In sum, it begs the question: we can not run the economy by a free market driven by greed and preference of materialism over human value. Uber and other gig economy ventures are not in the business of appraising the human value. End of case.
Of course those middlemen technology platforms will widen the gap between the professional service providers and the consumers because their main job is to get a big slice from the revenues of the professional service provider and in essence to compete with those who resist the domination of their platform. Unfortunately, people are no longer inclined to look into YP or directories to find those professionals, so the app and the web technology is where people turn to. Again, is it the technology problem? It seems like it but it is not. The problem is that only big capital and big venture have almost exclusive access to technology and that is taken by our society as quite normal or healthy. What is needed is a different view of who should be the main beneficiary of technology. If we are worried about the negative impact of technology and the rise of middlemen brokerage, then we should make technology and education more of a public service than a private venture. We should prioritize the beneficiaries and make sure that we don’t lose sight of the long term consequences of allowing private gain overcome public welfare. As such, the debate should become more about how much we place on human value versus material gain, a subject that private capitalism wants to shun away from. Public education is not immune from the threat of the gig economy either. As more private academic institutions are born every day, the venture of the middleman into those private institutions is a real possibility. The owners and operators of this gig economy are in fact retailers of those services that hardworking honest people provide. Why should the worker give up her sweat to someone who simply didn’t do the work? This is not the same as intermediaries who so needed job within the gig economy like that door checker in the Airbnb case.
Gig economy is just a new wave of downgrading workers and transferring wealth from the bottom to the top. Technology should be utilized for the benefit of the entire civilized society, not for creating billionaires at the expense of sweat workers, nor should technology be used to attack middle and working class for the benefit of owners and innovators. What is clear from this presentation is that big business looks at workers, especially the commodified service providers, as a liability, not as an asset to the overall welfare of society. When a big business makes a decision to replace an employee who must be paid for eight hours in wages and benefits with an “independent contractor” that could save the employer all obligations and pays only for half the wages earned, this will only create a society that has less wealth, security and political participation, which in turn affects general consumption of goods and services on other sectors of the economy and result in less democratic modes of living. It was not an accident that slaves and women who earned nothing or very little in the past were not allowed to vote either. The gig economy is rooted in misrepresentation, deception and exploitation. Measured against the early days practices of the plantation system, the feuds economy and the harsh industrial revolution factory working conditions, the gig economy is just another regressive mode of workers treatment wrapped in bright technological cloth! What matter and should be the core of this representation is not what the business world and big money thinks of the gig economy; it what matters is how workers have perceived the gig economy so far and what they have failed to appreciate in terms of potential danger resulting from the systematic disappearance of benefits, fair wages and job security. There is nothing wrong with an economy that pays a worker for less work and more benefits if that also means that we live in a society that is safe, healthy, secure and more active politically. I find the notion of technology being responsible for the creation of the gig economy to be silly and unveiling of the underlying willful attempt to degrade and regress the workplace. As if we did not have enough exploitation of the workforce under private capitalism, the gig economy is now adding to the pile of predatory economy accompanied by a corrupt political system it its final stage to Fascism. Technology should be utilized as a public service or as an open source tools subsidized by the government supported by philanthropic innovators and public educational institutions and funded by taxpayers money for creating work co-ops and citizen entrepreneurship. Why should not the Uber model work for group of a thousand owner operator drivers concentrated in a geographic locality and supported by the same app technology? Most economists agree that more competition means better and more optimized pricing and more freedom for workers to exercise bargaining power. As ownership and shareholding continue to seek private profit through monopoly ventures like Uber and Amazon, the exploitation of the workforce will only get worse because there is less competition and fewer options are out there for a better workforce bargaining power. The gig economy depends solely on the power of capital, not technology, to compete in the market, recruit desperate workforce for less and provide cheaper services for the public. All gig economy ventures continue the race to the bottom and now investors allures into shareholding are paying the heavy price. It seems that both investors and workers are the target of this racing to the bottom monopoly gig economy and the winners are the the few on the top who are reaping the profit. If the gig economy started as a technology that eliminated the need for the workforce altogether, the toxicity of the gig economy would have been less, but to use the workforce assets and its uninformed compromise of its benefits is nothing short of demonic and vile.
Hey I am a programmer, I found this informative. I did a bachelors in Psychology and minor in comp sci. I've been programming mobile apps
This is extremely educational and I really thank you for putting this up here. Thank you thank you thank you
I wish I was in MIT
Could you please suggest some good book which explains gig economy in detail?
there is one that's actually called "the gig economy"
Humans as a Service by Jeremias Prassl
extremely educating . thanks for sharing
In sum, it begs the question: we can not run the economy by a free market driven by greed and preference of materialism over human value. Uber and other gig economy ventures are not in the business of appraising the human value. End of case.
Of course those middlemen technology platforms will widen the gap between the professional service providers and the consumers because their main job is to get a big slice from the revenues of the professional service provider and in essence to compete with those who resist the domination of their platform. Unfortunately, people are no longer inclined to look into YP or directories to find those professionals, so the app and the web technology is where people turn to. Again, is it the technology problem? It seems like it but it is not. The problem is that only big capital and big venture have almost exclusive access to technology and that is taken by our society as quite normal or healthy. What is needed is a different view of who should be the main beneficiary of technology. If we are worried about the negative impact of technology and the rise of middlemen brokerage, then we should make technology and education more of a public service than a private venture. We should prioritize the beneficiaries and make sure that we don’t lose sight of the long term consequences of allowing private gain overcome public welfare. As such, the debate should become more about how much we place on human value versus material gain, a subject that private capitalism wants to shun away from.
Public education is not immune from the threat of the gig economy either. As more private academic institutions are born every day, the venture of the middleman into those private institutions is a real possibility. The owners and operators of this gig economy are in fact retailers of those services that hardworking honest people provide. Why should the worker give up her sweat to someone who simply didn’t do the work? This is not the same as intermediaries who so needed job within the gig economy like that door checker in the Airbnb case.
Check out gigit marketplace, the first gig economy platform that supports both paid and volunteer gigs: www.gigitmarketplace.com/#/welcome
Gig economy is just a new wave of downgrading workers and transferring wealth from the bottom to the top. Technology should be utilized for the benefit of the entire civilized society, not for creating billionaires at the expense of sweat workers, nor should technology be used to attack middle and working class for the benefit of owners and innovators. What is clear from this presentation is that big business looks at workers, especially the commodified service providers, as a liability, not as an asset to the overall welfare of society. When a big business makes a decision to replace an employee who must be paid for eight hours in wages and benefits with an “independent contractor” that could save the employer all obligations and pays only for half the wages earned, this will only create a society that has less wealth, security and political participation, which in turn affects general consumption of goods and services on other sectors of the economy and result in less democratic modes of living. It was not an accident that slaves and women who earned nothing or very little in the past were not allowed to vote either.
The gig economy is rooted in misrepresentation, deception and exploitation. Measured against the early days practices of the plantation system, the feuds economy and the harsh industrial revolution factory working conditions, the gig economy is just another regressive mode of workers treatment wrapped in bright technological cloth!
What matter and should be the core of this representation is not what the business world and big money thinks of the gig economy; it what matters is how workers have perceived the gig economy so far and what they have failed to appreciate in terms of potential danger resulting from the systematic disappearance of benefits, fair wages and job security. There is nothing wrong with an economy that pays a worker for less work and more benefits if that also means that we live in a society that is safe, healthy, secure and more active politically. I find the notion of technology being responsible for the creation of the gig economy to be silly and unveiling of the underlying willful attempt to degrade and regress the workplace. As if we did not have enough exploitation of the workforce under private capitalism, the gig economy is now adding to the pile of predatory economy accompanied by a corrupt political system it its final stage to Fascism.
Technology should be utilized as a public service or as an open source tools subsidized by the government supported by philanthropic innovators and public educational institutions and funded by taxpayers money for creating work co-ops and citizen entrepreneurship. Why should not the Uber model work for group of a thousand owner operator drivers concentrated in a geographic locality and supported by the same app technology? Most economists agree that more competition means better and more optimized pricing and more freedom for workers to exercise bargaining power.
As ownership and shareholding continue to seek private profit through monopoly ventures like Uber and Amazon, the exploitation of the workforce will only get worse because there is less competition and fewer options are out there for a better workforce bargaining power. The gig economy depends solely on the power of capital, not technology, to compete in the market, recruit desperate workforce for less and provide cheaper services for the public. All gig economy ventures continue the race to the bottom and now investors allures into shareholding are paying the heavy price. It seems that both investors and workers are the target of this racing to the bottom monopoly gig economy and the winners are the the few on the top who are reaping the profit. If the gig economy started as a technology that eliminated the need for the workforce altogether, the toxicity of the gig economy would have been less, but to use the workforce assets and its uninformed compromise of its benefits is nothing short of demonic and vile.