Delivery gig arbitrage. Now how long before the cash flow from such operations is securitized and sold off? </sarcasm>

Amazon could do this under an innocuously-named subsidiary to reduce their effective hourly pay costs.

It might be a valid way around "sticky wages."

If one looks at the whole economy, some prices might be very flexible and others rigid. This will lead to the aggregate price level (which we can think of as an average of the individual prices) becoming "sluggish" or "sticky" in the sense that it does not respond to macroeconomic shocks as much as it would if all prices were flexible. The same idea can apply to nominal wages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominal_rigidity

If Amazon were to open a subsidiary for lower priced delivery services it might be able to maintain its workforce branding and add lower rungs to the wage ladder for the purpose of labor supply development. It might be politically inconvenient for a wealthy company like Amazon to have an acknowledged wage tiering system even if it makes sense on different levels. For example, Amazon probably cannot publicly hire people without workforce documentation--an unacknowledged arms-length subsidiary would be able to provide this service.

This is sort of like taxi medallions. Amazon could have people pay to become authorized drivers, and then the medallion holders could rent them out.

That innocuously named subsidiary could also team up with Uber and Lyft to skirt AB5 in California! Think of the monetization possibilities!

Sadly i would remove the sarcasm markup.

"Greenmail Goes Transnational" (alt history from 1990) https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-03-23-me-521-st...

A/R lines of credit have been a thing for a long time.

I really don't understand how Four Hour Workweek doesn't get a ton of scorn, it's suggested approach is just so innately dishonest.

Because the point of reading the book is not to exactly replicate his life. Only to be aware of ways of reducing the amount of work in your own life.

Edit: it's the same idea as when I boxed competitively, and watched a Manny Pacquiao documentary. I wasn't going to wake up at 3 am to drink a 1000 calorie shake or do a 1000 sit ups everyday. I wanted to get into the mindset of optimizing my training within the reasonable constraints of my student life.

Have you ever bought something, say software, to make some work task easier or better fit how you work?

For example, I've started using a fountain pen and really like it better than the pens at the office and use it for minor work tasks. Four Hour Work Week isn't different from that but presents an extreme.

The hyperbolic subcontracting seems like a pain in the neck to manage to me, but I appreciate the challenge to think of work in terms of those activities in which I can personally add value and those that I can source value. How much of the time do we miss opportunities to do things better by forgetting to take a moment and think out the build vs buy implications?

I think most people reading it don't realize this. I thought it was pretty obvious when I first read it that the odds of replicating what Tim did was very low. It's about as likely as those people who lucked out on some affiliate keyword and now making $500k+ a year with a static html page with affiliate links and consistently places in first place on google. Plenty of stories of this happening, even on HN

so matt drudge. a static html page with ads

Meh the 4 hour workweek is basically snake oil.

Even Tim's own product couldn't be reduced to 4 hours. "If only I didn't sell a nutritional product, I wouldn't be getting contacted so much."

Yes, and if my job was to fill out paperwork and never Engineer, I could do my work in 4 hours a week.

Heck even if I paid some engineer in india, I'd still need to review their work, including learning the technologies and data sheets. I'm not sure how managers deal with this, just hope for the best?

> I'm not sure how managers deal with this, just hope for the best?

Good managers do what you said earlier - learn the tech, study the sheets, talk to experts and build appropriate understanding and knowledge.

Bad managers deflect, blame, hide, etc

True, if a bit oversimplified. But cynically, as a manager (one of the former type, I like to think), if you're able to outsource your work, while maintaining the expected quality of work product, without breaking any security/compliance/governance rules...I'm not really sure I'd have a ton of heartburn.