This is classic. It would be helpful for folks to put this into context.
Madame CJ Walker was the first self-made woman millionaire in America. She created beauty products for Black women, a deeply underserved market, and recruited thousands of women to sell them directly to consumers (as well as through salons or mail-order). The women working for her earned good commissions, by all accounts, so that's a bit different. Through history, the opportunity to earn money directly through gig work has been very important to women and their financial independence, as in so many cultures they must fit remunerated work around other caregiving.
So, great opportunity -- but with any great opportunity comes sharks and grifters. Multilevel marketing schemes where you've got to recruit others -- great example, big in religious and military families in the US. Slightly less predatory schemes where you nevertheless need to "invest in the product" and pay for inventory on hand, assuming personal risk for the company. And that's not even getting into the personal safety concerns of going into peoples' homes.
It features a woman who talked about how her family had no work opportunities. But then had a job as a dental receptionist for 15 years, and got married to a guy with a sales manager job. She has bought a house and a motorbike. And now she does this beauty stuff. And she makes 20% more than her husband?
The rest of it… eh. Seems like they’re suggesting a lot of this is just a middle man inserting themselves into a pre existing market.
Gig work seems like socialized slavery to me. Peel back the sticker and you have all sorts of constraints around what work you have to do to maintain your rights and wages as a worker. Like the reference here of requiring paid retraining if your rating falls too low. In such a system, at purchaser of labor can inflict serious harm to their worker at will. I don’t think this is a mainstream idea but it feels like the natural end game.
I don't liken it to slavery, but most wage (or salaried) labor looks like this. Making sure your employer thinks well of you (your 'rating'), getting certifications (some employers will pay, but not all).
The risk profile is different though. An employer is going to see you every day. They’re incentivized at least on some level to have a good faith relationship. They can fire you, but that inconveniences them even if you’re totally fungible.
A gig employer is unlikely to work with you again regardless. They don’t have much of a reason to care about you. And if they rate you poorly, that can potentially shut you out of the market entirely. Or cause you to pay for costly and timely retrainings like the article.
You're not wrong, it's the logical next step for capitalism.
"Again we have diluted ourselves into believing the myth that Capitalism grew and prospered out of the protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that Capitalism was build on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor – both black and white, both here and abroad. If Negroes and poor whites do not participate in the free flow of wealth within our economy, they will forever be poor, giving their energies, their talents and their limited funds to the consumer market but reaping few benefits and services in return." - Martin Luther King
Well MLK was a theologian, not an economist. Many countries have capitalism and never had slavery. And while they have a mindset that isn’t “Protestant work ethic,” it’s indistinguishable in relevant part. E.g. Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, etc. https://twitter.com/dnystedt/status/1558863974883823617
> Many countries have capitalism and never had slavery
You ignored the second part of his statement, where he claimed that since slavery ended, capitalism has been propped up by the exploitation of the poor. Those countries may not have slaves but they do have poor people.
All countries have poor people. The capitalist ones have fewest of them, because capitalism makes poor people wealthier, unlike alternatives, which make them starve and die.
If they wanted me to read that article they shouldn't have started by forcing me to scoll past a bunch of unenlightening pictures each with a single sentence scrolling over them.
After the third one I closed the tab. What's wrong with people? Someone went to the effort to research and write a story and then somebody else erected an annoying barrier to read it.
Edit to add:
I am well aware commenting on site design is discouraged on HN, but many of us do generate web sites of one sort or another (from blogs to customer-facing SaaS or ecommerce to corporate sites) so I felt that mentioning this egregious example is germane.
This scolly-barrier reminds me of 1990s sites that began with a splash screen that needed to be clicked through to get to the first page of the site. People would even complain about visitors using "deep links" (i.e. links) that meant they didn't get to see the splash page each time.
Funny that when you get to amazon or google or in fact most sites who actually want you to use them you immediately get something related to site use: a search bar, some content related to your past visits or something explanatory.
The approach this site took I consider as self-indulgent as a splash page, hence my calling it out.
"If they wanted me to watch the documentary they shouldn't have started by forcing me to sit through a bunch of unenlightening establishing shots with the name of the studio, distributor, or director over them. After the third one I walked out. What's wrong with people? Someone went to the effort to research and produce a documentary and then somebody else erected an annoying barrier to watch it."
I'm being perhaps unnecessarily facetious, but is there really that big of a difference here? This is the publication's attempt (and one may debate how successful it was) to immerse the reader in a way that a traditional layout wouldn't.
I always scrub forward though the name of the studio etc, much less an elaborate intro.
And apparently a lot of people find it annoying as most streaming sites provide a "skip" button for that stuff and queue up a "watch next" that skips all the credits.
The "traditional layout" is an introductory paragraph.
Madame CJ Walker was the first self-made woman millionaire in America. She created beauty products for Black women, a deeply underserved market, and recruited thousands of women to sell them directly to consumers (as well as through salons or mail-order). The women working for her earned good commissions, by all accounts, so that's a bit different. Through history, the opportunity to earn money directly through gig work has been very important to women and their financial independence, as in so many cultures they must fit remunerated work around other caregiving.
So, great opportunity -- but with any great opportunity comes sharks and grifters. Multilevel marketing schemes where you've got to recruit others -- great example, big in religious and military families in the US. Slightly less predatory schemes where you nevertheless need to "invest in the product" and pay for inventory on hand, assuming personal risk for the company. And that's not even getting into the personal safety concerns of going into peoples' homes.