The somewhat optimistic view of these "gigs" is that they have two important qualities:

- They can be picked up/put down at any time - They require no specific time commitment and can be managed in parallel with other money making endeavors/jobs

Most "jobs" are actually difficult to get (go try to get a job as a waiter - you probably need to know someone), require a very specific time commitment, and if you decide you have other opportunities you want to pursue for any period of time you have "quit" the job and renounce the right to work it likely forever.

Those are really shitty qualities! There's tremendous value in a job you know you can start/stop anytime and don't require any specific commitment in order to continue to have the job available to you. We should look at the gig economy not in any way as a career (although some may find it appropriate to use it as such) but rather as a new income generating tool. When considering whether the gig economy is good or bad, we should consider that context. My overall take is that we need more "gigs" but that the rate of the shift towards "gigs" in general is too fast and is worrying. I assume it will slow dramatically but if it doesn't...

Automated marketplaces are generally really efficient, which means that they drive the end-user cost down until it meets the cost of supply (ie. they drive the profit for suppliers down to zero). This is what's happening with Uber, even with their subsidised ride prices. (And for a virtual example, this is what happened in the Diablo 3 auction house, and basically killed the 'grind bosses for upgrades' endgame until they removed it.)

The problem is less with the qualities of the job and more with the pay of the job.

It's poverty wages and exploitative. It's not profiting off these people, it's profiteering off of them.

Low wages are the result of competition. If nearly everybody can be a waiter, and the demand is limited, there are two options: the salary would be very low, OR: there will be very few jobs (the imposed minimum salary case). This is mathematics, you can't change that.

You can subsidize these low-income jobs, but this is expensive and unsustainable (by definition, there are a lot of low-income people who need to be subsidized).

The only way out of the situation is to raise demand, and sharing economy does exactly that. In the days before (except maybe in the NYC), taxis were used relatively rarely; now, Uber is ubiquitous and used without hesitation in many places.

It's not a matter of subsidizing. We all need a base from where to work. There was a time when people worked 7 days a week, were forced to work over 40 hours a week without additional compensation, no vacations, no health insurance and work safety was iffy. Thanks to unions and an improving economy things changed. The gig economy is bringing some of us back to that. Where is the improvement we hoped tech was supposed to bring. We have a chance to make things better but we are not choosing to do it.

Money is not everything. I know society is better when people are healthy and happy than when they are not. The gig economy is not helping society it's making life more difficult for those that have no choice on what job they can get.

The "jobs" economy is over. It felt good while it lasted (about 140 years), when the economic output was mostly measured in material goods, and jobs were organized around large factories (either belonging to corporations, like in the US or Europe or Japan, or directly to the state, like in the USSR). Now in the post-industrial world, when the material goods production is mostly saturated, still believing that jobs can provide economic sustenance is about as realistic as believing that everybody can work as a farmer and live a good life producing food.

Today in developed countries, only about 3% of population work as farmers. Soon, only about 3% of population will have jobs — the rest will have to do something else (like be employed in the sharing economy gigs). This is inevitable, and there is no way to reverse this. Government regulations can't do anything to oppose these immense natural forces, nor they will need to.

Or rather there is a way to reverse the trend and provide the need for immense material economic output: a war. A world war — because warring parties quickly lose the economic edge in a peaceful economy, and it's either everyone's in, or nobody goes. There are no unemployed at wartime.

The gig economy gets a lot of hate, but it is successful because it is better than the alternative for both sides.

Uber competes with McDonald's for workers, but no one really thinks about whether workers are better off than at McDonald's.

With the fight for 15 and other minimum wage increases, many people argue that increasing wages will not substantially effect demand for labor, but it's sort of hard to make the case in the taxi space since reduced price has clearly led to an explosion of demand.

My biggest problem with Uber/Lyft is how the costs are incredibly obscure to the driver. I think that sucks. With Postmates, for example, a friend of mine was making $15 - $20 an hour riding his bike. That's ok money! Especially given the characteristics of the job I mentioned above. If he'd been driving a car, it's not really ok money.

I'm eyes wide open about the downsides of many of these jobs, especially the ones that involve using your own car. I just want to mention the upside because it's important. It has helped a really save a few of my friends butts at really tough times in their lives. I don't want to lose site of that. Optionality is important.

Indeed and additionally they're taking work away from people with previously reasonably paying work (cab drivers, etc). Some of these really are zero-sum games and the gig economy is destroying pay in these.

In what ways do you think they would be better off if these companies were shut down?

No don't shut them down. Just make sure they're not jobs where people are struggling.

> I wish the new tech entrepreneurs would find a better way to fix the low skill problem rather than find a way to reduce services/costs to the bone.

Just a few years ago there was a big push in this direction. MOOCs reduced the price of access to college level material close to zero [1].

There is more to it than access, of course.

[1] edit: following others, notably MIT, who have been releasing great stuff for free for a long time, and the Open University who have had great distance ed with online content for 48 years and counting. ('Online' started out as radio and TV shows). MOOCs were a fresh push, not a wholly original idea.

We have better access to information than ever before. Twenty years ago, I quit university/college and taught myself to do what I do now, and the learning materials have only multiplied since then.

I think that big issues that remain are motivation and incentive. You can study for 3-4 years with no guarantee that by the end of it you'll have a job or enjoy it. Or you can teach yourself for six months (or likely more) and have a very slow start as a freelancer, or an up-hill battle pitching your ability to a company looking for a college degree.

I don't love that the gig economy pushes costs and burdens to the employee, but it does provide a quicker opportunity. Someone who's done two weeks of HTML/JS online could well pick up shrapnel work on the side as they learn.

Outside of motivation and incentive, I'd be tackling costs of living so people can get by on 15-25 hours a week of work rather than grind themselves into the dust just to prop up their family.

Yes, but most people get a degree from an accredited university because they feel eventually it will get them ahead in life. True or not MOOCs don't carry the same prestige. They need to fix that. Also, with no one pushing the student it's easy for them to give up. MOOCs are great to improve your skills and enhance your college transcript but not to get a degree.

But I see your point, they have value. I took a tv based class to get credits for my degree. Now I would do it online. In time, moocs value will improve.

It turns out that course material is only one of the things you learn in college. And it's not the one that is necessarily a predictor of being gainfully employed.

Very true, some of the classes have very little value. I can go to any auditorium based class and sit in the class and the professor would likely not know. The TA's might but mostly I can be there and learn. There are no security guards. What people pay for is that final grade and the degree you are working to get. You can even hang out on campus. When I was getting my degree there were always former students that would hang out.That was there base of operation.

Strange how it works.

I believe there were predictions that the gramophone, radio, television, videos, DVDs, and computers (back before the net was a big thing, then several times after it was) would all revolutionize education.

And they all did, a little bit.

Every generation rediscovers distance education, and gets equally excited about it.

I think the gig economy is just a modern addition to day labouring, peacmeeal work and such. These segments have always existed. In many cases, they have played a positive role.

When "Labour" (unions and political movements) get heavy handed, they try to kill off these segments. They don't fit into the model. They want to promote job stability above all else, where workers have a right to their job in as close to perpetuity as they can achieve.

I don't think gig economies (and peacemeal or day labour) are completely without merits. The biggest advantage is a lack of gatekeepers. This has value.

Anyway, "uberization" is not going to replace the whole labour market. It's going to become a small segment of it. We need regulation that preserves it's character (low barriers, low committment, worker independence..) while bringing in standard worker protections.

There are many parts of the labour market that do not provide a middle class family income. The solution is not to kill them.

> They want to promote job stability above all else

No, please no. The labour movement want(ed) good living conditions for the majority rather than for the few. And yes, to not be fired by the whim of the bosses daily feeling is part of that, but not "above all else". And ofc these kind of jobs is the enemy of the labour movement, because it's exactly the opposite of what's been fought for in the last ~150 years.

I suppose we disagree, somewhat.

In my view/experience labour movements have generally pursued job stability as a primary instrument (for worker rights), even if it was not formally a goal in itself. This may be somewhat at odds with solidarity, but every movement deals with some internal contradiction.

There a multiple reasons for the focus on permanent employment. One is the labour union history of labour movements. Unions represent members and their interests, which are protecting their jobs, not jobs in general. Another reason is practical: it's almost impossible to unionize and hard to apply protections to a casual workforce. Labour movements (esp unions) are empowered by permanent workforces. Another reason (possibly the dominant one) is simple practical politics: people want a guarantee of permanence.

I believe that casual employment types have a role, in many cases one that permanent employment struggles to fill. From the worker perspective, this has to do with the low commitment, low barriers to entry, and relative absence of gatekeepers. Historically, when labour movements have tried to regulate casual labour they have tried to turn it into permanent labour.

In my view this is misguided. They should try to insert worker rights into the class while maintaining the casual noncommittal aspects of it.

For a practical example, I recently talked to some squatter/anarchists. They're hardly a major group, but weird and marginal enough that they're good at illustrating a point. Many of them work in the Gig economy (bike delivery). No Gatekeepers is what makes it work for them.

I'm not sure why your definition of labour movement is so local rather than national/global? It seems like a strange premise to your whole reply.

Causal employment doesn't have to mean worse worker rights.

We don't seem to disagree that much, I'm just questioning that you think it's the top priority.

I'm surprised by your bike delivery claim because I've recently seen exactly the opposite; the organizing of strikes in Berlin: https://deliverunion.fau.org/2017/06/27/riders-unite-protest... (syndicalist/anarchist union too)

I'm not sure what the dynamic is in Germany, but here (Ireland), the subtext to such demands would almost certainly be upgrading these delivery people to permanent employee status.

The way the law (much of it case law and labour court conventions) works currently is that arrangements similar to permanent employment are considered permanent employment, with all rights. If a company wants to keep it's "contractors'" status and avoid inadvertently picking up the responsibilities of a permanent employer, they need to avoid treating them like employees. Controlling hours, workflow and such (employee freedom) falls into that category. Providing sick pay, reimbursements, holiday pay and such also fall into that category.

Again, I don't know for sure this is an issue right now in germany, but I suspect it is. Intentionally or not, agreeing to this request/demand would weaken deliveroo's case that these are not "employees." It would set up a general ruling that effectively considers the whole employment model (which is technically not employment) unlawful.

What I'm suggesting is: (1) we find a new name/category for these employees, (2) remove the defacto laws that cause contractors to default to permanent employees when/if you treat them like employees (3) legislate new rights that are relevant to this category. These must be realistic about preserving the casualness of the arrangement.

You do touch on a point here: this gig economy only exists because full time employment does not offer living wages in the majority of the places where it exists.

Another benefit is wealth redistribution from richer to poorer countries, at least for gigs which can be delivered online.

" For whatever reason, some people just can't get enough skills to move up the food chain."

The assumption that this is an skills problem is only true for the individual but not in the aggregate. Payment is not a function of skills, but of supply and demand.

If everybody was able to work as a programmer, programmers would be pay as unskilled people and business could keep the profits.

That's the reason of the insistence, in the States, in not enough STEM professionals and the need for immigration.

> Try to raise 2 kids and you fall into poverty status.

When was this never the case? Kids have always been costly, and families in poverty have always had kids.

But should that continue to be the case? Poverty is not a plus in any society. We all know the problems poverty brings with it. The new economy should not add to the problem. It should help solve it. We'll never get past the multi-level economy. There will always be the people at the top and the people at the bottom. We mostly feel that those that work hard to get ahead should not be treated at the level as someone that has not. We project laziness on the poor but that's not necessarily the case. So, if you have the motivation to work should poverty be your reward? I say no.

Making things cheaper is another way of solving it.

So the idea is to make things cheaper for the poor by lowering their wages?

Yes, that reduces the cost of production. Everyone can be paid a high salary and produce expensive stuff. Or low salary and cheap stuff. Both of them are valid solutions.

But due to the current concentration of wealth in rich countries we are seeing preference for one of them.

So the wages of the poor is dynamic, but the profit margins etc are static by some force of nature?

Yes, because capital is more fluid.

There's clearly more instruments for affordable produce than lower wages for the poor. I'm from a Scandinavian country and we've had it pretty good compared to countries with less wages and workers rights.

Is any of this supported by evidence that "a big chunk of the economy (will be) powered by gigs"? I doubt it is true, and I believe your conclusion is likely off, even though I agree with (what I think are) your implied goals. Let me explain why.

> I wish the new tech entrepreneurs would find a better way to fix the low skill problem rather than find a way to reduce services/costs to the bone.

I doubt these low skill workers are the gig economy workers. Many people on AirBnB are doing fairly well, as no one wants to stay in the Ghetto, and the places with high take up are relatively well off places (London, NYC, SF). Ditto Uber, which requires a car under a certain age - is it 5 years? - not the sort of bombs truly poor people have.

The Minimum wage is a good comparison point here: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/08/who-makes-mi...

> Just who are minimum-wage workers, anyway? ... people at or below the federal minimum are:

> Disproportionately young: 50.4% are ages 16 to 24; 24% are teenagers (ages 16 to 19). > Mostly (77%) white; nearly half are white women. > Largely part-time workers (64% of the total).

The problem isn't that minimum wage is unlivable - it is that some people can't get a job. Increasing minimum wage doesn't help people who can't get a job at all.

Similarly, the gig economy isn't reducing the cost of services for people who currently do it. Rather, it is an extra source for people who already make OK money. There aren't a lot of poor people living in the Haidt, or NYC, two places where I have taken AirBnB places, and there aren't a lot of people looking to rent a room in Gary, Indiana. Or Nairobi. Or Soweto.

That's the real issue - not the cost reductions in rich areas, but finding a way to engage people who don't have a way in to the economy at all. I'd say this is not even a low skilled issue, I'd almost say it os a no skilled, combined with a no history (as in no work history) workers' problem. The gig economy isn't really affecting these people, as it seems more likely to me to be a way to prop up middle class people and make their lives slightly better, rather than a way-in for these almost-no-skilled workers.

Just as an increase in minimum wage isn't the panacea to poverty alleviation, if it does much of anything at all, so addressing the gig economy, when so many of the means of making money have rather high barriers to entry, isn't going to fix much.

I have no answers BTW, I just think the suppliers to the gig economy aren't the group - poor, low skilled people - that is the common perception, and this mis-alignment of who we need to help and HOW we help them is sending people in the wrong direction.