The gig economy is quietly undermining a century of worker protections

Re:The gig economy is quietly undermining a century of worke... by NeedMoreTea on Sunday April 28, 2019 @12:05PM (#19771861)

Would they be out of work otherwise? I saw no lack of deliveries or taxis ten or twenty years ago.

Delivery drivers have been moved from secure employment to the gig economy and enforced self-employment. Uber drivers would previously have been taxi or private hire drivers.

The problem comes when, after a few months, many realise that the gig role they took simply doesn't pay. Or pays significantly less than minimum wage without rights and benefits that everyone else in the economy takes for granted.

For the most part it's simply a way of larger companies outsourcing part of their labour costs to the state (via top-up benefits).

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Re:The gig economy is quietly undermining a century of worke... by 0xB31B1B on Sunday April 28, 2019 @12:20PM (#19771949)

There are orders of magnitude more uber drivers now than there were taxi drivers ten or twenty years ago. The point isn’t that these jobs didn’t exist or were replaced 1:1, the point is that there is a super steep demand curve in these services so a drop in price by 10% means 10x demand at that reduced price, which means the number of drivers now is much much more tha. It used to be to satisfy those orders

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Re:The gig economy is quietly undermining a century of worke... by AlexandrB on Sunday April 28, 2019 @02:48PM (#19772878)

> The point isn’t that these jobs didn’t exist or were replaced 1:1, the point is that there is a super steep demand curve in these services so a drop in price by 10% means 10x demand at that reduced price, which means the number of drivers now is much much more tha. It used to be to satisfy those orders

Let me go out on a limb and say: who gives a shit that there’s now more demand? This is not a good thing, demand for Uber is often replacing demand for public transit and bringing with it additional congestion[1], pollution, and waste in the classical “broken window” style. This is economic growth for the sake of itself - not towards any kind long term prosperity for the human race.

[1] https://digitalcommons.hope.edu/curcp_16/147/

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Re:The gig economy is quietly undermining a century of worke... by jimmaswell on Sunday April 28, 2019 @10:50PM (#19775457)

Make transit as attractive as you think it "should" be and these people wouldn't be choosing uber instead.

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