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> This seems like the future of the gig economy. Same work load, less pay, less security, less employee power. The gig economy is just a big scam on taxpayers

by kartan 10y ago

> This seems like the future of the gig economy. Same work load, less pay, less security, less employee power. The gig economy is just a big scam on taxpayers shoulders. Companies get the benefit of low paid workers and low or not-at-all taxes. And the rest of the society has to pay the burden of increasing poverty. It is a kind of Tragedy of the Commons, one rips the benefit while the whole pays the cost. It is fueled by the mentality of "at least they have a job". Having a job is not a goal in itself, the goal is that people are able to support themselves in a reasonable way. Having a job is a means to that end. People will be better with a Basic Income, waiting for a better opportunity that brings more value to them and to society. Once you land on a low paid, a-lot-of-hours job it is hard to get out of it. And companies that depend on this kind of jobs are inefficient and have no incentive to do things better.

ksk 10y ago
Its the MBA mentality of offloading risk. Todays consumer protections, employee benefits, health insurance, etc are all business "risks" that "hurt" the competitiveness of businesses. Companies like uber have managed to offload that risk onto society by turning their employees into daily wagers.
Analemma_ 10y ago
It's a consistent theme across the crony capitalist economy that "Privatize the profits; socialize the losses" is the way to get rich. i.e., any costs that can be pushed onto the taxpayer should be.
james_pm 10y ago
The remote work aspect makes it even easier to lose sight of the human doing the work. Once they are just another resource in the dashboard like an AWS instance, some system somewhere can spool more up when you need them, cut them loose when you don't.
- eru 10y ago
  That was the whole advertisement pitch of Amazon's Mechanical Turk, wasn't it?
dismantlethesun 10y ago
> The gig economy is just a big scam on taxpayers shoulders. Companies get the benefit of low paid workers and low or not-at-all taxes. And the rest of the society has to pay the burden of increasing poverty. All things being equal, companies would aim to spend the same TOE (total cost of employment), on each worker regardless of if they are a contractor or a employee. A contractor being paid $15/hour has to pay self-employment tax to cover medicare and social security. A company who hired the same worker, would only do so at say $14/hour to make up for the taxes that they now cover. The goal of contracting isn't to pay less, it's to handle jobs that are irregularly distributed so you aren't literally paying people to sit around. The only cases where you'd choose to employ part-time instead is if a workers' presence is physically required (e.g. Starbucks), or near instant time is extremely important (e.g. not Uber).

by kartan 10y ago

ksk 10y ago

Its the MBA mentality of offloading risk. Todays consumer protections, employee benefits, health insurance, etc are all business "risks" that "hurt" the competitiveness of businesses. Companies like uber have managed to offload that risk onto society by turning their employees into daily wagers.

Analemma_ 10y ago

It's a consistent theme across the crony capitalist economy that "Privatize the profits; socialize the losses" is the way to get rich. i.e., any costs that can be pushed onto the taxpayer should be.

james_pm 10y ago

The remote work aspect makes it even easier to lose sight of the human doing the work. Once they are just another resource in the dashboard like an AWS instance, some system somewhere can spool more up when you need them, cut them loose when you don't.

eru 10y ago
That was the whole advertisement pitch of Amazon's Mechanical Turk, wasn't it?

dismantlethesun 10y ago

> The gig economy is just a big scam on taxpayers shoulders. Companies get the benefit of low paid workers and low or not-at-all taxes. And the rest of the society has to pay the burden of increasing poverty. All things being equal, companies would aim to spend the same TOE (total cost of employment), on each worker regardless of if they are a contractor or a employee. A contractor being paid $15/hour has to pay self-employment tax to cover medicare and social security. A company who hired the same worker, would only do so at say $14/hour to make up for the taxes that they now cover. The goal of contracting isn't to pay less, it's to handle jobs that are irregularly distributed so you aren't literally paying people to sit around. The only cases where you'd choose to employ part-time instead is if a workers' presence is physically required (e.g. Starbucks), or near instant time is extremely important (e.g. not Uber).