Is the gig economy working? | Hacker News Reader

Is the gig economy working?

newyorker.com

39 pointsthedarkginger15 comments

Absolutely not. "Working" would require at least something to go well: well-compensated workers, high profits, technical innovation, a diversified market -- something! Instead we've got 1099 contractors making barely minimum wage, lawsuits instead of self-driving cars, local taxi companies being driven out of business. And to top it all off, the "unicorns" like Uber are not even profitable. It's just VCs spending their own money to wreck up existing markets instead of creating a viable business.

It's working alright for consumers

Charity from VCs to consumers isn't viable long-term.

Someone with a broader view on the long term success of VC than I have needs to chime in, but although I agree with your earlier statements, you made me think twice about this one.

What if it IS a viable long term strategy? VC was always "moonshots", 9 out of 10 fail, 1 goes big. While Uber is having issues, I've been hearing the profitibility issue raised for years now. Other startups, while not doing necessarily unicorn-esque in the "real world", have still IPOd or sold off. I imagine the VC's aren't idiots, if they looked at their balance sheets and saw a trend of throwing money into a bonfire they would have stopped a long time back. Are we breaking even? (I honestly don't know.) If we are, then perhaps the consumer 'charities' are a new norm for userbase building, for one strata of company growth strategy. "want to grow faster, throw money at it" has always been a technique, and I see the charity as just a new way of spending that money to gain userbase. The relevant question is whether it's more or less effective than prior/future methods.

That would be, in its own way, even more messed-up for the economy as a whole. It would mean we're steadily replacing democratically-governed public services and market-governed businesses with VC's decisions about where to provide a "service" by throwing good money after bad.

I should be able to catch a ride somewhere without relying on the philanthropy and good-will of some rich dude.

As an observation, your dystopia sounds like the grand vision of many politicians I've heard trumpeting privatization and philanthropy replacing social programs over the years. (However, I would mete the latter part of your AND (market governed) that VC is only a small part of the grander market, and their spending habits are (potentially, although I'd say likely) probably limited to their strata. Normal businesses are by nature not in the business of making these sorts of gambles at a scale to which it starts paying off.)

> steadily replacing democratically-governed public services

That's exactly what politicians and wealthy are calling for, very plainly and in the open. Not JUST VC's calling the shots, but the wealthy elite in general.

They own all the IP, we focus on making products they think will do best, we vote for their candidates...

Welcome to the real world.

I realize. There's a solution I can propose, too. It starts with "s" and ends with "eizing the means of production".

Sounds like someone should find a way to disrupt VC.

Why would anyone expect a unicorn focusing on growth to make a profit?

Once investments dry up you'll see Uber start to focus on profitability and reducing waste, until then they're 100% focused on expansion and disruption, which is pretty expensive and doesn't really make revenue.

Don't forget the workers' lack of access to health care in a post-ACA world.

It's set up a bunch of middle men, but undercuts local businesses and leads to a lot of desperate and impoverished workers. When you create a just-in-time labor system, this creates a huge amount of stress for workers, as their hours and wages are unpredictable. This is fine if you don't need the money or are just supplementing a full-time income. But you can't live that existence if you have fixed bills and want to have a stable middle-class existence

I feel like the gig economy would work better in a socialized healthcare system.

Most economies do, since it reduces friction and allows workers to better allocate labor across the market.

Socialized healthcare, and more broadly social safety nets and services, lubricate the economy to prevent labor movement friction from causing inefficiency.

I'll go with Betteridge's law of headlines: NO.

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