The grandparent deserves a good rebuttal, and I don't think this is very good. This comment is effectively saying that the gig worker is in fact not a free agent by using analogies like slavery and indentured servitude, but these analogies don't map well to the gig worker's economic position.
I'm going to second the GP's request for a convincing argument, as I've also yet to see one.
I didn’t read this as a rebuttal, it’s pointing out the logical fallacies in the structure of the GP’s argument, so criticising it for not offering a rebuttal is slightly missing the point. They certainly aren’t saying that Uber drivers are in an identical situation to slaves.
It's asserting there are logical fallacies, by calling the arguments "shallow", "straw man", and bemoaning how talk like this is dragging down HN quality.
But I didn't see any pointing out of logical fallacies among the condescension.
But there aren't any fallacies in the GP's argument. And it is quite directly making an absurd and unsupportable statement regarding indentured servitude for a job opportunity that is undeniably no strings attached.
The indentured servitude statement is apt: the GP implies that willful entrance into a contract of employment is by virtue of this willfulness incapable of being exploitative. But indentured servitude is entered into in the same manner, and few would deny the exploitative nature of indentured servitude.
Do you mean gig workers enter into no contract, or indentured servants entered into no contract, or something else?
Indentured Servitude: ‘Indentured servitude is a form of labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. The contract, called an "indenture", may be entered voluntarily for eventual compensation or debt repayment, or it may be imposed as a judicial punishment.’
Obviously I mean there's no contract demanding ongoing work performance from Uber drivers. Drivers can stop at any time. The only terms stipulate how they can work and under what terms, should they choose to do so.
It is the polar opposite of an arrangement which demands continuing performance. It's even less restrictive than a typical employer-employee relationship.
> It's even less restrictive than a typical employer-employee relationship.
Do you know why I still use taxi's over uber?
Because when I hop in a taxi and tell the driver I'll be inside for a few minutes but I'd like a ride back and they can just keep the meter running, they give me a thumbs up and do exactly that.
When I do this for an uber driver they tell me they're not _ALLOWED_ to do that and if I need a ride back I must call another uber and wait.
And then I hear these companies talk about how these uber drivers really and truly have freedom to do what they want and they're totally not taking advantage of the tax code and pushing all the risk onto the uber driver (wear and tear on the vehicle, insurance, increased risk of car wrecks, etc)!
Yeah, I call bullshit. They're starting to go after these companies because they take advantage of people who are taking long term risk for short term gain (money now vs repairs on the vehicle later). You know how Taxi companies do it? If you drive your own vehicle they get a small % of the fare for the dispatch service. If you don't want to drive your vehicle you can drive theirs and they take a larger % of the fare, but you aren't risking your own vehicle.
Now tell me again how uber is somehow better for their workers?
I refuse to use uber because Taxi drivers are human, uber drivers are an extension of ubers body.
GGP: How is it exploitative if the worker willfully enters into the contract?
GP: But indentured servants enter willfully into their contracts, and indentured servitude is exploitative. So how is the willful nature of gig work relevant to the question of whether it is exploitative?
You: GP has equated gig work with indentured servitude, and they are in no way comparable, because gig workers can quit whenever they choose.
Me: GP did not equate indentured servitude and gig work, they used indentured servitude as a tool to show the flawed reasoning of GGP.
You: Gig work is nothing like indentured servitude, because gig workers can quit whenever they want, and indentured servants can’t.
I see that you're making the same error, equating all contracts in ways that aren't reasonable.
When I buy a stick of gum I'm also entering into a contract (of sale). It would be disingenuous and dishonest of me to claim that the 7-11 clerk is exploiting me in ways similar to indentured servitude (or I, him) simply because both scenarios involve a contract.
The relevant aspect is whether the contract binds someone such that they cannot escape. Uber does not do this, period. To suggest otherwise is absurd.
What you're missing is that there's a limit to what contracts can legally do.
I can certainly enter into a legal contract that requires someone to eat my feces for breakfast, but I bet you if I tried to enforce such a contract I'd be told the law won't do it.
This here is why the idea of being able to walk away from a contract doesn't make the contract valid or legal, nor does it prevent the contract from being exploitative.
Find another reason why it's not exploitative, because them being able to legally walk away from it isn't enough. Not even the LAW uses such a lax definition.
There is a very small chance that the reason it’s difficult to understand is that you’re suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning, a stroke, or some other medical issue, so to the extent that you can easily eliminate those as possibilities, you should.
> People are not agents of free will, and any sub-utopic framework they have to participate in is immoral?
This is so fallacious that it almost doesn't parse as English (largely imo because it's been fluffed up to hide the utterly commonplace "so you're saying everything is wrong unless it's perfect?" strawman.)
It's intended to be a steelman and is a rephrasing of an argument said to me in the past; you could dig it up in my comment history from a previous uber discussion should you be so inclined.
Regardless, feel free to ignore my strawman and tell me the real argument.
The real argument is that gig employers have found a way to skirt regulations protecting “real” employees. And that the people who suffer from this are primarily in an economic position such that they don’t have much of a choice but to accept those conditions.
That doesn’t mean “any sub-utopic framework they have to participate in is immoral”, it just means this particular one is.
The only change is that Uber grew the market and popularized hiring cars, and the state of California decided to start attacking its own tech industry.
There's a lot of hypocrisy here. If the state truly had worker's interests at heart it would be looking at the farming industry, not ridesharing.
I think maybe you've misunderstood steelmanning. It's not about taking an argument to the absolute extreme, it's about constructing the most convincing and effective form of the argument.
Gig work normalizes the loss of the overall labor protections / amenities that were wrought so hard during the 19th and 20th century.
Here in The Netherlands flexible labor and temporary rental contracts were introduced last decade, they were meant to increase the fluidity of both markets and take up a small amount of overall contracts, but have started to dominate both of them. Being on either basically erodes any certainty you could have had as a foundation to build your life on.
Gig work is even worse than flexible contracts. Not only can you be ditched at any moment, in many ways you are considered self-employed which strips you of so many protections normally afforded to you. And whereas self-employed software developers (read: freelancers) are in an extremely powerful economic position, the usual gig worker has almost zero leverage. ‘Nuff said.
I don't think the GP does deserve a good rebuttal tbh, it's a pretty weak argument that I have a hard time believing someone could really think. The argument is, because these people "willingly" took the job, they cannot be being taken advantage of? I don't understand why people think "free will" means you cannot be taken advantage of. People can have both free will, and real economic / physical / legal constraints in my life that people could take advantage of if they are in a position to do so. It happens every single day all over the world.
I'll take a stab at a strong argument for gig workers being taken advantage of. I don't think it describes _every single_ gig worker, but I'm sure there are some for whom it's true.
There are individuals in precarious economic positions. They need income to survive, they are living one week to the next (meaning they pay rent weekly, and have no excess money at the end of the week). They need to provide for their families, maybe send money home to their families in another country because they are immigrants. Stuff like that. You can talk to them yourself, ride a cab in New York and ask the driver about his life, these stories are pretty common.
Let's say they have limited skills. But they have a body. They can move around, drive a car, or maybe just ride an e-Bike. They could maybe drive a cab, but driving a cab costs you a a flat fee per month to rent the medallion, no matter what you make. I believe you need some upfront capital to get started. So they sign up for Uber Eats / DoorDash / Grubhub / pick your delivery app.
The pay on DoorDash is very low, because consumers won't pay that much for food delivery. Out of that, the restaurant has to get paid, DoorDash has to get paid, and the gig worker has to get paid. Who has the least amount of bargaining power in this situation? The restaurant has other sources of income, so they can leave if they aren't happy with the cut. The platform obviously sets the terms, and there's a lot of people in precarious economic positions who need money. So the gig worker has the least amount of bargaining power. So he gets a pretty low pay. He lives in a one-room apartment with like, 8 other gig workers who all do delivery for Doordash, Grubhub, Uber Eats etc. (I'm not making this up, it's pretty common) and works 7 days a week. No time for learning some new skill, and since the wages are subsistence level, no ability to save and eventually move on to better work.
So essentially, they need money to survive, the money they get from delivery apps gives them that, but no more. They would certainly prefer to do something else, but have no other skills. So these apps run on the labor of people in precarious economic positions with no better options. Of course he has "free will", but I'm curios what economic alternatives you think are on offer that make that free will a meaningful, and not simply philosophical, concept.
Perhaps the phrase "taken advantage of" triggers some people. But it doesn't seem that controversial to me. The business works because there are people who need to work a job for very low pay. I don't think they love riding around picking up bags of food for $3-$5 each.
Here's a thread on the DoorDash Reddit, I found it by scrolling down the front page, it's not old.
> I couldn’t agree more. The only reason I’m doing doordash currently is out of desperation. Plus, it allows me some much needed flexibility which is crucial given some difficulties in my personal life.
I dunno what you consider that. But it's not like, an arrangement in which the worker seems to opting into this because they think it's a good deal out of their plethora of options. They do it because they are, in their words, desperate.
Edit: I'm not saying gig companies are evil or something, or even predatory. It's unclear to me if they have sound unit economics, but that doesn't make them evil. The business just doesn't work without low delivery wages.
> There are individuals in precarious economic positions.
This is true across all income classes, because the classes are a distribution. While I agree that those in "precarious" positions may be concentrated in the gig economy for the reasons you suggested, this argument is an insufficient rebuttal.
> The pay on DoorDash is very low, because consumers won't pay that much for food delivery.
OK, so costs go up, consumers don't participate in the market, and the gig economy collapses. Are we in a better or worse position now?
> Here's a thread on the DoorDash Reddit
Do these individuals think the picture would be more rosey if they didn't even have this work for income?
> This is true across all income classes, because the classes are a distribution. While I agree that those in "precarious" positions may be concentrated in the gig economy for the reasons you suggested, this argument is an insufficient rebuttal.
That wasn't the entire rebuttal. But people in other income classes don't have anything to do with DoorDash. People in other income classes can be taken advantage of too (I believe there's a thread about SBF buying crypto companies on the cheap as they are on the brink of collapse). Another example might be loan sharking.
> OK, so costs go up, consumers don't participate in the market, and the gig economy collapses. Are we in a better or worse position now?
I believe this is what's called a false dichotomy. But I agree with you it's better to work on DoorDash than have no work and no money at all, if that's what you're offering up as an alternative. The fact that you acknowledge that is the only other alternative is actually a point in favor of it being "taking advantage".
> Do these individuals think the picture would be more rosey if they didn't even have this work for income?
> I believe this is what's called a false dichotomy.
i'm interested in how this is false. if the person could have worked for higher wages before the gig economy, then surely they would not need to rely on the this economy to exist. but those who are unemployed or underemployed clearly see the flexibility as an acceptable compromise for either lack of better skills (and time/money needed to acquire them) or no work at all.
i think the people who can be taken advantage of are those who cannot improve their situation (health issues, mentally or physically impaired, undocumented immigrants, elderly who cannot easily learn new skills or commute to a farther work location), but this is not gig workers as a whole.
people have a habit of complaining that the skills they refuse to advance dont pay much (fast food workers, coal miners). it's always the employer not paying enough, not the fact that someone treats a cashier position as a career rather than a temp job. my parents delivered pizza when we moved to the US in 1991 with $500 to their name. needless to say, they didnt deliver pizza for long despite living in a motel with two kids to raise and nearly non-existent english.
I meant it's false in that it implies there are no other possible solutions that could alleviate this problem.
But if it's not false, and it truly is their least bad option they are choosing over destitution, I would think that's a strong argument for it being "taking advantage". I guess I don't follow the logic of, essentially, "yes I admit this is a terrible job, but your alternative is nothing / starvation, so I'm not taking advantage!"
> i'm interested in how this is false. if the person could have worked for higher wages before the gig economy, then surely they would not need to rely on the this economy to exist
Companies like Uber, Doordash etc. are price dumping because they have unlimited investor money. Their competitors cannot compete, and go out of business. As a result you have a choice of either starving to death or working for these companies.
> it's always the employer not paying enough, not the fact that someone treats a cashier position as a career
A person working as a cashier has a right to a decent living. This has nothing to do with "career".
> A person working as a cashier has a right to a decent living. This has nothing to do with "career".
i think people have a right to food, clean water, shelter, and healthcare. regardless of their employment status. no one should be homeless. but 'decent' is an odd word. should a cashier have a right to 'decently' raise/feed/house 6 kids? i'm not sure. should a cashier have a right to a decent living in the most expensive city in the world? that's a tough one; all cities need cashiers. probably they should be able to afford to rent a studio apt at least, that's not a 60min commute.
i dont know what the number should be. but when it comes to supporting dependents, i would say that we as a society do not have an obligation to make every job - no matter how trivial/approachable/unnecessary - sufficient for the task.
the flip side of this is, of course, should every job be subsidized to support any lifestyle? i'm guessing that the answer is "no". so there is in fact a line to be drawn.
shoe repair doesnt pay what it used to a century ago, but somone can definitely start a business doing it in 2022, and then discover that it's a job that cannot sustain a family of 4. so the person will need to seek greener pastures. how is the gig or unskilled labor situation any different? if it doesnt pay enough to support dependents, then you have to do something else.
i think it's reasonable to say every job should support one person, but more than this should require more than minimum effort.
some of the jobs you listed can pay pretty well (after some time), actually. but bagging groceries at a supermarket is not one of them.
> should every job be subsidized to support any lifestyle
What do you mean by subsidize? You don't "subsidize jobs". You provide a living wage.
What do you mean by "this lifestyle"? It's not a "lifestyle" to have a decent life.
> how is the gig or unskilled labor situation any different
Because, as it was already pointed to you repeatedly, there might not be a choice of greener pastures. Besides this, why do you insist that a person working 8 hours in the hell that is fast food industry isn't worthy of having a decent life outside work? Who is worthy then? You? Why? Where do you draw the line?
I mean, you probably wouldn't last more than a few days in most "unskilled labor" jobs (which actually require quite a lot of skill). But sure, do tell me how you're better.
> i think the people who can be taken advantage of are those who cannot improve their situation
If all the large tech companies conspired to halve wages by agreeing not to hire each other’s employees, and succeeded, would you consider those workers affected to have been taken advantage of?
halving wages by itself, im not sure. if apple decided to take an 80% cut of app sales in their walled garden and made it unprofitable to develop apps there for indie developers, would they be liable for some people not being able to make a living off their platform? do we even know that tech companies are not taking advantage with current wages. apple makes $400k profit per employee, etc.
these gig economies owe their entire existence as a direct result of being mediated as walled gardens. if uber's app vanished tomorrow, so would millions of gig jobs.
but not hiring each other's workers, yes. and in general, price fixing and anti-colluding laws should be enforced to ensure a competative market.
If working for DoorDash is their best available option, I'm inclined to point the finger at every other company first. Why is it that DoorDash and the other Gig economy companies are offering the best available work option for so many? Where are the rest of the companies and the government? I've never really understood blaming the best available option for the lack of alternatives. There are also enough gig economy companies that if one of them was especially bad then workers could easily switch to the competitor.
You're correct that blaming the delivery apps is looking in the wrong place. If the government doesn't want people in precarious employment they should provide a social safety net. Then if the gig jobs were so bad, they would have no workers and would cease to exist. Otherwise, they must be ok.
> There are also enough gig economy companies that if one of them was especially bad then workers could easily switch to the competitor.
And if they're all the same since they all run the exact same business in the exact same markets?
> And if they're all the same since they all run the exact same business in the exact same markets?
The FTC says they're going to take a look to see if there is any collusion. There's a reason those laws are on the books and real harm to workers could happen if they were colluding. It seems like these gig economy companies are spending a lot of time and effort to entice workers from other gig economy companies to join them, so maybe it's actually working correctly already.
Every person “above” these people in the economic hierarchy benefit from their dire situation, and there is very little incentive to change that structure.
“I’ll do whatever I can to help you from suffering from me being on your back, except getting off your back.”
> I dunno what you consider that. But it's not like, an arrangement in which the worker seems to opting into this because they think it's a good deal out of their plethora of options. They do it because they are, in their words, desperate.
and is his situation better if he cannot do doordash?
or to rephrase it. suppose I dont like mowing my lawn, but I dont want to pay what it costs for a professional lawn care service to do it. For the sake of argument, say the lawn care service charges $200, but I would only pay $20.
A desperate guy comes by, needs $10 for a mcdonalds meal or he goes hungry, he also needs $1000 to save towards getting an apartment. and i say "give you 20 bucks to mow my lawn", he figures he kinda has no choice, he does it "out of desperation", I "take advantage of him".
now suppose everyone in town has same policy as me, and its through lawndash.
Is the desperate guy worse off? how exactly are things better if i said "well.. I would pay you $20, but well... it almost seem cruel not to pay $200, so im gonna pass on that. Good luck getting a bite to eat though!" ?
Do you not understand that if some services are too expensive they will not exist? Would you pay $1000 for a 10 min busride to/from work(each trip)? no.
delivery of food has a certain price, if it is beyond that, it simply will not be done, and the gig workers are no worse off.
seeing as how this is the case, nobody is being taken advantage of. Its a choice, it may not be much, but he can just say "no" and be 100% as well off as if proud communist unions had their way and forbade these jobs.
The question isn't whether he's worse off or not. I don't know why you're moving the goalposts. It seems obvious that if you are presented with only two choices, one between $3 an hour and one between $0 and hour, that $3 an hour is better. The post is about whether they are being taken advantage of.
> Do you not understand that if some services are too expensive they will not exist?
No please explain more to me about how the fundamentals of economics and business work.
I suspect you would not make this argument if the prospective employee were a four year old child and the service to be rendered was sweeping your chimney. But according to what principle do you distinguish the two cases?
I would also rather a 4 year old have $20 for working than starving (in some fictional scenario where those are the two options). Given such an option the only reason I would refuse the child the work would be for legal liability reasons.
IMO if a child is so desperate for food that they must work, then pretty much all other options have failed, and they should be allowed to do it.
I can tell you I have had children ask me for work before. When I was struggling to pay for my own family, I had to refuse them work. Instead they simply stole things from me when I wasn't home. That is illegal too, although stealing from people tends to get you put in jail even faster, so I can tell you there seems to be kids in America where this is a real thing it just ends up being the 'work' they do is something illegal since they're not allowed a legal channel to work.
What I would say is that collectively we decide on the rules of society— what conditions are acceptable and so on. And just as we have decided in the US that it is unacceptable to allow four year olds to sweep chimneys, so too can we decide that, in the words of Franklin Roosevelt, “no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.”
Nobody, but that doesn't change anything about whether they're being taken advantage of. In order to be taken advantage of, desperation is a helpful precondition.
So, while everyone is so keen on “helping” them by reforming Uber, what are the policies you propose to not keep them homeless?
Also, what about all of the Uber drivers I meet who I talk to that do just consider this a part time hustle? I’ve met a few grandparents when I travel to Nashville for work for instance who say they love the flexibility of Uber. They said it gives them a little extra travel money.
Another point about the laws that California passed
to “protect freelancers” had other unintended consequences.
Jason Snell, the former editor of MacWorld went independent and now makes a living via podcasting, blogging and the occasional freelance writing gig for Macworld. He said AB-5 was going to make it harder for him to be a freelance writer in California.
I assure you that Jason Snell isn’t a right wing conservative by any stretch of the imagination railing against “big government”.
I didn't propose to reform Uber, and actually didn't make any policy recommendations at all. I engaged on the narrow question of whether some gig workers are being "taken advantage of", which GP claimed was essentially impossible since they have "free will", which I think is a simplistic philosophical / economic argument.
For specific policy, I would probably support something like a federal jobs guarantee, so employment is available to anyone who wants it that sets a wage floor in the labor market. Then those offering gig work will have to compete with that minimum wage floor. But it's really not my area of expertise.
>these analogies don't map well to the gig worker's economic position.
They do though. Gig workers are almost always in a very economically precarious position which Uber takes advantage of in precisely the same way that employers of indentured servitude do.
If the US had full employment and decent unemployment benefits (like it used to) jobs like these wouldnt exist.
> If the US had full employment and decent unemployment benefits (like it used to) jobs like these wouldnt exist.
We don't, though, and that has much deeper causes than the existence of gig companies. A large swath of the American voting public supports political candidates who oppose providing an adequate backstop for people balancing on a knife edge.
I think there's a legitimate market for people who want to earn cash in their spare time on their own schedule and gig companies seem like a good fit for those people, such as people who already have stable employment or cannot work regular hours for one reason or other. Very few industries/companies offer that level of flexibility to their workers.
The issue is that gig companies are also gutting already-existing labor markets by burning investor cash to undercut established competitors, so people who have stable employment find themselves forced into precarity and turn to gig work due to the lack of full time employment in the industry combined with the lack of adequate support in the American social safety net.
“ If the US had full employment and decent unemployment benefits (like it used to) jobs like these wouldn’t exist.”
I think that’s the “utopia” gp is referring to.
All this will do is force people to spend time and money forming corporations so that the uber corporation (for example) can contract directly with another corporation (most likely a one-employee s-corp) which will “employ” the driver. Same economic effect, but just with extra friction and cost for people who in general don’t have a lot of money to spare
>which will “employ” the driver. Same economic effect, but just with extra friction and cost for people who in general don’t have a lot of money to spare
...and all the rights that come with being an employee, for all that they're not so great in the US.
yes, but the “employee rights” will be between the driver and the driver’s own corporation - how does that help the driver if there isn’t enough money coming from the contracting company (eg Uber) to pay for those benefits?
I'm going to second the GP's request for a convincing argument, as I've also yet to see one.