
The Butler Didn’t Do It: Hello Alfred and the On-Demand Economy’s Limits - pavornyoh
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-21/the-butler-didn-t-do-it-hello-alfred-and-the-on-demand-economy-s-limits
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cryoshon
Am I the only one who is extremely uncomfortable with wasting so much human
potential to generate frills for people who already have enough frills?

It isn't just getting people fresh out of college to be my butler, I'm
uncomfortable with Uber/Lyft too: I've had multiple cabbies with Masters
degrees, and even an admitted literature PhD. These people could be building
us a new Great Society where learning and creativity are cornerstones, but
instead, we look down on such people and in fact despise them for their lack
of premeditated profit-seeking behavior during education.

They are stuck driving cabs or butlering for someone who got a few lucky
breaks instead of making use of their finer abilities, and it's frustrating to
see them flounder in the precariat.

~~~
swalsh
I view apps like this as a transition helper, eventually automated cars will
replace uber drivers, etc. However until that tech is fully ready people have
to do the jobs. These apps are like creating the interface before the back-end
is ready. The real interesting financial possibilities in my opinion about the
"gig economy" is the long term potential for when it's not people who are
doing the "gigs".

Of course people should be a lot more friendly to the people who unfortunately
have to rely on these "gigs" to get by.

~~~
VLM
So the TLDR is massive underemployment of some of our most expensively
educated youth isn't a problem because soon they'll be unemployed?

~~~
swalsh
One would hope that in a world where automated cars and advanced AI make
unskilled employment especially difficult, unemployment wouldn't be a terrible
thing.

~~~
vkou
That would require a _complete_ overhaul of the social order... Unlike AI,
however, nobody seems to be making any headway on that.

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forinti
This seems to me like the US becoming a lot like Brazil, where income
inequality allows the middle class to have maids. Except, of course, americans
would do it more efficiently and with a positive attitude.

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crpatino
I am almost afraid to ask, but what do you mean by "more efficiently" and
"with a positive attitude"?

I confess what I imagine out of those frases is roughly: "for less money/with
no strings attached" and "in blissful ignorance of the economic violence that
entails".

~~~
personlurking
I don't pretend to know the commentor's intentions but, for reference, there's
something in Brazil called the Stray dog/Mongrel complex which was thought up
by a famous Brazilian writer, and which may explain it for you. Of his phrase,
this writer said it's “the inferiority with which the Brazilian positions
himself, voluntarily, in front of the rest of the world”.

From a NYT piece written by author Larry Rohter in 2004:

"Writing in the 1950's, the playwright Nelson Rodrigues saw his countrymen as
afflicted with a sense of inferiority, and he coined a phrase that Brazilians
now use to describe it: "the mongrel complex." Brazil has always aspired to be
taken seriously as a world power by the heavyweights, and so it pains
Brazilians that world leaders could confuse their country with Bolivia, as
Ronald Reagan once did, or dismiss a nation so large -- it has 180 million
people -- as "not a serious country," as Charles de Gaulle did."

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Disruptive_Dave
I wonder what the role of "errands" plays in the development of a person.
These types of responsibilities must be beneficial to our every day existence,
right? And if you can outsource all these alleged time wasters, what would you
replace that time with? The final paragraph of the piece tells the real story,
IMO.

> Because, if I’m being honest, the real reason I never attend to all of these
> matters isn’t because I’m too busy. It’s because on Saturdays, when my dry
> cleaner is open, I’d rather sleep late and go to brunch.

~~~
sneak
Now try it while running a relationship, a family member with poor health, a
full-time consulting business, _and_ a startup.

Lots of people can benefit greatly from an extra hour or two per week.

~~~
ghaff
It's absolutely fair that it's worth it for some people to pay to free up a
few hours per week. However, it's equally true that it's not necessarily worth
it for others, especially if the outsourcing becomes as much a headache as
doing it yourself.

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Pxtl
I know how this story ends: the app has basically arranged to introduce a
service-provider to a client, and unlike Uber where you're getting services at
different locations where different providers are needed every time, Alfred is
providing the same service over and over again. This makes it trivial for the
provider and the client to eliminate the middle-man. Service agencies of all
kinds have been struggling with this problem since time immemorial, putting
them on an app solves nothing.

I'd actually rather a "pay for recommendation" engine where I can pay the app
to just put me in touch with a reputable service-provider for whatever - like
HVAC or an electrician or a local housekeeper.

~~~
sremani
There is an app for that, its called Angie's list.

~~~
Pxtl
_googles_

Holy crap that's an ugly website. Also, doesn't realize it's US only because
it lists my Canadian city like everything's kosher but only accepts a US
zipcode.

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ghaff
There are so many tasks that, by the time I figure out what needs to be done
and make decisions, I'm at least half-way there. I do have a housekeeper who
comes by occasionally but, honestly, sorting my mail isn't high on my list of
life's issues and, even if it were, you're talking private secretary not on-
demand gig. If I look at my list of tasks on my whiteboard, there's nothing
there I can just tell someone to "make it so" and it would be done--or I would
have already done so. (Or it's trivial stuff that I'll take care of when I can
batch it with some other things.)

~~~
Justsignedup
Most of life's small tasks require knowledge and involvement, otherwise they'd
be automated already.

Except spam mail. That is intentionally annoying. Fuck you US Postal Service
(okay fine, this is their main source of income)

~~~
ghaff
I tend to forget that I used to have to sit down, write out a bunch of checks,
and post them in envelopes on a regular basis. Or the amount of telephone tag
I used to have to play on a regular basis.

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somberi
I fit some of the characteristics mentioned the article (NYC, Income, etc) and
I honestly wonder why single people need this much help. Manhattan, unlike
most of USA is densely packed with grocery stores, laundry and most of them
are open close to 14 hours at least. In addition, there are umpteen on-demand
grocery suppliers (like Freshdirect, Amazon, Google, etc).

Most apartment buildings have laundry machines to wash your clothes (not all
of them do of course).

I cook most of my meals, wash my clothes and still have a good quality of life
(in addition to working hard).

For some reason this cartoon comes to mind - [http://www.newyorker.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/10/KanekoMo...](http://www.newyorker.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/10/KanekoMoulyCoverStory-
IvanBrunettisComfortFood_1-690-940-23151024.jpg)

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VLM
I looked up her servant's background... It takes four years at $65900/yr to
get a degree to be a servant, where the average career is eight months long.
Ouch. That indicates some severe structural economic problems.

