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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

Ugh, I couldn't get through half of this article without throwing up in my mouth a little.

Look, I'm a huge fan and believer in the benefits of entrepreneurship, but can we stop pretending like more than a small fraction of these "solopreneurs" (I hate that word, I guess if it's French it sounds cooler than "self employed") will be making more than an Uber driver?

We are moving much more towards a "Hollywood" style economy, where a few superstars gobble up the majority of income and capital, while everyone else working at Starbucks dreams they'll "make it big" one day before half of them end up in porn. What is, and has been, disappearing is a broad-based, stable economic system that benefits the masses.

I don't mean to be so negative, but these ridiculous "rah rah" articles that obfuscate the true nature of what is going on infuriate me.

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Yes and we need better language and analogies to talk about the non-superstars in these "new" economic arrangements. Gig economy workers being directed by an API Ala Uber/delivery apps are analogous to landless laborers in developing economies. Those with a virtual "stall" on someone else's platform (Etsy/Youtube/mobile app stores) are reminiscent of sharecroppers.

I'm not sure how accurate it is but I hear that at a time US salaries were high because the bar was low on starting a farm. Employers had to bid against that life style.

Today employers are looking for different abilities but those do seem to [greatly] overlap with what it takes to run your own shop.

Another thought I had was how poor job interviews still perform. There are lots of people who consider themselves capable but would have a hard time convincing others.

That is still huge. Mostly these are ordinary people pursuing their interests and sharing. The profits may be modest, but are on the same scale as employment they are qualified for and with much better fit and volatility.

You do sound negative and it doesn’t seem like a useful negativity. The world consolidating into so few companies is new, and any attempt at smaller more self sufficient businesses seems to me like a good thing.

Who cares if they make the equivalent of an Uber driver. Making that money not driving for Uber adds variety to the economy and we all win as a result.

It’s like opening a modern day corner store. Sure they all look similar, but it’s ownership and it matters and the people doing it should be proud of themselves.

If the bulk of these solopreneurs are—in their role as entrepreneurs—as economically productive as corner store owners, then I agree that this trend is great.

But the parent is asserting that the reality is that most of these solopreneurs are a actually just delusional, in that they consider themselves entrepreneurs but aren’t actually all that enterprising.

My intuition is that the parent is right, but the article doesn’t have much data to support or refute either of these theories.

Here in France they actually call it auto-entrepreneur, funnily enough (self-entrepreneur)

> What is, and has been, disappearing is a broad-based, stable economic system that benefits the masses.

Median income hasn't eroded. Real unemployment is again nearing historic lows. Median wealth hasn't eroded.

US median wealth remains higher than Germany or Sweden. Which, if you buy into the propaganda about the US (vs eg German worker protections and or Sweden's social safety net), that outcome should be impossible.

And for the US that's all despite one of the greatest demographic changes in world history, in which the US middle class has been massively shifted by an influx of low education, impoverished third world immigrants (which is the opposite approach of most affluent nations; for example Canada or Australia, they hyper restrict immigration based on scoring systems meant to keep poor people largely out, focusing instead of highly qualified immigrants that can immediately contribute to the welfare state tax base).

The fact is, the US has done extraordinarily well against that demographic change backdrop when it comes to the middle class and median figures. And this factor - dramatic demographic shift for the US middle class and median - is almost universally and intentionally ignored in the name of propaganda points.

It turns out that if you flood a country with tens of millions of poor people that don't speak the primary language, it might downward drag on the figures you see in the middle class and median (ie it pushes downward on all of that until the recent immigrants have enough time to adjust and gain positioning in society: gain education, gain income, gain wealth, establish careers, leading progress into second or third generations).

It can take generations for someone moving to a new culture, with little formal education, without the ability to speak the primary language, with no job or wealth supporting them, to get anywhere.

Want to see this effect in action? Look at the median white household wealth and income figures, today vs 1970 / 1980 / 1990. In 1980 the US was around 5%-6% hispanic for example, the middle class was almost exclusively white. Today the US middle class is increasingly hispanic, and that trend will continue aggressively for decades to come. Now do the right thing and account for that when talking about how well the US middle class has done over the last 30 or 50 years (it's not the same demographic, it's not the same group of people, it has changed).

If you move from Honduras to the US in 1993, previously living a third world lifestyle with minimum formal education and no ability to speak English; and then you lift yourself to the level of the US middle class by the 2010s, how do you account for showing that radical improvement in the US figures as it pertains to the middle class, if all it shows in the US figures is supposed stagnation (when what has really happened is the prior middle class demographic has moved upward, while formerly poor hispanics have moved in to the US middle class slot)?

If you don't account for the epic scale demographic shift, then what you're proposing is hyper misleading.

> US median wealth remains higher than Germany or Sweden. Which, if you buy into the propaganda about the US (vs eg German worker protections and or Sweden's social safety net), that outcome should be impossible.

Are you comparing absolute numbers here? Are they really comparable?

I'd say it's mostly a matter of energy and time you wish to put into becoming a successful entrepreneur. My experience tells me that first two-three years is a grind, then you can loosen that regime a bit, depending on what you want to achieve. If you're ok with making more (like x1.5 - 2.0 times more) than when employed you can relax and settle on 8-10h a day, if not - real benefits come later, but I think you'll need to hire somebody anyways.

You do sound negative, but I understand where you are coming from. I can't speak for the other soloers, but this solo affair over here is going to make WAY more than an Uber driver. Hell, I may make more than Uber itself.

That's the power of positive thought and focused attention. That attention nets positive feedback. I did this. Nobody else. Well, except for that bit Joe did. Thanks Joe.

Remember, anything is possible at Zombo.com.

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