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I genuinely don't understand the argument that tech companies are hurting society by providing lower paying gig-economy jobs. By providing more jobs, these com

I genuinely don't understand the argument that tech companies are hurting society by providing lower paying gig-economy jobs. By providing more jobs, these companies are increasing options for workers looking for jobs. No one is forcing Uber drivers to drive passengers. If there is a shortage of labor, then the prices paid to workers will increase due to market forces. If there is not a shortage of labor, then people that need jobs are finding them.

golergka 8y ago
Copenhagen principle of moral entanglement in action: regardless of cause and effect, the most powerful actor that is somehow entangled in a situation is called the one responsible by the media.
- sideshowb 8y ago
  It makes logical sense to direct efforts towards change at a body that is powerful enough to enact change. There is usually a confusion of practical and moral responsibility, of course. Moral responsibility is a heuristic based on evolutionary incentives, that sometimes is and sometimes isn't useful for enacting change.
fabricexpert 8y ago
It’s not the volume of jobs, it’s the quality. Driving a taxi or delivering food is a pretty bad job, doing it as a self employed contractor is almost criminal. You have to cover all your own expenses and have no guarantee of work, with zero progression (ever heard of an Uber driving saving up and staring their own minicab business?). It’s a terrible economic decision. The market does not correct for this as it is entirely controlled by a small group of companies.
- countryqt30 8y ago
  Again, nobody forces you to do this so what's the point?
  - fabricexpert 8y ago
    Do you really think people doing gig economy jobs have alternatives? It's not a "lifestyle choice", it's literally looking around and saying what can I do that will pay my bills, today. And if these are the only options available this is what you "choose".
    - howeyc 8y ago
      Right, but without the gig economy jobs they'd have less possibilities for income.
      - bryanlarsen 8y ago
        Without the gig economy jobs they could get welfare. But they don't qualify for welfare because gig economy jobs are available.
      - ivanbakel 8y ago
        Which would also mean the need for real jobs is honestly represented. This is a major debate in West at the moment, and in the UK it's synonymous with the term "zero-hour contracts": is it somehow OK to suppress unemployment figures by nominally employing more people but giving each one a smaller share of all the labour, and so, wages? If the gig economy unsustainably employs people at cut-throat rates, then the statistics look good, and that spins the public opinion. Why would workers complain that they can't pay the bills if there are so many jobs out there? In fact, employment for peanuts is worse than no employment at all, because it is a lie perpetuated to try to avoid having to really deal with the issue of job poverty.
        howeyc 8y ago
        I don't understand what you're getting at. So offering someone employment (do this for money) should only be allowed if it's at a consistent frequency (full time) and at a guaranteed non-variable amount? What if the job they're being hired to do does not have consistent demand? Or the service provided has competition, or varying costs, which requires price changes?
- _red 8y ago
  >It’s not the volume of jobs, it’s the quality. Perhaps we should allow another 10M 'undocumented' worker in? That should help, right?
- gpapilion 8y ago
  the quality of these jobs have changed over time. Originally an Uber driver told me he he was clearing $4000 a week a few years back(incentives, surge pricing, etc). Now not much has changed for me, but there pay structure has changed significantly.
neffy 8y ago
Think of society as a very slow (this is key) networked system, subject to the same kind of feedback loops and manipulations we can perform in computer networks, just progressing in human time over years. Now within this system there are two strategies to run a company, #1) employ people, make a product, sell it for a profit, rinse, recycle, keep going for decades if you´re good. Or #2, for a short (but longish in human terms, several years at least, remember it´s a very, very slow system, and hey interest rates have been really low now for a decade), borrow money, employ people, make a product, and sell it for less than it cost to make. Eventually with #2 the borrowed money runs out, but until it does you stand a more than decent chance of beating #1, and since you borrowed the money you can throw some great parties with it along the way. For extra thrills and lolz, borrow the money from the banking system, so that when you can´t repay it, you crash the entire country with a credit crisis. Note there isn´t necessarily as clear a division between the two strategies as we might want, most companies need some kind of startup capital, and have to borrow that from somewhere.
- gcb0 8y ago
  it used to be called investor diligence. if a small startup was selling at a loss like Microsoft can, nobody would be crazy to have their money there. now big finance saw they just need unicorns, not actual business models, so everything and anything is fair game and stocks are less sound than Vegas.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Though VC is technicaly equity rather than debt. Rather than borrowing, it induces a follow-on investment, capital, revenue and market (in cases), recruiting strength and other mindshare effects. The smart money knows the exit strategy (and more importantly: timing ), the dumb money thinks it does, the hopeless money has no idea what exit strategy is. The effect is similar to the debt model you describe, though structured differently.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> I genuinely don't understand the argument that tech companies are hurting society by providing lower paying gig-economy jobs. The whole point of “disruption” is that these businesses are squeezing out existing business which either provide more and/or higher-paying jobs.
i_am_proteus 8y ago
Because workers often stake their livelihoods on a single source of income. This is perilous enough when the source of income is result of them making contributions to the economy at the actual market rate. But there is nothing "market rate" about rank-and-file work for a company that's pouring gasoline on VC money and setting it ablaze. If demand for your labor is only due to artificially low prices, that demand will evaporate once growth targets are met. See also: existing business that was disrupted. If the new service is not actually more efficient and was only able to undercut existing players on price because of VC money, there are no real long-term winners on the ground. Sure, maybe some founders, early employees, and investors net a tidy profit, but that profit isn't based on an actual economic contribution if the product isn't viable after the VC spigot gets turned off
- scarface74 8y ago
  Are you just referring to gig economy workers or white collar workers who are also getting six figure incomes based on VC money? How much less would even profitable companies have to pay for white collar workers if they didn’t have to compete with VC funded startups and there were bunch of people out of work because VC funding dried up?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
joosters 8y ago
What about the people in the industries being 'disrupted' by the strategy of flooding the market with unsustainably-cheap products or services (e.g. taxi drivers being undercut by Uber) ?
- scarface74 8y ago
  I honestly have no idea how much taxi fares are and have only used a Taxi when I was in New York in 2012. Before Uber, I would rent a car at the airport. How many people use Uber for the convenience and are not price sensitive? How many people use Uber who have cars but use it so they won’t risk getting a DUI? Heck we use it just when we don’t feel like going through the hassle of parking and dealing with traffic when we go into the city center from the burbs sometimes.
- barry-cotter 8y ago
  Fuck taxi drivers and their entire industry. Fuck their lying about someone being there in 15 minutes for four hours. Fuck their “broken” credit card machine. Fuck hailing a taxi while black. Fuck a regulator that does their best to make filing a complaint impossible. Fuck trying to get s taxi to travel to an area that they are legally required to serve but they just refuse to go to. It is an enormous pity that the taxi industry has not been disrupted more. If better service in every possible way is what disruption looks like count me in. Bring it on.
  - danaris 8y ago
    But this is not a structural problem with the taxi industry: it is a problem with the current implementation in certain areas. Other places have recognized the need to make taxi service more modern and less horrible and made changes—having their own ride-hailing apps for the local taxi service, for instance. Not everywhere is New York City.
    - barry-cotter 8y ago
      Indeed, not everywhere is New York City. Some places are worse, like San Francisco. Possibly there are places that are worse again. Certainly I would never get a taxi in Southeast Asia if I could possibly get an Uber.
sideshowb 8y ago
Your argument hangs on the assumption of perfect competition and therefore a frictionless market. Neither of these assumptions hold in practice.
matt4077 8y ago
I genuinely don’t get people denying even the existence of opposing arguments. I am perfectly fine with arguing against them, even in such juvenile Ayn Rand terms. But to just pretend that there is no argument whatsoever seems disingenuous. - Über replaces taxis. Taxi drivers are relatively well situated wrt to pay, insurance, etc. Uber drivers are working poor. Therefore, the middle class wins, the lower class suffers. - In some cases, Uber replaces other modes of transportation, such as public transit. If you drive everywhere, you should hate Uber for clogging the streets. Also the environment, etc. - Uber is a shitshow internally. Remember hw they bought nice jackets for everyone on the team, except the single woman because they wouldn’t get a mass discount on that jacket? Yeah...
js2 8y ago
You will always find someone willing to work for less money or in worse conditions. It’s why we have minimum wage and workers’ rights regulations. To the extent that existing minimum wage and workers’ rights regulations haven’t caught up with the gig economy, these jobs looks like capital exploiting labor by having found a loophole in the rules. http://fortune.com/2015/07/30/freelance-vs-full-time-employees/ http://fortune.com/2015/07/30/freelance-vs-full-time-employe...
bryanlarsen 8y ago
Desperation and misunderstanding is forcing Uber drivers to drive passengers. The money they're getting has three components: the first part pays off their marginal costs (gas, insurance), the second pays off their fixed costs (increased depreciation on their car), and the third is their wage. How much is left after the first 2 components are taken off? It varies widely and is hard to calculate, but suffice it to say "not much". Driving for Uber is like selling your stuff for cash. It's better than starving, but it's not a good choice.
will_brown 8y ago
>genuinely don't understand the argument that tech companies are hurting society by providing lower paying gig-economy jobs. For starters these multi billion dollar gig economy tech platforms aren’t providing jobs (at least to the gig workers). Gig workers are independent contractors and by their very nature independent contractors are self-employed. It’s all a massive fraud that harms society. How many non tech companies go public with $1B/year losses? None. The very same company who on one hand doesn’t give 40+hour workers employee benefits and on the other claim they are job creators.

golergka 8y ago

Copenhagen principle of moral entanglement in action: regardless of cause and effect, the most powerful actor that is somehow entangled in a situation is called the one responsible by the media.

sideshowb 8y ago
It makes logical sense to direct efforts towards change at a body that is powerful enough to enact change. There is usually a confusion of practical and moral responsibility, of course. Moral responsibility is a heuristic based on evolutionary incentives, that sometimes is and sometimes isn't useful for enacting change.

fabricexpert 8y ago

It’s not the volume of jobs, it’s the quality. Driving a taxi or delivering food is a pretty bad job, doing it as a self employed contractor is almost criminal. You have to cover all your own expenses and have no guarantee of work, with zero progression (ever heard of an Uber driving saving up and staring their own minicab business?). It’s a terrible economic decision. The market does not correct for this as it is entirely controlled by a small group of companies.

countryqt30 8y ago
Again, nobody forces you to do this so what's the point?
- fabricexpert 8y ago
  Do you really think people doing gig economy jobs have alternatives? It's not a "lifestyle choice", it's literally looking around and saying what can I do that will pay my bills, today. And if these are the only options available this is what you "choose".
  - howeyc 8y ago
    Right, but without the gig economy jobs they'd have less possibilities for income.
    - bryanlarsen 8y ago
      Without the gig economy jobs they could get welfare. But they don't qualify for welfare because gig economy jobs are available.
    - ivanbakel 8y ago
      Which would also mean the need for real jobs is honestly represented. This is a major debate in West at the moment, and in the UK it's synonymous with the term "zero-hour contracts": is it somehow OK to suppress unemployment figures by nominally employing more people but giving each one a smaller share of all the labour, and so, wages? If the gig economy unsustainably employs people at cut-throat rates, then the statistics look good, and that spins the public opinion. Why would workers complain that they can't pay the bills if there are so many jobs out there? In fact, employment for peanuts is worse than no employment at all, because it is a lie perpetuated to try to avoid having to really deal with the issue of job poverty.
      - howeyc 8y ago
        I don't understand what you're getting at. So offering someone employment (do this for money) should only be allowed if it's at a consistent frequency (full time) and at a guaranteed non-variable amount? What if the job they're being hired to do does not have consistent demand? Or the service provided has competition, or varying costs, which requires price changes?
_red 8y ago
>It’s not the volume of jobs, it’s the quality. Perhaps we should allow another 10M 'undocumented' worker in? That should help, right?
gpapilion 8y ago
the quality of these jobs have changed over time. Originally an Uber driver told me he he was clearing $4000 a week a few years back(incentives, surge pricing, etc). Now not much has changed for me, but there pay structure has changed significantly.

neffy 8y ago

Think of society as a very slow (this is key) networked system, subject to the same kind of feedback loops and manipulations we can perform in computer networks, just progressing in human time over years. Now within this system there are two strategies to run a company, #1) employ people, make a product, sell it for a profit, rinse, recycle, keep going for decades if you´re good. Or #2, for a short (but longish in human terms, several years at least, remember it´s a very, very slow system, and hey interest rates have been really low now for a decade), borrow money, employ people, make a product, and sell it for less than it cost to make. Eventually with #2 the borrowed money runs out, but until it does you stand a more than decent chance of beating #1, and since you borrowed the money you can throw some great parties with it along the way. For extra thrills and lolz, borrow the money from the banking system, so that when you can´t repay it, you crash the entire country with a credit crisis. Note there isn´t necessarily as clear a division between the two strategies as we might want, most companies need some kind of startup capital, and have to borrow that from somewhere.

gcb0 8y ago
it used to be called investor diligence. if a small startup was selling at a loss like Microsoft can, nobody would be crazy to have their money there. now big finance saw they just need unicorns, not actual business models, so everything and anything is fair game and stocks are less sound than Vegas.
dredmorbius 8y ago
Though VC is technicaly equity rather than debt. Rather than borrowing, it induces a follow-on investment, capital, revenue and market (in cases), recruiting strength and other mindshare effects. The smart money knows the exit strategy (and more importantly: timing ), the dumb money thinks it does, the hopeless money has no idea what exit strategy is. The effect is similar to the debt model you describe, though structured differently.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> I genuinely don't understand the argument that tech companies are hurting society by providing lower paying gig-economy jobs. The whole point of “disruption” is that these businesses are squeezing out existing business which either provide more and/or higher-paying jobs.

i_am_proteus 8y ago

Because workers often stake their livelihoods on a single source of income. This is perilous enough when the source of income is result of them making contributions to the economy at the actual market rate. But there is nothing "market rate" about rank-and-file work for a company that's pouring gasoline on VC money and setting it ablaze. If demand for your labor is only due to artificially low prices, that demand will evaporate once growth targets are met. See also: existing business that was disrupted. If the new service is not actually more efficient and was only able to undercut existing players on price because of VC money, there are no real long-term winners on the ground. Sure, maybe some founders, early employees, and investors net a tidy profit, but that profit isn't based on an actual economic contribution if the product isn't viable after the VC spigot gets turned off

scarface74 8y ago
Are you just referring to gig economy workers or white collar workers who are also getting six figure incomes based on VC money? How much less would even profitable companies have to pay for white collar workers if they didn’t have to compete with VC funded startups and there were bunch of people out of work because VC funding dried up?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

joosters 8y ago

What about the people in the industries being 'disrupted' by the strategy of flooding the market with unsustainably-cheap products or services (e.g. taxi drivers being undercut by Uber) ?

scarface74 8y ago
I honestly have no idea how much taxi fares are and have only used a Taxi when I was in New York in 2012. Before Uber, I would rent a car at the airport. How many people use Uber for the convenience and are not price sensitive? How many people use Uber who have cars but use it so they won’t risk getting a DUI? Heck we use it just when we don’t feel like going through the hassle of parking and dealing with traffic when we go into the city center from the burbs sometimes.
barry-cotter 8y ago
Fuck taxi drivers and their entire industry. Fuck their lying about someone being there in 15 minutes for four hours. Fuck their “broken” credit card machine. Fuck hailing a taxi while black. Fuck a regulator that does their best to make filing a complaint impossible. Fuck trying to get s taxi to travel to an area that they are legally required to serve but they just refuse to go to. It is an enormous pity that the taxi industry has not been disrupted more. If better service in every possible way is what disruption looks like count me in. Bring it on.
- danaris 8y ago
  But this is not a structural problem with the taxi industry: it is a problem with the current implementation in certain areas. Other places have recognized the need to make taxi service more modern and less horrible and made changes—having their own ride-hailing apps for the local taxi service, for instance. Not everywhere is New York City.
  - barry-cotter 8y ago
    Indeed, not everywhere is New York City. Some places are worse, like San Francisco. Possibly there are places that are worse again. Certainly I would never get a taxi in Southeast Asia if I could possibly get an Uber.

sideshowb 8y ago

Your argument hangs on the assumption of perfect competition and therefore a frictionless market. Neither of these assumptions hold in practice.

matt4077 8y ago

I genuinely don’t get people denying even the existence of opposing arguments. I am perfectly fine with arguing against them, even in such juvenile Ayn Rand terms. But to just pretend that there is no argument whatsoever seems disingenuous. - Über replaces taxis. Taxi drivers are relatively well situated wrt to pay, insurance, etc. Uber drivers are working poor. Therefore, the middle class wins, the lower class suffers. - In some cases, Uber replaces other modes of transportation, such as public transit. If you drive everywhere, you should hate Uber for clogging the streets. Also the environment, etc. - Uber is a shitshow internally. Remember hw they bought nice jackets for everyone on the team, except the single woman because they wouldn’t get a mass discount on that jacket? Yeah...

js2 8y ago

You will always find someone willing to work for less money or in worse conditions. It’s why we have minimum wage and workers’ rights regulations. To the extent that existing minimum wage and workers’ rights regulations haven’t caught up with the gig economy, these jobs looks like capital exploiting labor by having found a loophole in the rules. http://fortune.com/2015/07/30/freelance-vs-full-time-employees/ http://fortune.com/2015/07/30/freelance-vs-full-time-employe...

bryanlarsen 8y ago

Desperation and misunderstanding is forcing Uber drivers to drive passengers. The money they're getting has three components: the first part pays off their marginal costs (gas, insurance), the second pays off their fixed costs (increased depreciation on their car), and the third is their wage. How much is left after the first 2 components are taken off? It varies widely and is hard to calculate, but suffice it to say "not much". Driving for Uber is like selling your stuff for cash. It's better than starving, but it's not a good choice.

will_brown 8y ago

>genuinely don't understand the argument that tech companies are hurting society by providing lower paying gig-economy jobs. For starters these multi billion dollar gig economy tech platforms aren’t providing jobs (at least to the gig workers). Gig workers are independent contractors and by their very nature independent contractors are self-employed. It’s all a massive fraud that harms society. How many non tech companies go public with $1B/year losses? None. The very same company who on one hand doesn’t give 40+hour workers employee benefits and on the other claim they are job creators.