Slashdot Mirror
The Gig Economy Celebrates Working Yourself to Death (newyorker.com)
Writing for The New Yorker, Jia Tolentino documents stories of several people -- a nine-month pregnant Lyft driver, for instance -- who contribute to companies that work on the model of gig economy. Through these tales, Tolentino underscores an increasingly growing pattern in the Silicon Valley (and elsewhere) where companies offer hard-labor contracts to people, pay them peanuts (with little liabilities), and yet find a reason to celebrate their business and encourage more to come onboard. From the article: Fiverr, which had raised a hundred and ten million dollars in venture capital by November, 2015, has more about the "In Doers We Trust" campaign on its Web site. In one video, a peppy female voice-over urges "doers" to "always be available," to think about beating "the trust-fund kids," and to pitch themselves to everyone they see, including their dentist. A Fiverr press release about "In Doers We Trust" states, "The campaign positions Fiverr to seize today's emerging zeitgeist of entrepreneurial flexibility, rapid experimentation, and doing more with less. It pushes against bureaucratic overthinking, analysis-paralysis, and excessive whiteboarding." This is the jargon through which the essentially cannibalistic nature of the gig economy is dressed up as an aesthetic. No one wants to eat coffee for lunch or go on a bender of sleep deprivation -- or answer a call from a client while having sex, as recommended in the video. It's a stretch to feel cheerful at all about the Fiverr marketplace, perusing the thousands of listings of people who will record any song, make any happy-birthday video, or design any book cover for five dollars. I'd guess that plenty of the people who advertise services on Fiverr would accept some "whiteboarding" in exchange for employer-sponsored health insurance. At the root of this is the American obsession with self-reliance, which makes it more acceptable to applaud an individual for working himself to death than to argue that an individual working himself to death is evidence of a flawed economic system. The contrast between the gig economy's rhetoric (everyone is always connecting, having fun, and killing it!) and the conditions that allow it to exist (a lack of dependable employment that pays a living wage) makes this kink in our thinking especially clear.
companies report record profits and the rich get richer.
guillotines are being prepared.
I thought this was a slashvertisments for whatever that 'fiver' company is, but after reading the summary, I still have no idea what that 'fiver' company is, or what the hell this story is about.
"The campaign positions Fiverr to seize today's emerging zeitgeist of entrepreneurial flexibility, rapid experimentation, and doing more with less. It pushes against bureaucratic overthinking, analysis-paralysis, and excessive whiteboarding."
Whoever came up with that deserves excessive waterboarding.
If fiverr, or the others, don't work for you then go somewhere else. Further, things like fiverr, lyft, and Uber aren't meant to be a primary source of income. The gig economy is just gigs for some cash not full time employment. If you want to be an independent full time then you need to setup your own legal entity and charge your own rates and build your own brand.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
Celebrates trolling people into clicking on bullshit.
The real key is not to get paid more for your job, but to reduce your debt.
When you don't owe anybody anything, it's amazing how rich you really are; having "fuck you" money is really just being debt free.
Unless you have a plan to make it profitable, don't go to university; don't buy that new car; don't purchase things on credit. Keep debts away, and you won't have to work yourself to death—instead, you'll have so much free time that you'll bore yourself death, which is a much more comfortable way to go.
Who is the sucker here?
> the American obsession with self-reliance, which makes it more acceptable to applaud an individual for working himself to death than to argue that an individual working himself to death is evidence of a flawed economic system.
It's a choice between community and individuals. Self-reliance was great back in the day when you could (in theory) walk into the wilds and build your own civilization, but if you want a modern standard of living there are simply too many things to do, too much to know. We rely heavily on people taking on highly specialized roles and ultimately everyone lives better as a result.
Modern 'self-reliance' is more like modern 'fuck you, I got mine'. It's people exploiting others and making them like it by holding out the carrot of their own anomalous success. And we eat it up because the human brain is shitty at probabilities... we all think WE are going to be the next big exploiter when the odds are far better that we'll win the lottery, and the truth is we're more likely to die by lightning strike than have either of those things happen.
Americans have to get over their fear of socialism and accept that, all other things being equal, a community that works together is stronger and more prosperous than one that does not. Or they can watch wealth disparity continue to increase, a smaller and smaller portion of the population living like near-Gods while the greater portion has less and less. It'll take time for that to become apparent, so long as bellies are full and everyone has an Internet connection, but eventually the mob rises up and you get a revolution.
News for Nerds for sure.
This all stems from the widespread adoption in America of the the Puritan philosophy of human worth, best summed up as "the quality, quantity, and duration of achievement."
So, yes, by their standards the ultimate goal is to work hard, until death, to earn a place by the side of god as the most righteous. The bonus is that this also allows the hardest workers in life to demean those who have not worked so hard.
Go fuck yourself. Seriously. Fuck yourself. People can work all manner of jobs too much to the point of being burnt out or worse. It's up to you as a free fucking human being to figure out how much you can handle and how much you want to work. I do not want your handholding bullshit anywhere near me. I make mistakes, I fucking deal with the consequences. I make informed decisions. I don't let a commercial convince me to work 24 hours a day 7 days a week. And if you do, well you've already fucked yourself by being stupid as fuck and society doesn't need that stupidity in it. Gah I hate this Jia fucker so much and I don't even know who it is.
http://moscowproject.org/
to keep up.
Oh, what a relief! For a moment there I thought Microsoft was going into the dairy business.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
"At the root of this is the American obsession with self-reliance, which makes it more acceptable to applaud an individual for working himself to death than to argue that an individual working himself to death is evidence of a flawed economic system"
Really? I seem to recall that BIG companies with HIGHLY regulated economies seem to fare much worse... or have we forgotten about Chinese companies taking advantage of slave labor (hello Apple)
The US does NOT have a flawed economic system.
The American obsession with self-reliance is GOOD. It encourages independent thought and, better, it encourages people to fight for their own destinies against corporations and governments and insipidly vapid ideologues (including Jia Tolentino here, who doesn't want liberty or e better economic system but a womb to the tomb babysitter government... like China...)
Because, and Jia seems to forget this here, people don't have to work for fiverr and, GOSH, can go out and make sixerr which will pay its employees more if they wish. Unlike China or Venezuela.
Wouldn't you be better off pestering your Facebook friends selling pyramid scheme essential oils or something?
“You eat a coffee for lunch,” the ad proclaims. “You follow through on your follow through. Sleep deprivation is your drug of choice. You might be a doer.”
I'll see you and raise you this:
"The busy man is never wise, and the wise man is never busy".
- Lin Yutang
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Coders always be high paid millionaires in demand! Just keep your skills up bro! Framework of the week is where it's at dude!
The last time that you could get a decent permanent job without solid skills and education was the 70s. But they weren't easy jobs - things like auto plant worker. And many of those jobs vanished in the 80s. Today's WSJ has an article why... basically people got progressively more expensive, while automation got less expensive. The "gig economy" is no different than what people did before about it... Amway or Fuller, or holding Tupperware parties, or starting a lawn care or housecleaning service, or starting your own cab/limo company before cities regulated and medallioned that option off the list. The unfortunate part is that we fall for the sob stories, the anecdotes of emotion, and then close off another rung on the upward-mobility ladder in the name of protecting the people that, as a result, are held down more firmly.
SV is one huge company town right from the last century. The only thing that is missing is Pinkerton thugs cracking skulls.
This is the logical conclusion of all union-busting that we have done last 25 years. While you might hate unions, the alternative is much worse.
My wife considered this when she was having a hard time finding a job. Read the fine print. Fees to list, fees off the gross, fees when you try and send the money to a real bank... You're lucky to keep 70% of what they pay, (which you are fully liable to pay taxes on, so expect your take-home portion to be significantly less), and even then the "customers" all expect highest service levels at the cheapest 3rd-world pay scale.
Participating in this, Uber, etc. "gig economy" crap is just contributing towards the race to the bottom.
If the system is broken the only way to beat it is not to play.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
it's doing it to the folks who want to hire their workers for peanuts. From what I can tell it's a platform to connect people to Uber cheap (pun intended) labor overseas. It's actually terrifying. One of the few good sources of jobs left in America is small businesses too tiny to outsource. Fivver might kill those too. If you're a consultant and you're reading this you should be sweating bullets right about now.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
American society has always had the obsession on self-reliance, but I'm glad people are starting to see gig economy jobs for what they are. The question is what we do when the possibilities of realistically supporting yourself evaporate completely, and we go back to a semi-feudal system -- the nobles having all the power and letting the peasants who serve them exist at the bare minimum standard.
For decades in the US, the formula was simple:
- If you're smart, go to college and study anything. A large company will hire you at the entry level and take you through to the end of your career
- If you're semi-skilled, go to trade school, become an apprentice and join a trade union; there will be work until you retire.
- If you're less skilled, go join a union and work in a factory -- same deal, there will always be work.
It seems to me like this is gone, and no one noticed until now, or brushed it off. The modern economy is built around steady paychecks -- people can't buy a house for cash, they have to get a mortgage and pay it off as they earn. Same thing for consumer credit...no one is going to go into debt if they feel they can't pay for it, and debt is what drives the economy to some extent.
Steady paychecks are one of the reasons I've stayed out of the IT contracting world, even though I've been told I'd be excellent at it. It's stressful worrying about your job, or where the money is going to come from, and having to constantly hustle to find new work.
So, to summarize what you said: "FUCK YOU! GOT MINE!"
Die now, old asshole.
If more of the same people who are decrying a pregnant woman burning the candle at both ends for Uber would back Trump on crippling the ability of employers to profit heavily from international labor arbitrage, among other things. But we can't do that, that would violate someone's rights and make it harder for a SF Bay Area entrepreneur to outsource some work to China.
Actually, it is
https://themoscowproject.org/
anyone else notice this (the expired date was yesterday, and it is gone today):
broadbandreports.com
Checking server [whois.easydns.com]
Results:
Domain Name: BROADBANDREPORTS.COM
Domain ID: 23073813_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.easydns.com
Updated Date: 2016-03-18T03:23:51Z
Creation Date: 2000-03-22T16:38:14Z
Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2017-03-22T15:38:14Z
Going off-grid an living in middle of nowhere sounds better every day. Of course that is not a effective and sustainable solution that can accomodate everone. :D
Just working hard and long is not the road to a great life if you are working on the wrong thing. Lyft, Uber, Fiverr etc. are among those. Working hard at creating those companies might have been.
People hate on unions, then wonder why they are treated like crap by employers.
You know those values...no. You really do know them.
Work hard, contribute, remain positive, be cheerful about you 70 hour work week.
This works with people. You do your friend a solid and he always remembers. (or at least does his or her best.)
Corporate psychology teaches us that we need to build a "culture" so people stop thinking about the job being a job and more of a community or even family.
You are not an employee you are a "googler" or a "tweet" or "microsofties"
The companies that do it well know and care about a work/life balance because it costs more money to lose great employees and hire replacements that to factor in they need time to live.
But most companies want to put your performance figures on a large whiteboard with other names so everyone can see who sucks and the rest try to workaholic each other out in a fight to get their head above the shit line.
Don't you dare be sick. Don't you dare question. Don't you dare be disruptive with your communication. Do your job, do it well, do it often, work through your sickness, work through your children's plays, get shit pay for it, smile at work and say thank you. -don't forget to be extra nice to the boss, because they are the boss.
There's always one more email, one more urgent deadline, one more customer meeting, one more critical submission...and if that's the case, hire more people. Don't be that dumb ass that goes above and beyond every single time. You think you;re making yourself valuable or saving your job but really you;re just ruining your life and keeping employers to their exploitative practices.
I propose a new strategy; Work by the letter of your contract from day 1. If you do extra that becomes special. If you;re fired because of it you know that place was not for you.
True, a lot of people work shit jobs for lack of options but believe it, there's always a slightly better option. A shit sandwich isnt always better than nothing.
When you finally find that place that appreciates you and actually tried to meet you halfway or goes out of their way for you -count your lucky stars and remember how you got there.
"Self-reliance" does not mean working yourself to death for peanuts. Oh, are we going to have the government step in, because you're too stupid to keep a reasonable work/life balance and negotiate fair compensation? Ultimately, you're going to want to progress from the tier of self-employment to owning your own business, because in the long term owning your own job means having no paid vacation or sick days. But self-employment is often the next step on getting out of the employment scam. You know the one: the claim that if you can just get a college degree, you'll get a safe, secure job and work until your comfortable retirement. Millennials, if anyone, should know this is hasn't been true for their entire lifetime. And government isn't going to get one for you, either.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Yeah, they may "pay them little". But if the people taking these jobs had higher paying alternatives, they would be taking them. So, "paying them little" is better than getting no money at all.
I'll offer the same advice to the gigsters that is (heretofore exclusively) provided to the poor white slobs of WV et al; move to where the good jobs are learn the new skills and also stop being ignorant. It's your own fault because you make bad decisions.
There. All fixed. Enjoy.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
There is a kind of investment known as "equity", you know. Put the risk on your investors.
How can you not see that you are agreeing?
You're barking up the wrong tree. It's got nothing to do with philosophy (i.e. self-reliance), and everything to do with mindless lemming culture. The people working themselves to death obviously aren't doing it to become self-reliant. If that were the case, then they'd be saving 75% of their income instead of spending 100% of it (usually more). But they're not saving it -- they're putting themselves in debt to buy 400-horsepower diesel trucks which they use for grocery shopping. They're working themselves to death in order to create an impression, not to better their own lives.
Tools like Fiverr, Mechanical Turk, etc are an amazing way to create positive trade with low-income nations. They get a living wage, we get cheap labor, everyone wins.
They are an abysmal way to run a sustainable first-world economy, due to all the problems listed in the many comments above.
But don't let the shittiness of a gig economy in the US, EU, and other prosperous areas overshadow the value they have in allowing poor areas of the world an instant economic advantage. The Internet has allowed us a way to provide aid without creating beggers, to create a cash flow where value is moving in the both directions, and to allow for economic success in developing nations without sweatshops and mines, without employers siphoning off most of the wealth, or warlords stealing the crops.
Five dollars for an hour of work is shitty here, but when five dollars can be a days wage (or a weeks) in many places it's amazing. If they can get Internet access (and that's a big if...) then it opens up a huge economic opportunity for many of the poorest nations. This kind of opportunity is why Google projects to get the Internet out to rural Africa, India, and South America are so vital.
So yes, it sucks for us here. It should be fought. But the idea itself has merit, it's just where it's being applied that is inappropriate.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
I've been one for three decades now. Self-employed is, and always has been, a recipe for way more work. The benefit, of course, is way more control; you're expected to translate that control into less work over time -- either by shifting the type of work, or by proceduralizing the efforts involved.
A gig, as is being discussed, doesn't provide any control benefits. A lyft driver can't outsource the driving, can't build the better car, and can't make better routes. Similarly, most of the other gigs are already fully proceduralized, and hence are already so commodity-based, that there is no legitimate benefits for improvement. This results in the up-front huge efforts similar to any self-employment, but without any opportunity to reap the benefits of that extra work.
Secondly, and this is probably the bigger deal, most of these gig-workers aren't entrepreneurs. Instead, they are would-be-factory-workers, lured by more-and-flexible hours, unable to see what they've lost as a result. Typical wage-earners usually work full weeks, for reasonable pay, with reasonable hours and reasonable benefits, but dream of "more hours" and "more flexibility". These gigs offer both of those, but don't translate into "more money".
But that's always been the farce of "the american dream". You can come to america, and you have every opportunity to make-it-big. You can be the next mcjagger. Of course, so can everyone else, so you aren't at all likely to be. What percentage of garage-bands become the rolling stones? You're much more likely to fizzle -- on the order of a 100 to 1. Think about it. 300 million americans, 1% make it big, 297 million don't -- and 200 million don't even come close, with 100 million failing miserably.
You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. "Equity". Look it up.
OP clearly framed his entire comment with "The real key is not to get paid more for your job, but to reduce your debt."
The OP also says "Unless you have a plan to make it profitable, don't go to university; don't buy that new car; don't purchase things on credit. Keep debts away..."
I mean, FUCK. How can you not see it?!
Pay peanuts, get code monkeys.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Seems Mary's story is about shitty doctors or clueless parents. Either the doctor did not tell her or learned nothing about being pregnant understand that a due date is just a guesstimate. A good doctor will tell you anytime within 4 weeks of the due date is considered "full term" and the baby can arrive at any time up to the date and 1 - 2 weeks past (before an induction). Nothing was mentioned about her being a down on her luck person that was forced to scrape every penny to survive, I'll lean toward clueless parent with the author chasing a convenient narrative to fit a story.
...and gets shot down by drones while 1% hide in bunkers for years until it's over
Seriously. What is wrong with you people?
You are just agreeing with OP.
It's a choice between community and individuals.
With one statement, you show yourself the fool, utterly lacking in understanding of what individualism is about, or the power of what it can do - not for a person, but for the COMMUNITY.
Individualism is not "I got mine". At the heart it is, if possible do not be a burden to others, because you have taken care of yourself as best you can. If you are personally in good shape then it makes it far easier to help others.
Your philosophy is the truest form of selfishness because it encourages members to leech off others with no return. Individualism is the simple common sense of "put your oxygen mask on before assisting others". Is that wrong?
Individualism is making sure that AS MANY members of the community are in a position to help others as possible, so that when the need arises people can get help instead of everyone assuming "the community" is helping someone while they freeze to death in a ditch.
Individualism is about looking out for other individuals, because a little assistance early heads off major and possibly impossible assistance later.
Americans have to get over their fear of socialism
Yeah, no reason to be afraid of a philosophy that has killed hundreds of millions, sometimes brutally and sometimes through sheer indifference.
Go visit Cuba or some former communist nations to see just how much communism should not be feared.
P.S. What is the deal with you communists forcing Trump into office? What did you think you'd get out of that anyway?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Argentina got in trouble larger for relying on a single product: oil. This mistake can happen in capitalism also, as the Irish potato famine showed. If anything, Adam Smith's "comparative advantage" encourages one to put too many eggs in one basket.
Greece got in trouble for overspending on lots of different things, including the Olympics. Politicians both left and right over-spend. Bush and Reagan were yuuuge spenders (and during non-slumps). I believe our military is too bloated, yet GOP wants to bloat it more.
I'm for a balanced budget amendment as long as it allows for stimuluses during slumps or emergencies. But that's nothing to do with capitalism versus socialism.
Table-ized A.I.
because the really, really, really hate being told what to do by a boss. The one I know lives in a dilapidated trailer without a roof (seriously, he couldn't afford to fix it so he put a tarp over it) in the middle of nowhere. Their hatred of bosses borders on mental illness and they trade just about everything else in life to avoid it. Most of them had/have failed businesses. There's enough of them you can make good money taking advantage of them. Sorta like how we've got all those scams targeting old people with failing mental facilities. For a brief period of time after 1940 society was actively trying to protect folks like that. Didn't take much to get us to turn on them...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
How much can these people really expect to make in these "gigs". I've seen the dramatically hyperbolic "success" stories of Uber drivers making "fortunes", but let's be real.
What's the realistic average for an Uber/Lyft driver?
Fiverr? Who is that stupid?
What is wrong with your brain?
Cable co's / fedex / others have misclassified 1099's for years before this gig work thing really got started. The thing is that the places like home joy and others want the control of a W2 but not the cost of them and hell with a 1099 we can even make money by forcing them to buy there tools and other stuff from us!
Is a good indicator some shenanigans are going on.
...
So tell me what you really think
I feel I never have enough gigs. I need more gigs and better paying gigs. I will never be a user of fiverr, because it doesn't align with my financial goals.
I've been hearing lazy political thinking on this point for, well, forever.
"Europe is coming apart at the seams! Socialism ruins everything and must be repudiated in all forms and down to the smallest molecule! America is the only salvation!"
Get with the program. Europe is one of the best places in the world to live. They even managed to solve the centuries-old factionalist thinking that led to war, over and over. The problems Europe faces today are neither more nor less important that the problems America faces. Those problems have (in general) little to do with Socialism and nothing to do with Communism. Yet lazy Americans like to claim, OMG, Marine Le Pen, she exists because of Socialism!!!
America continually dismisses Europe and thereby misses the point, endlessly. It's merely a part of a larger American blind spot. America is Great, The Best, Wonderful, Exceptional. No one else matters, needs to be paid any mind, or has accomplished anything of note. Even if they did, those accomplishments happened in ancient history and are irrelevant today. Now let's return to our Reality TV.
It's not that America is not great because it is. However Europe is great too and yet lazy political thinking keeps suggesting that Europe has nothing, is nothing, and will be in ruins "any day now". Because Socialism!
It's so absurd. If you look at 10k years ago humans probably had an 18 hour a day, 365 days a year "workday" just to survive. 200 years ago, the average person probably needed to work 90 hours a week to have a lifestyle equivalent to a lower (but not lowest) class Indian or Chinese person.
And now people bitch and whine and moan because people who live like kings relative to most of humanity's history have to get by with only enough income to eat, have shelter, and have modern conveniences and entertainment. Oh, the fucking humanity.
The worst are the "but muh wage slaves!!!" people and the "work life balance!" assholes. Oh noes, you have to work in order to get other people to work for you (which is all money really is, a proxy for other people's labor)?!?!! Poor fucking babies.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we should have anarchy and poor farms and shit like that. I believe in a reasonable welfare state, but jesus christ enough whining about needing to work to live like a king vs. merely a lucky American.
Found the Stalinist/communist.
Dear Comrade,
in the utopia that is our communism we have eradicated the evil that is choice-ism. Therefore everyone here has :
1. Shit sandwich
Enjoy, or else.
Actually, pre-agriculture, they didn't. Of course, they likely died of disease at a relatively young age.
right here.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
and declared it pretty much inevitable. Hell, by today's standard's he'd be a bomb-throwing leftist.
You're living in a dream world if you think you'll ever see the world of small communities you're talking about. You can't have it because the ruling class doesn't want it. You have to bend or break the ruling class to your whim with the shear weight of numbers that is the working class. That's what the laws, regulation and wealth redistribution of socialism does. You have to be equally careful that the powerful apperatus you built to do that doesn't get turned against you.
Government is a tool. A powerful, and dangerous tool. Like fire, guns, electricity or any of our other major discoveries you don't just give up on it because it's dangerous. You can't. If you leave a tool like that lying around unattended somebody else is gonna pick you up and brain ya with it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Actually, disease might be a lesser issue.
First, many diseases originate from animals, including cattle and swine. This is why the Native Americans couldn't handle the diseases Europeans brought over. Obviously, there was less contact with animals before agriculture.
Second, pre-agriculture humans were less stationary. Had to move around to hunt/gather. This meant humans had more exercise and thus healthier, plus they didn't stay in one place for long for germs to fester and grow.
Third, smaller population. Agriculture is great because it produced a lot of food to support a larger population. The flip side of large population means diseases can spread easier.
A government tries to conflate itself with a society—with a culture: Ask not what your country (read: government) can do for you, but what you can do for your country (read: government).
How about we start getting contracts for our relationship with the government, so that we, too, have a binding agreement that can be followed; I think people would quickly realize this fact: There is no such thing as a social contract; there is only a social dictate.
I want to know what percentage of Fiverr's workforce are actually dying?
Given the jobs I've seen - this could be people who have a passion about something - and offer these services on the side, while maintaining a 'day job' that really pays the bills. They might have been doing this for nothing before because they love it - and now they can recoup some costs/ make some 'mad money' along the way.
We need more information to be able to understand if the article is realistic or hyperbole.
White men hate men marrying female children because that gives advantage to men.
White men are retarded.
What do you expect from them?
They just want to sacrifice for their master. Born serfs.
This article is spot on. I have long said the country is great except for one major flaw: TOO MUCH WORK ETHIC! And this new generation has just gotten so much work. I try to tell these millennials there is more to life than work work work. But they don't listen! All they want to do is select the most profitable college major and work 120+ hour weeks in an office until they die. This massive work ethic is really making the rest of us look terrible, not to mention drastically increasing the effective labor supply, this depressing wages.
So, millennials, I know all you want to do is work harder than your parents ever did, but take a breather, would ya?! I need to catch up to you.
And while there is plenty of blame for "the system", I would not say that the people are much better. It is a mixture of envy, hubris and a greed that makes the gig economy so attractive to many people: they think that professionals just rake in the money (uber driver trying to be a rich cabby), they overestimate themselves and their business skills, and they fail to account for the operating expenses and costs of providing a service.
In the past, you often have to satisfy a certain standard to run a business or provide services, and that standard would require formal teaching in your subject area and in business. Now we have "deregulated" the market, and everybody can do everything, including working themselves into the ground. It turns out that "the freedom to work yourself into the ground" is not that great after all. As I said, hubris is part of it.
That said, as is usually the case, there is some truth in the hyperbole. In particular, the gig-economy presumes that people are actually fiscally self-aware enough to understand that making a living means selling your time, and if you don't want to have to sell your time till the day you have no time left to sell (as in, you are dead), you'd better be banking some income today so you can become a capitalist tomorrow (where a capitalist sells the time and values of assets they own, their capital, aka, "retired" from the simple business of selling time).
So, the gig-economy assumes people are fiscally self-aware, but experience suggests that many people grossly underestimate the costs of maintenance, operating costs, etc as they drive their assets around town trying to make money for today, but not necessarily making money for the future.
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
Sounds like it was written by a communist who hates all free enterprise! 8-P
No one wants to work themselves to death. But if someone wanted to, do you have a right to force them not to? That way truly lies slavery!
Save other people if they give you their permission, but don't take away their right to refuse.
Government regulation of large companies is necessary, as a balance of their power (in both directions). But regulation of people's life choices is extreamly dangerous.
Sometimes you don't have the right to "fix things". ;-)
"At the root of this is the American obsession with self-reliance, which makes it more acceptable to applaud an individual for working himself to death than to argue that an individual working himself to death is evidence of a flawed economic system. "
Well, yes, but even more to the point is that these people AREN'T working for themselves. We have a family landscaping and gardening business, and we work ALL the time. But we aren't doing the work to make someone else rich. The gig economy is truly the worst of both worlds.