting up etc. So we get into this thing were people don't even try, or they try and fail once and don't bother getting back up. Granted, having a family etc is problematic .. though I do know someone who failed thrice starting businesses while being a mother of 5. That has to be pretty challenging and seeing her persevere tells me many more can be successful if they get past the initial hurdles.
      - joncrocks 10y ago
        I think what the parent means is that not everyone could do this and make money and then have to work less. If that were possible, then it would also be possible for no-one to ever have to work, which might be possible in the future, but not right now.
- pavlov 10y ago
  I'm not convinced that Protestant traditions are to blame. The Nordic countries have had an extreme Protestant majority ever since the Reformation. In 1950s Finland, 95% of the population was a member of the national Lutheran church! That's practically everyone. At the same time, these 95% Protestant societies were heavily unionized, built up strong social safety nets, and offered long vacations, public health care and other worker-friendly policies. So it seems too simple to blame the dysfunctionalities of the American work environment on reformed Christian ethics -- at least, the Nordic example shows that a different, more employee-friendly interpretation of the same ethic is possible.
  - bildung 10y ago
    AFAIK protestant work ethics are rooted in Calvinism, which heavily influenced many sects in the U.S., but not or to a lesser degree the northern european countries.
    - iaskwhy 10y ago
      Can you guys expand on this? It's something I'm usually interested in but being raised in a Roman Catholic country doesn't make it obvious what differences might exist between Calvinism and Protestantism.
      - ikurei 10y ago
        Also catholic-raised, but from my understanding Calvino very strongly defended discipline and hard work over faith. In contrast, catholicism places a greater emphasis on... well, not sinning.
      - ZeroGravitas 10y ago
        This is probably a good start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_S...
    - piva00 10y ago
      Calvinism influenced the Netherlands a lot, I'm not really so much versed in Calvinism in America but if you want to compare I'd suggest starting there. Even more interesting because I consider Netherlands the closest you get in Continental Europe to a Scandinavian country (socially/economically speaking).
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  Back in reality, working hours have no significant upward trend. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHNONAG https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHNONAG https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M0829BUSM065NNBR https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M0829BUSM065NNBR https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHAETP https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHAETP More people simply don't work. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART Consumption (note: figure adjusted for inflation) has only increased. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A794RX0Q048SBEA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A794RX0Q048SBEA Looks like that protestant work ethic/capitalism/etc is working pretty well for us.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    Or, you know, this whole interpretation is misleading statistical BS, and as the caption says "Factors such as unpaid absenteeism, labor turnover, part-time work, and stoppages cause average weekly hours to be lower than scheduled hours of work for an establishment" -- and lowly paid part time work has replaced steady full time employment in many sectors. (As for the per capital consumption, does it add mr. Gates with Joe Average? Even so I'm sure they will be an increase in Joe Average's consumption, but is that because Joe Average has more buying power than a worker in the 60s, or because they have to spend more to stay afloat, as everything's more expensive, and they don't have much cushion left in the bank?)
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      All the factors you cite mean the number I provided is an overestimate. If you have any evidence we work harder than before, cite it. Even so I'm sure they will be an increase in Joe Average's consumption, but is that because Joe Average has more buying power than a worker in the 60s, or because they have to spend more to stay afloat, as everything's more expensive, That's definitely not the case, since the numbers I cited are adjusted for inflation. To determine whether average Joe has more buying power, simply compare the goods and services available to him to those of his parents. That's a clear win - when I was a kid, avocados were an expensive luxury to be consumed only once in a while, and I was often bored with nothing to read.
- nostrademons 10y ago
  Anyone who is successfully bilking the system so they can make large amounts of money doing a job they enjoy is not going to crow about it on social media. (Well, except for brokenmasonjars, who is currently downvoted to oblivion here.) You get a very skewed perception of reality reading human-interest pieces, because nobody wants to read an article about someone who is doing better than them in every way, having more fun too, and is going to act like a douche and crow about it to the news media. And if you have half a brain, you don't want that article to be written about you.
- Applejinx 10y ago
  If Fiverr is going on about "beating the trust-fund kids", that is inadvertently exposing a severe unpatched exploit which has nothing to do with protestant work ethic. It is currently more profitable to have very large sums of capital itself (and invest this in other capital, financial instruments etc), than to work, no matter how hard you work. As such you have to work even harder than that or drop out of the game entirely. Systemically, the correct winning strategy is already to have huge sums of capital. I'm not sure if there's a half-measures strategy for starting with only a little capital: perhaps it's primarily luck, as it is for most/all big investors? But there's certainly no strategy for beginning with only sweat equity and having that turn efficiently into capital, so the 'protestant work ethic' is a mighty sad and inappropriate thing to have right now. I think the combination of this ethic and huge capital holdings is largely a thing of the past, and can hold people back from larger wealth because they're looking for ways to expand that involve work, and this competes against more efficient, purer capital strategies based around pure capital manipulation (which is strongly incentivised, for instance with tax incentives).
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >It is currently more profitable to have very large sums of capital itself (and invest this in other capital, financial instruments etc), than to work, no matter how hard you work. Currently? And why would "how hard you work" play any role? A surgeon doing 20 hour shifts gets way untold times less money than e.g. Tim Cook or some absentee CEO -- as their pay, not as their returns from capital investments. And let's not compare a miner who risks their life (and lungs) underground with some cushy executive.
- archevel 10y ago
  > Several large studies of mobility in developed countries in recent years have found the US among the lowest in mobility. One study (“Do Poor Children Become Poor Adults?") found that of nine developed countries, the United States and United Kingdom had the lowest intergenerational vertical social mobility with about half of the advantages of having a parent with a high income passed on to the next generation. The above quote from wikipedia article on mobility in the US [1] highligts an important point. The US as the land of opportunity is clearly a false image, since you have a lower chance of climbing out of poverty there than in a lot of other countries. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the_United_States#Comparisons_with_other_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the...
- rmc 10y ago
  > Maybe we just have too much of that protestant work ethic? The UK has Protestantism as an official state religion and yet it has the NHS, mandatory paid holidays etc.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    The average UK citizen hardly cares for any religion, much less have the protestant work ethic being pervasive. In fact the Church of England if often jokingly called the closest thing a church has to atheism. Don't conflate nominal state religions with actual ideas at play in citizen's heads...
- cyphunk 10y ago
  Upward mobility in the US is a myth fed through fables. Measured by % of population that transitions from the lower 5th economic ladder to the top 5th the US ranks lower than the large majority of OECD peers [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-upward-mobility-study-2014-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-upward-mobility-study...
- rsync 10y ago
  "Maybe we just have too much of that protestant work ethic?" Actually, that's testable, to a degree ... The largest and most potent concentration of "the protestant work ethic" produced switzerland, which is the nicest and best place on earth. I don't think too much PWE is our problem.
ganfortran 10y ago
Classy newyorker is good at criticising, but never good at offering alternative. And the implied solution(opposite of being too much self-reliant) is always the cliche rosy picture of bigger government and welfare society.
- rimliu 10y ago
  I think I saw a report somewhere stating thad Danes are most happy to pay taxes—because they are happy what they gain in return. Also, there was a report recently, that happiest people are in Norway. Maybe it is not fair to call all socially responsible arrangements "welfare society"?
  - refurb 10y ago
    Or maybe they don't know any different? How many people have actually had the opportunity to live a decade or more of their adult lives in different countries? A very small minority. Canadians love their single payer healthcare. They have no problem waiting a year or more for surgery. They don't think paying a 15% VAT is a burden. They don't know any different. Americans would shit themselves if they had to deal with that.
    - Kristine1975 10y ago
      >Canadians have no problem waiting a year or more for surgery. Citation needed.
      - refurb 10y ago
        Citation that Canadians are OK with long waiting times? Or that long waiting times exist? This woman was told she'd need to wait 2+ years. Bennett was referred for surgery on her right hip in November of 2013 and said she’s been told she won’t get in until early in 2016. She said her joint has deteriorated so much she is unable to work or even function without strong narcotic painkillers. [1]http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/patients-lives-ruined-as-hip-surgery-waits-grow-1.2976196 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/patients-live...
raverbashing 10y ago
Ah Fiverr, the 'gives you a logo for 5 bucks' or 'a Wordpress site for (too little)' Epitome of race to the bottom
Bombthecat 10y ago
Human meat is cheap and plenty. I don't think it will ever get better anytime soon.
- curuinor 10y ago
  Many of the most loyal Soviet apparatchniks recognized that they got their positions due to them being freed up by the various purges and such. Piketty claims that the lowering inequality of the early 20th century that Kuznets claimed was the natural consequence of capitalism was contingent - contingent upon the orgy of destruction of the two great wars. Kuznets claimed that there were cycles in capital allocation of a certain type, in between some other's determination of characteristic scale, the business cycle, the Kondratiev wave. This is probably not the case, and it's just all a jumbling 1/f wave. So it might be 1 month till your statement proves not to be the case, or 1 millenium.
thedogeye 10y ago
The Gig Economy Celebrates Working For Money
DanielBMarkham 10y ago
"...It does require a fairly dystopian strain of doublethink for a company to celebrate how hard and how constantly its employees must work to make a living, given that these companies are themselves setting the terms..." "setting the terms" is a bit over-the-top here. If I want to go from here to the airport, and you have a car, and I offer you twenty bucks, is that okay? Does it somehow become bad if we meet online in a chat room? How about if a thousand people in this city make this trade on a chat room today? So somebody sets up an online app. At that point do the people setting up the app "set the terms"? Does it happen when they have standards for who can use the app? In that last statement, where the app creators start setting standards for who can participate, we run into problems -- mainly because if you're the gatekeeper, you can charge rent on both parties seeking the deal. Other than that, there's nothing amiss or terrible going on here. Western literature has this childish and somewhat verklempt tradition of taking something that's new and making it into an emotional outburst. Thoreau goes out into the woods and laments the arrival of trains, the stresses of the city, and the war against Mexico. Dickens with his cutting criticism of Victorian England. When done well, it's a thing of beauty. Most of the time, however, authors get a little too tied-up in belly-button-gazing and confuse "things that I can become emotional about and rant" with "things that are important and transcend time" We all take the shortcut of "if it's important to me, it must be important" I am a bit concerned about Uber, Lyft, and the gig economy. On one hand, I am concerned that companies are exerting so much control over the marketplace that they're not innovating as much as they are creating monopolies. On the other hand, however, I am concerned that because this destroys the concept of "a job" for so many people, and the relationship to their employer and country -- they are going to push hard for limiting all sorts of free trade under the rubric of "something must be done!" In this case, quite literally, the writer begins her essay with an example of how people might feel that something must be done for the children. My first wife worked a 9-5 W-2 job during her labor with our second child. I didn't tell her to do it, we didn't need the money. She said she'd rather be doing something than hanging out at home or the hospital. I guess I could tell the story of our second child in much the same way as this author told the story of the Lyft driver in labor -- how some folks "might" look at it as exploitation. But I'm not 17 any more, and I don't tend to view individual choices as being some kind of massive battle between forces that I must take sides on. It was her choice and she made it. For me to come along later and use it as an example for any kind of political bullshit is whack. Rant all you want about whatever topic you'd like, but never take agency away from folks simply because you think you might get a little extra mileage out of your essay.
milesrout 10y ago
The American economy celebrates working yourself to death, has for a long time, and probably will for a long time. Thankfully I'm not American and I'm not working in the US, so I don't care.
rick_cheese 10y ago
Yet all of these companies weave a wonderful narrative about changing the world, empowering people, giving them freedom and independence. Clearly the business models are based on exploitation of the downtrodden and uneducated. Due to clever PR many actually believe this is cool.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- jamesblonde 10y ago
  This is a classic such example from Lyft: http://creativity-online.com/work/lyft-junelife-is-better-when-you-share-the-ride/50329 http://creativity-online.com/work/lyft-junelife-is-better-wh... Goebels would be proud. The granny is a lyft driver (1) by choice (2) it helps with her loneliness (3) she gets affirmation of her value to society. Of course, the reality is that drivers drive Lyft through necessity, and it is lonely job much of the time. The real kicker, though, is that the advertisement is not even to try and get more drivers. It's used to asuage middle-class guilt who are underpaying for the labour of one of their peers. Middle class people should think 'Hey, these people drive by choice, and it's fun. Win win!'
Kiro 10y ago
How does this work with the minimum wage? It seems like whenever you get paid per item instead of hour the minimum wage can be disregarded.
- CodeWriter23 10y ago
  In America, minimum wage is for employees only. Once you're an independent contractor, you can accept less than minimum wage for your work. This is indicative that our asset-based economic recovery from the crash of '07 hasn't done much for those who don't have hard assets. Namely the former paycheck-to-paycheck members of the middle class, who walk past homeless encampments wondering if the people living in tents and RVs are their future friends, those who lost their homes after getting fooled into a subprime loan, and the poor. Ironically, Uber will set you up with a subprime auto loan or lease through their partners, payments taken from your weekly take, before you ever see it of course.
rejschaap 10y ago
I don't really see the 'gig economy' as an alternative to regular jobs, which is always implicitly or explicitly implied by these articles. If you need a job, go find a job. If you are flexible, have some extra time, could use some extra money, enjoy these gig tasks or whatever, find a gig task. Obviously there aren't enough jobs to go around, this is not caused by the gig economy. Some regular jobs don't pay well enough, this is also not caused by the gig economy.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  There are plenty of jobs. People just refuse to do them. https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/robots_didnt_take_our_jobs.html https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/robots_didnt_take_ou... Aren't Trump's anti-immigrant attitude considered bad in part because we might lose immigrant labor we are dependent on?
  - rejschaap 10y ago
    There is a difference between a job and "there is much work to be done".
    - collyw 10y ago
      Yes, its pay. Just look around any developing country. There always seem to be people almost begging for work, yet there seems so much more work that needs done - infrastructure needing repaired, litter being cleared, healthcare...
  - foldr 10y ago
    'Creche' isn't Hinglish. It's just not used much in the US.
willdotphipps 10y ago
it's when the black cab driver and uber driver shake hands, make an app OWNED by the drivers, that drivers get more dough and Uber go bust. Wouldn't be difficult.
willdotphipps 10y ago
...you see even IF Uber prohibit drivers from using their own app between rides, if they all just agree, they can just go fuck it, we've had enough. anyone here ever spoken to a happy Uber driver? Me neither. Wife...family..kids meanwhile Kalanick gets his $6bn...NICE.
- philipfoobybar 10y ago
  here, hear
- raverbashing 10y ago
  Actually the Uber drivers I talked to seemed to be doing ok on the platform. (though those were in Europe)
- ycombinete 10y ago
  Literally every Uber driver I've spoken to was happy. In fact many of them have actually quit other jobs, to drive an Uber.
  - CPLX 10y ago
    And literally every person who has carried bags to my hotel room has seemed pleased to serve me.
    - dustinmr 10y ago
      You really have little respect for service workers, don't you? Many people in tourism actually like what they do. Others even see you as the sucker. I came her to agree with the gf comment. It may be partially geographic, as I'm in Miami and about 75% of the drivers I've spoken with are Venezuelan, arrived in the last 2 years or so, and are very happy with their life change and their job driving. And the other 25% are largely either other immigrants or former taxi drivers who are, after talking with a number of them about how the economics worked in taxis and with Uber/Lyft, significantly less exploited than they were working for taxi companies. They see Uber/Lyft as an upgrade, a big one. Trying actually talking with them and asking enough to get to their real opinions. You might hear some spectacular stories, like the Cuban driver I spoke with who walked ashore in Key West on July 4th, and the beachgoers paid a taxi to his family's house in Miami (a 3 hour taxi fare). Then, after he ended up on the street he panhandled and saved enough to rent a car and drive Uber/Lyft while he began working to get his electrician's license in the US (he was an electrician in Cuba). He was just a few weeks from getting his license. Tenacity. Pure tenacity. The gig economy was working very well for him. And he was quite happy with how he was able to use it to improve his life.
_pmf_ 10y ago
I don't know, those startup employees sure seem to have time to write lengthy blog posts.
throw2016 10y ago
The biggest irony is all the well meaning starts ups from SV desperately trying 'improve the world' when they can't even improve the city they live in. Not because of failure from trying but because they can't be bothered. Without a moral compass the only thing they can deliver is a dry soulless unfeeling dystopia stripped of any hint of humanity. Those who don't want present day SV to be replicated in their regions should be wary of the ideological underpinnings of SV startup culture and American capitalism. The lack of a properly defined moral compass from those from non privileged backgrounds struggling through life guided perhaps by upbringing or religion but with no time to ponder or reflect can perhaps be understood but for a privileged well educated elite to display this level of apathy towards humanism is a truly shocking state of affairs. Ultimately its our humanity, our relationships, our capacity for feeling and emotion that enriches our existence, not money.
bythckr 10y ago
Gig Economy = legalised interns intern = a person who works for free or next to nothing on the promise that they will benefit in the long run, while you make sure that they get no benefits and assign every demeaning job possible to them.
coldtea 10y ago
>The Gig Economy Celebrates Working Yourself to Death As any respected free-market advocate will tell you, it's better than dying from starvation. Yeah, that's not a very high bar...
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Yeah, the crucial observation here being, that in a civilized society, this should not be the only choice you're presented with.
- Asooka 10y ago
  Dying from starvation shouldn't happen on an Earth as abundant with resources as this one. Okay, at some point you can't hunt and gather food for yourself any more, but is that dying from starvation or dying from old age?
seanhandley 10y ago
As a European (used to free healthcare, statutory maternity leave, and 25 days paid leave per year) it shocked me on first visiting America how third-world it actually feels regarding what people consider a "normal" work/life balance. People work incredibly hard, long hours and often with very little to show for it. It's surreal.
- rmc 10y ago
  And many of them think that people in Europe have it worse. That the economy would just collapse into African-levels of poverty if there was mandatory paid holidays. This is a danger of American TV shows and movie studios remaking shows for the American audiences. They don't get to see that Europe is mostly a developed place.
  - J-dawg 10y ago
    Not to disagree with the parent comment (because overall I prefer the European way) but we do have it worse in some ways. Salaries for professionals are markedly lower, we live in much smaller houses etc. I get the feeling that when you're winning at life in America, you're really winning. But when you're losing you're really losing. In Europe the ups and downs of life are more smoothed out.
    - cmdrfred 10y ago
      I live in America and my wife's family is from the UK. We aren't rich by any means but we bought a small house last year and when her family flew in they kept commenting on how big our house was. Our house is about as small as you can get without living in a trailer. I'm a high school drop out and we each make less than the median nation income and I feel we are better off than if we lived in the UK. Though I admit life from 18 - 25 would have probably been less of a struggle there.
      - intended 10y ago
        Whats the comparison of sizes like ? Really curious because if the next smaller house in size is a trailer then the UK sizes must be weirdly small.
grabcocque 10y ago
All very interesting theories, but the US isn't an amazingly hard working nation by global standards. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time
- J-dawg 10y ago
  The ranking [0] is absolutely fascinating, and contains a lot of surprises. Who knew that Mexicans work 500 hours a year more than the Japanese? I wonder if the data is being skewed somehow, perhaps by different cultural norms around women working, or something like that? If anyone can shed any light on this it would be really interesting. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#OECD_ranking https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#OECD_ranking
  - TulliusCicero 10y ago
    IIRC the extra hours the Japanese work tend to go unreported.
- Asooka 10y ago
  Yes, but how much vacation do you get, how much do you work and how much do you pay for your health in order to have the standard "two adults + two children" normal lifestyle? I'm just thinking that maybe these numbers are brought down by people working very little for scraps.
llamataboot 10y ago
Waiting for the inevitable HN critique about "voluntary work" and "why should anyone have the right to tell someone else to work less" without a complete understanding of what voluntary means in a world with massive structural inequalities. Or as the anarchists say, "Work 50 hours or starve" isn't a choice, it's a threat. (edit: nitpick misspelling)
- beaconstudios 10y ago
  which is kind of ironic because in a state of anarchy like subsistence farming you'd expect to work a lot more than 50 hours, and doing back-breaking manual labour at that.
  - llamataboot 10y ago
    I'm not sure how much subsistence farming has to do with a socio-political theory that primarily came out of 19th Century Europe/Russia and Modernity, but sure, if that's your critique I don't want to derail the thread into a discussion about what anarchism is/isn't
    - beaconstudios 10y ago
      it's just one example of a system of living that doesn't involve a central government. I'm not an anarchist myself so tend to be extremely skeptical of anarchist claims that a country with no police force would continue to be "modern" for any stretch of time.
- conanbatt 10y ago
  > "Work 50 hours or starve" isn't a choice, it's a threat. Damn nature, we'll get back at her somehow, we will.
lordnacho 10y ago
I don't know if it was Mary's first baby, but she might know that it's not terribly urgent to go to a hospital. Even when your water breaks, the hospital will tell you not to come in immediately. With my first kid it was like that, we had hours before anything started happening. A few minutes extra to drive someone doesn't seem all that bad.
d--b 10y ago
This is a strangely divisive topic in the startup industry. For some reason, there are smart people who think that meritocracy works: work hard and things will be good for you. The problem is that in many cases working hard (as in building up a startup) does indeed give people the opportunity to rise in society. But it is not true in all cases at all. And so the negative statement "if you are struggling you didn't try enough" is completely flawed. First, in capitalism, a work's remuneration is supposed to be related in a way to the perceived utility of that work for society in general. Second competition means that a work's remuneration is inversely proportional to how easy it is to perform. Using those 2 propositions, it becomes obvious that jobs with little utility and high competition have a remuneration that tends to go down to 0 (fast food, taxis, etc.). So in these cases, no matter how hard you work, your pay can only go that high.
- imgabe 10y ago
  > First, in capitalism, a work's remuneration is supposed to be related in a way to the perceived utility of that work for society in general. This is a misconception, I think. A work's remuneration is related to the utility perceived by the person providing the remuneration. Society in general doesn't pay people. Specific people pay other people. Find something enough people want and give it to them. It's not any more complicated than that.
  - ice109 10y ago
    you're wrong. if some good is over valued for long enough market dynamics kick in and the price will go down.
    - 1_2__3 10y ago
      That's the Econ 101 textbook statement, not reality.
  - d--b 10y ago
    That's why I wrote "supposed". In reality it's a lot more complex than that, but it is usually one argument brought forward to explain why CEOs are being paid more than the workers they manage.
wordpressdev 10y ago
While I agree to the points made in the article that workers in a gig economy have little rights and less benefits than doing a full time employment, gig economy was never supposed to be exact replacement of a permanent job. If you live in a Western country, gigs like driving an Uber, doing a task through TaskRabbit or providing service at Fiverr / Upwork can be considered a modern day equivalent of waiting tables or babysitting. Obviously, if you consider the later as full time jobs then you have to burn your a-- to make the ends meet. For those living in the developing countries, the gig economy is a gift from skies. More and more people from Asia, Africa and parts of Europe are joining the gig economy to supplement their income. Considering the cost of living in these areas, they are even in a position to generate full time living from doing these gigs. Not to mention the digital nomads who are escaping the stressful lives in the US / Europe and traveling to less expensive regions - living off gig economy. Looking at the positives; gig economy gives you freedom to live your life. You do not have to spend precious hours of the day in commute, waste time in useless meetings, bear office politics and bend over to get a raise. Reduce your expenses, get a few well paying clients, work when you feel like it and enjoy your life. All hail the Gig Economy ;)
- 1_2__3 10y ago
  What you are calling the gig economy in this case is really a service economy, which existed long before cell phones or SF tech startup silliness. It's not some amazing new step forward for humanity.
Mendenhall 10y ago
I see many posts about the hours worked in USA. Whats slightly funny to me is having grown up around people who lived through great depression and fought in ww2 I often see USA as lazy these days.
dalbasal 10y ago
This article, and most discussions on this topic are all rich with sub-text. It offers to connect drivers with an insurance broker, and helpfully notes that “the Affordable Care Act offers many choices to make sure you’re covered.” ..a lot of sub-text here, for example. One piece of the sub-text coming up in my internet & human bubble is "technological unemployment" which I have a slightly different take on then a lot of what I read. I think we're seeing it already and it manifests mostly as wage disparity, not unemployment. On the subtext of that quote, it seems to be on the side of what we generall call "labour socialism" in Europe. The idea that laws should focus on increasing low leverage emloyees' bargaining power and/or mandated benefits. IMO, this is a dated position. We've seen relatively consistent success with government provided primary services: health, education & transport. This gets called welfarism, though I think centralism is a better term. We have not seen that kind of success in the labour-socialist sphere. In fact, example like France suggest a problematic trade-off between "good" employment and unemployment. I think the main problem is labour-socialism's tendency to corporatism. I would really like to see employment (including the gig economy) be free-er but suplemented with free or subsidized basic services (health & education mostly) and a basic income. If housing prices are not pathological (as they often are), the gig-worker would be a lot better off. Instead of chasing our tail trying to force uber (or regular taxi companies) to provide stabilty, the state can just subsidize the citizen and provide stability on some fronts. It doesn't even require "big government" for the most part. In most of west Europe, we should be able to implement this relativley easily. Redundant conditional welfare benefits (dole, pensions) already spend 25-40% of what a UBI would cost. Another 25%-40% could be taxed back as income tax without disadvantaging workers (IE, your UBI is >= tax increases). That's most of the way to funding it. This remaining gap mostly represents the uber driver, workers earning well below national average dealing with insecurity and on the wrong end of employer provided benefits (like health insurance). I don't think the US can do it anytime soon though.
- campbellmorgan 10y ago
  I agree thoroughly with your sentiment and am a strong believer in the welfare state as a way of addressing social imbalances. I also like the economics of the state providing better stability to those in the gig economy because, in theory, it will mean that they feel less pressure to work unhealthy hours (as in the article) and this, in turn, should increase the minimum amount they will work for. However, my objection to this as solution is the situation of non-domiciled, largely un-taxed multinationals not contributing fairly to the pot that keeps the welfare working. As far as I can see, that amounts to a wealth transfer from the state to the shareholders and high-level managers of these companies. Of course the solution would be to tax these companies fairly (which at least in the UK, is slowly beginning to happen), but eventually when taxed fairly enough, doesn't the burden for the companies end up being the same? The only difference is that the state would be footing the bill for the admin overhead of supporting these workers.
sheeshkebab 10y ago
IMO, Excessive working is not a problem (if you are not forced to and can/want to do it)... getting paid $11/hour for it is the problem.
andreasklinger 10y ago
Doesnt that ad target their clients and not their suppliers? It's part of their "Entrepreneur campaign" - using that cliche "entrepreneur hustling"
kelvin0 10y ago
Yup, this is similar to a mentality I've seen celebrated in some Crossfit cliques and it 'works' for a certain type of people. Until the imbalance catches up to them and makes them re-assess their priorities (injury,depression,sickness...)
m23khan 10y ago
Can't speak for whole of Canada but Toronto is definitely on track to become a city where it is impossible to buy a house and rents are so high that for a family - both husband and wife need to work and one of the spouse has to have a side gig for making the money to feed and clothe the family along with some meagre savings. Canadian government keeps stating that inflation rate is less than 2% but reality is, in Toronto, it is probably running in excess of 10% for last 10+ years. However, the companies keep pretending that for their existing employees, if they are lucky to get a raise, that raise should be 3% or 4%. In Toronto, even modest vacations feel like luxury and entertainment options seem to be leave you with a feeling that your pocket is on fire. Now before my pro-Canadiana countrymen come here and lecture me on how great Canada is (and yes, the free healthcare!!), let me tell you: I like Canada and definitely feel it is the place to be. I am just stating in context of the article, that is all.
- antoniuschan99 10y ago
  Toronto Real Estate thread on Reddit is very informative. Houses are commonly being bought ~25% over asking price at the moment apparently. And it's because Agents are using it as a tactic to drive up offers. Also, a lot of people here are agents nowadays.
- badsock 10y ago
  I understand the argument for excluding housing, food, and fuel from the official inflation stats, but at this point it's making that number a complete departure from reality. Canada right now is basically getting divided into two classes: those who happened to own real estate a decade or two ago and their children, and everyone else. That's not success based on how hard you worked, or how much you contributed to society, or proportionate to the amount of risk you took. It's just (mostly) Chinese money randomly landing on some of the population, and causing real issues with quality of life and serious opportunity costs for the rest. That is not something we should be happy about, and it's something that we should have better numbers on.
JohnLeTigre 10y ago
Typically 2/3rd of expenses in companies go into salaries. That's a huge chunk of money. Somebody finds a system that reduces the salarial expenses to zero and all the hard-capitalists are over-joyed, secretly dreaming that they could apply this model to their own business. In the mean time workers, while owning the means of production, are still liable to pay all the running expenses, to invest their time and work and give a percentage to a stranger, for some odd reason. This is a form of feudalism. I am not anti-capitalist, but I fear that this form of economy on the long run will not allow individuals to flourish economically through the merit of their work.
- fjdlwlv 10y ago
  The "odd" reason is that that the "stranger" makes a huge contribution. That's why people weren't runnning nearly so many personal car services before Uber.
  - JohnLeTigre 10y ago
    It's an app
    - fjdlwlv 10y ago
      It's an app that no one made before. Why didn't they?
      - JohnLeTigre 10y ago
        It's illegal to taxi people around without a permit. Look it up, gypsy cabs are not new at all. Most people kept a low profile and stuck to their own ghettos though. Anyways, the conversation is not substantive anymore, both of our points where made.
maxxxxx 10y ago
This ad reminds me of how the ruling class makes going to war as something honorable and desirable although the people doing the actual fighting almost never get any benefits from the wars. I guess the capitalists want to pull the same trick selling working yourself to death for nothing as having valor.

329 points by type4 10y ago

Seems like in America it's hard to win. Either get paid not nearly enough and struggle to make ends meet, or get a high paid high stress job, still work all day and all night. Maybe we just have too much of that protestant work ethic?

SwellJoe 10y ago
Some might say "too much capitalism". I don't know many protestants.
- WaxProlix 10y ago
  "Too much capitalism" would imply that the people who get money funneled to them at the top don't work hard enough (or take enough risk) to earn that money. Surely you don't believe that? edit: Sarcasm on HN is a bad idea. Obviously earning 400x a worker's wage is bullshit, there's no amount of work that justifies that.
  - sillysaurus3 10y ago
    I believe that. Family connections matter far more than how hard you work. I don't think it's unfair, or that there's too much capitalism, but it's the nature of the system. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig_qpNfXHIU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig_qpNfXHIU edit: Sarcasm on HN is a bad idea. Obviously earning 400x a worker's wage is bullshit, there's no amount of work that justifies that. Well, look at what Steve Jobs did for Apple. Regardless of whether he would've done that if he was paid less, how many workers was he worth? The natural follow-up question is then, why not pay them what they're worth? One reason CEOs are paid so much is to prevent them from making short-term decisions that optimize their stock price at the expense of long-term planning. If their entire compensation is tied to the stock price, there's no incentive for any CEO to try to do better than increase the stock price at any cost.
  - ifdefdebug 10y ago
    Look, while there are enough people getting money funneled to them at the top for sure work very hard. But those are not the seriously rich. Those are the subalterns, they earn about seven or eight figures a year and work hard for it. The seriously rich get to chose how much they want to work, if they want to work at all. Surely you know that? Edit: sarcasm is best perceived when the argument leads ad adsurdum. Now people at the top working very hard and taking risks happens all the time and your "Surely you don't believe that?" could have been just an arrogant attitude, so your sarcasm was hard to spot. But I'm glad to hear it was just sarcasm :)
    - milesrout 10y ago
      'Seven or eight figures' is seriously rich.
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    It's not at all about how hard you work. It's about working smart, i.e. working on the right things.
    - pikzen 10y ago
      Some people don't get to work on the right things. Hell, most people don't get to work on the right things, by virtue of not being born in the right social class, the right skin color, the right neighbourhood, the right family.
  - 4c2383f5c88e911 10y ago
    The issue is not the sarcasm, the issue is that there is now no way to differentiate that sarcasm from a non-sarcastic opinion on HN, because you can find people legitimately believing this.
  - rsync 10y ago
    "Obviously earning 400x a worker's wage is bullshit, there's no amount of work that justifies that." I don't think that's obvious, but let's stipulate that it's true. While there may be no amount of work that justifies it, there is an amount of ownership that justifies it. Not everyone is a up-the-ladder CEO that gets placed into a firm and then rent-seeks for a few years while waiting for a golden parachute. Some people founded their firms and reap the financial gains directly from what they've built - and if that is 400 or 500 or 600x what the janitor makes, so be it.
- cbanek 10y ago
  Right, I'd agree with that. But my point is that capitalist drive, and that feeling to "work hard and you'll succeed" rather than saying it's who you know and how lucky you are, some historians trace down to the early American protestants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_S...
- danmaz74 10y ago
  If you mean "too much capitalism" as in "too little taxes for the rich, almost complete destruction of unions, too much power for lobbyists", then I think you're right. "Free market", democracy, government spending and unions are all imperfect, but they are IMHO all necessary counterbalances to the sheer power of money for a capitalist system that benefits most of the population. Instead, for too long the ideology that The Market is perfect and self-regulating and automatically works for the greater good, while Government/taxes/regulations/unions are all evil, has triumphed. Working to find a good balance is so much more difficult and so much less attractive than believing in a very well narrated oversimplification. But, instead of working in that direction (the good balance), lots of people are opting to believe in even worse oversimplifications - the ones that populists all over the West are spreading. Not an easy situation to fix.
  - saiya-jin 10y ago
    when somebody from left mentions taxes it's always to increase them, which makes most people turn their back immediately (me too). what US needs is to be smarter with taxes for the citizens, not more of them (because army/intelligence/state will happily take and consume any amount). don't wage super expensive useless wars that do pure evil in the world for generations to come is a good starter. tax megacorps like apple which laugh in your US face while you worship their products (and super rich if it makes sense too) appropriately. bureaucracy can always be leaner. and so on, we all know the drill
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  > Some might say "too much capitalism" Competition is good. Aristocracies are not [1] [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jena–Auerstedt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jena–Auerstedt
NTDF9 10y ago
>> Seems like in America it's hard to win. Either get paid not nearly enough and struggle to make ends meet, or get a high paid high stress job, still work all day and all night. A consequence of worshipping money. Even a human is valued by the amount of money they make or what they can afford. Other societies have agreed that there are some fundamental things that they will all share the burden for collectively and the rich are going to contribute a larger share towards those collective resources. Thus, humans are not reduced to what they make but how they live and what their values are. Happy faces sharing a dining table, celebrating large families and friendships that last a lifetime. It's not protestant work ethic. It's ass on fire, all the time for 70 years (save 18 years before college) and hoping you don't meet a "man-made" disaster like healthcare disaster, divorces, bankruptcies, lawsuits, prisons (completely ignoring natural disasters).
- cbanek 10y ago
  I'd agree with all of that. The differences between Europe and the US in terms of maternity leave / time off / healthcare are fairly stark. And now we're presently dismantling healthcare as a right in the US. Really hitting at least one disaster in your life seems almost inevitable, and the system is waiting there to profit from you. I'm definitely of the more socialist bent, in that I know that if people around me aren't healthy and safe, everyone is more at risk. But I feel in the minority these days.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - trome 10y ago
    58% of Americans would prefer a federally funded healthcare system[0], akin to healthcare in Canada. We only feel alone because both parties are bought and owned by multi-nationals, and don't give a shit about what most people want. First Past the Post ensures a 3rd party will cause carnage if it ever did rise, splitting the vote and not electing the candidate most voters would prefer. Look at Wolf PAC in Connecticut closing 26 points of a 36 point gap by beating the streets with 500 volunteers[1], or Bernie in West Virginia going to town hall after town hall and talking to people about the very real issues that affect their lives. We can convert the "unwinnable" "red" states if we only dare put in the effort to beat the streets and call people, have one on one interaction and talk about issues that matter. Jobs, healthcare, workers rights, when you connect to people, even if you disagree with a person about "divisive" issues, they can often feel you are out there fighting for a better future for them and their family. So get out there, go join Wolf PAC, Our Revolution/Woke, go to a Womens Day protest, a BLM protest and fight for a better future. If we take action, we can create change! 0 - http://www.gallup.com/poll/191504/majority-support-idea-fed-funded-healthcare-system.aspx http://www.gallup.com/poll/191504/majority-support-idea-fed-... 1 - http://www.mediaite.com/online/the-message-we-want-to-send-is-the-young-turkss-cenk-uygur-talks-to-mediaite-about-organizing-volunteers-in-local-elections/ http://www.mediaite.com/online/the-message-we-want-to-send-i...
nefitty 10y ago
I'm sure there's a happy middle. Obsession with luxuries and consumption play a big part in getting stuck on the hedonic treadmill. Obsession with achievement probably plays a big role in burnout and overwork. Personally, I'm doing my best to get to a point where I can feel good in an outfit I've had for years, feel good with a cheap haircut, feel satisfied reading and meditating to relax and being able to leave work at work and sleep soundly no matter the occurrences of the day. Judge me by the way I treat you not by the number of zeros in my bank account.
brokenmasonjars 10y ago
I don't know.. I work about 15 hours a month opening up positions and closing them with my brokerage account. Have been doing this for a good 12 years or so now. Granted the earlier years were fraught with hard learned lessons that any newbee would make without proper mentorship. To me, it just seems like too many see that initial hamster wheel and jump on without thinking much about things. Then again, they lack proper education. I'm not even sure if it's about teaching them how to trade and invest, instead people need to be taught how to think critically and break out of the victimization trend. Then again, I'm not sure if that will help things much either.
- pyrale 10y ago
  You do realize your way of life can never become mainstream, right ?
  - brokenmasonjars 10y ago
    It can act as an additional revenue source thus allowing you to cut on the hours you work per week. If you can train yourself, or find a proper mentor. Though I think a proper mentor is the real bottle neck, so too many try to train themselves and lack the proper knowledge for where to start; too many go to CNBC to start.. If it became mainstream it would just mean more volatility which for me.. volatility is a good thing. Yet were not even close to that, not many trade. Which is fine too, adaptability is key. I think the "you can't" stuff really flows out to other areas of the economy, e.g. starting up etc. So we get into this thing were people don't even try, or they try and fail once and don't bother getting back up. Granted, having a family etc is problematic .. though I do know someone who failed thrice starting businesses while being a mother of 5. That has to be pretty challenging and seeing her persevere tells me many more can be successful if they get past the initial hurdles.
    - joncrocks 10y ago
      I think what the parent means is that not everyone could do this and make money and then have to work less. If that were possible, then it would also be possible for no-one to ever have to work, which might be possible in the future, but not right now.
pavlov 10y ago
I'm not convinced that Protestant traditions are to blame. The Nordic countries have had an extreme Protestant majority ever since the Reformation. In 1950s Finland, 95% of the population was a member of the national Lutheran church! That's practically everyone. At the same time, these 95% Protestant societies were heavily unionized, built up strong social safety nets, and offered long vacations, public health care and other worker-friendly policies. So it seems too simple to blame the dysfunctionalities of the American work environment on reformed Christian ethics -- at least, the Nordic example shows that a different, more employee-friendly interpretation of the same ethic is possible.
- bildung 10y ago
  AFAIK protestant work ethics are rooted in Calvinism, which heavily influenced many sects in the U.S., but not or to a lesser degree the northern european countries.
  - iaskwhy 10y ago
    Can you guys expand on this? It's something I'm usually interested in but being raised in a Roman Catholic country doesn't make it obvious what differences might exist between Calvinism and Protestantism.
    - ikurei 10y ago
      Also catholic-raised, but from my understanding Calvino very strongly defended discipline and hard work over faith. In contrast, catholicism places a greater emphasis on... well, not sinning.
    - ZeroGravitas 10y ago
      This is probably a good start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_S...
  - piva00 10y ago
    Calvinism influenced the Netherlands a lot, I'm not really so much versed in Calvinism in America but if you want to compare I'd suggest starting there. Even more interesting because I consider Netherlands the closest you get in Continental Europe to a Scandinavian country (socially/economically speaking).
yummyfajitas 10y ago
Back in reality, working hours have no significant upward trend. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHNONAG https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHNONAG https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M0829BUSM065NNBR https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M0829BUSM065NNBR https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHAETP https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHAETP More people simply don't work. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART Consumption (note: figure adjusted for inflation) has only increased. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A794RX0Q048SBEA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A794RX0Q048SBEA Looks like that protestant work ethic/capitalism/etc is working pretty well for us.
- coldtea 10y ago
  Or, you know, this whole interpretation is misleading statistical BS, and as the caption says "Factors such as unpaid absenteeism, labor turnover, part-time work, and stoppages cause average weekly hours to be lower than scheduled hours of work for an establishment" -- and lowly paid part time work has replaced steady full time employment in many sectors. (As for the per capital consumption, does it add mr. Gates with Joe Average? Even so I'm sure they will be an increase in Joe Average's consumption, but is that because Joe Average has more buying power than a worker in the 60s, or because they have to spend more to stay afloat, as everything's more expensive, and they don't have much cushion left in the bank?)
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    All the factors you cite mean the number I provided is an overestimate. If you have any evidence we work harder than before, cite it. Even so I'm sure they will be an increase in Joe Average's consumption, but is that because Joe Average has more buying power than a worker in the 60s, or because they have to spend more to stay afloat, as everything's more expensive, That's definitely not the case, since the numbers I cited are adjusted for inflation. To determine whether average Joe has more buying power, simply compare the goods and services available to him to those of his parents. That's a clear win - when I was a kid, avocados were an expensive luxury to be consumed only once in a while, and I was often bored with nothing to read.
nostrademons 10y ago
Anyone who is successfully bilking the system so they can make large amounts of money doing a job they enjoy is not going to crow about it on social media. (Well, except for brokenmasonjars, who is currently downvoted to oblivion here.) You get a very skewed perception of reality reading human-interest pieces, because nobody wants to read an article about someone who is doing better than them in every way, having more fun too, and is going to act like a douche and crow about it to the news media. And if you have half a brain, you don't want that article to be written about you.
Applejinx 10y ago
If Fiverr is going on about "beating the trust-fund kids", that is inadvertently exposing a severe unpatched exploit which has nothing to do with protestant work ethic. It is currently more profitable to have very large sums of capital itself (and invest this in other capital, financial instruments etc), than to work, no matter how hard you work. As such you have to work even harder than that or drop out of the game entirely. Systemically, the correct winning strategy is already to have huge sums of capital. I'm not sure if there's a half-measures strategy for starting with only a little capital: perhaps it's primarily luck, as it is for most/all big investors? But there's certainly no strategy for beginning with only sweat equity and having that turn efficiently into capital, so the 'protestant work ethic' is a mighty sad and inappropriate thing to have right now. I think the combination of this ethic and huge capital holdings is largely a thing of the past, and can hold people back from larger wealth because they're looking for ways to expand that involve work, and this competes against more efficient, purer capital strategies based around pure capital manipulation (which is strongly incentivised, for instance with tax incentives).
- coldtea 10y ago
  >It is currently more profitable to have very large sums of capital itself (and invest this in other capital, financial instruments etc), than to work, no matter how hard you work. Currently? And why would "how hard you work" play any role? A surgeon doing 20 hour shifts gets way untold times less money than e.g. Tim Cook or some absentee CEO -- as their pay, not as their returns from capital investments. And let's not compare a miner who risks their life (and lungs) underground with some cushy executive.
archevel 10y ago
> Several large studies of mobility in developed countries in recent years have found the US among the lowest in mobility. One study (“Do Poor Children Become Poor Adults?") found that of nine developed countries, the United States and United Kingdom had the lowest intergenerational vertical social mobility with about half of the advantages of having a parent with a high income passed on to the next generation. The above quote from wikipedia article on mobility in the US [1] highligts an important point. The US as the land of opportunity is clearly a false image, since you have a lower chance of climbing out of poverty there than in a lot of other countries. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the_United_States#Comparisons_with_other_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the...
rmc 10y ago
> Maybe we just have too much of that protestant work ethic? The UK has Protestantism as an official state religion and yet it has the NHS, mandatory paid holidays etc.
- coldtea 10y ago
  The average UK citizen hardly cares for any religion, much less have the protestant work ethic being pervasive. In fact the Church of England if often jokingly called the closest thing a church has to atheism. Don't conflate nominal state religions with actual ideas at play in citizen's heads...
cyphunk 10y ago
Upward mobility in the US is a myth fed through fables. Measured by % of population that transitions from the lower 5th economic ladder to the top 5th the US ranks lower than the large majority of OECD peers [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-upward-mobility-study-2014-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-upward-mobility-study...
rsync 10y ago
"Maybe we just have too much of that protestant work ethic?" Actually, that's testable, to a degree ... The largest and most potent concentration of "the protestant work ethic" produced switzerland, which is the nicest and best place on earth. I don't think too much PWE is our problem.

ganfortran 10y ago

Classy newyorker is good at criticising, but never good at offering alternative. And the implied solution(opposite of being too much self-reliant) is always the cliche rosy picture of bigger government and welfare society.

rimliu 10y ago
I think I saw a report somewhere stating thad Danes are most happy to pay taxes—because they are happy what they gain in return. Also, there was a report recently, that happiest people are in Norway. Maybe it is not fair to call all socially responsible arrangements "welfare society"?
- refurb 10y ago
  Or maybe they don't know any different? How many people have actually had the opportunity to live a decade or more of their adult lives in different countries? A very small minority. Canadians love their single payer healthcare. They have no problem waiting a year or more for surgery. They don't think paying a 15% VAT is a burden. They don't know any different. Americans would shit themselves if they had to deal with that.
  - Kristine1975 10y ago
    >Canadians have no problem waiting a year or more for surgery. Citation needed.
    - refurb 10y ago
      Citation that Canadians are OK with long waiting times? Or that long waiting times exist? This woman was told she'd need to wait 2+ years. Bennett was referred for surgery on her right hip in November of 2013 and said she’s been told she won’t get in until early in 2016. She said her joint has deteriorated so much she is unable to work or even function without strong narcotic painkillers. [1]http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/patients-lives-ruined-as-hip-surgery-waits-grow-1.2976196 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/patients-live...

raverbashing 10y ago

Ah Fiverr, the 'gives you a logo for 5 bucks' or 'a Wordpress site for (too little)' Epitome of race to the bottom

Bombthecat 10y ago

Human meat is cheap and plenty. I don't think it will ever get better anytime soon.

curuinor 10y ago
Many of the most loyal Soviet apparatchniks recognized that they got their positions due to them being freed up by the various purges and such. Piketty claims that the lowering inequality of the early 20th century that Kuznets claimed was the natural consequence of capitalism was contingent - contingent upon the orgy of destruction of the two great wars. Kuznets claimed that there were cycles in capital allocation of a certain type, in between some other's determination of characteristic scale, the business cycle, the Kondratiev wave. This is probably not the case, and it's just all a jumbling 1/f wave. So it might be 1 month till your statement proves not to be the case, or 1 millenium.

thedogeye 10y ago

The Gig Economy Celebrates Working For Money

DanielBMarkham 10y ago

"...It does require a fairly dystopian strain of doublethink for a company to celebrate how hard and how constantly its employees must work to make a living, given that these companies are themselves setting the terms..." "setting the terms" is a bit over-the-top here. If I want to go from here to the airport, and you have a car, and I offer you twenty bucks, is that okay? Does it somehow become bad if we meet online in a chat room? How about if a thousand people in this city make this trade on a chat room today? So somebody sets up an online app. At that point do the people setting up the app "set the terms"? Does it happen when they have standards for who can use the app? In that last statement, where the app creators start setting standards for who can participate, we run into problems -- mainly because if you're the gatekeeper, you can charge rent on both parties seeking the deal. Other than that, there's nothing amiss or terrible going on here. Western literature has this childish and somewhat verklempt tradition of taking something that's new and making it into an emotional outburst. Thoreau goes out into the woods and laments the arrival of trains, the stresses of the city, and the war against Mexico. Dickens with his cutting criticism of Victorian England. When done well, it's a thing of beauty. Most of the time, however, authors get a little too tied-up in belly-button-gazing and confuse "things that I can become emotional about and rant" with "things that are important and transcend time" We all take the shortcut of "if it's important to me, it must be important" I am a bit concerned about Uber, Lyft, and the gig economy. On one hand, I am concerned that companies are exerting so much control over the marketplace that they're not innovating as much as they are creating monopolies. On the other hand, however, I am concerned that because this destroys the concept of "a job" for so many people, and the relationship to their employer and country -- they are going to push hard for limiting all sorts of free trade under the rubric of "something must be done!" In this case, quite literally, the writer begins her essay with an example of how people might feel that something must be done for the children. My first wife worked a 9-5 W-2 job during her labor with our second child. I didn't tell her to do it, we didn't need the money. She said she'd rather be doing something than hanging out at home or the hospital. I guess I could tell the story of our second child in much the same way as this author told the story of the Lyft driver in labor -- how some folks "might" look at it as exploitation. But I'm not 17 any more, and I don't tend to view individual choices as being some kind of massive battle between forces that I must take sides on. It was her choice and she made it. For me to come along later and use it as an example for any kind of political bullshit is whack. Rant all you want about whatever topic you'd like, but never take agency away from folks simply because you think you might get a little extra mileage out of your essay.

milesrout 10y ago

The American economy celebrates working yourself to death, has for a long time, and probably will for a long time. Thankfully I'm not American and I'm not working in the US, so I don't care.

rick_cheese 10y ago

Yet all of these companies weave a wonderful narrative about changing the world, empowering people, giving them freedom and independence. Clearly the business models are based on exploitation of the downtrodden and uneducated. Due to clever PR many actually believe this is cool.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jamesblonde 10y ago
This is a classic such example from Lyft: http://creativity-online.com/work/lyft-junelife-is-better-when-you-share-the-ride/50329 http://creativity-online.com/work/lyft-junelife-is-better-wh... Goebels would be proud. The granny is a lyft driver (1) by choice (2) it helps with her loneliness (3) she gets affirmation of her value to society. Of course, the reality is that drivers drive Lyft through necessity, and it is lonely job much of the time. The real kicker, though, is that the advertisement is not even to try and get more drivers. It's used to asuage middle-class guilt who are underpaying for the labour of one of their peers. Middle class people should think 'Hey, these people drive by choice, and it's fun. Win win!'

Kiro 10y ago

How does this work with the minimum wage? It seems like whenever you get paid per item instead of hour the minimum wage can be disregarded.

CodeWriter23 10y ago
In America, minimum wage is for employees only. Once you're an independent contractor, you can accept less than minimum wage for your work. This is indicative that our asset-based economic recovery from the crash of '07 hasn't done much for those who don't have hard assets. Namely the former paycheck-to-paycheck members of the middle class, who walk past homeless encampments wondering if the people living in tents and RVs are their future friends, those who lost their homes after getting fooled into a subprime loan, and the poor. Ironically, Uber will set you up with a subprime auto loan or lease through their partners, payments taken from your weekly take, before you ever see it of course.

rejschaap 10y ago

I don't really see the 'gig economy' as an alternative to regular jobs, which is always implicitly or explicitly implied by these articles. If you need a job, go find a job. If you are flexible, have some extra time, could use some extra money, enjoy these gig tasks or whatever, find a gig task. Obviously there aren't enough jobs to go around, this is not caused by the gig economy. Some regular jobs don't pay well enough, this is also not caused by the gig economy.

yummyfajitas 10y ago
There are plenty of jobs. People just refuse to do them. https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/robots_didnt_take_our_jobs.html https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/robots_didnt_take_ou... Aren't Trump's anti-immigrant attitude considered bad in part because we might lose immigrant labor we are dependent on?
- rejschaap 10y ago
  There is a difference between a job and "there is much work to be done".
  - collyw 10y ago
    Yes, its pay. Just look around any developing country. There always seem to be people almost begging for work, yet there seems so much more work that needs done - infrastructure needing repaired, litter being cleared, healthcare...
- foldr 10y ago
  'Creche' isn't Hinglish. It's just not used much in the US.

willdotphipps 10y ago

it's when the black cab driver and uber driver shake hands, make an app OWNED by the drivers, that drivers get more dough and Uber go bust. Wouldn't be difficult.

willdotphipps 10y ago

...you see even IF Uber prohibit drivers from using their own app between rides, if they all just agree, they can just go fuck it, we've had enough. anyone here ever spoken to a happy Uber driver? Me neither. Wife...family..kids meanwhile Kalanick gets his $6bn...NICE.

philipfoobybar 10y ago
here, hear
raverbashing 10y ago
Actually the Uber drivers I talked to seemed to be doing ok on the platform. (though those were in Europe)
ycombinete 10y ago
Literally every Uber driver I've spoken to was happy. In fact many of them have actually quit other jobs, to drive an Uber.
- CPLX 10y ago
  And literally every person who has carried bags to my hotel room has seemed pleased to serve me.
  - dustinmr 10y ago
    You really have little respect for service workers, don't you? Many people in tourism actually like what they do. Others even see you as the sucker. I came her to agree with the gf comment. It may be partially geographic, as I'm in Miami and about 75% of the drivers I've spoken with are Venezuelan, arrived in the last 2 years or so, and are very happy with their life change and their job driving. And the other 25% are largely either other immigrants or former taxi drivers who are, after talking with a number of them about how the economics worked in taxis and with Uber/Lyft, significantly less exploited than they were working for taxi companies. They see Uber/Lyft as an upgrade, a big one. Trying actually talking with them and asking enough to get to their real opinions. You might hear some spectacular stories, like the Cuban driver I spoke with who walked ashore in Key West on July 4th, and the beachgoers paid a taxi to his family's house in Miami (a 3 hour taxi fare). Then, after he ended up on the street he panhandled and saved enough to rent a car and drive Uber/Lyft while he began working to get his electrician's license in the US (he was an electrician in Cuba). He was just a few weeks from getting his license. Tenacity. Pure tenacity. The gig economy was working very well for him. And he was quite happy with how he was able to use it to improve his life.

_pmf_ 10y ago

I don't know, those startup employees sure seem to have time to write lengthy blog posts.

throw2016 10y ago

The biggest irony is all the well meaning starts ups from SV desperately trying 'improve the world' when they can't even improve the city they live in. Not because of failure from trying but because they can't be bothered. Without a moral compass the only thing they can deliver is a dry soulless unfeeling dystopia stripped of any hint of humanity. Those who don't want present day SV to be replicated in their regions should be wary of the ideological underpinnings of SV startup culture and American capitalism. The lack of a properly defined moral compass from those from non privileged backgrounds struggling through life guided perhaps by upbringing or religion but with no time to ponder or reflect can perhaps be understood but for a privileged well educated elite to display this level of apathy towards humanism is a truly shocking state of affairs. Ultimately its our humanity, our relationships, our capacity for feeling and emotion that enriches our existence, not money.

bythckr 10y ago

Gig Economy = legalised interns intern = a person who works for free or next to nothing on the promise that they will benefit in the long run, while you make sure that they get no benefits and assign every demeaning job possible to them.

coldtea 10y ago

>The Gig Economy Celebrates Working Yourself to Death As any respected free-market advocate will tell you, it's better than dying from starvation. Yeah, that's not a very high bar...

TeMPOraL 10y ago
Yeah, the crucial observation here being, that in a civilized society, this should not be the only choice you're presented with.
Asooka 10y ago
Dying from starvation shouldn't happen on an Earth as abundant with resources as this one. Okay, at some point you can't hunt and gather food for yourself any more, but is that dying from starvation or dying from old age?

seanhandley 10y ago

As a European (used to free healthcare, statutory maternity leave, and 25 days paid leave per year) it shocked me on first visiting America how third-world it actually feels regarding what people consider a "normal" work/life balance. People work incredibly hard, long hours and often with very little to show for it. It's surreal.

rmc 10y ago
And many of them think that people in Europe have it worse. That the economy would just collapse into African-levels of poverty if there was mandatory paid holidays. This is a danger of American TV shows and movie studios remaking shows for the American audiences. They don't get to see that Europe is mostly a developed place.
- J-dawg 10y ago
  Not to disagree with the parent comment (because overall I prefer the European way) but we do have it worse in some ways. Salaries for professionals are markedly lower, we live in much smaller houses etc. I get the feeling that when you're winning at life in America, you're really winning. But when you're losing you're really losing. In Europe the ups and downs of life are more smoothed out.
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    I live in America and my wife's family is from the UK. We aren't rich by any means but we bought a small house last year and when her family flew in they kept commenting on how big our house was. Our house is about as small as you can get without living in a trailer. I'm a high school drop out and we each make less than the median nation income and I feel we are better off than if we lived in the UK. Though I admit life from 18 - 25 would have probably been less of a struggle there.
    - intended 10y ago
      Whats the comparison of sizes like ? Really curious because if the next smaller house in size is a trailer then the UK sizes must be weirdly small.

grabcocque 10y ago

All very interesting theories, but the US isn't an amazingly hard working nation by global standards. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time

J-dawg 10y ago
The ranking [0] is absolutely fascinating, and contains a lot of surprises. Who knew that Mexicans work 500 hours a year more than the Japanese? I wonder if the data is being skewed somehow, perhaps by different cultural norms around women working, or something like that? If anyone can shed any light on this it would be really interesting. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#OECD_ranking https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#OECD_ranking
- TulliusCicero 10y ago
  IIRC the extra hours the Japanese work tend to go unreported.
Asooka 10y ago
Yes, but how much vacation do you get, how much do you work and how much do you pay for your health in order to have the standard "two adults + two children" normal lifestyle? I'm just thinking that maybe these numbers are brought down by people working very little for scraps.

llamataboot 10y ago

Waiting for the inevitable HN critique about "voluntary work" and "why should anyone have the right to tell someone else to work less" without a complete understanding of what voluntary means in a world with massive structural inequalities. Or as the anarchists say, "Work 50 hours or starve" isn't a choice, it's a threat. (edit: nitpick misspelling)

beaconstudios 10y ago
which is kind of ironic because in a state of anarchy like subsistence farming you'd expect to work a lot more than 50 hours, and doing back-breaking manual labour at that.
- llamataboot 10y ago
  I'm not sure how much subsistence farming has to do with a socio-political theory that primarily came out of 19th Century Europe/Russia and Modernity, but sure, if that's your critique I don't want to derail the thread into a discussion about what anarchism is/isn't
  - beaconstudios 10y ago
    it's just one example of a system of living that doesn't involve a central government. I'm not an anarchist myself so tend to be extremely skeptical of anarchist claims that a country with no police force would continue to be "modern" for any stretch of time.
conanbatt 10y ago
> "Work 50 hours or starve" isn't a choice, it's a threat. Damn nature, we'll get back at her somehow, we will.

lordnacho 10y ago

I don't know if it was Mary's first baby, but she might know that it's not terribly urgent to go to a hospital. Even when your water breaks, the hospital will tell you not to come in immediately. With my first kid it was like that, we had hours before anything started happening. A few minutes extra to drive someone doesn't seem all that bad.

d--b 10y ago

This is a strangely divisive topic in the startup industry. For some reason, there are smart people who think that meritocracy works: work hard and things will be good for you. The problem is that in many cases working hard (as in building up a startup) does indeed give people the opportunity to rise in society. But it is not true in all cases at all. And so the negative statement "if you are struggling you didn't try enough" is completely flawed. First, in capitalism, a work's remuneration is supposed to be related in a way to the perceived utility of that work for society in general. Second competition means that a work's remuneration is inversely proportional to how easy it is to perform. Using those 2 propositions, it becomes obvious that jobs with little utility and high competition have a remuneration that tends to go down to 0 (fast food, taxis, etc.). So in these cases, no matter how hard you work, your pay can only go that high.

imgabe 10y ago
> First, in capitalism, a work's remuneration is supposed to be related in a way to the perceived utility of that work for society in general. This is a misconception, I think. A work's remuneration is related to the utility perceived by the person providing the remuneration. Society in general doesn't pay people. Specific people pay other people. Find something enough people want and give it to them. It's not any more complicated than that.
- ice109 10y ago
  you're wrong. if some good is over valued for long enough market dynamics kick in and the price will go down.
  - 1_2__3 10y ago
    That's the Econ 101 textbook statement, not reality.
- d--b 10y ago
  That's why I wrote "supposed". In reality it's a lot more complex than that, but it is usually one argument brought forward to explain why CEOs are being paid more than the workers they manage.

wordpressdev 10y ago

While I agree to the points made in the article that workers in a gig economy have little rights and less benefits than doing a full time employment, gig economy was never supposed to be exact replacement of a permanent job. If you live in a Western country, gigs like driving an Uber, doing a task through TaskRabbit or providing service at Fiverr / Upwork can be considered a modern day equivalent of waiting tables or babysitting. Obviously, if you consider the later as full time jobs then you have to burn your a-- to make the ends meet. For those living in the developing countries, the gig economy is a gift from skies. More and more people from Asia, Africa and parts of Europe are joining the gig economy to supplement their income. Considering the cost of living in these areas, they are even in a position to generate full time living from doing these gigs. Not to mention the digital nomads who are escaping the stressful lives in the US / Europe and traveling to less expensive regions - living off gig economy. Looking at the positives; gig economy gives you freedom to live your life. You do not have to spend precious hours of the day in commute, waste time in useless meetings, bear office politics and bend over to get a raise. Reduce your expenses, get a few well paying clients, work when you feel like it and enjoy your life. All hail the Gig Economy ;)

1_2__3 10y ago
What you are calling the gig economy in this case is really a service economy, which existed long before cell phones or SF tech startup silliness. It's not some amazing new step forward for humanity.

Mendenhall 10y ago

I see many posts about the hours worked in USA. Whats slightly funny to me is having grown up around people who lived through great depression and fought in ww2 I often see USA as lazy these days.

dalbasal 10y ago

This article, and most discussions on this topic are all rich with sub-text. It offers to connect drivers with an insurance broker, and helpfully notes that “the Affordable Care Act offers many choices to make sure you’re covered.” ..a lot of sub-text here, for example. One piece of the sub-text coming up in my internet & human bubble is "technological unemployment" which I have a slightly different take on then a lot of what I read. I think we're seeing it already and it manifests mostly as wage disparity, not unemployment. On the subtext of that quote, it seems to be on the side of what we generall call "labour socialism" in Europe. The idea that laws should focus on increasing low leverage emloyees' bargaining power and/or mandated benefits. IMO, this is a dated position. We've seen relatively consistent success with government provided primary services: health, education & transport. This gets called welfarism, though I think centralism is a better term. We have not seen that kind of success in the labour-socialist sphere. In fact, example like France suggest a problematic trade-off between "good" employment and unemployment. I think the main problem is labour-socialism's tendency to corporatism. I would really like to see employment (including the gig economy) be free-er but suplemented with free or subsidized basic services (health & education mostly) and a basic income. If housing prices are not pathological (as they often are), the gig-worker would be a lot better off. Instead of chasing our tail trying to force uber (or regular taxi companies) to provide stabilty, the state can just subsidize the citizen and provide stability on some fronts. It doesn't even require "big government" for the most part. In most of west Europe, we should be able to implement this relativley easily. Redundant conditional welfare benefits (dole, pensions) already spend 25-40% of what a UBI would cost. Another 25%-40% could be taxed back as income tax without disadvantaging workers (IE, your UBI is >= tax increases). That's most of the way to funding it. This remaining gap mostly represents the uber driver, workers earning well below national average dealing with insecurity and on the wrong end of employer provided benefits (like health insurance). I don't think the US can do it anytime soon though.

campbellmorgan 10y ago
I agree thoroughly with your sentiment and am a strong believer in the welfare state as a way of addressing social imbalances. I also like the economics of the state providing better stability to those in the gig economy because, in theory, it will mean that they feel less pressure to work unhealthy hours (as in the article) and this, in turn, should increase the minimum amount they will work for. However, my objection to this as solution is the situation of non-domiciled, largely un-taxed multinationals not contributing fairly to the pot that keeps the welfare working. As far as I can see, that amounts to a wealth transfer from the state to the shareholders and high-level managers of these companies. Of course the solution would be to tax these companies fairly (which at least in the UK, is slowly beginning to happen), but eventually when taxed fairly enough, doesn't the burden for the companies end up being the same? The only difference is that the state would be footing the bill for the admin overhead of supporting these workers.

sheeshkebab 10y ago

IMO, Excessive working is not a problem (if you are not forced to and can/want to do it)... getting paid $11/hour for it is the problem.

andreasklinger 10y ago

Doesnt that ad target their clients and not their suppliers? It's part of their "Entrepreneur campaign" - using that cliche "entrepreneur hustling"

kelvin0 10y ago

Yup, this is similar to a mentality I've seen celebrated in some Crossfit cliques and it 'works' for a certain type of people. Until the imbalance catches up to them and makes them re-assess their priorities (injury,depression,sickness...)

m23khan 10y ago

Can't speak for whole of Canada but Toronto is definitely on track to become a city where it is impossible to buy a house and rents are so high that for a family - both husband and wife need to work and one of the spouse has to have a side gig for making the money to feed and clothe the family along with some meagre savings. Canadian government keeps stating that inflation rate is less than 2% but reality is, in Toronto, it is probably running in excess of 10% for last 10+ years. However, the companies keep pretending that for their existing employees, if they are lucky to get a raise, that raise should be 3% or 4%. In Toronto, even modest vacations feel like luxury and entertainment options seem to be leave you with a feeling that your pocket is on fire. Now before my pro-Canadiana countrymen come here and lecture me on how great Canada is (and yes, the free healthcare!!), let me tell you: I like Canada and definitely feel it is the place to be. I am just stating in context of the article, that is all.

antoniuschan99 10y ago
Toronto Real Estate thread on Reddit is very informative. Houses are commonly being bought ~25% over asking price at the moment apparently. And it's because Agents are using it as a tactic to drive up offers. Also, a lot of people here are agents nowadays.
badsock 10y ago
I understand the argument for excluding housing, food, and fuel from the official inflation stats, but at this point it's making that number a complete departure from reality. Canada right now is basically getting divided into two classes: those who happened to own real estate a decade or two ago and their children, and everyone else. That's not success based on how hard you worked, or how much you contributed to society, or proportionate to the amount of risk you took. It's just (mostly) Chinese money randomly landing on some of the population, and causing real issues with quality of life and serious opportunity costs for the rest. That is not something we should be happy about, and it's something that we should have better numbers on.

JohnLeTigre 10y ago

Typically 2/3rd of expenses in companies go into salaries. That's a huge chunk of money. Somebody finds a system that reduces the salarial expenses to zero and all the hard-capitalists are over-joyed, secretly dreaming that they could apply this model to their own business. In the mean time workers, while owning the means of production, are still liable to pay all the running expenses, to invest their time and work and give a percentage to a stranger, for some odd reason. This is a form of feudalism. I am not anti-capitalist, but I fear that this form of economy on the long run will not allow individuals to flourish economically through the merit of their work.

fjdlwlv 10y ago
The "odd" reason is that that the "stranger" makes a huge contribution. That's why people weren't runnning nearly so many personal car services before Uber.
- JohnLeTigre 10y ago
  It's an app
  - fjdlwlv 10y ago
    It's an app that no one made before. Why didn't they?
    - JohnLeTigre 10y ago
      It's illegal to taxi people around without a permit. Look it up, gypsy cabs are not new at all. Most people kept a low profile and stuck to their own ghettos though. Anyways, the conversation is not substantive anymore, both of our points where made.

maxxxxx 10y ago

This ad reminds me of how the ruling class makes going to war as something honorable and desirable although the people doing the actual fighting almost never get any benefits from the wars. I guess the capitalists want to pull the same trick selling working yourself to death for nothing as having valor.