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Here's the problem. Rather than actually solving the underlying problems of lack of good jobs, training, and support networks for these people you're just givi
by mdorazio 7y ago
Here's the problem. Rather than actually solving the underlying problems of lack of good jobs, training, and support networks for these people you're just giving them a slightly less-shitty "job", rationalizing away all the bad parts by saying it's "flexible" now, checking the box for employment, and calling it good until automated delivery completely destroys these jobs in a few years.
I would personally argue that this is worse in many ways than if we could point to high unemployment and people marching in the streets as reasons we need to change the status quo in more meaningful ways.
- zaroth 7y agoI mean, if you need people starving and rioting in the street to obtain your policy goals, maybe that’s a good point to stop and rethink?
- whataboutisms 7y agoYou have it backwards. The policy goal is to avoid starving and rioting in the streets.
- colinyoung 7y agoThis comment is wildly out of touch with how power works and change happens in this world
- zaroth 7y agoI’m not taking the flame bait. TFA is discussing the app economy for last mile delivery, a market which TFA admits was previously largely exploitative of illegal immigrant labor paid under the table and often abused in the process. The is a prime example where the world has changed for the better through software. The job is now above board, tracked, and accounted in ways that make it better paying, more reliable and even safer work. The competitiveness of the marketplace will only ensure these jobs become even better paying and safer over time. Exceedingly low job switching costs is a massive contributor to the competitive forces which lead to these advances, which in fact serve to protect low skilled workers from otherwise abusive employers. Every delivery app platform lives in absolute fear of all their contractors switching to the competition because they found a way to more efficiently schedule, queue, route, deliver, fulfill their customers and therefore can pay the couriers a higher rate or ensure them more profitable routes or a larger tip share.
- AtlasBarfed 7y agoRethink the policy, or rethink the fundamentally broken pro-rich government? The goal of government is apparently to give the poor as little as possible to help themselves and keep them from rioting, and therefore any policy that doesn't risk (too much) rioting from that is "good policy"? Come on.
- AtlasBarfed 7y agoIt would be so much more palatable ethically if the US had universal health care.
- Excel_Wizard 7y agoImprovements that happen on the margin are better than no improvements at all. You seem to agree that the new app-driven delivery jobs are better than before. "Lack of good jobs" has always been true, but has also been improving over time.
- mdorazio 7y agoI disagree with both of your statements. The entire point of my comment was that improvements on the margin are not always better than no improvements at all because the margin improvements prevent bigger improvements from taking place. "Better than before" is not the same as "better than it would otherwise have been". And even then, I'm not convinced gig economy jobs really are better than before. "Lack of good jobs" has demonstrably not always been true unless by "always" you mean "in the last 20 years". And I've not seen any evidence whatsoever that the availability of good jobs is actually improving. The opposite, in fact. Traditional good jobs are increasingly being replaced by contract positions across the board not because employees actually want them, but rather because they're cheaper overall to employers.