Something I read this morning
https://www.thenation.com/article/gigged-economy-the-unmaking-of-the-ame...
It looked at the gig economy from a perspective that I hadn't quite thought of. The Webvan story is telling. By training their employees and caring for them and providing a well designed and administered service they drove themselves into bankruptcy - they could never recover their investment in infrastructure or their operating costs. Instead the way to succeed is to provide less than survival rate pay and a barely workable infrastructure, then sit back and let your workers drive themselves into the hospital compensating for your intentional inadequacies. You will always be able to replace them when they drop and you won't ever suffer the consequences. And don't target your "service" to the general public, provide disposable servants (at a premium price) to the wealthy. (and the pretentious well to do upper middle class)
The question for the gig economy is not what your labor is worth, but is the difference between your pay and the customer's enough for him to justify hiring you. This is classism and capitalism explained in the most brutal way.
When they starved the taxi drivers
I didn't care because I turned my nose up at taxi drivers
When they starved the counter workers
I didn't care as long as they understood my order
When they starved the programmers
I just got an increase in the number of H1-b visas.
When I starved my assistant
I just hired another.
They will never starve executives
so fuck you.
Comments
BULLY! ! !
eom
Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .
Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .
If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march
A good article but creepy
Gig jobs might be good for college students but not for folks who need to survive on that type of work.
Ugh.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
Another good article
at The Nation this week that I hope to read after I read your link:
Co-ops in the US
Employee owned? Actually, there are a lot of them in the USA. Here's a list ...and I am sure this doesn't include all of them.
Thank you!
Great list and easy to use going forward. Peace.
I worked for a "cooperative" for thirty years.
San Francisco's Yellow Cab called itself a cooperative, but it was a cooperative of medallion holders, not drivers, and it was as exploitative as it's "competitors". In fact the SF taxi industry was a cartel; they did not compete, they conspired to abuse their monopoly, just like the other companies. In fact, Yellow was the leading actor in the corruption that led to the end of the industry. It was however diverse, as most of the people demanding that the city issue more and more medallions regardless of the damage they caused to the drivers and public were minorities.
A note on the gig economy from a taxi driver's perspective: Uber/Lyft have what could be a superior business model, but it's a fraud. Allowing people to choose their own work schedules should create a situation where the number of drivers matches the amount of available business, but at least for now it doesn't. Desperate people are flooding the streets - and the market - doing nothing but lowering driver income. The only advantage this has is that Uber and Lyft, with no medallions to demand for, have no reason to sabotage their dispatch systems as the old taxi companies did. The system sucks, but the public never sees that because it is in the driver's power - and in his short term interest - to prevent the customer from seeing it.
On to Biden since 1973
So ,instead of day laborers
it's day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month laborers.
Yes the gig economy is turning us into a jungle
But it always really was - they're just up front about it now.
On to Biden since 1973
Surplus Leisure
I was thinking the other day about the unpaid work that everyone seems to be doing these days. We all know about Marx’s theory of surplus value, but what sites like fakebook do is monetize people’s leisure time. Sure they get a minuscule amount of value in return for their leisure time, but as usual the surplus is sucked up by the owners.
So really everyone using fb is working at least two jobs - one of which pays peanuts and one of which pays shells .
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
To Paraphrase...
...my 1988 Finance Prof:
"Fuck you, pay me"
That is the world he was warning us we would live in if we continued with the financialization of society. This is in 1988 while we were following the RJR/Nabisco leveraged buyout in real time. He would do his 10 minute soap-box lecture before every class. It is where I first learned of what is now called MMT.
He gave us a brief history of the corporate boardroom and how it started with the Production boys on the top floors, then the Mad-Men Marketing maniacs and now the Finance/Destroyers of Worlds on top.
The last thirty years have taught me that we need the working woman/man on the top floors: teachers, machinists, mechanics, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, musicians, farmers, nurses, ect, ect.
Everyday folks with everyday difficulties.