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Re:We may have reached peak “gig” economy by LoonyBalloony on Monday February 06, 2017 @02:17PM (#13582900)
"It's funny to see the sharing economy promoted as a goal in itself, when 30 years ago one of the criticisms of the Soviet Union was that people there are so poor that they are forced to share kitchens and cars with strangers."

And how the soviet union would only have one manufacturer and one shitty product.

Now we have walmart.

No matter the ideology, powerful people will want to possess power and wealth and will use whatever systems are in place to get there.

Re:We may have reached peak “gig” economy by djsumdog on Monday February 06, 2017 @05:08PM (#13584709)
> one shitty product.

Many of the things made during the Soviet era were made to last. I'd recommend the documentary: "The Lightbulb Conspiracy." It talks about planned obsolesce and the throw away economy.

It's not necessarily because the Soviet state, but more simply due to resource scarcity and needing to make things that last a very long time.

It's more than appalling that our cell phones are only intended to last two ~ four years. Of course that gives miners and Chinese manufactures jobs and growth (and the war industry too as they start a few more wars to collect resources).

Re:We may have reached peak “gig” economy by jdietrich on Tuesday February 07, 2017 @03:03AM (#13587881)
>Many of the things made during the Soviet era were made to last.

They were made to last because they were costly and difficult to obtain, but they were of shockingly poor quality. Consumer goods in the soviet union were uniformly terrible. These dreadful products were the natural result of material shortages, obsolete design, inept management, a total indifference to quality and consumers who had no other choice.

Look at soviet cars. Trabants, Yugos and Ladas were shoddily built from the cheapest materials. Soviet citizens kept these cars running because they had no other choice - either you figured out some way to fix up your pile of junk, or you walked. When Ladas and Yugos were exported to the west, they required major upgrades to meet safety and emissions standards and were still the worst cars on the market.

That maps across the entire soviet economy. The very best goods available to soviet citizens were usually worse than the shoddiest goods on the western market.

Re:We may have reached peak “gig” economy by TeMPOraL on Monday February 06, 2017 @06:23PM (#13585315)
> but more simply due to resource scarcity and needing to make things that last a very long time

And no pressure to make shitty things just to ensure you have return customers.

Re:We may have reached peak “gig” economy by umberway on Tuesday February 07, 2017 @06:02AM (#13588568)
Increase sales tax on status/luxury items. Decrease sales tax on long-life products.
Re:We may have reached peak “gig” economy by TeMPOraL on Tuesday February 07, 2017 @06:08AM (#13588598)
I don't see how the latter would help - "long-life" products would break anyway.

OTOH, if we could get minimum warranties from the EU's standard 2 years to something like 20 years for appliances and 10+ years for digital electronics... maybe then companies would start to care.

Re:We may have reached peak “gig” economy by umberway on Thursday February 09, 2017 @09:55PM (#13612912)
The idea is to give companies an incentive to make tough stuff by increasing their revenue for such products. But let's do both!
Re:We may have reached peak “gig” economy by mc32 on Tuesday February 07, 2017 @02:29AM (#13587775)
There is both good and bad in a quick product cycle.

The bad, if done wrong, you get poor recycling of input materials. If done right, you get iteratively better more environmentally friendly products.

We would not want to be using inefficient air conditioners, washers, dryers, refrigerators, water heaters, etc. from yen years ago. They are simply inefficient compared to a new model. The problem is in recycling the displaced products.

Re:We may have reached peak “gig” economy by achamayou on Monday February 06, 2017 @05:37PM (#13584956)
Walmart doesn't source from a single manufacturer though, and while competing with them may not be a walk in the park, it's still orders of magnitude less tricky than competing with state owned soviet companies ever was.

There's plenty of wrong with the current state of facts, but suggesting it's roughly similar, let alone equivalent, to what the situation was in the USSR is quite ridiculous.