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Tech Giants Are Building a Dystopia of Desperate Workers and Social Isolation
- bunnyswipe_com 4y ago[flagged]
- bell-cot 4y agoDup: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34762214 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34762214
- tablespoon 4y agoI don't think that's a dup, since that submission didn't seem to get much traction.
- anonyfox 4y agoWhile I do agree with the sentiment of the article and that all these workers should be paid a good living wage (especially the ones labelled essential during covid!)... I love on-demand everything. There is no way I ever will go back to doing some chores manually, like grocery shopping. _Some_ things will always stay ultimately, like great restaurants/bars/clubs/... _if_ they focus on the human experience. I do not drive to a italian restaurant any longer to have a great pizza - I could simply order me one nowadays! - but the experience maybe a few hours of the flair being there.
- Lacerda69 4y agoSounds weird to me tbh. I would never feel comfortable having someone else doing my shopping for me - unless i was severely incapacitated for some reason of course. Same with cooking, cleaning, washing my clothes etc. I could pay someone to do that but I get a lot of joy out of basic chores I guess.
- wing-_-nuts 4y agoI used to think the same, until my local walmart went self checkout only. From that point forward I started using the 'pickup' option. I flat out refuse to bag my own groceries. I'm not sure what the thought process was there. Walmart went from me doing most of the work to them doing almost everything. The day pickup stops being free, I'll likely just throw in the towel and start paying more to get groceries from another chain.
- gretch 4y agoseveral benefits probably 1) Pickup is asynchronous, so no long lines will form. If it's busy you get the notification ~15 minutes later than you normally would 2) There's no possibility of shop lifting (not saying that _you_ steal, but inevitably some people do) 3) Maybe the parking lot or the store is actually full (fire code) and the actually amount of commerce is being bottlenecked by people in the store. You can literally just sell more stuff if you have everyone do a 2 minutes pickup. 4) Pickup selection requires you to go into the app, perhaps where they have opportunities to upsell you in clever algorithmic ways. Chalk it up as a win-win. Not everything has to be either they lose or I lose
- mixmastamyk 4y agoInteresting. I usually bag my own if I can, in order to keep the rotisserie chicken from being packed with the frozen peas. Most baggers don't care enough about this kind of thing in my experience.
- kderbyma 4y agoAvoid Walmart. just shop at the locals grocer. Trust me. they will appreciate it, and Walmart will maybe get better (bwahahaha)
- wing-_-nuts 4y agoSee, where they got me is their cheap generic prescription drugs.
- 4y ago
- uoaei 4y agoI am not sure if this is exactly your intention, but you are advocating the position that "my convenience is worth your agony". I think we can do better than that. A person's role in society goes far beyond that of the mere consumer.
- geodel 4y agoYeah I think this is the vibe: I need high quality supplies, restaurant food at my doorstep. If it somehow result in low wage/ worker agony, this is the sacrifice I am willing to make
- tablespoon 4y ago> this is the sacrifice I am willing to make That would probably be better phrased along the lines of, "that's a price I'm willing to make you pay." Basically make it crystal clear the person speaking is not the one making the sacrifice, but rather perverting the phraseology of self-sacrifice.
- anonymouskimmer 4y agoI think the way to have this cake and eat it too is to personally be an extraordinarily good cash tipper. You'll still be supporting the system, but you'll ameliorate your personal use of it.
- rlkf 4y agoAdding tips will probably just cause the business to lower the wages, making the workers more dependent on a semi-random stream of tips instead of a fixed income, making life worse for them. Restaurants now work like that, and workers are voting with their feet. No need to extend this to other industries.
- anonymouskimmer 4y agoIf it's a cash tip the app doesn't know it happened. It's not like restaurants. No manager is there to make everyone count up their tips at the end of the shift.
- rideontime 4y agoWould you be willing to pay enough for your "on-demand everything" to provide a living wage to those who enable it?
- msmenardi 4y agoThe more you have to pay for it, the fewer people have access to "on-demand everything". Meaning it'll become a luxury of the richer side of the arbitrary cut-off line where ordering groceries or getting an Uber is financially feasible. The less these services cost, the better for all of us. The solution that solves that problem is to remove the infrastructure from the capitalist market - for example, by nationalizing UberEats or Amazon (although nationalization isn't the only option) Doing so would allow the business to continue as usual but the expenses that are external to each transaction would be offloaded to a third party (the government for example, or just written off) thus allowing the maximum amount of people to access the service at the lowest price.
- JustSomeNobody 4y agoAs opposed to paying more in taxes to provide a social safety net for those individuals? 6 in one, half dozen in the other.
- anonyfox 4y agoYes. Getting what you want when you want it does not necessarily mean cheap exploitation. We „only“ need to stop shareholders siphoning money and redirect that wealth back to the workers instead. Worst case the working class would have money to spend, maybe even for other convenience on-demand stuff, recursively. I would be willing to accept a few dozen billionaires being degraded to millionaires as the prize, when in doubt they can protest on the streets against that.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mixmastamyk 4y agoNot long ago teens up to twenty or so did this kind of work. Fast food, pizza delivery, etc. The skills-required and profit margins for these jobs aren't the kind to support raising a family on. Everyone knew this and accepted it. Transitioning folks into skilled/good-paying jobs would be better than trying to make service jobs a desired destination.
- yunwal 4y ago> There is no way I ever will go back to doing some chores manually, like grocery shopping. Awesome, these companies can pay good wages to their workers and pass on the cost knowing they won’t lose you as a customer.
- anonyfox 4y agoActually, yes. For example Edeka (German supermarket chain) increases prices when ordering significantly as well as adding a base fee for shipping. This roughly adds 30%-50% compared of buying the same things in the same store manually. Sure, it’s a luxury position to say that, but I happily pay that.
- yunwal 4y agoGenuinely, if workers are paid a living wage, this is great to hear. Sorry for being a cynical American :)
- armchairhacker 4y agoIt seems like DoorDash, Uber etc. really are great jobs for people who have trouble getting more traditional jobs: people without prior skills or connections who just want an easy job, "want to be their own boss", don't want rigid structure, etc. As they were originally and still are marketed. They just need to be treated and payed better. The people using these services by design have money to spend, "outrageous" delivery tips and fees can be justified if the fees are actually going to the workers.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago[flagged]
- aliqot 4y agoAt least they're up front about their biases. I can appreciate that.
- lbrito 4y agoYeah, because voices of the American left with socialist perspectives are automatically dum-dums. Only voices of the American right with anti-socialist perspectives should be allowed. Am I right or am I right?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoObjective journalism should be the goal. I'm counted amongst the "American left" and I think Jacobin is a rag.
- happytoexplain 4y agoObjectivity does not necessitate political neutrality (though they may be correlated).
- anonymouskimmer 4y agoYou're saying this at a place effectively dedicated to promoting personal editorials (as is any forum). Editorial journals have always been a thing. As have Facts-based journals.
- yunwal 4y agoThere is no such thing as objective journalism. Or rather, objectivity and neutrality are 2 separate concepts, and you can’t avoid engaging in side-choosing and still report on news.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
- standardUser 4y agoNot much different than arguments about fast food chains overtaking healthy food, or supermarkets eating up local groceries, or homogenous retail chains driving out the mom-and-pops. The thing about those arguments is, they were right. Those trends did transform our lives in many negative ways (in addition to positive) and we did see it coming. What I don't like is the prognosis, which seems to think we should somehow stop or reverse the current transformation. I just doubt that's possible. Instead, we should take some lessons from the past and this time around we can proactively ameliorate the worst aspects of the ongoing changes. Something we completely failed to do with chain takeovers or mega mergers or outsourcing or all of the other corporate trends that harm, either directly or through side effects, the vast majority of working people.
- tablespoon 4y ago> What I don't like is the prognosis, which seems to think we should somehow stop or reverse the current transformation. I just doubt that's possible. Why not? Sometimes change is just plain for the worse. However, passivity and helplessness in the face of change are attitudes that are common and frequently encouraged in modern society, and that is another problem that needs to be addressed.
- sidpatil 4y ago> Instead, we should take some lessons from the past and this time around we can proactively ameliorate the worst aspects of the ongoing changes. That doesn't sound like passivity or helplessness to me.
- q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y agoThat's a fair train of thought, and I do agree it's better to embrace the future than to resist it. > Instead, we should take some lessons from the past and this time around we can proactively ameliorate the worst aspects of the ongoing changes. Yeah, I like this way of slicing it. What do you think are those downsides, and how could they be ameliorated?
- 4y ago
- autokad 4y agoIt goes through all that just to set up its ultimate agenda at the end, blame the right: > people on the political right often criticize public investment as wasteful and corrupt, but the reality is that the retreat of the state hasn’t resulted in some idyllic “free” market — it has just left wealthy, powerful, and ultimately unaccountable people in charge of shaping the economy. which is hilarious, given that these companies exist in the most left geographies, owned and run by the most left oligarchs, owned by the left politicians, and it was the left policies forcing people to use these companies that entrenched them to begin with.
- gretch 4y agoCan you explain when you said "left policies forcing people to use these companies that entrenched them". I can think of no instances of this
- autokad 4y agolockdowns, there's 1.
- taylodl 4y agolibertarian != left I think you’ve forgotten that one of the most influential neocons, Ronald Reagan, hailed from California. As did Nixon, interestingly enough. California != bastion of liberalism
- mrguyorama 4y agoCalifornia still has more conservative thinkers and voters than nearly any other state in the union, they just get somewhat disenfranchised by the way voting works in the US.
- drewcoo 4y agoThere was a time when coal and ice and milk were delivered, a time when door-to-door salesmen were normal, going directly to your home to sell you things so you wouldn't have to leave. Why the news even used to be delivered directly to a household by children, back when they were allowed to roam more freely. Those are some of the many delivery interactions that are gone now. Now that "big automobile" and their cabal have created a dystopia of having to leave the house. It's a horror so immense that even "big catalog" and "big telephone" and "big radio" can't fight it off.
- ghusto 4y agoUnpopular opinion in tech, but hear me out. The word "progress" in technology is misused in the same way it is when talking about evolution. The evolution of the eye was not done with progressions, because that implies a destination or goal. You _can_ look at the eye and think of the steps that led to it to be progressions, and that's fine! but only if you do it consciously. Similarly, we need to be mindful when we see technological change as progress, because we're by definition implicitly stating that there's a goal towards something. Not acknowledging that give us the benefits of such an assumption, without the downsides of responsibility (i.e. examining that goal). Now my point: There often isn't a conscious goal with technological change, and that is dangerous. If we look at the resultant change, there is nothing wrong with saying that things are headed in a bad direction, and we wish to change course. It is not Ludditism, and shouldn't be shamed.