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Worker-Owned Apps Are Trying to Fix the Gig Economy's Exploitation

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

MrPlow writes:

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: 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.