4 ms·

> Just because somethin has a benefit to the consumer does not mean we should keep it a viable business model, otherwise we should also allow slave labor. How

by bko 7y ago

> Just because somethin has a benefit to the consumer does not mean we should keep it a viable business model, otherwise we should also allow slave labor. How could you compare someone voluntarily engaging in employment to slave labor? > well be detrimental overall, because it increases costs for everyone. I don't buy it. The math that claims that these designations cost taxpayers is naive. As though applying additional costs to the employers would somehow just generate wealth and tax revenue from nowhere. The money would come from somewhere (consumers and gig workers), and would result in less business as an artificially higher price would scale back quantity demanded. > The only people who are really benefiting are the large shareholders. Most of these businesses are losing a lot of money. They're not fleecing anyone. It might not be viable by any means but increasing the costs arbitrarily would decrease their chances. It's important to remember that most of these gig workers work these jobs because they prefer them over any other job available to them. So removing options for them is unlikely to benefit them.

Shikadi 7y ago
OC wasn't comparing voluntarily engaging in employment to slave labor, they were giving an example of something good for the consumer that we don't want as a business model. My personal opinion on your last statement about removing options being unlikely to benefit, the other way of looking at it is a race to the bottom. If you create a job market segment where employees are being underpaid, but they're accepting it because there aren't better options for them, the overall job market can suffer. Hypothetically, some place like Walmart could see a chance to pay less for their workers, and if they actually went through with it then one of the largest employers would be taking a massive chunk of money out of the working class. They're a good example because they're already a burden on tax payers (about 6.2 billion depending on your source) since so many of their workers are on welfare. The reality is, if you let companies exploit workers, they will, and the workers will be happy to be exploited until it's too late. See: Working conditions in China over the past few decades I'm not an economist, so maybe someone with more knowledge on the subject can hopefully put it more eloquently, or maybe even give an explanation as to why I might be wrong
- bko 7y ago
  The whole point of a voluntary exchange of labor or goods is that it has to benefit both parties for it to take place. Companies, including Walmart, don't set wages arbitrarily. Despite their size, they can't control the market for labor. They don't pay what they do because they are generous. There are frictions with hiring and onboarding people. They want their employees to be happy. And even if they were a significantly large employer, the market is not a closed system and things change Regarding your welfare claim, it depends how you look at it. Walmart is offering these people the best employment opportunity they can get, otherwise they would work elsewhere. If they lost that opportunity which certainly some would with increased costs, they would likely be moved to more generous government benefits.
  - jacobolus 7y ago
    There is a long history of people deliberately selling themselves into slavery. Just because there is consent involved doesn’t mean it should be legal; there are many types of desperate / coercive situations under which people will make choices that compromise their own bodily autonomy or sacrifice their values. > [Walmart] wants their employees to be happy There is little evidence for this that I have seen. Rather, they want to provide as little support for employees possible consistent with maintaining their profits. But there are many, many horrific stories of Walmart abusing and taking unethical (often illegal) advantage of employees. In addition Walmart spends considerable effort and money lobbying governments to undermine basic worker rights and protections.
    - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
      > There is a long history of people deliberately selling themselves into slavery. "Selling yourself into slavery" is a contradiction in terms. Willingly exchanging labor for compensation is not slavery. It's just an attempt to frame things in an inflammatory way. Suppose that someone kidnaps you and forces you to work without compensation for the rest of your life. Suppose that you willingly agree to sign onto $250K in student loans that can't be discharged in bankruptcy and which you will never in your whole life be able to pay all back. Is agreeing to work for someone your whole life if they put you through college more like the first one or more like the second one? Clearly the second, I think, but then we see people calling it "selling yourself into slavery" on one hand and the government explicitly subsidizing it on the other. Agreeing to either of those sets of terms is, of course, problematic. But the problem isn't caused by someone being willing to offer those terms, it's caused by people being desperate enough to accept them. And you can't solve that by limiting their alternatives to whatever even worse option that caused them to choose the objectionable one to begin with. You have to add better alternatives, not remove existing ones. > In addition Walmart spends considerable effort and money lobbying governments to undermine basic worker rights and protections. You say "undermine basic worker rights and protections" while they say creating jobs for unskilled workers who would otherwise have to rely fully on government assistance.
Frost1x 7y ago
Voluntarily doesn't disqualify something from being slavery. Historically, if you look at indentured servitude you'll see this very trend and indentured servitude is classified as a form of slavery (albeit, arguably, not as bad). Interestingly, if you want to look at a modern parallel, it's not too far off from how H1Bs are used. There are of course more modern rights that allow individuals to quickly terminate these responsibilities but essentially contracts hold needs (income, assets) and desires (citizenship) hostage as the bargaining mechanisms, not too far from what many indentured servants entered into. To be fair, working conditions and treatment have also of course increased drastically.
augstein 7y ago
> How could you compare someone voluntarily engaging in employment to slave labor? The gig workers I talked to basically told me „it’s either that gig job or starving“, so I‘m not so sure about the voluntariness anymore.
- gruez 7y ago
  >it’s either that gig job or starving You could say the same about every American living paycheck to paycheck. Are they all slaves?
  - your-nanny 7y ago
    maybe!?
    - sctb 7y ago
      You've been posting a whole lot of unsubstantive comments. Could you please review the guidelines and work on telling us more? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    Yes wage slavery is a key features of capitalism, and a key incentive for capitalists (the economic class) to oppose reforms to increase the economic security of the working class, as mitigating wage slavery frees employees to demand a greater share of the value produced.
  - NotSammyHagar 7y ago
    There are some people who are not well educated and they can't get other jobs. So yes, that might be the only job where they can work around limitations on child care or whatever.
TelmoMenezes 7y ago
> How could you compare someone voluntarily engaging in employment to slave labor? Is it really voluntary if the alternative is to die of starvation?
- zaroth 7y ago
  Yes? The vast majority of people in the world work in order to feed themselves and their families. This does not make the work “involuntary”. Choice is obviously not an absolute, because we don’t live in magical fairy land. Choice is the ability to decide how you will go about feeding yourself and your family. Gig economy simply increases the available choices, and provides quite a few fairly pleasant options, judging by how many people choose to do Gig work versus any other possible minimum wage (or below) job. There is real slavery in the world. To equate Gig jobs with slavery is pretty terribly insulting both to Gig workers and the people actually suffering true slavery or slave-like conditions.
  - TelmoMenezes 7y ago
    > The vast majority of people in the world work in order to feed themselves and their families. Yes, and this is an inane state-of-affairs given 2019 technology. We could keep the entire world population fed with minimal effort, if we stopped acting in insane ways.
b_tterc_p 7y ago
Just because something is voluntary doesn’t make it fair. There are many things, for many reasons, that are voluntary but unfair. Most of it is due to information asymmetry. I would hypothesize that the gig economy gradually grows into a large economic underclass. And the larger it grows, the worse it is for each individual member. Maybe we should avoid that
jquery 7y ago
I agree. As someone who likes the idea of being able to drive for Uber for spare cash, I'm not very happy with the heavy-handed way California likes to regulate its economy. Many of these gig economy workers will end up simply relying on the government or foregoing the cash altogether if gigs are taken away.

by bko 7y ago

Shikadi 7y ago

OC wasn't comparing voluntarily engaging in employment to slave labor, they were giving an example of something good for the consumer that we don't want as a business model. My personal opinion on your last statement about removing options being unlikely to benefit, the other way of looking at it is a race to the bottom. If you create a job market segment where employees are being underpaid, but they're accepting it because there aren't better options for them, the overall job market can suffer. Hypothetically, some place like Walmart could see a chance to pay less for their workers, and if they actually went through with it then one of the largest employers would be taking a massive chunk of money out of the working class. They're a good example because they're already a burden on tax payers (about 6.2 billion depending on your source) since so many of their workers are on welfare. The reality is, if you let companies exploit workers, they will, and the workers will be happy to be exploited until it's too late. See: Working conditions in China over the past few decades I'm not an economist, so maybe someone with more knowledge on the subject can hopefully put it more eloquently, or maybe even give an explanation as to why I might be wrong

bko 7y ago
The whole point of a voluntary exchange of labor or goods is that it has to benefit both parties for it to take place. Companies, including Walmart, don't set wages arbitrarily. Despite their size, they can't control the market for labor. They don't pay what they do because they are generous. There are frictions with hiring and onboarding people. They want their employees to be happy. And even if they were a significantly large employer, the market is not a closed system and things change Regarding your welfare claim, it depends how you look at it. Walmart is offering these people the best employment opportunity they can get, otherwise they would work elsewhere. If they lost that opportunity which certainly some would with increased costs, they would likely be moved to more generous government benefits.
- jacobolus 7y ago
  There is a long history of people deliberately selling themselves into slavery. Just because there is consent involved doesn’t mean it should be legal; there are many types of desperate / coercive situations under which people will make choices that compromise their own bodily autonomy or sacrifice their values. > [Walmart] wants their employees to be happy There is little evidence for this that I have seen. Rather, they want to provide as little support for employees possible consistent with maintaining their profits. But there are many, many horrific stories of Walmart abusing and taking unethical (often illegal) advantage of employees. In addition Walmart spends considerable effort and money lobbying governments to undermine basic worker rights and protections.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    > There is a long history of people deliberately selling themselves into slavery. "Selling yourself into slavery" is a contradiction in terms. Willingly exchanging labor for compensation is not slavery. It's just an attempt to frame things in an inflammatory way. Suppose that someone kidnaps you and forces you to work without compensation for the rest of your life. Suppose that you willingly agree to sign onto $250K in student loans that can't be discharged in bankruptcy and which you will never in your whole life be able to pay all back. Is agreeing to work for someone your whole life if they put you through college more like the first one or more like the second one? Clearly the second, I think, but then we see people calling it "selling yourself into slavery" on one hand and the government explicitly subsidizing it on the other. Agreeing to either of those sets of terms is, of course, problematic. But the problem isn't caused by someone being willing to offer those terms, it's caused by people being desperate enough to accept them. And you can't solve that by limiting their alternatives to whatever even worse option that caused them to choose the objectionable one to begin with. You have to add better alternatives, not remove existing ones. > In addition Walmart spends considerable effort and money lobbying governments to undermine basic worker rights and protections. You say "undermine basic worker rights and protections" while they say creating jobs for unskilled workers who would otherwise have to rely fully on government assistance.

Frost1x 7y ago

Voluntarily doesn't disqualify something from being slavery. Historically, if you look at indentured servitude you'll see this very trend and indentured servitude is classified as a form of slavery (albeit, arguably, not as bad). Interestingly, if you want to look at a modern parallel, it's not too far off from how H1Bs are used. There are of course more modern rights that allow individuals to quickly terminate these responsibilities but essentially contracts hold needs (income, assets) and desires (citizenship) hostage as the bargaining mechanisms, not too far from what many indentured servants entered into. To be fair, working conditions and treatment have also of course increased drastically.

augstein 7y ago

> How could you compare someone voluntarily engaging in employment to slave labor? The gig workers I talked to basically told me „it’s either that gig job or starving“, so I‘m not so sure about the voluntariness anymore.

gruez 7y ago
>it’s either that gig job or starving You could say the same about every American living paycheck to paycheck. Are they all slaves?
- your-nanny 7y ago
  maybe!?
  - sctb 7y ago
    You've been posting a whole lot of unsubstantive comments. Could you please review the guidelines and work on telling us more? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  Yes wage slavery is a key features of capitalism, and a key incentive for capitalists (the economic class) to oppose reforms to increase the economic security of the working class, as mitigating wage slavery frees employees to demand a greater share of the value produced.
- NotSammyHagar 7y ago
  There are some people who are not well educated and they can't get other jobs. So yes, that might be the only job where they can work around limitations on child care or whatever.

TelmoMenezes 7y ago

> How could you compare someone voluntarily engaging in employment to slave labor? Is it really voluntary if the alternative is to die of starvation?

zaroth 7y ago
Yes? The vast majority of people in the world work in order to feed themselves and their families. This does not make the work “involuntary”. Choice is obviously not an absolute, because we don’t live in magical fairy land. Choice is the ability to decide how you will go about feeding yourself and your family. Gig economy simply increases the available choices, and provides quite a few fairly pleasant options, judging by how many people choose to do Gig work versus any other possible minimum wage (or below) job. There is real slavery in the world. To equate Gig jobs with slavery is pretty terribly insulting both to Gig workers and the people actually suffering true slavery or slave-like conditions.
- TelmoMenezes 7y ago
  > The vast majority of people in the world work in order to feed themselves and their families. Yes, and this is an inane state-of-affairs given 2019 technology. We could keep the entire world population fed with minimal effort, if we stopped acting in insane ways.

b_tterc_p 7y ago

Just because something is voluntary doesn’t make it fair. There are many things, for many reasons, that are voluntary but unfair. Most of it is due to information asymmetry. I would hypothesize that the gig economy gradually grows into a large economic underclass. And the larger it grows, the worse it is for each individual member. Maybe we should avoid that

jquery 7y ago

I agree. As someone who likes the idea of being able to drive for Uber for spare cash, I'm not very happy with the heavy-handed way California likes to regulate its economy. Many of these gig economy workers will end up simply relying on the government or foregoing the cash altogether if gigs are taken away.