As a European (used to free healthcare, statutory maternity leave, and 25 days paid leave per year) it shocked me on first visiting America how third-world it actually feels regarding what people consider a "normal" work/life balance.
People work incredibly hard, long hours and often with very little to show for it. It's surreal.
This is a strangely divisive topic in the startup industry.
For some reason, there are smart people who think that meritocracy works: work hard and things will be good for you. The problem is that in many cases working hard (as in building up a startup) does indeed give people the opportunity to rise in society. But it is not true in all cases at all. And so the negative statement "if you are struggling you didn't try enough" is completely flawed.
First, in capitalism, a work's remuneration is supposed to be related in a way to the perceived utility of that work for society in general. Second competition means that a work's remuneration is inversely proportional to how easy it is to perform.
Using those 2 propositions, it becomes obvious that jobs with little utility and high competition have a remuneration that tends to go down to 0 (fast food, taxis, etc.). So in these cases, no matter how hard you work, your pay can only go that high.
"...It does require a fairly dystopian strain of doublethink for a company to celebrate how hard and how constantly its employees must work to make a living, given that these companies are themselves setting the terms..."
"setting the terms" is a bit over-the-top here. If I want to go from here to the airport, and you have a car, and I offer you twenty bucks, is that okay? Does it somehow become bad if we meet online in a chat room? How about if a thousand people in this city make this trade on a chat room today? So somebody sets up an online app. At that point do the people setting up the app "set the terms"? Does it happen when they have standards for who can use the app?
In that last statement, where the app creators start setting standards for who can participate, we run into problems -- mainly because if you're the gatekeeper, you can charge rent on both parties seeking the deal. Other than that, there's nothing amiss or terrible going on here.
Western literature has this childish and somewhat verklempt tradition of taking something that's new and making it into an emotional outburst. Thoreau goes out into the woods and laments the arrival of trains, the stresses of the city, and the war against Mexico. Dickens with his cutting criticism of Victorian England.
When done well, it's a thing of beauty. Most of the time, however, authors get a little too tied-up in belly-button-gazing and confuse "things that I can become emotional about and rant" with "things that are important and transcend time" We all take the shortcut of "if it's important to me, it must be important"
I am a bit concerned about Uber, Lyft, and the gig economy. On one hand, I am concerned that companies are exerting so much control over the marketplace that they're not innovating as much as they are creating monopolies. On the other hand, however, I am concerned that because this destroys the concept of "a job" for so many people, and the relationship to their employer and country -- they are going to push hard for limiting all sorts of free trade under the rubric of "something must be done!"
In this case, quite literally, the writer begins her essay with an example of how people might feel that something must be done for the children.
My first wife worked a 9-5 W-2 job during her labor with our second child. I didn't tell her to do it, we didn't need the money. She said she'd rather be doing something than hanging out at home or the hospital. I guess I could tell the story of our second child in much the same way as this author told the story of the Lyft driver in labor -- how some folks "might" look at it as exploitation. But I'm not 17 any more, and I don't tend to view individual choices as being some kind of massive battle between forces that I must take sides on. It was her choice and she made it. For me to come along later and use it as an example for any kind of political bullshit is whack. Rant all you want about whatever topic you'd like, but never take agency away from folks simply because you think you might get a little extra mileage out of your essay.
Seems like in America it's hard to win. Either get paid not nearly enough and struggle to make ends meet, or get a high paid high stress job, still work all day and all night.
Maybe we just have too much of that protestant work ethic?
>> Seems like in America it's hard to win. Either get paid not nearly enough and struggle to make ends meet, or get a high paid high stress job, still work all day and all night.
A consequence of worshipping money. Even a human is valued by the amount of money they make or what they can afford.
Other societies have agreed that there are some fundamental things that they will all share the burden for collectively and the rich are going to contribute a larger share towards those collective resources. Thus, humans are not reduced to what they make but how they live and what their values are. Happy faces sharing a dining table, celebrating large families and friendships that last a lifetime.
It's not protestant work ethic. It's ass on fire, all the time for 70 years (save 18 years before college) and hoping you don't meet a "man-made" disaster like healthcare disaster, divorces, bankruptcies, lawsuits, prisons (completely ignoring natural disasters).
I'm not convinced that Protestant traditions are to blame.
The Nordic countries have had an extreme Protestant majority ever since the Reformation. In 1950s Finland, 95% of the population was a member of the national Lutheran church! That's practically everyone.
At the same time, these 95% Protestant societies were heavily unionized, built up strong social safety nets, and offered long vacations, public health care and other worker-friendly policies.
So it seems too simple to blame the dysfunctionalities of the American work environment on reformed Christian ethics -- at least, the Nordic example shows that a different, more employee-friendly interpretation of the same ethic is possible.
Anyone who is successfully bilking the system so they can make large amounts of money doing a job they enjoy is not going to crow about it on social media. (Well, except for brokenmasonjars, who is currently downvoted to oblivion here.)
You get a very skewed perception of reality reading human-interest pieces, because nobody wants to read an article about someone who is doing better than them in every way, having more fun too, and is going to act like a douche and crow about it to the news media. And if you have half a brain, you don't want that article to be written about you.
I'm sure there's a happy middle. Obsession with luxuries and consumption play a big part in getting stuck on the hedonic treadmill. Obsession with achievement probably plays a big role in burnout and overwork.
Personally, I'm doing my best to get to a point where I can feel good in an outfit I've had for years, feel good with a cheap haircut, feel satisfied reading and meditating to relax and being able to leave work at work and sleep soundly no matter the occurrences of the day. Judge me by the way I treat you not by the number of zeros in my bank account.
> Several large studies of mobility in developed countries in recent years have found the US among the lowest in mobility. One study (“Do Poor Children Become Poor Adults?") found that of nine developed countries, the United States and United Kingdom had the lowest intergenerational vertical social mobility with about half of the advantages of having a parent with a high income passed on to the next generation.
The above quote from wikipedia article on mobility in the US [1] highligts an important point. The US as the land of opportunity is clearly a false image, since you have a lower chance of climbing out of poverty there than in a lot of other countries.
If Fiverr is going on about "beating the trust-fund kids", that is inadvertently exposing a severe unpatched exploit which has nothing to do with protestant work ethic.
It is currently more profitable to have very large sums of capital itself (and invest this in other capital, financial instruments etc), than to work, no matter how hard you work.
As such you have to work even harder than that or drop out of the game entirely. Systemically, the correct winning strategy is already to have huge sums of capital. I'm not sure if there's a half-measures strategy for starting with only a little capital: perhaps it's primarily luck, as it is for most/all big investors?
But there's certainly no strategy for beginning with only sweat equity and having that turn efficiently into capital, so the 'protestant work ethic' is a mighty sad and inappropriate thing to have right now. I think the combination of this ethic and huge capital holdings is largely a thing of the past, and can hold people back from larger wealth because they're looking for ways to expand that involve work, and this competes against more efficient, purer capital strategies based around pure capital manipulation (which is strongly incentivised, for instance with tax incentives).
Upward mobility in the US is a myth fed through fables. Measured by % of population that transitions from the lower 5th economic ladder to the top 5th the US ranks lower than the large majority of OECD peers [1]
I don't know.. I work about 15 hours a month opening up positions and closing them with my brokerage account. Have been doing this for a good 12 years or so now. Granted the earlier years were fraught with hard learned lessons that any newbee would make without proper mentorship.
To me, it just seems like too many see that initial hamster wheel and jump on without thinking much about things. Then again, they lack proper education. I'm not even sure if it's about teaching them how to trade and invest, instead people need to be taught how to think critically and break out of the victimization trend. Then again, I'm not sure if that will help things much either.
The biggest irony is all the well meaning starts ups from SV desperately trying 'improve the world' when they can't even improve the city they live in. Not because of failure from trying but because they can't be bothered.
Without a moral compass the only thing they can deliver is a dry soulless unfeeling dystopia stripped of any hint of humanity. Those who don't want present day SV to be replicated in their regions should be wary of the ideological underpinnings of SV startup culture and American capitalism.
The lack of a properly defined moral compass from those from non privileged backgrounds struggling through life guided perhaps by upbringing or religion but with no time to ponder or reflect can perhaps be understood but for a privileged well educated elite to display this level of apathy towards humanism is a truly shocking state of affairs.
Ultimately its our humanity, our relationships, our capacity for feeling and emotion that enriches our existence, not money.
Can't speak for whole of Canada but Toronto is definitely on track to become a city where it is impossible to buy a house and rents are so high that for a family - both husband and wife need to work and one of the spouse has to have a side gig for making the money to feed and clothe the family along with some meagre savings.
Canadian government keeps stating that inflation rate is less than 2% but reality is, in Toronto, it is probably running in excess of 10% for last 10+ years. However, the companies keep pretending that for their existing employees, if they are lucky to get a raise, that raise should be 3% or 4%.
In Toronto, even modest vacations feel like luxury and entertainment options seem to be leave you with a feeling that your pocket is on fire.
Now before my pro-Canadiana countrymen come here and lecture me on how great Canada is (and yes, the free healthcare!!), let me tell you: I like Canada and definitely feel it is the place to be. I am just stating in context of the article, that is all.
I understand the argument for excluding housing, food, and fuel from the official inflation stats, but at this point it's making that number a complete departure from reality.
Canada right now is basically getting divided into two classes: those who happened to own real estate a decade or two ago and their children, and everyone else.
That's not success based on how hard you worked, or how much you contributed to society, or proportionate to the amount of risk you took. It's just (mostly) Chinese money randomly landing on some of the population, and causing real issues with quality of life and serious opportunity costs for the rest. That is not something we should be happy about, and it's something that we should have better numbers on.
Toronto Real Estate thread on Reddit is very informative.
Houses are commonly being bought ~25% over asking price at the moment apparently. And it's because Agents are using it as a tactic to drive up offers. Also, a lot of people here are agents nowadays.
Yet all of these companies weave a wonderful narrative about changing the world, empowering people, giving them freedom and independence. Clearly the business models are based on exploitation of the downtrodden and uneducated. Due to clever PR many actually believe this is cool.
Goebels would be proud. The granny is a lyft driver
(1) by choice
(2) it helps with her loneliness
(3) she gets affirmation of her value to society.
Of course, the reality is that drivers drive Lyft through necessity, and it is lonely job much of the time.
The real kicker, though, is that the advertisement is not even to try and get more drivers. It's used to asuage middle-class guilt who are underpaying for the labour of one of their peers. Middle class people should think 'Hey, these people drive by choice, and it's fun. Win win!'
This article, and most discussions on this topic are all rich with sub-text.
It offers to connect drivers with an insurance broker, and helpfully notes that “the Affordable Care Act offers many choices to make sure you’re covered.”
..a lot of sub-text here, for example.
One piece of the sub-text coming up in my internet & human bubble is "technological unemployment" which I have a slightly different take on then a lot of what I read. I think we're seeing it already and it manifests mostly as wage disparity, not unemployment.
On the subtext of that quote, it seems to be on the side of what we generall call "labour socialism" in Europe. The idea that laws should focus on increasing low leverage emloyees' bargaining power and/or mandated benefits.
IMO, this is a dated position. We've seen relatively consistent success with government provided primary services: health, education & transport. This gets called welfarism, though I think centralism is a better term. We have not seen that kind of success in the labour-socialist sphere. In fact, example like France suggest a problematic trade-off between "good" employment and unemployment. I think the main problem is labour-socialism's tendency to corporatism.
I would really like to see employment (including the gig economy) be free-er but suplemented with free or subsidized basic services (health & education mostly) and a basic income. If housing prices are not pathological (as they often are), the gig-worker would be a lot better off. Instead of chasing our tail trying to force uber (or regular taxi companies) to provide stabilty, the state can just subsidize the citizen and provide stability on some fronts. It doesn't even require "big government" for the most part.
In most of west Europe, we should be able to implement this relativley easily. Redundant conditional welfare benefits (dole, pensions) already spend 25-40% of what a UBI would cost. Another 25%-40% could be taxed back as income tax without disadvantaging workers (IE, your UBI is >= tax increases). That's most of the way to funding it. This remaining gap mostly represents the uber driver, workers earning well below national average dealing with insecurity and on the wrong end of employer provided benefits (like health insurance).
I don't think the US can do it anytime soon though.
I agree thoroughly with your sentiment and am a strong believer in the welfare state as a way of addressing social imbalances. I also like the economics of the state providing better stability to those in the gig economy because, in theory, it will mean that they feel less pressure to work unhealthy hours (as in the article) and this, in turn, should increase the minimum amount they will work for. However, my objection to this as solution is the situation of non-domiciled, largely un-taxed multinationals not contributing fairly to the pot that keeps the welfare working. As far as I can see, that amounts to a wealth transfer from the state to the shareholders and high-level managers of these companies.
Of course the solution would be to tax these companies fairly (which at least in the UK, is slowly beginning to happen), but eventually when taxed fairly enough, doesn't the burden for the companies end up being the same? The only difference is that the state would be footing the bill for the admin overhead of supporting these workers.
...you see even IF Uber prohibit drivers from using their own app between rides, if they all just agree, they can just go fuck it, we've had enough. anyone here ever spoken to a happy Uber driver?
Me neither. Wife...family..kids meanwhile Kalanick gets his $6bn...NICE.
Yes, but how much vacation do you get, how much do you work and how much do you pay for your health in order to have the standard "two adults + two children" normal lifestyle? I'm just thinking that maybe these numbers are brought down by people working very little for scraps.
intern = a person who works for free or next to nothing on the promise that they will benefit in the long run, while you make sure that they get no benefits and assign every demeaning job possible to them.
While I agree to the points made in the article that workers in a gig economy have little rights and less benefits than doing a full time employment, gig economy was never supposed to be exact replacement of a permanent job.
If you live in a Western country, gigs like driving an Uber, doing a task through TaskRabbit or providing service at Fiverr / Upwork can be considered a modern day equivalent of waiting tables or babysitting. Obviously, if you consider the later as full time jobs then you have to burn your a-- to make the ends meet.
For those living in the developing countries, the gig economy is a gift from skies. More and more people from Asia, Africa and parts of Europe are joining the gig economy to supplement their income. Considering the cost of living in these areas, they are even in a position to generate full time living from doing these gigs. Not to mention the digital nomads who are escaping the stressful lives in the US / Europe and traveling to less expensive regions - living off gig economy.
Looking at the positives; gig economy gives you freedom to live your life. You do not have to spend precious hours of the day in commute, waste time in useless meetings, bear office politics and bend over to get a raise. Reduce your expenses, get a few well paying clients, work when you feel like it and enjoy your life.
What you are calling the gig economy in this case is really a service economy, which existed long before cell phones or SF tech startup silliness. It's not some amazing new step forward for humanity.
I don't really see the 'gig economy' as an alternative to regular jobs, which is always implicitly or explicitly implied by these articles. If you need a job, go find a job. If you are flexible, have some extra time, could use some extra money, enjoy these gig tasks or whatever, find a gig task.
Obviously there aren't enough jobs to go around, this is not caused by the gig economy. Some regular jobs don't pay well enough, this is also not caused by the gig economy.
Waiting for the inevitable HN critique about "voluntary work" and "why should anyone have the right to tell someone else to work less" without a complete understanding of what voluntary means in a world with massive structural inequalities.
Or as the anarchists say, "Work 50 hours or starve" isn't a choice, it's a threat.
which is kind of ironic because in a state of anarchy like subsistence farming you'd expect to work a lot more than 50 hours, and doing back-breaking manual labour at that.
Yup, this is similar to a mentality I've seen celebrated in some Crossfit cliques and it 'works' for a certain type of people. Until the imbalance catches up to them and makes them re-assess their priorities (injury,depression,sickness...)
Typically 2/3rd of expenses in companies go into salaries. That's a huge chunk of money.
Somebody finds a system that reduces the salarial expenses to zero and all the hard-capitalists are over-joyed, secretly dreaming that they could apply this model to their own business.
In the mean time workers, while owning the means of production, are still liable to pay all the running expenses, to invest their time and work and give a percentage to a stranger, for some odd reason.
This is a form of feudalism.
I am not anti-capitalist, but I fear that this form of economy on the long run will not allow individuals to flourish economically through the merit of their work.
The "odd" reason is that that the "stranger" makes a huge contribution. That's why people weren't runnning nearly so many personal car services before Uber.
Dying from starvation shouldn't happen on an Earth as abundant with resources as this one. Okay, at some point you can't hunt and gather food for yourself any more, but is that dying from starvation or dying from old age?
I see many posts about the hours worked in USA. Whats slightly funny to me is having grown up around people who lived through great depression and fought in ww2 I often see USA as lazy these days.
[+] [-] seanhandley|9 years ago|reply
People work incredibly hard, long hours and often with very little to show for it. It's surreal.
[+] [-] d--b|9 years ago|reply
For some reason, there are smart people who think that meritocracy works: work hard and things will be good for you. The problem is that in many cases working hard (as in building up a startup) does indeed give people the opportunity to rise in society. But it is not true in all cases at all. And so the negative statement "if you are struggling you didn't try enough" is completely flawed.
First, in capitalism, a work's remuneration is supposed to be related in a way to the perceived utility of that work for society in general. Second competition means that a work's remuneration is inversely proportional to how easy it is to perform.
Using those 2 propositions, it becomes obvious that jobs with little utility and high competition have a remuneration that tends to go down to 0 (fast food, taxis, etc.). So in these cases, no matter how hard you work, your pay can only go that high.
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|9 years ago|reply
"setting the terms" is a bit over-the-top here. If I want to go from here to the airport, and you have a car, and I offer you twenty bucks, is that okay? Does it somehow become bad if we meet online in a chat room? How about if a thousand people in this city make this trade on a chat room today? So somebody sets up an online app. At that point do the people setting up the app "set the terms"? Does it happen when they have standards for who can use the app?
In that last statement, where the app creators start setting standards for who can participate, we run into problems -- mainly because if you're the gatekeeper, you can charge rent on both parties seeking the deal. Other than that, there's nothing amiss or terrible going on here.
Western literature has this childish and somewhat verklempt tradition of taking something that's new and making it into an emotional outburst. Thoreau goes out into the woods and laments the arrival of trains, the stresses of the city, and the war against Mexico. Dickens with his cutting criticism of Victorian England.
When done well, it's a thing of beauty. Most of the time, however, authors get a little too tied-up in belly-button-gazing and confuse "things that I can become emotional about and rant" with "things that are important and transcend time" We all take the shortcut of "if it's important to me, it must be important"
I am a bit concerned about Uber, Lyft, and the gig economy. On one hand, I am concerned that companies are exerting so much control over the marketplace that they're not innovating as much as they are creating monopolies. On the other hand, however, I am concerned that because this destroys the concept of "a job" for so many people, and the relationship to their employer and country -- they are going to push hard for limiting all sorts of free trade under the rubric of "something must be done!"
In this case, quite literally, the writer begins her essay with an example of how people might feel that something must be done for the children.
My first wife worked a 9-5 W-2 job during her labor with our second child. I didn't tell her to do it, we didn't need the money. She said she'd rather be doing something than hanging out at home or the hospital. I guess I could tell the story of our second child in much the same way as this author told the story of the Lyft driver in labor -- how some folks "might" look at it as exploitation. But I'm not 17 any more, and I don't tend to view individual choices as being some kind of massive battle between forces that I must take sides on. It was her choice and she made it. For me to come along later and use it as an example for any kind of political bullshit is whack. Rant all you want about whatever topic you'd like, but never take agency away from folks simply because you think you might get a little extra mileage out of your essay.
[+] [-] cbanek|9 years ago|reply
Maybe we just have too much of that protestant work ethic?
[+] [-] NTDF9|9 years ago|reply
A consequence of worshipping money. Even a human is valued by the amount of money they make or what they can afford.
Other societies have agreed that there are some fundamental things that they will all share the burden for collectively and the rich are going to contribute a larger share towards those collective resources. Thus, humans are not reduced to what they make but how they live and what their values are. Happy faces sharing a dining table, celebrating large families and friendships that last a lifetime.
It's not protestant work ethic. It's ass on fire, all the time for 70 years (save 18 years before college) and hoping you don't meet a "man-made" disaster like healthcare disaster, divorces, bankruptcies, lawsuits, prisons (completely ignoring natural disasters).
[+] [-] pavlov|9 years ago|reply
The Nordic countries have had an extreme Protestant majority ever since the Reformation. In 1950s Finland, 95% of the population was a member of the national Lutheran church! That's practically everyone.
At the same time, these 95% Protestant societies were heavily unionized, built up strong social safety nets, and offered long vacations, public health care and other worker-friendly policies.
So it seems too simple to blame the dysfunctionalities of the American work environment on reformed Christian ethics -- at least, the Nordic example shows that a different, more employee-friendly interpretation of the same ethic is possible.
[+] [-] nostrademons|9 years ago|reply
You get a very skewed perception of reality reading human-interest pieces, because nobody wants to read an article about someone who is doing better than them in every way, having more fun too, and is going to act like a douche and crow about it to the news media. And if you have half a brain, you don't want that article to be written about you.
[+] [-] nefitty|9 years ago|reply
Personally, I'm doing my best to get to a point where I can feel good in an outfit I've had for years, feel good with a cheap haircut, feel satisfied reading and meditating to relax and being able to leave work at work and sleep soundly no matter the occurrences of the day. Judge me by the way I treat you not by the number of zeros in my bank account.
[+] [-] archevel|9 years ago|reply
The above quote from wikipedia article on mobility in the US [1] highligts an important point. The US as the land of opportunity is clearly a false image, since you have a lower chance of climbing out of poverty there than in a lot of other countries.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the...
[+] [-] SwellJoe|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Applejinx|9 years ago|reply
It is currently more profitable to have very large sums of capital itself (and invest this in other capital, financial instruments etc), than to work, no matter how hard you work.
As such you have to work even harder than that or drop out of the game entirely. Systemically, the correct winning strategy is already to have huge sums of capital. I'm not sure if there's a half-measures strategy for starting with only a little capital: perhaps it's primarily luck, as it is for most/all big investors?
But there's certainly no strategy for beginning with only sweat equity and having that turn efficiently into capital, so the 'protestant work ethic' is a mighty sad and inappropriate thing to have right now. I think the combination of this ethic and huge capital holdings is largely a thing of the past, and can hold people back from larger wealth because they're looking for ways to expand that involve work, and this competes against more efficient, purer capital strategies based around pure capital manipulation (which is strongly incentivised, for instance with tax incentives).
[+] [-] cyphunk|9 years ago|reply
http://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-upward-mobility-study...
[+] [-] yummyfajitas|9 years ago|reply
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHNONAG https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M0829BUSM065NNBR https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHAETP
More people simply don't work. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART
Consumption (note: figure adjusted for inflation) has only increased.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A794RX0Q048SBEA
Looks like that protestant work ethic/capitalism/etc is working pretty well for us.
[+] [-] rsync|9 years ago|reply
Actually, that's testable, to a degree ...
The largest and most potent concentration of "the protestant work ethic" produced switzerland, which is the nicest and best place on earth.
I don't think too much PWE is our problem.
[+] [-] rmc|9 years ago|reply
The UK has Protestantism as an official state religion and yet it has the NHS, mandatory paid holidays etc.
[+] [-] brokenmasonjars|9 years ago|reply
To me, it just seems like too many see that initial hamster wheel and jump on without thinking much about things. Then again, they lack proper education. I'm not even sure if it's about teaching them how to trade and invest, instead people need to be taught how to think critically and break out of the victimization trend. Then again, I'm not sure if that will help things much either.
[+] [-] throw2016|9 years ago|reply
Without a moral compass the only thing they can deliver is a dry soulless unfeeling dystopia stripped of any hint of humanity. Those who don't want present day SV to be replicated in their regions should be wary of the ideological underpinnings of SV startup culture and American capitalism.
The lack of a properly defined moral compass from those from non privileged backgrounds struggling through life guided perhaps by upbringing or religion but with no time to ponder or reflect can perhaps be understood but for a privileged well educated elite to display this level of apathy towards humanism is a truly shocking state of affairs.
Ultimately its our humanity, our relationships, our capacity for feeling and emotion that enriches our existence, not money.
[+] [-] m23khan|9 years ago|reply
Canadian government keeps stating that inflation rate is less than 2% but reality is, in Toronto, it is probably running in excess of 10% for last 10+ years. However, the companies keep pretending that for their existing employees, if they are lucky to get a raise, that raise should be 3% or 4%.
In Toronto, even modest vacations feel like luxury and entertainment options seem to be leave you with a feeling that your pocket is on fire.
Now before my pro-Canadiana countrymen come here and lecture me on how great Canada is (and yes, the free healthcare!!), let me tell you: I like Canada and definitely feel it is the place to be. I am just stating in context of the article, that is all.
[+] [-] badsock|9 years ago|reply
Canada right now is basically getting divided into two classes: those who happened to own real estate a decade or two ago and their children, and everyone else.
That's not success based on how hard you worked, or how much you contributed to society, or proportionate to the amount of risk you took. It's just (mostly) Chinese money randomly landing on some of the population, and causing real issues with quality of life and serious opportunity costs for the rest. That is not something we should be happy about, and it's something that we should have better numbers on.
[+] [-] antoniuschan99|9 years ago|reply
Houses are commonly being bought ~25% over asking price at the moment apparently. And it's because Agents are using it as a tactic to drive up offers. Also, a lot of people here are agents nowadays.
[+] [-] rick_cheese|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamesblonde|9 years ago|reply
Goebels would be proud. The granny is a lyft driver (1) by choice (2) it helps with her loneliness (3) she gets affirmation of her value to society.
Of course, the reality is that drivers drive Lyft through necessity, and it is lonely job much of the time.
The real kicker, though, is that the advertisement is not even to try and get more drivers. It's used to asuage middle-class guilt who are underpaying for the labour of one of their peers. Middle class people should think 'Hey, these people drive by choice, and it's fun. Win win!'
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dalbasal|9 years ago|reply
It offers to connect drivers with an insurance broker, and helpfully notes that “the Affordable Care Act offers many choices to make sure you’re covered.”
..a lot of sub-text here, for example.
One piece of the sub-text coming up in my internet & human bubble is "technological unemployment" which I have a slightly different take on then a lot of what I read. I think we're seeing it already and it manifests mostly as wage disparity, not unemployment.
On the subtext of that quote, it seems to be on the side of what we generall call "labour socialism" in Europe. The idea that laws should focus on increasing low leverage emloyees' bargaining power and/or mandated benefits.
IMO, this is a dated position. We've seen relatively consistent success with government provided primary services: health, education & transport. This gets called welfarism, though I think centralism is a better term. We have not seen that kind of success in the labour-socialist sphere. In fact, example like France suggest a problematic trade-off between "good" employment and unemployment. I think the main problem is labour-socialism's tendency to corporatism.
I would really like to see employment (including the gig economy) be free-er but suplemented with free or subsidized basic services (health & education mostly) and a basic income. If housing prices are not pathological (as they often are), the gig-worker would be a lot better off. Instead of chasing our tail trying to force uber (or regular taxi companies) to provide stabilty, the state can just subsidize the citizen and provide stability on some fronts. It doesn't even require "big government" for the most part.
In most of west Europe, we should be able to implement this relativley easily. Redundant conditional welfare benefits (dole, pensions) already spend 25-40% of what a UBI would cost. Another 25%-40% could be taxed back as income tax without disadvantaging workers (IE, your UBI is >= tax increases). That's most of the way to funding it. This remaining gap mostly represents the uber driver, workers earning well below national average dealing with insecurity and on the wrong end of employer provided benefits (like health insurance).
I don't think the US can do it anytime soon though.
[+] [-] campbellmorgan|9 years ago|reply
Of course the solution would be to tax these companies fairly (which at least in the UK, is slowly beginning to happen), but eventually when taxed fairly enough, doesn't the burden for the companies end up being the same? The only difference is that the state would be footing the bill for the admin overhead of supporting these workers.
[+] [-] willdotphipps|9 years ago|reply
Me neither. Wife...family..kids meanwhile Kalanick gets his $6bn...NICE.
[+] [-] grabcocque|9 years ago|reply
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time
[+] [-] J-dawg|9 years ago|reply
Who knew that Mexicans work 500 hours a year more than the Japanese?
I wonder if the data is being skewed somehow, perhaps by different cultural norms around women working, or something like that?
If anyone can shed any light on this it would be really interesting.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#OECD_ranking
[+] [-] Asooka|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bythckr|9 years ago|reply
intern = a person who works for free or next to nothing on the promise that they will benefit in the long run, while you make sure that they get no benefits and assign every demeaning job possible to them.
[+] [-] wordpressdev|9 years ago|reply
If you live in a Western country, gigs like driving an Uber, doing a task through TaskRabbit or providing service at Fiverr / Upwork can be considered a modern day equivalent of waiting tables or babysitting. Obviously, if you consider the later as full time jobs then you have to burn your a-- to make the ends meet.
For those living in the developing countries, the gig economy is a gift from skies. More and more people from Asia, Africa and parts of Europe are joining the gig economy to supplement their income. Considering the cost of living in these areas, they are even in a position to generate full time living from doing these gigs. Not to mention the digital nomads who are escaping the stressful lives in the US / Europe and traveling to less expensive regions - living off gig economy.
Looking at the positives; gig economy gives you freedom to live your life. You do not have to spend precious hours of the day in commute, waste time in useless meetings, bear office politics and bend over to get a raise. Reduce your expenses, get a few well paying clients, work when you feel like it and enjoy your life.
All hail the Gig Economy ;)
[+] [-] 1_2__3|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rejschaap|9 years ago|reply
Obviously there aren't enough jobs to go around, this is not caused by the gig economy. Some regular jobs don't pay well enough, this is also not caused by the gig economy.
[+] [-] yummyfajitas|9 years ago|reply
https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/robots_didnt_take_ou...
Aren't Trump's anti-immigrant attitude considered bad in part because we might lose immigrant labor we are dependent on?
[+] [-] llamataboot|9 years ago|reply
Or as the anarchists say, "Work 50 hours or starve" isn't a choice, it's a threat.
(edit: nitpick misspelling)
[+] [-] conanbatt|9 years ago|reply
Damn nature, we'll get back at her somehow, we will.
[+] [-] beaconstudios|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] milesrout|9 years ago|reply
Thankfully I'm not American and I'm not working in the US, so I don't care.
[+] [-] kelvin0|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JohnLeTigre|9 years ago|reply
Somebody finds a system that reduces the salarial expenses to zero and all the hard-capitalists are over-joyed, secretly dreaming that they could apply this model to their own business.
In the mean time workers, while owning the means of production, are still liable to pay all the running expenses, to invest their time and work and give a percentage to a stranger, for some odd reason.
This is a form of feudalism.
I am not anti-capitalist, but I fear that this form of economy on the long run will not allow individuals to flourish economically through the merit of their work.
[+] [-] fjdlwlv|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldtea|9 years ago|reply
As any respected free-market advocate will tell you, it's better than dying from starvation.
Yeah, that's not a very high bar...
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Asooka|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raverbashing|9 years ago|reply
Epitome of race to the bottom
[+] [-] Mendenhall|9 years ago|reply