
Growth in the ‘Gig Economy’ Fuels Work Force Anxieties - Futurebot
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/13/business/rising-economic-insecurity-tied-to-decades-long-trend-in-employment-practices.html
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rumcajz
A dwindling number of people can do all the work nowadays. And the
productivity is not going to decline any time soon. Unions are not going to
help unless they lobby for a 20hr working week, guaranteed basic income or
something in that vein.

~~~
bjwbell
For the best people there's an unbounded amount of work. But if you're not the
best too bad for you. A lot more fields are becoming winner takes all (acting,
athletes etc. are all this way).

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littletimmy
Unions were a solution at one point in time, but I doubt their effectiveness
in an information economy. What we have is simply a lack of jobs for a lot of
people.

We have to move towards a basic income - you get paid even if you do nothing.
That way at least there's a hard floor on living standards.

~~~
anon4
That might be a lot more palatable to people if it came with strings attached.
Maybe if you're not allowed to marry and have children if you're on basic
income? After a few generations, the problem should disappear then.

~~~
aianus
Basic income would be for _everyone_ , even billionaires. You're free to go
out and earn more on top of that or not.

But yeah, you definitely shouldn't get _more_ basic income for having children
or children would become some kind of perverse cash cows.

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mkhpalm
Personal nit but can we stop calling Uber a "startup" already? When you're
getting valued in billions and running around with hundreds of millions hiring
whoever you want to hire. You're probably a corporation, not a startup.

~~~
rahimnathwani
Uber is still:

1) Growing very fast, and

2) Spending investors' money to acquire market share of both drivers and
customers.

In China, the prices are so low, and the subsidies for drivers so high, that I
wonder whether Uber has even reached unit profitability (i.e. positive gross
margins). Plus, they're spending money on customer acquisition, and investing
in infrastructure.

Do we already know that Uber has found a repeatable business model?

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andyfleming
Reminds of this more direct article about the "servitude bubble":

[https://medium.com/bad-words/the-servitude-
bubble-c9e998c437...](https://medium.com/bad-words/the-servitude-
bubble-c9e998c437c6)

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x5n1
so unionize. corporations and capitalists are looking out for their own profit
margins and bottom lines. it's time you guys start doing the same again. in
university's management class that i took the prof basically said corporations
that get unions usually deserve those unions. it seems like the economy needs
it now. it's the only way that we're are going to survive a capitalist economy
at perfect efficiency. where corporations and capitalists are taking out
profits from employee's paychecks.

~~~
eru
If unions really manage to drive up wages, why would any company want to hire
anyone in a union? (Especially for gigs where you can hire anyone worldwide.)

~~~
lumberjack
They don't get a choice usually, partly due to protections set in law and
partly because there isn't enough labour competition for them to only pick
non-unionized workers.

Also in countries with well established unions like Germany, the employers
expect the union to be equally responsible for some [productivity guarantees
in return. It's less of a one sided deal. I believe in the recent recession,
many union workers there agreed to a lesser pay in return for the employer to
retain the whole of them employed.

~~~
Frqy3
Doctors and lawyers provide a good example of how unions (though they don't
refer to themselves as that) can be embedded into the legal framework. With
these unions also having control over the number of newly qualified workers
admitted each year, supply is also sufficiently curtailed.

~~~
aianus
Loads of law students and recent graduates are unemployed but legal costs are
sky-high all the same. That's a very dysfunctional labor market there.

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AndrewKemendo
I've taken a lot of uber rides and have never met a driver who was planning on
doing it long term - it was a stop gap measure for them till they got a better
job.

So what happens when those people who have uber ready cars get other jobs?
Seems like a stiff barrier to entry for new drivers - having a nice car that
is.

~~~
rodgerd
> I've taken a lot of uber rides and have never met a driver who was planning
> on doing it long term

That was always the spin about why it was OK that McDonalds and Walmart were
terrible places to work. Because it's just a starter job for kids.

Yeah, not so much.

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radmuzom
The piece by Nick Hanauer and David Rolf, linked in the article, is great.
Long read, but worth it.

[http://www.democracyjournal.org/37/shared-security-shared-
gr...](http://www.democracyjournal.org/37/shared-security-shared-growth.php)

