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I have been thinking lately that the app stores, the food delivery apps and others, are reproducing on a b2b scale what happened with the industrial revolution,

by Udik 6y ago

I have been thinking lately that the app stores, the food delivery apps and others, are reproducing on a b2b scale what happened with the industrial revolution, when factory owners became effectively monopolists of the job market and, in a framework without rules, forced everyone to work on the terms most profitable to them. Perhaps then what we miss now is the possibility to unionize businesses with respect to the tech/ internet giants. Form providers unions (e.g. restaurants, app developers, etc.). Force every single web or internet store to provide a switch to allow each provider to stop and restart their sales/ deliveries at will and display messages explaining why. Organise coordinated strikes in which those businesses halt their sales en masse until their demands have been met.

solipsism 6y ago
Good luck picketing, pressuring scabs, leveraging local politics. I'm not convinced this model could possibly work at the global scale.
- Udik 6y ago
  True, it's not the same as masses of workers picketing factories. Not everything transfers from one case to the other. But the fact is that today app developers, or restaurants, are as fungible as factory workers used to be in the nineteenth century. Don't like the pay and the hours? F.. off then, there's the queue at the gates of the factory of people trying to be hired for the day. You can look for a job somewhere else (I'm sorry if the factories are all mine here). Granted, it might not work. But it could be tried, and it would need to be enforced by regulation as workers right were. Where's the right to strike and to let the reasons for the strike be known, in these environments? Can I force Apple to stop and restart the sales of my app at will, without consequences? Can I inform my customers of the reasons I did it? Can the restaurants of a city organize and stop deliveries in a coordinated way for a week?

by Udik 6y ago

solipsism 6y ago

Good luck picketing, pressuring scabs, leveraging local politics. I'm not convinced this model could possibly work at the global scale.

Udik 6y ago
True, it's not the same as masses of workers picketing factories. Not everything transfers from one case to the other. But the fact is that today app developers, or restaurants, are as fungible as factory workers used to be in the nineteenth century. Don't like the pay and the hours? F.. off then, there's the queue at the gates of the factory of people trying to be hired for the day. You can look for a job somewhere else (I'm sorry if the factories are all mine here). Granted, it might not work. But it could be tried, and it would need to be enforced by regulation as workers right were. Where's the right to strike and to let the reasons for the strike be known, in these environments? Can I force Apple to stop and restart the sales of my app at will, without consequences? Can I inform my customers of the reasons I did it? Can the restaurants of a city organize and stop deliveries in a coordinated way for a week?