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

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

bryanlarsen 8y ago
Sorry, I wasn't clear; I was imagining a scenario where people weren't forced to choose crappy options. In that scenario people who needed economic security would choose options that actually gave it to them.
- jessedhillon 8y ago
  Serious question: in that world, who cleans the toilets?
  - njarboe 8y ago
    People getting paid $100k/year or $200k/year to do that job? Wouldn't it be cool if robots did most things and people could make good money doing the not-very-fun things the robots can't do.
    - cornholio 8y ago
      I don't think we are literally able to imagine the implications of an economic scenario where the market clearing wage for toilet cleaning is $200.000, with current purchasing parity (that is, every janitor could buy the equivalent of a nice suburban home, every year, or accumulate the equivalent of 100 acres / 40 hectares of land in capital, every year). That world would have more to do with a Star Trek episode than with the current society.
      - rosser 8y ago
        >>>> I was imagining a scenario where... Isn't the point of an imagined scenario not to be like current society in some way?
        cornholio 8y ago
        Sure, my point is that we are not really imagining it. It's like a 12 old imagining he could do his homework by tapping a magic wand, not realizing that possessing such a magic wand would make the whole concepts of homework, school or teachers irrelevant.
      - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
        You just described precisely why your scenario is impossible. Money is fundamentally just a representation of access to resources and labor, which are finite. You can create infinite money but you can't create infinite quantities of that which it represents. There are about 1.9 billion acres of land in the continental united states. That works out to 5.8 acres per person. If people could afford to purchase 100 acres of land per year, and even a tiny percent of people utilized this - land prices would skyrocket. And a similar story would end up being true of other resources and labor costs. In describing fantasy scenarios you have to consider the implications on the allocation of limited resources such that everything isn't just completely overwritten by inflation.
        cornholio 8y ago
        That's precisely why I used the phrases "equivalent land in capital" and "equivalent to a nice suburban home". In context, it should be obvious such a wealth explosion would cause an unfathomable real estate inflation. While land is limited, wealth and capital are not. It's perfectly possible to posit a society where people own, say, shares of robotic mining companies that roam the solar system for resources. Or that values genuine human sexual intercourse to the tune of one million dollars per act, inflation adjusted. It's much harder to substantiate how such a society would actually look like.
      - raducu 8y ago
        That is a very interesting point you are making. While I'm sure we could(and most likely will) make sure no one suffers from hunger, has access to quality education(in the online form), and quality goods, things that cannot be mass produced/duplicated will become even more expensive-real estate in tourist cities, tropical/scenic places, art and so on.
      - njarboe 8y ago
        In the US in 1960 one can find wage surveys[1] where one finds saleries of: Electric, gas, sanitary services: $6147/yr Wholesale and retail trade: $4478/yr The first would be where janitors would go and retail is another poorly paid job today. The average house cost in 1960 [2] was $11,900. So with a house price of around two times yearly income, we get to about $100k wage for a janitor or retail clerk in 1960. US post WWII was a pretty unique situation, but one would hope that you should be able to more than imagine such a situation. You can study the existence of such a culture in the recent past and still talk to people who actually lived it. [1](https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015021301612;view=1up;seq=406;size=125 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015021301612;vi...) [2]https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/values.html https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/valu...
        cornholio 8y ago
        Using average housing prices is a poor proxy since both the average size and quality of homes have increased, while the US real estate market has had a very particular evolution, unrepresentative for the overall inflation. It was a bad choice on my part, I was trying to give an intuitive current wealth reference, not track housing trends over decades. An inflation adjusted wage of $5000 in 1960 represents $42.500 in 2018, which is in line with the often repeated tidbit that real wages of blue collar workers have stagnated for decades. Therefore, what you are describing is a world with similar real wages to those of today, and with real estate cheaper by a factor 2-3x, inflation and quality adjusted. That is indeed easy to imagine. What I am describing is a world where real wages are 4-5 times larger. Yes, those wealth increases could be trapped by a ballooning real estate market, where a single bedroom semi is worth $2 million at current purchasing parity, making it very similar to your world. Or something else could happen entirely, that is almost impossible to predict.
  - dieterrams 8y ago
    People who are paid well? Shared responsibility?
  - kwhitefoot 8y ago
    Why should you not be paid a decent income to clean toilets?
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - mgkimsal 8y ago
    companies will pay "cleaning companies" $20/hr for people who end up getting paid $10/hr to avoid the entanglement of needing to 'hire' employees directly at, say, $13/hr. There's often more nuance to that scenario - basically, most companies don't need full-time cleaners. However, it still strikes me as more than a bit odd.
  - Broken_Hippo 8y ago
    Janitors, office employees... the normal. These aren't gig jobs. They offer steady employment with predictable hours and wages. If everyone has a basic job contract (which is a right in some countries already), it is even more predictable. If the job itself isn't good enough for your basic economic needs, the safety net kicks in. If they lose their job, the safety net kicks in so they aren't struggling to get by with gigs. (Obviously idealized situation). The point is that worker never is forced to piece together gigs to be able to pay for food, clothing, shelter, and other things society sees necessary to be a full citizen. The same employee might decide to save for a house, vacation, buy a newer vehicle, or something similar and then work gigs on top of his normal employment. It isn't that everyone will be paid well or that no one will clean toilets, but it may mean that companies like Uber would have to hire regular employees so they have the same sort of economic security as the janitor would.
beebmam 8y ago
The point is: No one should have economic insecurity when it comes to basic needs.
- oldcynic 8y ago
  Yet millions do. Now what?
- ataturk 8y ago
  Socialist pipe dream that does not translate well in the real world. No one should have to pay exorbitant taxes to underwrite a welfare state, either.
jexah 8y ago
Employers will hire the best for the job. Don't mistake meritocracy for scabbing, nobody is entitled to somebody else's money. Employment is, after all, a consensual trade between two parties.

bryanlarsen 8y ago

Sorry, I wasn't clear; I was imagining a scenario where people weren't forced to choose crappy options. In that scenario people who needed economic security would choose options that actually gave it to them.

jessedhillon 8y ago
Serious question: in that world, who cleans the toilets?
- njarboe 8y ago
  People getting paid $100k/year or $200k/year to do that job? Wouldn't it be cool if robots did most things and people could make good money doing the not-very-fun things the robots can't do.
  - cornholio 8y ago
    I don't think we are literally able to imagine the implications of an economic scenario where the market clearing wage for toilet cleaning is $200.000, with current purchasing parity (that is, every janitor could buy the equivalent of a nice suburban home, every year, or accumulate the equivalent of 100 acres / 40 hectares of land in capital, every year). That world would have more to do with a Star Trek episode than with the current society.
    - rosser 8y ago
      >>>> I was imagining a scenario where... Isn't the point of an imagined scenario not to be like current society in some way?
      - cornholio 8y ago
        Sure, my point is that we are not really imagining it. It's like a 12 old imagining he could do his homework by tapping a magic wand, not realizing that possessing such a magic wand would make the whole concepts of homework, school or teachers irrelevant.
    - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
      You just described precisely why your scenario is impossible. Money is fundamentally just a representation of access to resources and labor, which are finite. You can create infinite money but you can't create infinite quantities of that which it represents. There are about 1.9 billion acres of land in the continental united states. That works out to 5.8 acres per person. If people could afford to purchase 100 acres of land per year, and even a tiny percent of people utilized this - land prices would skyrocket. And a similar story would end up being true of other resources and labor costs. In describing fantasy scenarios you have to consider the implications on the allocation of limited resources such that everything isn't just completely overwritten by inflation.
      - cornholio 8y ago
        That's precisely why I used the phrases "equivalent land in capital" and "equivalent to a nice suburban home". In context, it should be obvious such a wealth explosion would cause an unfathomable real estate inflation. While land is limited, wealth and capital are not. It's perfectly possible to posit a society where people own, say, shares of robotic mining companies that roam the solar system for resources. Or that values genuine human sexual intercourse to the tune of one million dollars per act, inflation adjusted. It's much harder to substantiate how such a society would actually look like.
    - raducu 8y ago
      That is a very interesting point you are making. While I'm sure we could(and most likely will) make sure no one suffers from hunger, has access to quality education(in the online form), and quality goods, things that cannot be mass produced/duplicated will become even more expensive-real estate in tourist cities, tropical/scenic places, art and so on.
    - njarboe 8y ago
      In the US in 1960 one can find wage surveys[1] where one finds saleries of: Electric, gas, sanitary services: $6147/yr Wholesale and retail trade: $4478/yr The first would be where janitors would go and retail is another poorly paid job today. The average house cost in 1960 [2] was $11,900. So with a house price of around two times yearly income, we get to about $100k wage for a janitor or retail clerk in 1960. US post WWII was a pretty unique situation, but one would hope that you should be able to more than imagine such a situation. You can study the existence of such a culture in the recent past and still talk to people who actually lived it. [1](https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015021301612;view=1up;seq=406;size=125 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015021301612;vi...) [2]https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/values.html https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/valu...
      - cornholio 8y ago
        Using average housing prices is a poor proxy since both the average size and quality of homes have increased, while the US real estate market has had a very particular evolution, unrepresentative for the overall inflation. It was a bad choice on my part, I was trying to give an intuitive current wealth reference, not track housing trends over decades. An inflation adjusted wage of $5000 in 1960 represents $42.500 in 2018, which is in line with the often repeated tidbit that real wages of blue collar workers have stagnated for decades. Therefore, what you are describing is a world with similar real wages to those of today, and with real estate cheaper by a factor 2-3x, inflation and quality adjusted. That is indeed easy to imagine. What I am describing is a world where real wages are 4-5 times larger. Yes, those wealth increases could be trapped by a ballooning real estate market, where a single bedroom semi is worth $2 million at current purchasing parity, making it very similar to your world. Or something else could happen entirely, that is almost impossible to predict.
- dieterrams 8y ago
  People who are paid well? Shared responsibility?
- kwhitefoot 8y ago
  Why should you not be paid a decent income to clean toilets?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- mgkimsal 8y ago
  companies will pay "cleaning companies" $20/hr for people who end up getting paid $10/hr to avoid the entanglement of needing to 'hire' employees directly at, say, $13/hr. There's often more nuance to that scenario - basically, most companies don't need full-time cleaners. However, it still strikes me as more than a bit odd.
- Broken_Hippo 8y ago
  Janitors, office employees... the normal. These aren't gig jobs. They offer steady employment with predictable hours and wages. If everyone has a basic job contract (which is a right in some countries already), it is even more predictable. If the job itself isn't good enough for your basic economic needs, the safety net kicks in. If they lose their job, the safety net kicks in so they aren't struggling to get by with gigs. (Obviously idealized situation). The point is that worker never is forced to piece together gigs to be able to pay for food, clothing, shelter, and other things society sees necessary to be a full citizen. The same employee might decide to save for a house, vacation, buy a newer vehicle, or something similar and then work gigs on top of his normal employment. It isn't that everyone will be paid well or that no one will clean toilets, but it may mean that companies like Uber would have to hire regular employees so they have the same sort of economic security as the janitor would.

beebmam 8y ago

The point is: No one should have economic insecurity when it comes to basic needs.

oldcynic 8y ago
Yet millions do. Now what?
ataturk 8y ago
Socialist pipe dream that does not translate well in the real world. No one should have to pay exorbitant taxes to underwrite a welfare state, either.

jexah 8y ago

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