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Hillary Clinton Takes Aim At 'Gig Economy'
SonicSpike writes with an excerpt from Marketwatch that says at least one major candidate in the 2016 electoral fight has made the "sharing economy" epitomized by Uber and Airbnb a campaign issue. In a major campaign speech in New York City, the former secretary of state didn't mention the ride-sharing service by name. But it was pretty clear what sort of companies she was talking about when she got to how some Americans earn money. "Many Americans are making extra money renting out a spare room, designing websites, selling products they design themselves at home, or even driving their own car," she said at the New School. But that sort of work comes with its own problems, she said. "This 'on demand' or so-called 'gig economy' ... is raising hard questions about workplace protections and what a good job will look like in the future," Clinton added.
Uber is an illegal cab company and should just be shut down. If Uber puts the cab companies out of business it most certainly take away a lot of "real" jobs. Furthermore, we'll all be slaves to "surge pricing". And make no mistake, surge pricing is going to increase drunk driving fatalities.
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...We need to figure out how to kill it with regulations so that my big corporate donors can sleep soundly at night.
Love sees no species.
You can rest assured that the solution requires more laws, more government, more money, and less freedom.
Once corporations have been allowed to erode almost every labor law put into place, watch people become hopelessly dependent on them on a meal by meal basis. We will be exactly like Chinese workers at Foxconn, who consider it to be a wonderful opportunity because the alternative is starvation.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
How can they possibly hope to steal your money when you aren't going through the traditional red tape and entrenched special interests? It just won't do.
Unfortunately it is not a strange world view to many, less liberty-minded, people.
As a society, we've gotten to the point where we tolerate zero risk in our daily lives. So much so that society wants government to decide what is good for us.
This is a terrible way to live. I want options in my life and I want the free market to create them. I don't want government restricting options available to me, or restricting those that would provide those options to me.
Who adhere to the "Gibs me dat" economy.
Race to the bottom refers to deflation of wages and working conditions due to deregulation.
Not long before you were born there was a system of employment called 'piece work'. If you work in a sweat shop or on a farm or in a factory, you got paid according to what you produced. Usually this meant that you worked your butt off and still got paid less than hourly workers. This has been frowned upon until recently.
People raising a family, paying a mortgage, saving for retirement or children's education need a reliable income. Corporations don't want to get weighed down with that burden--they want people that they can call when needed and dump when the need passes.
Corporations have been winning for a long time now and this 'gig economy' is the next step.
...omphaloskepsis often...
I want to pay market prices for everything I consume. No one suggested that anything or anyone should be free.
then why don't you pay double for your gasoline? you are getting a 50% discount thanks to government subsidies
and you should also be paying more for milk and other dairy products whose prices are artificially lowered by government actions
I think you're a little confused.
You got together a car way better than any taxi, 'for fun', caring nothing for the depreciation of your asset you bring to the table, in order to be a dilettante scab just on a whim.
It's not automatically a race to the bottom for passengers, so long as Uber can continue to get people like you who aren't actually committed, and as long as the passengers' luck holds out.
It's a race to the bottom for that entire employment sector because any driver, either taxi or uber, has to compete with YOU 'for fun' when you don't actually have to get paid because you don't really care. You don't have to care about wearing out your resources because you'll likely just drop out if something happens to your car, you don't have to care about getting paid since you're doing it 'for fun', and as long as Uber or Lyft can get hold of enough people like you, everybody has to compete on your terms.
And you're losing money. You're the sucker, you just get to opt out before you lose everything as it's just a gig, 'for fun'. You don't have to consider wear on your vehicle, your insurance, any of that. You're doing it for some other reason and as long as the company can find more like you
It's one thing when you 'pay to play' at some Sunset Strip nightclub, in order to get your music out there. Yeah, that's no business plan but it's an ego thing and performing on stage and it's easy to see how that type of 'work' ends up for dilettantes and trust-funders, generally unable to provide a living wage to your average musician.
It's VERY WEIRD if you have to be a superstar freakin' cab driver to earn a living because everybody else is losing money on the deal. Just saying. Your activity contributes to a situation where everybody else has to match your level of interaction/committment/cashflow. Cabdriving is not meant to be a hobby you spend some money on to have an interesting experience on weekends. (of course, Uber is liable to take it to 'cabdriving is not for humans' in the relatively near future)
[Citation Needed] Considering close to 1/4 of the price of gas in most places in the US is ALREADY taxes, that would be a hard number to back up. Or are you comparing the price here to the even higher taxed fuel in other countries and calling that a "subsidy"?
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
The Constitution of the United States (not your personal constitution, not the unwritten constitutional law of Great Britain, etc.) limits the Federal government to the regulation of Interstate Commerce. It should not have the scope to regulate business that does not cross the boundaries of the many States. For example, if I sell produce raised in the garden on my land to my neighbors or at a stand on the road I live on or even to a local store, I am not engaging in interstate commerce as my reach does not cross State lines. Now the State or the County or the City/Town/Village that I live in may regulate my business; but that is not encompassed by the U.S. Constitution. I know there are people who believe that we don't live in such an environment but in a totally top down government like those in many other parts of the world. And there are those who are wishing it were that way and even those who are fighting to make it top down. But it isn't so yet. Hillary Clinton is one of the latter. She and the Democrat Party would like nothing more than turning the States into mere departments of the Federal Government wherein the big cities of the East and West coasts could suck the money, life and freedom from the rest of the country. They desire the world of the Hunger Games.
'Nuf said.
Not long before you were born there was a system of employment called 'piece work'. If you work in a sweat shop or on a farm or in a factory, you got paid according to what you produced. Usually this meant that you worked your butt off and still got paid less than hourly workers. This has been frowned upon until recently.
Piece work is still around and in many cases it is a very appropriate way to pay for services rendered. If I'm an employer and I've got two employees and one is twice as productive as the other, why should they receive equal pay? What is the less productive person doing that makes them worth just as much despite doing less work? If the piece work rate is too low that is a different issue but there is nothing inherently wrong with compensating on a piece work basis.
Furthermore piece work is used in many place you aren't really thinking about it. Doctors get paid per-procedure which is basically piece work. (it's why they have to hustle through so many patients) Truckers often get paid per delivery or per mile which is basically piece work. Lots of professions get compensated on a piece work basis that have nothing to do with making widgets and there is nothing wrong with that. Piece work incentivizes efficient deliver of services.
The problem with piece work is that it can also incentivize shoddy quality if there aren't controls in place to keep quality high. Sometimes that is not easy to do which is why piece work isn't used in some place where it might otherwise make sense.
People raising a family, paying a mortgage, saving for retirement or children's education need a reliable income.
A reliable income can be assured through having valuable skills and working hard. If you lack a valuable skill and/or are not willing to work hard then a reliable income will be hard to come by. People are not and should not be entitled to a reliable income merely for existing - they need to earn it. Your choice to have a family or buy a house isn't my problem. Work hard and develop some skills that others value and chances are you'll do fine.
Corporations don't want to get weighed down with that burden--they want people that they can call when needed and dump when the need passes.
So corporations are supposed to pay people to sit idle and do nothing? How many people do you employ so that they can sit on their ass and collect a paycheck for no work? I'm guessing you've never run a company. I do run a manufacturing company. Paying people to do nothing (read work inefficiently) is pretty much the best way I know of to put a company into bankruptcy. No company should be required to employ someone when there is no work for them to perform or if they are providing sub-standard performance.
Regulated monopolies are not good for any economy.
the us economy flourished in the 1950s with regulated telephones and regulated taxicabs and regulated airfares
The US economy flourished because it had just modernized during World War II and many other industrial nations had their economies wrecked during the war. Plus US industry was heavily "subsidized" by the government financed reconstruction of many of those countries devastated by war.
When making such comparisons always keep in mind the caveat of the statistician and economist, "all other things being equal". In the 1950s they were not.
If coders contribute code in their free time to an open source project is that bad because it takes that opportunity away from corporate coders who make their living off that kind of work? Is the corporate coder disadvantaged by the open source contributors that are doing it for fun? They don't have to consider having an office, benefits, or any of that.
I code for fun. Am I putting paid programmers out of a job?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
You think the consumer will continue to have a better deal if Uber is the only game in town?
Uber already has competition from Lyft, and other ride sharing services. New entrants can easily enter the market.
the loser in that scenario will be the drivers
With ride sharing, the drivers compete by providing quality and value to consumers. With taxis, the drivers compete by bidding up the price of medallions. There is no reason to believe that the latter will lead to higher wages. But there is good reason to believe that the former will lead to better service, and more people riding rather than driving and parking their own cars.
If government imposed artificial scarcity and price controls is such great idea for taxis, then why shouldn't the same model be good for other areas of the economy? Why shouldn't there be a "grocery store medallion" to limit the number of stores, jack up prices, and prevent them from having to compete? How about programmers? Should there be a "programmer medallion" to limit the number of people allowed to write code?