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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."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by gallondr00nk on Friday December 19 2014, @08:31PM
I'd like to see how the distributed service economy survives in a few years time.
Without intervention, I suspect what we'll witness is an absolute race to the bottom, where more and more people are trying to get business through fewer and fewer people, and a lot of human misery.
There was a report [tuc.org.uk] released by the UK TUC (trade union congress) recently analysing job growth in the UK from 2008 to 2014. Out of the one million net jobs created, only 25,000 of them could be considered full time. Another 378,050 were part time, and 645,612 jobs were self employed, either full or part time. It is worth mentioning that during this period, the UK population rose by 3 million (I'm not certain how much of that is working age population).
Perhaps some of these self employed jobs are well paying, I don't know. I suspect the majority of them are most certainly not. I would guess that many of them will be servicing the distributed service economy in some fashion.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Friday December 19 2014, @08:42PM
A race to the bottom, with value extracted by high-renting middlemen who do little bun run a comms service.
More billionaires - not because of inherently more value in the economy - but because they've squeezed their actual productive workforce down to the husk and sucked out all the juice for themselves.
The children of an Uber driver will never have the privilege of being taken home on a paid Uber ride, after school - no. The parent will have to do this on their own time, removing productive hours from their "workday".
I really don't care anymore. Randian super-parasites will crush what's left underfoot, with a mythology of their information technology entitlement. It's called "decline and fall". Watch the show - if you have the stomach.
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Friday December 19 2014, @08:45PM
I was going to make the same comment that it's a race to the bottom. Look at what happens every time something like this opens up. More and more people work for less and less. I honestly do not see how anyone could do computer programming for freelance job sites and afford a computer and Internet connection to do the work for the pay that's offered. Paid writing assignments are the same way. Look at Amazon's 600k title slush pile for the Kindle. This kind of economy doesn't support subsistence, and my examples don't factor in things like transportation costs. To get customers, you'd have to lowball the price, or people would just do it themselves.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 2) by CRCulver on Friday December 19 2014, @09:50PM
I do translation and interpretation on a freelance basis and do OK (my clients are willing to pay more or less the going rate of the first world), but when I signed up for those sites I was amazed at how little programming and graphic design jobs paid, and how any call for applications would quickly get dozens of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis signing up to work for peanuts. I too wondered how they could afford to even keep a computer and internet connection, but then I discovered that there are office spaces opening up in the Indian subcontinent which subcontract this freelance work to local people. The people you think you're hiring keep a cut for themselves, but they just provide the computer, the internet connection, and a chair and desk to someone else. Apparently Dhaka in Bangladesh has dozens of such offices now.
It's not even just a Subcontinent thing anymore; I'm based in Romania, and in my town one of these working spaces for graphic design recently opened (though judging from the middle class salaries paid there, they work on a long-term basis with clients instead of one-off exploitive jobs to the lowest bidder).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 19 2014, @08:47PM
There was a report that self-employed get 1/2 the wages of a full time regular job, on average. So no, self-employed is not better of.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Saturday December 20 2014, @02:32AM
There was a report that self-employed get 1/2 the wages of a full time regular job, on average.
So?
Seriously. We have spent a century making the act of hiring an employee harder and more expensive and contracting out labor easier and cheaper. Now the same labor/socialists in the first world are bitching that business is following the incentives. Grow the heck up. Elections have consequences. Labor actions have consequences.
Uber isn't exploiting anyone, they are offering a service that rational and willing actors look at and sign up for; on both sides. If someone thought they could make more money for less effort and risk they wouldn't be driving for Uber. If customers ever decide a traditional government monopoly taxi is a better deal there is nothing Uber can do to make someone use their service. The government monopolies on the other hand.....
As to the bitchin' upthread about international competition on online piecework and contracting, sucks don't it. Everybody wants the poor in the third world to be lifted out of poverty, not exploited by 'the man' etc. They never consider that the best and only way it actually happens is when they actually find a way to earn a living. And yup, the Internet totally flattened the world for any work that can be done via it and now a first worlder is competing on essentially a level playing field with some random guy/gal in India, etc. They are going to rise but they are going to eat your lunch doing it. And what that means is no more 'birthright' to a first world lifestyle, if you expect a superior lifestyle you have to be able to offer something superior. Location does help a little, but for how much longer?
And yes the whole welfare state is doomed, there ain't going to be enough excess wealth in the 1st world to remain so stupid as to pay 1/3 to 1/2 of the population to not work. Like it, hate it, reality isn't interested in your feels so suck it up and learn to live with it and just perhaps you will find the spirit that your ancestors had that made the 1st world number one and find a way to thrive in the new reality.
Either that or we all go on a rampage and destroy the Internet and call technology a bad idea. Choose or propose a third way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 20 2014, @04:16AM
"Uber isn't exploiting anyone, they are offering a service that rational and willing actors look at and sign up for." Absolute BS. Uber can only offer their service because the economy is poor and there are a lot of desperate people willing to do anything to try to make enough money to eat and pay rent. If the economy didn't suck Uber wouldn't be able to get drivers at the crappy rates they pay. And if they paid more they wouldn't be cheaper than the competition and no one would care. Also, just wait until an Uber driver is in an accident and someone is injured and the insurance companies get involved. How many Uber drivers have the right levels of insurance? And how long until Uber drivers start noticing the extra wear and tear on their cars are coming out of their already measly wages?
Also, is it really fair to say that desperate workers are "rational and willing"? Since when does poverty and desperation lead to rational and willing behavior? Low income workers don't have the luxury to act rationally. As an example, buying items at dollar stores is more expensive than buying bulk at a supermarket or Target or Costco. BUT if you don't have the capital to buy in bulk you are stuck paying more for fewer goods. Even if they know they are getting ripped off the poor don't often have a choice.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Saturday December 20 2014, @05:14AM
Uber can only offer their service because the economy is poor...
So? Assume you are correct. People are still making a rational decision in bad circumstances. Guess what sport? Life sometimes sucks, bad times come (especially when a society does stupid things....) and everything isn't always unicorns shittin' Skittles. People are dealing with it. If your assessment is correct, they are doing what they must to put vittles in the cupboard and pay the rent. Apparently you don't like that, perhaps you would prefer they simply starve and thus reduce the surplus population? Your alternative would be? Eh? Speak up, we can't hear you.
If you are right, all we need do is elect a few more Republicans (especially a POTUS) and reignite the economy and Uber will cease to exist. Ok, maybe you are even correct. But yet again I retort, So?
If the market doesn't support Uber in good economic times, that sucks for the idiots buying Uber stock at prices not seen since the last .bomb went off, but stupid people are supposed to lose their money on the stock market. I'm still failing to see a downside for anyone else. So long as people are free to choose to deal with or not deal with Uber, it is all good. It is the invisible hand of the market reallocating capital from the incompetent to those better able to put those resources to productive use.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Saturday December 20 2014, @09:13AM
sudo mod me up