Comment by frotak | Hacker News Reader

Comment by frotak | Hacker News Reader

My girlfriend tried out the Instacart gig for a while as she finally got her chronic low energy and fatigue addressed through B12 shots and wanted something to occupy her and give her a little extra spending money outside of what's budgeted.

That experience was absolutely demoralizing in terms of what she was able to actually make. Granted we live in a lower density city in the southeast so that result makes sense. But everything is very skewed toward the company in the case of Instacart...mileage reimbursement is from the store to the delivery...and you can be sent 10-15 miles from your point of origin to the store to purchase goods at.

I'm not surprised at all that Uber (and the gig economy as a whole) are squeezing their "independent contractor labor force" given that for them it's just a stepping stone toward a fully autonomous pipeline. The calculus here isn't toward establishing and maintaining a happy and committed workforce but bridging the gap between funding and profitability through autonomous solutions.

I don't know what the answer is but I couldn't imagine being in a position where one of the few viable options available for any sort of gainful employment was working as part of the "gig" economy.

edit: If that rate is intended to also cover fuel costs then fuel can easily eat up >10% of that $0.60/mi rate. Man.

My company was bleeding money so I had to close it down over this past fall. Spent all of my savings and had to start making money asap.

I turned to uber eats, grubhub, and doordash. None of the companies value the drivers. If anything it feels like the companies are trying to milk the drivers so that the company can profit.

If the drivers are happy the customer will be happy and profits can be made. Raising rates for customers, lowering payouts for contractors is a bad idea short term. Automation of transportation is not close enough to discourage all of your contractors from working.

> If anything it feels like the companies are trying to milk the drivers so that the company can profit.

That's probably particularly true of those companies, but it's also endemic to capitalism more generally.

I feel capitalism is such a bad thing for our earth. If I had a reset button that would equally distribute all the worlds wealth I would push it.

And you think human nature would just magically change and everyone would be equally motivated to create things of value because you burnt down all the institutions? Hierarchy and inequality exist regardless of what political system you put in place. It is literally a law of nature. Every single system creates inequality, it’s just that capitalism also creates wealth, where as other systems historically can not compete in this regard. Humans are on average wealthier now than at any other point in history and this is a VERY good thing for creating the most good for the largest number of people possible.

I also try to buy what I want or need at the lowest prices available, and so does everyone else I know.

I guess they should form a union and strike.

Paragraph #2

> As independent contractors who can’t unionize, drivers are isolated from one another.

I mean...if they could organize they could have the effective weight of a union - but the circumstances of Uber's employment scheme make that more difficult.

I imagine that would only be orders of magnitude harder to manager in this circumstances than in previous generations.

Especially for Uber who can incentivize payouts in an elastic fashion as the available labor pool shrinks. Service quality might decline a bit as available drivers decrease...but Uber won't even have to explicitly go out and find "scabs" - they can simply temporarily surge pricing to entice some of the drivers who either aren't striking or who aren't as committed.

Difficult indeed to really cut at the heart of Uber in this case and really swing some leverage as organized labor.

Especially with the setback face in U.S. court.

I mean, the surge in pricing wouldn't even be a thing someone has to do. It would just happen automatically.

That's the whole problem with this issue: Uber has made the market for taxis/rides incredibly liquid, which has driven the prices down to pretty much exactly the marginal costs. There are plenty of people who have already sunk the cost of a car, and have nothing else to do, so it still makes economic sense to do this with their time.

If the demand for unskilled labor doesn't increase, this will get worse.

Uber operates with a loss. The prices are under marginal cost. The drivers have no scale benefits like ordinary Taxi companies when it comes to buying cars or maintenance.

It only makes economical sense to drive for Uber with the car if you can't sell it for a good price (you know the car is good and not abused, the buyer doesn't) and that you don't plan on buying a new car after the wheels fall off on the present one, or you need to liquidize your assets a little bit, i.e. getting approx. 100USD for decreasing the value of the car and buying gas driving for Uber for 100USD.

That's why effective unions, like every government, use the threat of violece to enforce the social contract. They can delegate completely to the government if they can win recognition as employees (they aren't ICs under a reasonable reading of law) and jump through the appropriate hoops to get a closed shop.

Or just don't work for Instacart. The market will raise rates when they cannot find any runners for food.

That's what a strike is! The workers stop until the bosses acknowledge market value.

I mean, that's temporary. Are you saying all workers will agree that only say 20% of them work at a time (rotating) to artificially create scarcity, raising price of labor, then redistribute income amongst themselves in a communal fashion? Because that's strictly worse.

There will always be the hopelessly desperate just waiting to be taken advantage of. The market will not magically stop this happening. We must make the choice; maybe we'll choose to allow exploitation of the hopelessly desperate, maybe we won't, but praying to the market to magically fix it won't do a thing.

I think the government should step in with UBI, supplemental income, or some such, but it would be wrong to fix price of labor for one particular industry/market. The latter is just a hack.

No, there won’t. Wages are rising for all levels of employees. Driving a vehicle without dealing with coworkers or a “boss” just happens to be something many, many people can do so as a supplier, you have tons of competition, therefore the prices you can charge are lower.

Work towards a position that requires you to be differentiated from others and see your ability to charge more go up.

Do you have any evidence that one day there will no longer be hopelessly desperate people? The evidence so far indicates otherwise. Where is your posited utopian future coming from?

Wages are rising for all levels of employees.

It's my understanding that the evidence indicates this isn't true (for example, https://globalriskinsights.com/2018/01/us-economy-workers-di... , and many other such). What are you basing this assertion on?

Work towards a position that requires you to be differentiated from others and see your ability to charge more go up.

This is the standard trite, middle-class advice towards people who are hopelessly desperate and trapped in poverty. The hopelessly desperate cannot do this on their own. They don't have the time, the health, the regular hours, the safety blanket of cash, the lack of children, the support network, even the simple knowledge of how to gain skills, on and on - all the things people need to take your advice. They don't have that. That's what being hopelessly desperate is.

https://www.frbatlanta.org/chcs/wage-growth-tracker.aspx

Wages are rising, at least nominally, of course. I know they the wage and wealth gap is increasing, and the top 10% are running away with almost all the spoils, and is not a good situation.

However, the context of my response was to the person you had responded to had said that Instacart would have to pay more if people stopped running food for them, to which you had responded that Instacart wouldn't since there was an endless supply of hopelessly desperate people that Instacart can pull from.

Getting from point A to point B, especially with the help of navigation software, is something everyone can do, hence the bottom of the barrel wages. You're competing with almost everyone. Expecting to earn more than the very minimum in that kind of market is unrealistic. Before, the bottom of the barrel jobs were retail/restaurant/hotel/service jobs, but now with Instacart and Uber and whatnot, those are the new bottom of the barrel jobs, and retail/restaurant/hotel/service jobs have had to raise their wages.

I understand some people might not have a good education, some might not know the right language, have a stable home, and that is something society needs to work at fixing, but that's not the reason Uber/Instacart can afford to pay little. It's because the type of work (unscheduled, be your own boss, no language skills necessary, no customer service skills, etc) is desirable compared to other jobs that have a large supply of labor.

Wages are rising, at least nominally, of course.

At risk of sounding trite, nominal is cold comfort when the real is dropping.

This is nothing to do with self driving cars and everything to do with the imbalance of power when management acts an an organized team but labor doesn't.

It’s a good thing there is more than one organized team of management to pick from! Gainful employment is not a right, it’s a voluntary agreement by both parties. Vote with your feet and go elsewhere... they will feel the crunch.

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