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Comment by anonknowsaguy | Hacker News Reader

Fun fact about Deliveroo. A lot of your drivers aren't the registered driver. It's really common practice for a citizen or someone with a work visa to register and then rent their phone to someone desperate with no work visa. So your driver is often making almost nothing while someone else sits on their ass and collects cash for doing nothing and then Deliveroo again sits on their ass providing poor service collecting even more cash.

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So are you saying there are bands of Deliveroo riders in England who are here on 6-month tourist visas? Or are you saying they are in the country illegaly?

I've only seen this happen to people on student visas that permit little or no working hours.

Students will do all kinds of "harmless" under the table stuff to get/save a little extra spending money. That's different to me than an person desperate for money to pay rent or buy food.

That's certainly true and they are illegally working. But maybe your image of a student might be a bit narrow? There's a large industry in Europe of language schools. You pay the school/country a few thousand euros/pounds and in return you get a student visa + basic language course. Not all, but many students are coming from pretty bad places in the hope of somehow landing a work visa(Italy and Portugal will grant citizenship if you can prove ancestry for example). The friends of my wife that told me about their lives/this practice, none of them where working for "spending money".

In portugal you need more than just "ancestry", unless it's relatively close relatives (grandparent).

You would need to speak Portuguese, and prove an effective tie to portugal, for example participating in Portuguese cultural activities, groups or organizations

I certainly needed to pay rent and buy food when I was a student?

If you're working on a tourist visa, then you're in the country illegally - your visa becomes invalid the minute you start work and you're liable to be deported.

Agreed

Source?

I have a friend that works for a deliveroo clone in Paris, this is true, loads of people rent their phones to migrants that work for the company under a fake identity

> It's really common practice for a citizen or someone with a work visa to register and then rent their phone to someone desperate with no work visa

Do humans really have such low morality and ethics? I just can't picture a person who does this to another human being...

I mean most of these delivery type services are basically the first company passing off the usual risk of having a lot of employees onto contractors.... not exactly the same, but not that many steps removed.

What’s immoral here? You know someone who can’t work so you let him rent your phone so he can work. I mean it’s not respecting the law, but it’s no more immoral than companies renting out cars, houses, or tools used by others to earn a living.

The author wrote that some people would make other people do the work, taking a cut. Given, that people who work themselves at Deliveroo already struggle to get a decent salary, then yes, it is immoral.

The person with the account is providing a benefit in return for that cut, though -- the account itself and the attached phone. It's not slavery, any more than Amazon taking a cut of sales through their website is.

I fail to see how the citizen in this case is harming the non-citizen.

Deliveroo riders have some of the worst working conditions, it's a grind and people do it because they need the cash.

Going as far as circumvent legal regulations and even pay to be able to do such a job is a good indicator that the person doing it is desperate for income.

Many people believe wealth should be shared, that everyone deserve happiness, and that no one should spend their lives slaving away just to survive, those same people would not try to profit off of someone desperate for income and willing to work hard and would consider what OP is talking about immoral.

This is the same argument leveled against sweatshops and it is frankly a fallacious one.

It proposes a false dichotomy where the worker has to either be in well paying and fulfilling employment (which obviously is not an option given their circumstances) or alternatively, they must be saved from the tyranny of their employer (usually through enactment of regulations which will leave them jobless).

Either way all it achieves is to deprive the worker of income, experience and the agency that comes with being able to make their own employment decisions. Your comment, despite seeming conscientious, gives little consideration to utility of the worker and the pragmatic decisions they face.

A sense of moral outrage towards a company (or individual) for perceived exploitation of their employees might be justified, but is not sufficient grounds for limiting the freedom of exchange.

Accessory to a large number of immigration crimes and in the Uk that's a strict liability offence.

A former PM (Gordon Brown) was fined when it was found that his cleaner had used good forged papers.

Various modern slavery and gangmaster laws also come to mind.

The question was what makes it immoral, not what makes it illegal.

Taking advantage and ripping off unfortunates is not immoral? As Seward said "there is a higher law".

No, the law preventing residents from working is immoral. Someone sharing their identity to allow them to work is actually doing a righteous thing.

And you don't think the sort of person that does that isn't ripping the hell out of poor sods?

There have been well documented cases of modern slavery where disadvantaged people like this have been abused and effectively turned into slaves.

There's people who will gladly do worse things to people, for free.

People using their accrued wealth to sit around while other people make money for them (who will suffer if they can't do that) is generally considered moral- or at least ethical- under the current order.

It's no more immoral than the business model of Deliveroo, Uber, etc. themselves. In fact it's almost exactly the same.

I use a number of services in Sweden and they all do the same thing, the picture of the person who gets you the food is never the same as in their website. Also errors in orders is so common.

Did saying this make you feel better about yourself or something?

Because it's a ridiculously naive statement at best. More likely just some sanctimonious BS you decided to post to signal how much of a good person you are.

Like seriously, what world do you live in where you can't picture a person doing something to take advantage of another person? Have you read literally anything in history?

I have a really hard time trying to understand the mindset of somebody who is going to take advantage of a person for profit. I actively remind myself of this because I need to be aware of this fact when dealing with people who could potentially take advantage of me.

Nobody is asking you to understand their mindset. Recognizing that such people exist does not require understanding their mindset..

Did saying this make you feel better about yourself or something?

Because it's a ridiculously smug statement at best. More likely just some sanctimonious BS you decided to post to signal how much of an intelligent person you are.

Like seriously, what world do you live in where you can't picture a person thinking that it's sad that a person takes advantage of another person? Have you read literally anything in history?

How meta. You must be a super clever person with original thoughts to add to every discussion.

What a strange thing to say. Surely you've heard of war, murder, rape...?

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