Most Uber/lyft drivers are recent immigrants , working poor who end up taking on a lot of risk for little if any reward.
Uber also uses psychological tricks to trick drivers into driving more then is rational [1]
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/technology/uber-driver-ip...
[1]
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/04/02/technology/ub...
$40,000 a year is hardly minimum wage. Most of the drivers I've talked to explain that it does usually equate to between minimum wage to $20-$25 an hour after expenses depending on how effective you are at getting surge priced rides. But, unlike a minimum wage job you can set your own hours which is a huge advantage.
> Most Uber/lyft drivers are recent immigrants , working poor who end up taking on a lot of risk for little if any reward.
Yeah, and what would poor recent immigrants be doing instead? Probably work that is much riskier (e.g. farm work).
> Uber also uses psychological tricks to trick drivers into driving more then is rational
I don't see any "psychological tricks" in this article. Telling drivers where the most riders are and where surge pricing is happening helps drivers get more money. And I'm supposed to think this is a bad thing?
Also, I would advise against trusting the NYT when it comes to reporting on the tech industry - especially large tech companies. I have observed grossly exaggerated stories and even outright falsehoods portraying tech companies in a negative light with enough consistency that I do not consider them a reliable source on this topic. Remember, traditional media like the New York Times is being decimated by Google and social media. Fanning the fires of the "techlash" is in their best interest.
No, but it gets pretty close when you factor in all the expenses that contractors have to deal with.
And regardless, this is exactly one data point. Hardly enough to draw any meaningful conclusions. And as I have said before, I am not inclined to trust the New York Times' coverage of large tech companies.
* Attempting to depict high profile YouTubers as promoting Nazism despite the given examples unambiguously not promoting nazism in context.
* Alleging YouTube pushes users towards right wing content when quantitative analysis shows left-leaning content outnumbers right leaning content more than 2:!, and a slim minority of recommendations going to right leaning content.
Here's one recent example: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/technology/google-temp-wo...
The NYT is portraying Google's use of contractors as some nefarious and unfair system of two tiers of employees. In reality this not at all specific to Google, or even tech companies. Most companies use contractors for security, office maintenance, and recruiting. This is not new. Nor is it secret. Calling it a "shadow" workforce is deceptive.
The pattern of portraying large tech companies (especially Google) in a negative light is a consistent pattern I have observed for years. Bias is inevitable when there is a conflict of interest like this. Established media and news organizations are losing huge amounts of money and influence to technology companies. Trusting them to be unbiased in their reporting face of such a conflict of interest is highly naive.
The writers at the NYT are unionized and consequently derive above-market wages as a result of labor regulations.
Gig economy companies like Uber undermine labor regulations, like the kind that empower unionized workforces like the NYT's.
Still the theory has a pretty flimsy basis of support.
Will it hurt them more than making roughly minimum wage or less?
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-how-much-uber-driv...
Marketwatch is estimating under $11/hr with no insurance, no retirement benefits, etc. Even In-n-Out and Starbucks pay more, offer better benefits (even for part timers), and generally offer flexible schedules.
You'd prefer that I answer "because gig economy companies provide unmatched flexibility and freedom to their employees^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcontractors", right? I'm not really here to play that game, so how's this?
- They may not work in an area where In-n-Out exists or Starbucks is hiring. Note: this doesn't mean that the other available low/no skill work pays less than Uber or other "gig economy" jobs.
- They may not realize that retail work pays more than Uber or they may believe Uber's exaggerated wage claims while not realizing that Uber would continue to take a larger and larger share of the driver's earnings
- They may have fallen prey to Uber's predatory financing and bought a vehicle expressly to drive for Uber
- They may believe that working in "gig economy" serfdom makes financial sense. I've a friend like that. They "work" for Instacart, but instead of driving their own vehicle (which they're upside down on) they use Uber to get to the grocery store, then another Uber to the person's house, and then another Uber home. Trust me, it's costing them money to do this but in their head it makes sense
- They could be Travis Kalanick and drive under the Boober[1] model — basically driving as a means of meeting sexual conquests.
- They could believe that retail work is beneath them
- Back before Uber was forced to institute background checks another option is that the driver failed a background check elsewhere or was otherwise unemployable in retail.
1: https://qz.com/1011300/uber-ceo-travis-kalanick-pissed-peopl...
I don't think VW should want to want that even if they do.
Having 3 months mutual contract disbandment time favours the employer way more than the employee. It's huge being able to replace a person in an orderly manner.
Also I believe given big corps. inefficiencys and internal "politics" not being able to fire who you want at random but in predetermined order is also good for the corparations since you will automatically keep the employees with the most experience and not make stupid shortsighted savings or fireing people the bosses don't like.
“They didn’t understand that in Germany, companies and unions are closely connected,” Mr. Poschmann said. “Bentonville didn’t want to have anything to do with unions. They thought we were communists.” [0]
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/02/business/worldbusiness/02...
This is just fucking insane. That's not a supermarket, that's like a cult.
They kept it up into the 1950s, when Tom Watson died and control of the company passed to his son.
I like this note from the end of the Network World article, where they ask a Harvard Business School professor if there's anything similar going on in the contemporary tech world:
> "I don't think there is a Microsoft company song other than 'Get to the bank as fast as possible so you can deposit the check,' " Tedlow adds.
"Harmonised unemployment rates define the unemployed as people of working age who are without work, are available for work, and have taken specific steps to find work. The uniform application of this definition results in estimates of unemployment rates that are more internationally comparable than estimates based on national definitions of unemployment. This indicator is measured in numbers of unemployed people as a percentage of the labour force and it is seasonally adjusted. The labour force is defined as the total number of unemployed people plus those in civilian employment." (https://data.oecd.org/unemp/harmonised-unemployment-rate-hur...)
Besides, harmonized or not, doesn't explain the economic weakness in Germany over the past decade compared to the US.
If anything, the US should scale back profits and rebuild its social supports structures, the same structures which were torn down in the name of profit.
>If anything, the US should scale back profits and rebuild its social supports structures, the same structures which were torn down in the name of profit.
All of this sounds like more debt, which if we learned (we haven't) anything from 2008, will not solve the problems, just exacerbate it more when it blows up (again).
... which is meaningless when you compare it to the official US statistics (as you did) because they count things differently. The harmonization helps make the numbers comparable in the first place.
Let's posit as a hypothetical that 1% of the workforce is deplorably bad at the notion of being employed (let's define that as: It'll take them 100s+ of trying things until they find a job where the employer is better off employing them vs. not employing them). Let's say a further 1% is rated as 'quite bad' (defined as: More than half the jobs they would on paper qualify for, they'd do such a bad job the employer is better off not employing them).
Why employ these people? In western europe the common song and dance routine is a calvinistic 'because work is good for you, otherwise they'd be lazy gits'... at which point apparently the argument becomes: The employers of the notion must carry the burden of dealing with these folks, for the good of society.
In the US and a lot of right wing euro parties the sentiment is more: Well, they are lazy! I don't wanna pay taxes to enable these morons. Except that is an economic falsehood; they drag society down no matter what you do. I guess unless you're willing to take the moral position of just casually killing them in a way that is really cheap and easy (and thus, probably quite imprecise – few to no people are morally okay with this I assume), you just have to grin and bear it. Yeah, they drag a bit. It's fine; the economy can easily accomodate them.
The point is: A system that does let such people be employed here and there for a while is not inherently better than one that does not, and, 0% unemployment is a crazy goal.
This is an overly coarse grained depiction of the situation. An individual is not blanket "bad employee" who can't be productive. I'm a good software developer, but if you hired me to be a concert pianist I'd suck at it. I'd say probably 5-10% of employees end up being under productive or non-productive at their jobs. This is consistent with the performance review scores I've seen.
When firing an employee is easy, employers are much more willing to hire because they know that they will be able to terminate employees that are not productive. When firing an employee is hard, employers will be reluctant to hire employees and will only hire the ones that they are confident will do well. This usually makes it very hard to get started in an industry, because companies are leery of workers without experience.
> Why employ these people? In western europe the common song and dance routine is a calvinistic 'because work is good for you, otherwise they'd be lazy gits'... at which point apparently the argument becomes: The employers of the notion must carry the burden of dealing with these folks, for the good of society.
This doesn't seem to be the case seeing as how most of Western Europe has a higher unemployment rate than the US.
> In the US and a lot of right wing euro parties the sentiment is more: Well, they are lazy! I don't wanna pay taxes to enable these morons. Except that is an economic falsehood; they drag society down no matter what you do. I guess unless you're willing to take the moral position of just casually killing them in a way that is really cheap and easy (and thus, probably quite imprecise – few to no people are morally okay with this I assume), you just have to grin and bear it. Yeah, they drag a bit. It's fine; the economy can easily accomodate them.
You're seriously saying that if we don't employ people who are incapable of doing their jobs, then the only other option is summary execution? This is absurd to the point that I can only assume this is a bad joke.
The much more likely approach is to let them continue to be unemployed and search for a job that they are capable of doing.
> The point is: A system that does let such people be employed here and there for a while is not inherently better than one that does not, and, 0% unemployment is a crazy goal.
0% unemployment is a crazy goal and I don't know why you seem to think that making it harder or easier to fire employees will ever bring it closer to zero. Even in fields where the number of job openings vastly exceed the available positions, unemployment is still usually at 1-2%.
I explicitly defined 'bad employee' as 'takes many job hops to find a place'. It's coarse grained to make a point, which you perhaps missed.
My point is: There is a % of the workforce that could work, but it is economically more efficient for them not to.
> When firing an employee is easy, employers are much more willing to hire because they know that they will be able to terminate employees that are not productive.
This is a separate idea: The job market should be such that people are free to find the best place for them. It'd take multiple essays to cover all the angles on how to best do that, or why the US is as it is, etc. For example, different cultural standards play quite a role there.
> This doesn't seem to be the case seeing as how most of Western Europe has a higher unemployment rate than the US.
It is the case now. Check just about any european politician's speeches. Unemployment rates don't prove anything here.
> You're seriously saying that if we don't employ people who are incapable of doing their jobs, then the only other option is summary execution?
Not what I said. I said: If you want to make an economic argument, given the fact that there are a few people where it's economically more efficient to not employ them, one should accept this. Or take on ridiculous extremist positions such as summary execution, which I assume nobody wants to take.
> 0% unemployment is a crazy goal and I don't know why you seem to think that making it harder or easier to fire employees
You seemed to be making the point that gig economy jobs are a good solution for perennially bad employees because they can easily get these jobs and be easily fired from them. I was countering said point.
There is an limit to exploitation capitalism.
That reminds me of the posturing when they passed those child labor laws. And what did we get? A bunch of unemployed children.
Child labor laws prevented parents from sacrificing their children' educations to use them for immediate economic gain. This is not at all related to extending employee benefits to contract workers that set their own hours.
You make the unqualified assumption that these people had healthcare and benefits before driving for Uber. And regardless, unlike child labor these are adults that are making these decisions for themselves. They looked at their opportunities and decided that driving for Uber or Lyft was best. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that these individuals are more qualified to make their own life choices than people on the internet who know nothing about their lives.
Regardless, other countries have these worker protections and benefits for all jobs and Uber drivers don't have them. So Uber is a worse employer than most.
And still, people chose them you would say. Well, the problem with that is that there will always be people desperate enough, or naive enough or greedy enough to jump on opportunities. At the beginning, Uber was paying its drivers more and there were also fewer drivers.
Currently it's a predatory company. And society shouldn't tolerate such companies.
At the risk of going down the partisan rabbit hole, this reminds me of the video segment where Ami Horowitz questioned people of liberal political persuasions on the ability of black voters to meet photo ID requirements, and then asked black Americans the same questions:
He also isn't asking the black voters "the same questions" at all.
Can we try and improve the situation for low wage workers as well as additional methods to address unemployment?
Majority of land owners over the course of history had come to the conclusion that serfdom and slavery is beneficial to positive returns on landholding.
Also multiple countries had been greatly improving their GDP from forced labor (Nazi Germany, Mao's China, Stalin's Russia and other).
On the off chance that you're not trolling, contractors - unlike slaves - have the freedom to choose what work they'll do. Drivers for Uber often also drive for Lyft when it pays better. There's nothing stopping them leaving if their opinion is that the pay is not worth the work. By comparison, slaves are not free and are forced to do whatever work their masters tell them to.
"Freedom" of choice is relative term here.
Slaves also had next to no protection. Slaves could be killed in gladiatorial fights, and were often used to work in the most unhealthy and unsafe jobs. Masters could rape their slaves at will, or prostitute their slaves. The only "protection" they had was the fact that it was in their masters' self-interest to keep them alive so that they could continue working.
I seriously cannot fathom as to how you can think that the gig economy is comparable to owning other human beings as property.
One should not base their notion of slavery on popular culture like Game of Thrones or Gladiator but on reading historic books. Or Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Rome
> Although in general freed slaves could become citizens, with the right to vote if they were male
> Roman slaves could hold property which, despite the fact that it belonged to their masters, they were allowed to use as if it were their own.
> Claudius announced that if a slave was abandoned by his master, he became free. Nero granted slaves the right to complain against their masters in a court. And under Antoninus Pius, a master who killed a slave without just cause could be tried for homicide.[65] Legal protection of slaves continued to grow as the empire expanded. It became common throughout the mid to late 2nd century AD to allow slaves to complain of cruel or unfair treatment by their owners.
Also some slave had been administering largest empires on Earth (China, Roman Empire) or establishing empires of their own with control over lifes of milions of free people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamluk
> Particularly in Egypt, but also in the Levant, Mesopotamia, and India, mamluks held political and military power. In some cases, they attained the rank of sultan, while in others they held regional power as emirs or beys. Most notably, mamluk factions seized the sultanate centered on Egypt and Syria, and controlled it as the Mamluk Sultanate (1250–1517).
So back to the subject. Slavery and serfdom had been complex institutions spanning thousands of years and multiple cultures and historical circumstances.
And yes. I am personally convinced that bringing poor people and immigrants with limited citizenship rights into perpetuating economic relation where they cannot make economic progress and mostly accumulate debt and obligations with limited social benefits is modern version of serfdom.
> Roman slaves could hold property which, despite the fact that it belonged to their masters, they were allowed to use as if it were their own.[58] Skilled or educated slaves were allowed to earn their own money, and might hope to save enough to buy their freedom.[59][60] Such slaves were often freed by the terms of their master's will, or for services rendered. A notable example of a high-status slave was Tiro, the secretary of Cicero. Tiro was freed before his master's death, and was successful enough to retire on his own country estate, where he died at the age of 99.[61][62][63] However, the master could arrange that slaves would only have enough money to buy their freedom when they were too old to work. They could then use the money to buy a new young slave while the old slave, unable to work, would be forced to rely on charity to stay alive.
The opportunity to buy one's way to freedom was not the norm, and typically only skilled or educated slaves could aspire to do this. And, as the article mentioned, this could take a very long amount of time and its only something that skilled or educated slaves might aspire to achieve.
> Although in general freed slaves could become citizens, with the right to vote if they were male, those categorized as dediticii suffered permanent disbarment from citizenship. The dediticii were mainly slaves whose masters had felt compelled to punish them for serious misconduct by placing them in chains, branding them, torturing them to confess a crime, imprisoning them or sending them involuntarily to a gladiatorial school (ludus), or condemning them to fight with gladiator or wild beasts (their subsequent status was obviously a concern only to those who survived). Dediticii were regarded as a threat to society, regardless of whether their master's punishments had been justified, and if they came within a hundred miles of Rome, they were subject to reenslavement.
First of all, this only applies if the slave was freed which is up to the discretion of their master. Also, I wrote an essay on Roman slavery and the patterns of slavery evolved over the course of Rome's roughly millennium long existence. Some periods saw reduced or even eliminated paths for slaves to become free let along citizens. Slaves in the Roman Empire varied as far as their conditions. Educated slaves might lead decent lives, but on the whole slaves are on the lowest rungs of society and did not even remotely have the kinds of worker protections we have today.
Middle Eastern soldier-slaves aren't really slaves as Westerners understand the term. They were effectively a military caste. In fact, the article even says this in its opening section, "The most enduring Mamluk realm was the knightly military caste in Egypt in the Middle Ages, which developed from the ranks of slave soldiers."
> And yes. I am personally convinced that bringing poor people and immigrants with limited citizenship rights into perpetuating economic relation where they cannot make economic progress and mostly accumulate debt and obligations with limited social benefits is modern version of serfdom.
These companies don't set immigration policy so I'm not sure what you're trying to say in this paragraph. And besides, many citizens also drive for these companies. And most importantly, if they decide that there are better opportunities than Uber and Lyft they are free to take those opportunities. This isn't serfdom at all, it's objectively wrong to call it that. The defining feature of serfdom and slavery is that the workers do not have agency to decide their form of employment. Uber and Lyft drivers do. If a serf thinks they can make more money as a craftsman instead of as a farmer they are not allowed to change their jobs because they're a serf. If an Uber or Lyft driver decides they can make more money working the checkout counter at Safeway they have the agency to take up that opportunity because they're not slaves or serfs. Calling Uber and Lyft the "modern version of serfdom" either demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of these terms on your part, of it's a bald faced lie.
The point remains, comparing Uber and Lyft drivers to slaves is absolutely inane.
I do not intend to be deceptive. You have provided overly simplistic vision of slavery and I have provided some counterexamples.
> The opportunity to buy one's way to freedom was not the norm, and typically only skilled or educated slaves could aspire to do this. And, as the article mentioned, this could take a very long amount of time and its only something that skilled or educated slaves might aspire to achieve.
This seems to me like a vision of an American dream of sorts. Promise of social mobility for a choosen few members of lower class to become middle class.
The problem is that for the last 30 years American dream isn't working anymore. It is rather that middle class poeple are pushed in lower class ranks.
No you have not. You have selectively quoted parts of a Wikipedia article to portray Roman slavery as though slaves were treated well and had reliable paths to freedom. This is absolutely not the case, slaves had little to no protection and were subject to whim of their masters who could harm them without repercussion.
> This seems to me like a vision of an American dream of sorts. Promise of social mobility for a choosen [sic] few members of lower class to become middle class. The problem is that for the last 30 years American dream isn't working anymore. It is rather that middle class poeple are pushed in lower class ranks.
Sure. But how on Earth do you go from, "social mobility isn't as good as I would like" to "gig workers are comparable to slaves"? You're clearly reluctant to defend this statement, probably because you've realized how inane it really is.
It’s just a word that we sometimes use to describe certain kinds of superior-inferior relationships: master-servant, lord-peasant, employer-employee, landlord-tenant, etc.
Or how about debtpeon-bank?
Taxman-taxpayer...
Government-citizen...
State-subject...
You say “slavery” and you think of “black slavery”, but do you think of the ruthlessly exploited sharecropper?
How about the fresh-faced grad indentured to his debt for life?
The newlywed with the mortgage on the house that cost him 10x what it cost his father?
Slavery is closer than you think.
The ease of entering and exiting the gig economy is one of its most valuable aspects. What other kinds of jobs can you set your own hours, and join and quit largely at whim? If Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, etc. all now have to consider their contractors employees then they will have to start setting hours. If they have to give their workers the same benefits as employees, then it will be financially unsustainable to let them set their own hours. People who depended on Uber for flexible employment will not be able to continue working.
This seems like political posturing that's going to hurt the majority of employees if it passes.