The problem is that for most gig economy companies, the entire point was to shift a large percentage of the risk onto their quasi-employees, so that they could undercut companies that actually paid benefits and right-sized their staff to meet long term demands. The entire premise, for at least most gig-economy companies, was rotten.

That doesn’t mean that a company that’s genuinely based around providing consumers access to rarely distributed skills and products is necessarily bad. But it’s got to be the kind of service/product that the company couldn’t offer via traditional staffing methods.

I wasn't saying gig economy couldn't be done ethically, just that I've never heard of a case where it was. I'll take a look at Textbroker.

> "Ninety percent of everything is crap."

I never seen that applied to ethics before. I so hope it's wrong...

I was thinking more in terms of "companies in a new economic model getting some parts of it very wrong."

We try a thing, it goes horribly sideways, people freak out over "ethics," which often means large scale, social consequences that weren't necessarily readily apparent before you did the thing.

If you're talking about journalists and bloggers buying into the hype and only noticing problems once things "go horribly sideways", then I agree; it's also fair to point out that second-order consequences are very often not obvious, and only apparent in hindsight. Hell, in my more naive days, I was also bullish on some of those companies, before I started reading about and contemplating the issues that were brought up later on.

But the cynical me wants to point out that any particular company doing gig economy/"share" economy/locust economy[0] business has to design and understand their own business model. Many of the ethical issues are already apparent at this stage; when you look at Cost Structure and Revenue Streams segments of your Business Model Canvas, take a stock of regulatory requirements affecting you, you can already what corners you cut and who's going to get a short end of your value proposition stick.

So e.g. I do not believe AirBnB was initially aware of the impact their business will have on the housing market, but I'm rather certain all the evil shenanigans Uber pulled were intentional.

EDIT: also: I know that I'm being an armchair ethicist here, that it's easy to see the larger picture from a high horse, especially when one doesn't need to use said businesses. But to my defense: doing that is a valid market signal on its own; to the extent I don't deal with businesses I consider ethically challenged, and discourage others from dealing with them, this sends a (however small) signal to the free market that those issues are something that matters to some customers, and are worth competing on.

--

[0] - I only now remembered this article, https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2013/04/03/the-locust-economy/. Worth pointing out that it was written in 2013, about when the "share economy" hype was at its peak, and everyone wanted to do a startup with this model.

AirBnB pivoted. Their initial model was more like paid couch surfing and that's not what took, basically. So, no, I don't think they really knew what they were getting into and I don't think they intended it to go where it went.

I think the efficiency gains of the gig economy are real and can potentially benefit all parties. The fact that they often don't is something that I tend to "attribute to stupidity rather than malice" as the saying goes.

I'm really short of sleep and maybe that's the problem here, or part of it. I'm happy to discuss this with you, but I wasn't accusing you of anything at all.

I have thought a great deal about this and I run r/GigWorks because I feel strongly that gig work can be "the next industrial revolution."

When I was homeless and began doing gig work, I sometimes made like $1.25/hour, which is terrible. But it was more than I would have otherwise had and it allowed me to build towards something better and it made sense for me.

When I'm having a good a day, I can make more like $20/hour these days. The flexibility mattered to me and I continue to struggle to articulate the very real value of details like that.

We keep raising the bar and raising the bar until you have to have a PhD and be making a mint to have any hope of moving out of your parents basement, so to speak. And that's a problem.

Thanks for your detailed reply. I'm open to being wrong in my views about the gig economy, and will happily continue this conversation in an e-mail.

I know you weren't accusing me of anything; it just occurred to me, while writing n-th comment in this thread, that what I write may be perceived as arrogant or pretentious, so I wanted to add a caveat about it. I know you actually depended on gig work, which is a perspective I lack.

You are more than welcome to email me. I'm very short of sleep, so nothing is occurring to me as something more I want to say, but I'm happy to reply to you about your thoughts on the topic and engage in further discussion.

Cheers.

I'm curious, what makes you certain Uber has been malicious?

There are certainly positive aspects, but I think they are mostly for short-term money problems.

The main problem with the gig/platform economy is that in a sense it's the worst of both worlds: those in favor of a laissez-faire economy will see that markets are regulated anyway (not by governments but by corporations); and those in favor of government regulation also lose.