Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

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."

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (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)

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (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_