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.
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Worker-Owned Apps Are Trying to Fix the Gig Economy's Exploitation
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @10:06AM (35 children)
Even if the new boss is nicer.
(Score: 1, Troll) by khallow on Wednesday November 20 2019, @02:29PM (34 children)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Wednesday November 20 2019, @03:42PM (33 children)
Sometimes I disagree with your hardcore market ideology because it leads you to mindlessly regurgitate memes about it without even have assing the math of the economics. But this time, you're so far up your own ideology, I can't even figure out what you think you're trying to say.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @03:50PM (23 children)
Common sense looks like gibberish to you: https://www.simplypsychology.org/asch-conformity.html [simplypsychology.org]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday November 20 2019, @03:53PM (22 children)
The set of things called "common sense" is very frequently gibberish with no basis in reality, yes.
Especially on the internet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @04:08PM (21 children)
"It doesn't look like anything at all to me"
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday November 20 2019, @04:21PM (20 children)
Yes, I cannot discern an actual assertion about reality from the series of words he put together. I can deduce he's saying there's magic free market fairies involved from the word choice, but I cannot actually figure out what he's trying to imply happened.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @04:36PM (19 children)
Really? You can't figure out that price controls lead to shortages. Interestingly, there seems to be a large number of people who share your trouble. Let's see how to take advantage of your/their confusion.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday November 20 2019, @04:37PM (15 children)
The number of steps you invented to go from what he said to what you said is insane, totally unrelated statements.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @04:52PM (14 children)
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)
And
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)
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)
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)
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)
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
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
Order of magnitude drop in an asset that's still overpriced.
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)
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
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
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)
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
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
Uber requires a fairly new vehicle which most poor people can't afford.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 21 2019, @03:42PM
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.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday November 21 2019, @12:51AM (2 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 21 2019, @01:20AM
We can see what effect they had when it came to taxis. Compared to uber/lyft they offer a much worse experience at a much more expensive price.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 21 2019, @04:45AM
Yeah, and keep people in their place. If you can't afford the good stuff, then you don't deserve anything.
Have you not noticed how, for just about everything, there is competition on price as well as quality (granted, perceived quality probably counts for more than it should, but people are people)?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 20 2019, @09:25PM (8 children)
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday November 20 2019, @09:51PM (3 children)
Have you tried googling the exact phrase "the abuses of the gig economy" [ycombinator.com] because even that hyper-specific search finds results documenting them.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 20 2019, @10:41PM (2 children)
It doesn't matter to that poster that the delivery contractors do indeed have a choice and their "abuse", such as it is, has nothing to do with their employee or contractor status. In the second quote, the poster just pulls some stuff out of their ass.
No one is "effectively forced" to do tax fraud (how would that work anyway?). And notice how the flimsy pretext "if you don't control your own customer relation" is used as an excuse to claim the driver isn't a contractor. The IRS doesn't use that as the standard (and who is the customer here? Uber or the passengers?). Once again, a lack of any abuse from the gig economy combined with demands to treat contractors as employees.
My view is that law shouldn't protect your business model any more than it should protect traditional or gig economy businesses. Uber, Deliveroo, and such don't exist because of some hypothetical exploitation of the employer-employee relationship, but because they're delivering services that existing businesses couldn't due to a combination of cartel behavior and lack of infrastructure.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday November 21 2019, @07:04PM (1 child)
That's just the result from googling, the actual abuses are in the youtube video that page is a discussion of.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 21 2019, @10:51PM
What hasn't been shown that "someone is losing out" and "standards of living are being put under pressure".
After all, what's the gig worker doing otherwise? They're not going to choose to work this, if they had better work (by whatever criteria they use) available. Nor are the people buying gig services considered. These things have considerable value.
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday November 21 2019, @06:37AM (3 children)
Breaking the law can result in legal consequences? Even at that, there are lots of people willing to sell drugs as a part of the gig economy.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 21 2019, @04:16PM (2 children)
What's the abuse that's due to the gig activity being a gig? For example, in the US, the laws that make selling drugs illegal with all kinds of creative and often illegal (in particular, civil asset forfeiture) are the problem not the gig nature of drug dealing.
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday November 23 2019, @05:20AM (1 child)
People operating as taxi's without the correct professional drivers licensing and the resultant lack of insurance so that even if the driver is not at fault, the driver and passengers may not be covered. Even in those cases where the driver does have a drivers license for driving a small bus/taxi, there's a good chance they haven't the proper insurance.
The problem with the drug dealing gig economy is the lack of quality control leading to thousands of deaths, mostly due to people being poisoned by not getting the advertised product.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 23 2019, @01:06PM
Outlawed markets aren't regulated markets.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @10:59AM
$100 to $150 just to come out. $80 per hour.
Time to learn to do it all yourself, it seems.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Wednesday November 20 2019, @12:03PM (1 child)
This word 'ownership' doesn't translate quite as well to the internet as some were hoping, despite the ease with which computers are used to exert control.
There is a lot of work to be done on the 'middleman' aspect of the internet, which will have to be moderated by public interest technologists like these.
We will know them by the values demonstrated by their code.
Like VLC, I feel like I know the people who make this, through the application. They are like friends, my tv. Same for the pirates who share their tv with me.
The rest of the internet has a lot of catching up to do, there is a lot of work to be done de-bullshitifying social networking and business interaction. But none of it will work without public interest, otherwise like I am always saying we are just building a fancy bedazzled prison.
Have you seen the meme with the people under the boots? The people carry these giant boots, the fascism/totalitarian one is black and white, the capitalist one has colorful streamers like a party.
This sort of effort is an attempt by the workers to own the boot, but the giant foot will still be there. But it is progress, so long as it doesn't become eventually owned by people who don't work and just want a cut.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @01:01PM
Already, capital is hard at work to keep this from happening. If you can't buy ownership outright, you can always sue. Sue for what? Well, how about patents? Putting that capital to work.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by theluggage on Wednesday November 20 2019, @02:32PM (5 children)
Well, the people running the successful ones would spend more time, and make more money, running the platform than doing their original work. Eventually, they'd realise that they could become mega-rich by either taking the company public or selling it out to Gooberzon or vulture capitalists.
Or, if that didn't happen, if the workers were incorruptible, and Gooberzon couldn't stop it with patents, the big boys would suddenly become far more interested in regulation "because worker rights and safety" and lobby (or at least pull the briar-patch routine) for all sorts of new laws and liabilities which are always more burdensome on smaller organisations who don't have in-house lawyers and armies of administrators.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @03:52PM
Bimgo! One of the best posts on SN in a long time.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday November 21 2019, @12:57AM (2 children)
Isn't there such a thing as a worker-owned coop in the USA?
(Score: 3, Touché) by dry on Thursday November 21 2019, @06:40AM
That would be socialism and every American knows socialism means lots of dead people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 24 2019, @07:22PM
yes, but they are not super common.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 23 2019, @01:14PM
What's supposed to be the problem here? That's not corruption. Would be nice actually, if that kept happening.
Yes, I agree this is a problem. In fact, my thinking is that it's already happening with the "big boys" being established taxi companies.