9 ms·

In the Sharing Economy, Workers Find Both Freedom and Uncertainty

73 points by kanamekun 12y ago

joelrunyon 12y ago
Isn't this a bit obvious? Getting both complete freedom is at odds with certainty. There's an inherent tradeoff in the two commodities.
- _delirium 12y ago
  There are some attempts to combine them, which is gradually becoming one of the preferred EU strategies (though countries vary widely in their opinions): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexicurity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexicurity The basic idea is that it should be easy to hire/fire people ("flexible labor market", vs. the traditional less-flexible European model), but social policy should smooth out some of the economic uncertainty that produces.
  - tormeh 12y ago
    It's considered a very good idea over here, I think, but it requires the government to redistribute money from people who work to people who don't, so everyone gets security without needing predictability. I don't think it's very popular in southern Europe, though.
    - BSousa 12y ago
      In southern Europe, at the moment the idea is to give as much flexibility to hire/fire people and at the same time reduce as much as possible any benefits for people that fall on hard times. Quick example, unemployment used to be at 75% of net income (give or take). Then they changed it to 70, then 65%. Then they capped it at 1600 euros, then 1200. Now it is capped at 1000 euros for the first 6 months, and then 900 afterwards (and the length has also been shortened). Doesn't matter if you were earning 10,000 euros a month or 2,000, now you both get max 1000 euros unemployment, even thou one of you paid 5 times as much in social security payments. (quick note, values are approximate as I remember this from 2 years ago).
      - tormeh 12y ago
        It's easier to save on that than it is to save on tax dodging and stimulate the economy with less regulatory capture and corruption, unfortunately. It's the tragedy of austerity, that the wrong measures seem to get taken.
- phillmv 12y ago
  I think what we're seeing here is companies using automation to offload certain costs on to their workers - and then use the guise of "freedom" to paper it over.
- jellicle 12y ago
  On the contrary, freedom is defined as the ability to do what you want, which implies a very great deal of certainty - the certainty that you won't be attacked, run out of money, run out of food, that you'll have shelter tonight, and so on. The uncertainty of not having enough money for food, shelter, medical care, education, raising children, and so on is a huge limitation on freedom. We see this very explicitly in concepts such as tenure: certainty = freedom.
  - avz 12y ago
    You're mixing up freedom with safety. The conflict between freedom and certainty is real. Having enough money for food, shelter and medical care means having the ability to command other people to grow food for you, build a shelter for you and provide medical care for you. These people do what you want them to do instead of doing what they would like. Your safety is improved. Your providers' freedom is reduced.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
graeme 12y ago
I think programmers should remind themselves how fortunate they are, to have skills that are both enjoyable and in demand. It's an entirely different economy out there, for most people. Average citizens would love to have recruiters as a "problem". I think the sharing economy is a net benefit – I doubt it's preventing the creation of stable jobs. But we would do well to remember that we live in an economic bubble, a tiny pocket of prosperity amidst much harder time. (Not a programmer personally, but I run an online business)
- vezzy-fnord 12y ago
  Having recruiters as a problem is typically restricted to programmers who actually have advanced and/or highly specialized skills, or who have made themselves a public image.
  - krakensden 12y ago
    As a programmer in San Francisco Bay Area: nope. Although I suspect visible programmers get better sounding offers.
- larrys 12y ago
  "to have skills that are both enjoyable and in demand." Well that's now, in this slice of time, and if you have the skills that are hot at the given moment. If not, assumes that a programmer can easily pick up the new thing and get a job (with age bias) which I don't think is necessarily the case. Is there a hot job market for perl programmers? That was the big thing in the 90's when I first went online. Can a 50's perl programmer learn the next new thing and be in high demand? (Edit: More of a statement than a question as I think "probably not an easy task")
  - brandonmenc 12y ago
    > Can a 50's perl programmer learn the next new thing A programmer who can't learn the next new thing in their 50s, probably couldn't learn the next new thing in their 20s, likely just learned the first new thing and never deviated.
apozem 12y ago
I worry sometimes about Uber, TaskRabbit, AirBnB and the like. Sometimes it seems like too much of their success rests on their Walmartesque avoidance of benefits, the kinds of benefits which blue-collar folks have relied on for years. If too many people get caught out in the cold, the government might start pushing back against those companies to protect the workers.
- BrainInAJar 12y ago
  > If too many people get caught out in the cold, the government might start pushing back against those companies to protect the workers. That seems unlike the government, they've done nothing to address the shrinking of the middle class, the dismantling of unions and the shift from stable employment towards mcjobs, so why would they do anything about the uberization of the workforce?
  - sliverstorm 12y ago
    Just as last time this happened, when unions were created, government did not push back of its own accord- the workers had enough and lit a fire under their government's a.
    - BrainInAJar 12y ago
      the last time this happened, when unions were created, the government was basically forced in to supporting the unions by virtue of the fact that communist revolutions were happening all over the world
- innguest 12y ago
  Those workers are consciously choosing to go work for those companies, taking all differences in consideration. Why do they need to be "protected", and from what? I think you're assuming that the way things are is necessarily better for everyone.
  - ergl 12y ago
clairity 12y ago
this article is a bit better at considering the economic impacts than the one i commented about here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8187487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8187487 my concern is that the value "created" by startups like uber and taskrabbit come not from displacing large and slow incumbents (e.g., taxi dispatchers & courier services) but from shifting economic risk onto disempowered individuals. the people who pay (largely the top 20%) see value in at least two ways: (1) greater certainty of commodity products & services and (2) lower prices. the startups themselves are shielded from market risk, particularly on the supply side (labor), because they have disproportionate power over labor, which then smooths out profit by automatically matching costs to revenues. taskers bear all the market risk while also giving up traditional employment benefits. the value of this shift is passed on to the consumer and to the startups themselves (capital), leaving taskers in even more volatile economic circumstances. by the way, i'm distinctly not condemning the startups here, because they're only part of larger economic trends that they have little control over. now that the structure is in place, they can't do much individually (e.g., if one tried to raise prices to raise wages, they would be competed out of the market).
- rayiner 12y ago
  Not only are they shifting risk onto workers, but they are replacing small, local, owner-operated businesses with Wall Street funded national corporations. They're seeking to put people like my cleaning lady (who runs a small business with a couple of employees) or the local Chinese laundromat out of business. I'm not saying that's a bad thing (frankly, big Wall Street funded corporations are much more efficient than small local businesses), but I do detect some cognitive dissonance in people who rail against big corporations but also support companies like Uber.
  - larrys 12y ago
    A really good point. Of course I think it's still possible for a small owner operator to use one of these services to gain a consistent customer base (and even get referrals from that customer base) and then cut out the big corporation that gave them the contacts in the first place. And operate on their own. Work like this is done on relationships. I'm still using the same painter for projects that was referred to me by a realtor that sold me a property. Although there are tons of other painters I can get bids from (cheaper) I'd rather go with someone that I've used that I know can get the job done with little aggravation.
Futurebot 12y ago
In the US, think of how different these services would be if we had both a guaranteed income to give these people a baseline of safety, plus a real universal healthcare system to sidestep that entire issue. It would turn this class of people from a 'precariat' into a fluid, task-oriented labor force with few/none of the current negative implications (around both the jobs and the companies supplying them.) I wonder if the attitude towards these services in countries with UHC systems or more generous safety nets is less negative and stigma-ridden.
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  Of course if we had universal healthcare, some of these startups loose half their competitive advantage...
dougmccune 12y ago
I find it amazing that these companies have gotten "sharing economy" to stick. I seriously don't get it. People are buying and selling services, and companies like AirBnB, Uber, and TaskRabbit are the middlemen facilitating these transactions. Nobody is sharing anything any more than Starbucks is sharing a cup of coffee with me in exchange for money.
- UVB-76 12y ago
  The term comes from those who have been empowered by these services to go into business sharing what they already have, e.g. sharing their residence with Airbnb, or their commute to work with Sidecar. Obviously people aren't sharing these things for free, but they are sharing them nonetheless.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > The term comes from those who have been empowered by these services to go into business sharing what they already have There's a well-established term for the thing you call "go into business sharing" and its called "renting".
- avz 12y ago
  "To share" means "to use or enjoy something jointly or in turns" (source: http://thefreedictionary.com/share http://thefreedictionary.com/share). I hear Starbucks customers generally receive their own coffee each. Note also that sharing does not imply "for free". It simply implies more than one person using a given resource.
  - Wilya 12y ago
    That doesn't explain why Uber is more about sharing than taxi companies, nor why Airbnb is more about sharing than the old way of renting your flat.
    - avz 12y ago
      Taxi service doesn't allow you to easily share your car and hotels don't allow you to easily share your flat. Traditional renting of an apartment is a long-term proposition which again inhibits sharing.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
timedoctor 12y ago
The quality of the jobs on these platforms is proportionate to the level of employment in the economy and the general strength of labour in the economy. In Australia the situation seems to very different to the US. There is a competitor to Task Rabbit - Airtasker - and my experience is that it's really expensive to hire people on this platform. In most cases I decided to do the work myself because the rates that people charge are so high in Sydney at least (for many tasks $30/hour to $50/hour as a minimum) that I would prefer to save the money and do it myself. This is a function of the strength of the Australian economy and labour market.
baddox 12y ago
Is working in the sharing economy more uncertain that the same people working somewhere else?

73 points by kanamekun 12y ago

Isn't this a bit obvious? Getting both complete freedom is at odds with certainty. There's an inherent tradeoff in the two commodities.

_delirium 12y ago
There are some attempts to combine them, which is gradually becoming one of the preferred EU strategies (though countries vary widely in their opinions): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexicurity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexicurity The basic idea is that it should be easy to hire/fire people ("flexible labor market", vs. the traditional less-flexible European model), but social policy should smooth out some of the economic uncertainty that produces.
- tormeh 12y ago
  It's considered a very good idea over here, I think, but it requires the government to redistribute money from people who work to people who don't, so everyone gets security without needing predictability. I don't think it's very popular in southern Europe, though.
  - BSousa 12y ago
    In southern Europe, at the moment the idea is to give as much flexibility to hire/fire people and at the same time reduce as much as possible any benefits for people that fall on hard times. Quick example, unemployment used to be at 75% of net income (give or take). Then they changed it to 70, then 65%. Then they capped it at 1600 euros, then 1200. Now it is capped at 1000 euros for the first 6 months, and then 900 afterwards (and the length has also been shortened). Doesn't matter if you were earning 10,000 euros a month or 2,000, now you both get max 1000 euros unemployment, even thou one of you paid 5 times as much in social security payments. (quick note, values are approximate as I remember this from 2 years ago).
    - tormeh 12y ago
      It's easier to save on that than it is to save on tax dodging and stimulate the economy with less regulatory capture and corruption, unfortunately. It's the tragedy of austerity, that the wrong measures seem to get taken.
phillmv 12y ago
I think what we're seeing here is companies using automation to offload certain costs on to their workers - and then use the guise of "freedom" to paper it over.
jellicle 12y ago
On the contrary, freedom is defined as the ability to do what you want, which implies a very great deal of certainty - the certainty that you won't be attacked, run out of money, run out of food, that you'll have shelter tonight, and so on. The uncertainty of not having enough money for food, shelter, medical care, education, raising children, and so on is a huge limitation on freedom. We see this very explicitly in concepts such as tenure: certainty = freedom.
- avz 12y ago
  You're mixing up freedom with safety. The conflict between freedom and certainty is real. Having enough money for food, shelter and medical care means having the ability to command other people to grow food for you, build a shelter for you and provide medical care for you. These people do what you want them to do instead of doing what they would like. Your safety is improved. Your providers' freedom is reduced.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

graeme 12y ago

I think programmers should remind themselves how fortunate they are, to have skills that are both enjoyable and in demand. It's an entirely different economy out there, for most people. Average citizens would love to have recruiters as a "problem". I think the sharing economy is a net benefit – I doubt it's preventing the creation of stable jobs. But we would do well to remember that we live in an economic bubble, a tiny pocket of prosperity amidst much harder time. (Not a programmer personally, but I run an online business)

vezzy-fnord 12y ago
Having recruiters as a problem is typically restricted to programmers who actually have advanced and/or highly specialized skills, or who have made themselves a public image.
- krakensden 12y ago
  As a programmer in San Francisco Bay Area: nope. Although I suspect visible programmers get better sounding offers.
larrys 12y ago
"to have skills that are both enjoyable and in demand." Well that's now, in this slice of time, and if you have the skills that are hot at the given moment. If not, assumes that a programmer can easily pick up the new thing and get a job (with age bias) which I don't think is necessarily the case. Is there a hot job market for perl programmers? That was the big thing in the 90's when I first went online. Can a 50's perl programmer learn the next new thing and be in high demand? (Edit: More of a statement than a question as I think "probably not an easy task")
- brandonmenc 12y ago
  > Can a 50's perl programmer learn the next new thing A programmer who can't learn the next new thing in their 50s, probably couldn't learn the next new thing in their 20s, likely just learned the first new thing and never deviated.

apozem 12y ago

I worry sometimes about Uber, TaskRabbit, AirBnB and the like. Sometimes it seems like too much of their success rests on their Walmartesque avoidance of benefits, the kinds of benefits which blue-collar folks have relied on for years. If too many people get caught out in the cold, the government might start pushing back against those companies to protect the workers.

BrainInAJar 12y ago
> If too many people get caught out in the cold, the government might start pushing back against those companies to protect the workers. That seems unlike the government, they've done nothing to address the shrinking of the middle class, the dismantling of unions and the shift from stable employment towards mcjobs, so why would they do anything about the uberization of the workforce?
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  Just as last time this happened, when unions were created, government did not push back of its own accord- the workers had enough and lit a fire under their government's a.
  - BrainInAJar 12y ago
    the last time this happened, when unions were created, the government was basically forced in to supporting the unions by virtue of the fact that communist revolutions were happening all over the world
innguest 12y ago
Those workers are consciously choosing to go work for those companies, taking all differences in consideration. Why do they need to be "protected", and from what? I think you're assuming that the way things are is necessarily better for everyone.
- ergl 12y ago

clairity 12y ago

this article is a bit better at considering the economic impacts than the one i commented about here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8187487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8187487 my concern is that the value "created" by startups like uber and taskrabbit come not from displacing large and slow incumbents (e.g., taxi dispatchers & courier services) but from shifting economic risk onto disempowered individuals. the people who pay (largely the top 20%) see value in at least two ways: (1) greater certainty of commodity products & services and (2) lower prices. the startups themselves are shielded from market risk, particularly on the supply side (labor), because they have disproportionate power over labor, which then smooths out profit by automatically matching costs to revenues. taskers bear all the market risk while also giving up traditional employment benefits. the value of this shift is passed on to the consumer and to the startups themselves (capital), leaving taskers in even more volatile economic circumstances. by the way, i'm distinctly not condemning the startups here, because they're only part of larger economic trends that they have little control over. now that the structure is in place, they can't do much individually (e.g., if one tried to raise prices to raise wages, they would be competed out of the market).

rayiner 12y ago
Not only are they shifting risk onto workers, but they are replacing small, local, owner-operated businesses with Wall Street funded national corporations. They're seeking to put people like my cleaning lady (who runs a small business with a couple of employees) or the local Chinese laundromat out of business. I'm not saying that's a bad thing (frankly, big Wall Street funded corporations are much more efficient than small local businesses), but I do detect some cognitive dissonance in people who rail against big corporations but also support companies like Uber.
- larrys 12y ago
  A really good point. Of course I think it's still possible for a small owner operator to use one of these services to gain a consistent customer base (and even get referrals from that customer base) and then cut out the big corporation that gave them the contacts in the first place. And operate on their own. Work like this is done on relationships. I'm still using the same painter for projects that was referred to me by a realtor that sold me a property. Although there are tons of other painters I can get bids from (cheaper) I'd rather go with someone that I've used that I know can get the job done with little aggravation.

Futurebot 12y ago

In the US, think of how different these services would be if we had both a guaranteed income to give these people a baseline of safety, plus a real universal healthcare system to sidestep that entire issue. It would turn this class of people from a 'precariat' into a fluid, task-oriented labor force with few/none of the current negative implications (around both the jobs and the companies supplying them.) I wonder if the attitude towards these services in countries with UHC systems or more generous safety nets is less negative and stigma-ridden.

sliverstorm 12y ago
Of course if we had universal healthcare, some of these startups loose half their competitive advantage...

dougmccune 12y ago

I find it amazing that these companies have gotten "sharing economy" to stick. I seriously don't get it. People are buying and selling services, and companies like AirBnB, Uber, and TaskRabbit are the middlemen facilitating these transactions. Nobody is sharing anything any more than Starbucks is sharing a cup of coffee with me in exchange for money.

UVB-76 12y ago
The term comes from those who have been empowered by these services to go into business sharing what they already have, e.g. sharing their residence with Airbnb, or their commute to work with Sidecar. Obviously people aren't sharing these things for free, but they are sharing them nonetheless.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > The term comes from those who have been empowered by these services to go into business sharing what they already have There's a well-established term for the thing you call "go into business sharing" and its called "renting".
avz 12y ago
"To share" means "to use or enjoy something jointly or in turns" (source: http://thefreedictionary.com/share http://thefreedictionary.com/share). I hear Starbucks customers generally receive their own coffee each. Note also that sharing does not imply "for free". It simply implies more than one person using a given resource.
- Wilya 12y ago
  That doesn't explain why Uber is more about sharing than taxi companies, nor why Airbnb is more about sharing than the old way of renting your flat.
  - avz 12y ago
    Taxi service doesn't allow you to easily share your car and hotels don't allow you to easily share your flat. Traditional renting of an apartment is a long-term proposition which again inhibits sharing.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

timedoctor 12y ago

The quality of the jobs on these platforms is proportionate to the level of employment in the economy and the general strength of labour in the economy. In Australia the situation seems to very different to the US. There is a competitor to Task Rabbit - Airtasker - and my experience is that it's really expensive to hire people on this platform. In most cases I decided to do the work myself because the rates that people charge are so high in Sydney at least (for many tasks $30/hour to $50/hour as a minimum) that I would prefer to save the money and do it myself. This is a function of the strength of the Australian economy and labour market.

baddox 12y ago

Is working in the sharing economy more uncertain that the same people working somewhere else?