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Comment by sbarre | Hacker News Reader

> 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...

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> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

> 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.

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