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from the this-is-the-most-2020-thing-of-2020-yet dept.
Gig Economy Company Launches Uber, But for Evicting People:
"SINCE COVID-19 MANY AMERICANS FELL BEHIND IN ALL ASPECTS," reads the website copy. The button below this statement is not for a GoFundMe, or a petition for calling for rent relief. Instead, it is the following call to action, from a company called Civvl: "Be hired as eviction crew."
During a time of great economic and general hardship, Civvl aims to be, essentially, Uber, but for evicting people. Seizing on a pandemic-driven nosedive in employment and huge uptick in number-of-people-who-can't-pay-their-rent, Civvl aims to make it easy for landlords to hire process servers and eviction agents as gig workers.
Helena Duncan, a Chicago-based paralegal who also participates in housing activism, saw a Craigslist post from Civvl while searching for jobs. The ad alarmed her.
"It's fucked up that there will be struggling working-class people who will be drawn to gigs like furniture-hauling or process-serving for a company like Civvl, evicting fellow working-class people from their homes so they themselves can make rent," she told Motherboard.
[...] At the time of writing, Civvl and OnQall did not return requests for comment, but did appear to block the author's IP address from visiting OnQall.com.
There is a federal ban on evictions, declared by the CDC, but landlords are still attempting to press on. There is a penalty for violating the ban, which can include a combination of fines and jail time. Civvl did not respond to a question about how the company ensures evictions are legal, though based on the Terms of Service, it appears to pass all risk onto the companies using its platform, stating that it simply "provides lead generation to independent contractors," and does not actually carry out the work itself.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday September 30 2020, @06:26AM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday September 30 2020, @06:39AM
As someone who's read too much Marx, I will now happily dive in with an actual response to:
>>> Karl Marx told no lies about the systemic behavior of capitalism.
My response being:
Bullshit. Marx discombobulated completely and utterly on that matter. He viewed capitalism as *necessarily* self-destructive, which is what made revolution *inevitable*. However, while retreating to purer philosophising for a while (as preparation for writing das kap) he did manage to prove to himself that this wasn't the case, but then the cognitive dissonance got too much, so he purged that sensibility from his brain and went back to plan A and proceeded to lie through his teeth.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves