Hacker News Reader

Comment by thr0wawayf00 | Hacker News Reader

> Uber is effectively an instrument to shift economic gains from labour to capital by atomizing the workforce.

This is the entire gig economy/sharing economy in a nutshell. The platform puts most of the financial risk on the labor side (drivers owning the cars if you're driving Uber, owning the house if you're Airbnb'ing it, etc.) and simply taking a cut of each transaction. The platform owns nothing, the workers have very few rights, and the company has complete control of the market. This is VC utopia right here.

The next financial crisis is gonna show us just how fragile this system is, whenever that is.

View on HN

> The next financial crisis is gonna show us just how fragile this system is, whenever that is.

For now, a lot of the gig economy (but not all of it) is focused on non-essential services (food or other delivery, vacation rentals, private car rentals, etc), so in a time of crisis people can just stop using those services.

It will suck for the workers but even in a non-gig model that same problem would occur, although there would be more safety nets like unions and insurance ...

What worries me is if essential services start getting "gigged out" in a similar manner, that would be problematic..

Easy to say that would never happen, but "private citizens operating unregulated hotels/taxis" seemed impossible/illegal just a decade ago...

> but "private citizens operating unregulated hotels/taxis" seemed impossible/illegal just a decade ago

Every city has had gypsy cabs and Craigslist hotels since forever.

1) Gypsy is a slur

2) Both of those things were / are illegal and operated relatively underground, which is exactly the point of the person you're responding to.

>Gypsy is a slur

Wow. Someone should probably let the creators of "Big Fat Gypsy Weddings" know this! And all the people that participated in the show. And all of the Travellers that watched it.

It’s in the process of being removed from names. For example, the moth: https://www.ksmu.org/2022-04-18/a-common-moth-pest-had-a-slu...

Well, it's true the meaning of the word has evolved into a slur. At least some of the people who used to be called gypsies in English don't want to be called that.

As for shows, didn't Netflix's "Gypsy" take flak for the name?

>Well, it's true the meaning of the word has evolved into a slur.

Is it, though, or is it one of those words like "Indian" (referring to an American Indian, not someone from the country of India) that people say is a slur but is not considered offensive at all by the community it supposedly degrades (and in fact, refusing to use it in their company will get you strange looks more than anything else).

See also: my username for a similar "slur".

>As for shows, didn't Netflix's "Gypsy" take flak for the name?

Based on its Wikipedia page (especially in the "talk" page), it looks like it was mainly just a single author generating righteous outrage to get clicks.

Hm. It seems you're right. Well, I stand corrected.

Sure but that's not what I'm talking about and you know it. I mean large well-known and easily accessible versions of those.

> that's not what I'm talking about and you know it. I mean large well-known and easily accessible versions of those

Not particularly.

They existed at a small scale. Always. Smartphones let them knit together. That scale produced efficiencies. Authorities tried to clamp down but consumers loved them and policy adapted. The path from point A to point B looks linear and altogether unsurprising, albeit ex post facto.

> Easy to say that would never happen, but "private citizens operating unregulated hotels/taxis" seemed impossible/illegal just a decade ago...

I think a lot of it was making it "cool". These things definitely existed in the past and you could avail yourself of them if you knew where to look but these were seen as seedy and lesser than calling a real taxi/car service and staying in a "real hotel. Somehow making it an "app" from a "tech company" really changes customer perceptions.

> if essential services start getting "gigged out" in a similar manner, that would be problematic..

Just have Uber drivers carry a gun, handcuffs, a fire extinguisher and a first aid kit in the trunk. Now they can shift from taxi driver to cop to firefighter to paramedic at a moment's notice. Maybe an LED light bar/siren combo they can quickly attach to the roof of the car with magnets when they switch to emergency responder mode. It'll be a hell of a lot cheaper too, they won't have all those silly pensions and unions and stuff.

It's easy to think of Uber as a non-essential service, but it's not really -- it's started to get its tendrils into a lot of places. E.g. https://qz.com/1971558/uber-plans-to-play-a-bigger-role-in-p... -- Uber is being baked into public transit plans as a viable last-mile option.

Essential services are already effectively being 'gigged out'. Travel nurses and EMTs being employed by staffing agencies rather than the hospitals, Amazon's entire delivery end is almost entirely driven by third party contractors, and in general a lot of employment relationships that would have once been owned by a company are now abstracted to vendors solely as a way to reduce margin.

>The platform puts most of the financial risk on the labor side (drivers owning the cars if you're driving Uber, owning the house if you're Airbnb'ing it, etc.)

Actually people already owned the cars and already owned their houses. How is that a financial risk? These platforms allow people to use their existing resources to make money. That's efficiency gains.

If anyone decides to acquire new vehicles or properties to use on these platforms it's because it's profitable due to the large demand driven by these companies pouring billions into customer acquisition and customer relations/support for them.

That’s how it started out - but people began purchasing for use in Uber and then driver rates started dropping, but car payments didn’t.

> If anyone decides to acquire new vehicles or properties to use on these platforms it's because it's profitable

I don't know why you would make that assumption. See https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-uber-makes-its-drivers-pay-...

> Most Uber drivers seem unaware of how their job costs them when it comes to the value of their cars.

Someone needs money for groceries. A bank will lend them money for a car but not groceries. They use Uber as an inefficient means to turn said loan into cash for groceries.

There's no reason to assume that Uber drivers have priced out devaluation and/or have the long term in mind.

And with all this power these companies still somehow never manage to become profitable. It seem to that the consumer is benefiting the most in this situation because both the VC and labor keep having to subsidize him

It's kind of absurd. These companies are trying to build a moat in an industry with very little barrier to entry and regional compartmentalization. The only thing Uber has going for it is the network effect of being available across multiple cities and countries.

How much of this "never manage to become profitable" is tricks in accounting? Would investors continue to give money after due diligence looking into the books show this constant loss and say "yes, take my money!"?

I think it's time to forgo this idea that investors do any due diligence anymore. They just look at price going up and someone hyping it going up further and jump on the train, thinking they can sell it for more later... And then justifying the price by some far future market dominance and magic tech actually coming real, see Uber and Tesla... Or even with social media companies like Twitter to actually turn decent profit...

> The platform puts most of the financial risk on the labor side and simply taking a cut of each transaction.

This is "intermediation". They are not "simply" taking their cut, the platform gets the task of finding the customers and lending their brand to the workers, as well as doing some quality assurance for the customers.

Done right, this is incredibly useful for both sides and creates a lot of wealth. Done wrong it destroys markets.

Right when millennials are starting to feel some stability and save some money, right THEN is when the financial crisis will hit. Just wait and see.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com