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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday November 20 2019, @09:39AM   Printer-friendly
from the routing-around-damage dept.

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

What would happen if low-wage workers came together to cut out the middleman and build their own platforms? This isn't just a thought experiment. Worker-owned apps are already providing real alternatives to dismal working conditions in the global gig economy.

Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pa75a8/worker-owned-apps-are-trying-to-fix-the-gig-economys-exploitation


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @04:52PM (14 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @04:52PM (#922442)

    I'd be interested in the steps you are thinking of, which are clearly different than mine. It requires one obvious step, maybe you can call it two.

  • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday November 20 2019, @05:11PM (13 children)

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 20 2019, @05:11PM (#922453) Journal

    the vast majority of ride hailing drivers would not be able to drive for pay at all if it weren't for those services that cut out the taxi companies.

    And

    You can't figure out that price controls lead to shortages.

    Do not connect at all. There's not a single concept linking these two. Like if you really start reaching, I can see the abstract idea that taxi companies, by way of unions existing in some places, raise prices for service, that's not a pricing that leads to a shortage of supply of labor. Under "econ 101" that you goddamn idiots think you understand, but clearly never do that should lead to a glut of supply and no demand.

    Libertarianism is calvinball. Meaningless gibberish where you pretend to understand things but in actuality just say the first thing that passes through your heads. I rarely even need to delve into my actual ideological agreements with you people, because the shit you say doesn't even accurately reflect your own hell-born belief system

    No thought required.
    No rigor required.
    No applicability required.

    It's the epitome of saying shit because you think it vaguely sounds smart.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @05:16PM (5 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @05:16PM (#922456)

      Taxi medallions cost lots of money, which sets a minimum on what can be charged while still making a profit. This creates a shortage of driving jobs for people who may be interested but unable/unwilling to buy a medallion or go through the training, etc that the medallion owners will require.

      It is quite simple. Interesting you have so much difficulty with such obvious concepts.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @07:42PM (4 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @07:42PM (#922558)

        Taxi medallions cost lots of money,

        Not any more they don't.

        https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/reader-center/taxi-medallion-investigation.html [nytimes.com]
        https://www.npr.org/2018/10/15/656595597/cities-made-millions-selling-taxi-medallions-now-drivers-are-paying-the-price [npr.org]
        https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/04/nyregion/taxi-medallions-chicago.html [nytimes.com]

        Training? In some places, the municipality requires a special license, not the medallion owners.

        In other places all you need is a standard driver's license.

        Do you usually display your ignorance so glaringly? I imagine people laugh at you. A lot.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @08:02PM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @08:02PM (#922566)

          Tens of thousands of dollars is still a lot of money, and the reason prices dropped is due to the gig economy undercutting taxis...

          When I've asked you needed to memorize the streets. Also, etc includes being expected to make a certain amount of money per week, etc.

          Basically, wtf are you talking about?

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @08:15PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @08:15PM (#922577)

            When I've asked you needed to memorize the streets. Also, etc includes being expected to make a certain amount of money per week, etc.

            That whole "The Knowledge" [wikipedia.org] thing is just in London AFAIK.

            Everywhere else, it's GPS all day every day. And the passengers usually know better than the drivers.

            As for the money, one *is* required to make a certain amount of money -- so they can pay for food, rent, etc.

            Yeah. People laugh at you a lot.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @08:43PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @08:43PM (#922595)

              Well you know wrong. Go ask a cabbie sometime.

              And what is this "people laugh at you" thing? It sounds like the projections of someone with low self esteem.

        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 21 2019, @04:25PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 21 2019, @04:25PM (#923029) Journal

          Not any more

          Order of magnitude drop in an asset that's still overpriced.

          Taxi medallions used to be a great investment for cab drivers all over the U.S. Over a dozen cities sold these permits to operate cabs. Medallion values rose quickly, sometimes doubling in just a few years to hundreds of thousands or even over a million dollars, in the case of New York City.

          Then the ride-share companies, Lyft and Uber, came along. They operated without medallions or a cap on how many vehicles they could put on the road. The two companies used their venture capital to grow quickly and flood the streets with cars.

          Medallion prices plummeted. In New York City they fell from around $1.3 million to around $160,000. In Philadelphia they dropped from a high of $545,000 to $10,000. Similar devaluations struck in every other city with monetized medallions. Thousands of medallion holders each lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity.

          In some places, medallions still cost a lot of money - $160k is not pocket change.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @06:46PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @06:46PM (#922518)

      Different AC here, but I'd really stop think about why you were projecting some ideological rant on your discussion partner here. Your post becomes extremely ironic. The point initially made way up on this discussion chain has nothing to do with ideology. When things have barriers to entry, it means fewer people can work in them, which means prices go up. In some fields this makes sense. You probably want a pretty big barrier to entry to somebody calling themselves a doctor, but driving cars is a low skill task and so the barriers to entry don't really achieve much other than restricting the number of people that can work. That results in fewer jobs and higher prices.

      This should be the baseline level understanding. Now is where you should be inserting ideology. For instance somebody might be supportive of the above arguing that the barriers to entry prevent the entire industry from just becoming a race to the bottom. While another person might argue that if you don't let the markets determine the price you're ultimately creating an inefficient industry and inhibiting competition which is ultimately good for all consumers. And there are pros/cons to each argument, but you didn't even show up to the starting line here and I think the only explanation is precisely because of that rant you projected onto your discussion partner.

      • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday November 20 2019, @06:58PM

        by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 20 2019, @06:58PM (#922531) Journal

        I have, as you asked, thought about why I'm projecting an ideological rant onto others.

        After serious thought and consideration, it's because the words that came out of their mouths were really fucking stupid. Thank you for the suggestion.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @07:09PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @07:09PM (#922540)

        All you can do is learn to take advantage of this type of chronically wrong person. It is quite easy these days now that most have been forced into buying stocks by the monetary and fiscal policies they support.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @08:21PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @08:21PM (#922584)

      Different AC here.

      I do not propose to agree with the previous AC, but to translate, he or she is proposing:

      1) Licensing costs for taxi medallions (e.g. I think they cost about $500k in NYC a few years ago before the advent of these so-called ride-sharing apps)
      2) Poor people will not be able to afford that initial capital cost
      3) Poor people can afford the relatively low cost of Uber/Lyft/whatever startup, so can begin being faux-taxis immediately

      Additionally:

      4) Having a cap on the number of taxis will result in a diminished supply, thus shortages (e.g. "I want to get a taxi, but I need to wait 60 minutes for one to arrive at my door")

      You are postulating, which is in agreement, that:

      5) there is no a labor shortage, there is a taxi shortage. The reduced supply results in higher costs, thus higher profits, thus more people wanting to go into the business than can (implicating the high cost of taxi medallions)

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @08:46PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @08:46PM (#922596)

        Minimum wage and the like causes a job shortage which is reflected in unemployment or misemployment (people working jobs they are not qualified for, or working in the black market, etc). I have no idea why someone would think this causes a labor shortage.

      • (Score: 2) by dry on Thursday November 21 2019, @06:34AM

        by dry (223) on Thursday November 21 2019, @06:34AM (#922885) Journal

        Uber requires a fairly new vehicle which most poor people can't afford.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 21 2019, @03:42PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 21 2019, @03:42PM (#923008) Journal

      Libertarianism is calvinball.

      The quotes come from different people, neither who inserted libertarianism into this thread. Nor will I claim responsibility for your alleged inability to understand libertarian arguments. I think the better statement for the second line would have been "supply caps/restrictions lead to shortages". The rest of your post (as well as most of your contributions to this thread) is garbage.