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posted by janrinok on Friday December 19 2014, @06:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the for-richer-for-poorer dept.

After Uber's success, nearly every pitch made by starry-eyed technologists “in Silicon Valley seemed to morph overnight into an ‘Uber for X’ startup" with various companies described now as “Uber for massages,” “Uber for alcohol,” and “Uber for laundry and dry cleaning,” among many, many other things. The conventional narrative is this: enabled by smartphones, enterprising young businesses are using technology to connect a vast market willing to pay for convenience with small businesses or people seeking flexible work. Now Leo Marini writes that the Uber narrative ignores another vital ingredient, without which this new economy would fall apart: inequality.

"There are only two requirements for an on-demand service economy to work, and neither is an iPhone," says Marini. "First, the market being addressed needs to be big enough to scale—food, laundry, taxi rides. Without that, it’s just a concierge service for the rich rather than a disruptive paradigm shift, as a venture capitalist might say. Second, and perhaps more importantly, there needs to be a large enough labor class willing to work at wages that customers consider affordable and that the middlemen consider worthwhile for their profit margins." There is no denying the seductive nature of convenience—or the cold logic of businesses that create new jobs, whatever quality they may be concludes Marini. "All that modern technology has done is make it easier, through omnipresent smartphones, to amass a fleet of increasingly desperate jobseekers eager to take whatever work they can get."

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday December 19 2014, @07:46PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Friday December 19 2014, @07:46PM (#127564)

    " Our high school guidance counselor used to ask us what you'd do if you had a million dollars and you didn't have to work. And invariably what you'd say was supposed to be your career. So, if you wanted to fix old cars then you're supposed to be an auto mechanic. ... You're working at Initech because that question is bullshit to begin with. If everyone listened to her, there'd be no janitors, because no one would clean shit up if they had a million dollars."

    Basically, the only reason anybody would ever agree to work a crappy job for $7.50 an hour and no benefits is because the alternative is homelessness and starvation. Those who are doing the hiring for those crappy jobs know full well that this is the case, so they work hard to buy the political system and ensure that there are lots of people for whom that $7.50 an hour is all that stands between them and homelessness and starvation.

    The only things that have ever changed that basic fact:
    1. Trade unions, which if prevalent enough can force employers to pay more or provide more benefits.
    2. Fully enforced government regulation such as minimum wage laws.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 19 2014, @08:02PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 19 2014, @08:02PM (#127569)

    3. A robust, strong economy with very low unemployment. (currently only seen in very local exaples... like what Wal-Mart is paying in the frakking boom towns)

    • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday December 19 2014, @09:03PM

      by Thexalon (636) on Friday December 19 2014, @09:03PM (#127589)

      That doesn't last very long, for two reasons:
      1. People flock to the area looking for decent jobs, and those local conditions are eliminated.
      2. Whoever the dominant employer in town is can play hardball with those who have committed to living there and start cutting pay once they've started working. If you have a choice between a pay cut and moving halfway across the country, which do you choose? It's at least a difficult question, right?

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
      • (Score: 2) by dry on Saturday December 20 2014, @04:22AM

        by dry (223) on Saturday December 20 2014, @04:22AM (#127663) Journal

        In Canada they use the foreign worker program to keep wages low. Tim Hortons (donut shop) cries that it can't afford to pay much above minimum wage and still sell coffee for $1, import workers from the Philippines where work is mostly non-existent and who consider $10 an hour good money, abuse them including putting them to work in a location where they aren't supposed to and then threaten to tell the government so their work visa would be cancelled and keep wages low in some of the most expensive places in N. America to live. (Canada is about 30% more expensive then the States to begin with and much more expensive up north in the oil towns)

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 19 2014, @08:48PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 19 2014, @08:48PM (#127585)

    3. Become your own boss.
    If what you do requires more than 1 person, find like-minded people and form a cooperative.
    Cooperatives beat poverty wages [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [commondreams.org]
    Mondragon [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [wikipedia.org]

    -- gewg_

    • (Score: 2) by Pav on Saturday December 20 2014, @12:46AM

      by Pav (114) on Saturday December 20 2014, @12:46AM (#127626)

      Mod parent up!

      Uber and other similar services are still taking their cut for selling us to eachother, and for less - they're just the Walmart of taxi services. Game theory tells us that the winning strategy for cooperative games is to negotiate less money/benefit for your "partner" - deregulation, anti-union action etc... have allowed corps to do this, and Uber (if anything) accelerates this trend. The parent comment suggestion of the Coop model is the only real way out (at least that I can see).

      I've been seriously looking into Coops to join, but the only one I've found isn't very healthy right now (ie. NoISP in Australia) - I spoke to the secretary via email. I just wish I had business/accounting smarts, otherwise I'd have started one already as I already am doing my own thing, and cooperating with others and getting the benefit of a larger organisation while still maintaining equality and a little control would be great.

    • (Score: 2) by dry on Saturday December 20 2014, @04:27AM

      by dry (223) on Saturday December 20 2014, @04:27AM (#127666) Journal

      Co-ops are of course by definition socialist and should be illegalized. (sarcasm, but likely to come true)

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 20 2014, @05:58AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 20 2014, @05:58AM (#127678)

        Marxism: The means of production is owned by the workers.
        All decisions are made democratically by a vote of the workers at that business.
        e.g. Mondragon (already linked in this thread)
        e.g. New Era Windows [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [libcom.org]

        Socialism: The means of production is owned by the government (ALL the people, through their elected representatives).
        ALL of the voters get to choose the representatives who will make the decisions for ALL of the affected businesses.
        e.g. Los Angeles Department of Water and Power

        Capitalism: The means of production is owned by investors, typically, non-laborers.
        All of the decisions are made by the ownership class (or their appointed representatives); the opinions of rank-and-file workers' don't count.
        e.g. WalMart (which has to have a minimum wage set by the gov't or Sam Walton's heirs would try to pay their employees zero).

        .
        illegalized

        That would be interesting to see. [19thcenturyart-facos.com]

        -- gewg_

        • (Score: 2) by dry on Saturday December 20 2014, @05:42PM

          by dry (223) on Saturday December 20 2014, @05:42PM (#127779) Journal

          To quote wiki,

          Socialism is a social and economic system characterised by social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy, as well as a political theory and movement that aims at the establishment of such a system.

          Social ownership does not have to be through the government. Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism [wikipedia.org]

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 20 2014, @07:27PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 20 2014, @07:27PM (#127796)

            In your definition and mine, there can be people who don't work at the facility|operation|business who get to make decisions about how the operation is run.

            A co-op doesn't have that.
            ONLY the workers -involved- in the operation get a vote (and EVERY ONE of those workers gets an EQUAL vote).
            That's Marxism (by your definition, a specific subset of Socialism).

            Marxism is very bottom-up and very democratic.
            Socialism can be more bureaucratic, with busybodies trying to tell you how to run your business.

            -- gewg_