...most didn't know about the Intel ME chip. A designated onboard black-box chip for transcriptions, that doesn't rely on an a server, would seriously benefit tech corps
Would it really be the first time we were lied to/surveilled?
When will we stop giving the hyper-growth oriented Silicon Valley startup world the benefit of the doubt?
> Not sure how this applies to the current conversation though
You mentioned you disagreed with all of the OP's substantial arguments, and then you made a few claims without any sources to back it up. I am using your idea of 'paternalistic protection' to challenge a commonly held idea which posits that the current neoliberal regulations are somehow neutral. Your statement that the big tech gig-worker platforms provide likeable or meaningful jobs is very misguided and naive imo.
To address one of your statements:
> Gig economy workers have overwhelmingly spoken that they like this work, by continuing to sign up for it in massive numbers.
“Uber is lauded as an exemplary ‘platform’. When it arrives in a target city, it launches a packaged recruiting programme for drivers, usually offering incentives. Then it undercuts official taxi fares by operating a flexible, demand-based fare scheme; this lowers fares at times of slack demand and raises them when demand is strong so as to attract more drivers. Once established, Uber uses drivers to offer other services. Just as Google uses search-related advertising to generate income with which it enters other businesses, so Uber’s plan is to offer ‘transportation as reliable as running water, everywhere for everyone’.9
Thus it has branched out into delivery services, providing lunch delivery, cycle courier services and deliveries of household supplies in various US cities. It reaches out to retailers as well, offering same-day deliveries. While others such as Postmates and Shyp are in the same space, Uber has greater scale and financial clout. It can raise cash quickly from new city operations and has been able to tap investors for huge sums – more than $9 billion by the end of 2015 – with which to intimidate competitors.
This has enabled Uber to finance operational losses as it expands into new markets by undercutting actual and potential rivals. According to leaked documents the company prepared for investors, operational losses reached a staggering $1 billion in the first half of 2015.10 Yet Uber more than doubled its cash holdings to over $4 billion, giving it a handy war chest for future expansion.
Private equity financing enables Uber to squash competition through predatory pricing, extracting greater rents as its near-monopoly strengthens. Other start-ups are also gaining near-monopoly positions with the help of venture capital. They are not competing in free markets.
The USA has led the way. Paradoxically, private investors and private companies, as opposed to publicly listed companies, were boosted by the US Jobs Act of 2012 (Jumpstart Our Businesses), which was supposed to encourage firms to go public and list on Wall Street. President Obama said at the time that public companies were desirable because they expanded more quickly, created more jobs and operated with ‘greater oversight and greater transparency’. But, whereas previously private firms were required to publish detailed financial information once they had over 500 shareholders, the Act increased that to 2,000. As a result, many more companies can opt to stay private so as to keep control in the hands of a restricted group and avoid public scrutiny of their dealings.
The capital for digital platforms, even the largest of which have chosen to remain private, comes from a narrow circle of investors from mutual funds, private equity firms, hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds. It is a market reserved for the elite and plutocracy, a sort of closet capitalism. Making it even more so, investors often demand assurances that the company will indemnify them if it goes public at a lower valuation. This ‘ratchet’ arrangement grants them extra shares to compensate for any shortfall. They thereby receive a free insurance against risk, a special form of rent.”
[...]
“In the first round of this predatory model, the taskers (in this case drivers) may be among the beneficiaries, receiving loyalty premiums. But this is likely to be short-lived once a platform has established monopoly control of the market (or possibly oligopoly control by several platforms that tacitly agree to divvy up the market). The earnings of Uber drivers have already been cut in cities where the company is successfully established.”
- Guy Standing, The Corruption of Capitalism: Why rentiers thrive and work does not pay
> it ultimately just comes down to paternalistic protection
Isn't this same 'paternalistic protection' the same force Silicon Valley uses to guarantee monopoly rents from 'intellectual property'?
"A globalised intellectual property rights system was immensely strengthened by TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) passed through the World Trade Organisation in 1994, shaped by a few US multinationals, backed by the US and UK governments. This has facilitated the commercialisation, privatisation and colonisation of ideas. Since 1994, the annual filing of patents has more than tripled, with the global stock of patents close to 12 million, each giving monopolistic control of some idea for 20 years or more.
Many patents result from publicly-funded research, diminishing the risk. But TRIPS allows corporations to receive monopolistic income for two decades, or use the patent to block others from producing something. Those claiming to believe in free markets should have opposed the trend, but reveal their class-based ideology by keeping quiet. There is evidence that the patent system hinders economic growth and innovation. It merely increases inequality and rentier capitalism. George Osborne, as Chancellor, made it even more blatant with his Patent Box tax break that in practice benefits multinationals coming to Britain if they have patented products, particularly Big Tech and Big Pharma. That tax break merely accentuated the plunder of the intellectual commons." [1]
"The Precariat is the first class in history to be losing acquired rights – cultural, civil, social, economic and political. This is documented in A Precariat Charter. It leads to the most crucial feature. Those in it are reduced to being supplicants. The Latin root of precariousness is “to obtain by prayer”. The precariat must ask for favours, for charity, to show obsequiousness, to plead with figures of authority. It is degrading and stigmatizing." [1]
> The existence of thousands of uber drivers -- who in my experience, have all been quite reasonable, nice people -- seem to directly contradict your claim that it does not pay a 'reasonable wage'. Clearly, it does for those invested parties.
Maybe we can leave it up to the academic researchers and labor rights organizations? Why do you make a claim and link to no sources, please could you provide your sources?
> 'Ridesharing' (Which is a hilarious term for the simple fact that the ride is not being shared, the driver is not intending to go to your favorite bar. ) isn't a 21st century situation or solution.
Great summary for this scary situation.
> I see this as an attempt to make the Gig Economy pay all workers fairly in addition to healthcare costs and to put the onus on the company rather than their taxes.
There is a new word for this class of gig workers doing precarious labor that I've started using: the Precariat.
"In sociology and economics, the precariat (/prɪˈkɛəriət/) is a neologism for a social class formed by people suffering from precarity, which is a condition of existence without predictability or security, affecting material or psychological welfare. The term is a portmanteau obtained by merging precarious with proletariat.[1] Unlike the proletariat class of industrial workers in the 20th century who lacked their own means of production and hence sold their labour to live, members of the precariat are only partially involved in labour and must undertake extensive "unremunerated activities that are essential if they are to retain access to jobs and to decent earnings".
Classic examples of such unpaid activities include continually having to search for work (including preparing for and attending job interviews), as well as being expected to be perpetually responsive to calls for "gig" work (yet without being paid an actual wage for being "on call"). The hallmark of the precariat class is the condition of lack of job security, including intermittent employment or underemployment and the resultant precarious existence.[2] The emergence of this class has been ascribed to the entrenchment of neoliberal capitalism.[3][4]"
[..]
"The British economist Guy Standing has analysed the precariat as a new emerging social class in work done for the think tank Policy Network and the World Economic Forum.[6] In his 2014 book entitled A Precariat Charter he argued that all citizens have a right to socially inherited wealth.[8][9] The latest in the series is titled The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class[2][10] where he proposed basic income as a solution for addressing the problem.
The analysis of the results of the Great British Class Survey of 2013, a collaboration between the BBC and researchers from several UK universities, contended there is a new model of class structure consisting of seven classes, ranging from the Elite at the top to the Precariat at the bottom.[11] The Precariat class was envisaged as "the most deprived British class of all with low levels of economic, cultural and social capital." This was contrasted with "the Technical Middle Class" in Great Britain in that instead of having disposable income but no interests, people of the new Precariat Class have all sorts of potential activities they like to engage in but cannot do any of them because they have no money, insecure lives, and are usually trapped in old industrial parts of the country.
The precariat class has been emerging in societies such as Japan, where it includes over 2 million so-called "freeters".[12]"
I hear you brother/sister. I honestly believe, the people with these arguments have never experienced any hardships - which mean they can't understand the ruthlessness of their arguments. So ingrained are they in the Cultural Hegemony of Western civilization. I recently watched 'Owned: A Tale Of Two Americas', which is a great documentary on the US's racist housing policies.
> I've determined that the things I cannot change are human nature
This line of argument scares me, because we are so unaware of how human made our problems are.
"Money is like an iron ring we've put through our noses. We've forgotten that we designed it, and it's now leading us around. I think it's time to figure out where we want to go - in my opinion toward sustainability and community - and then design a money system that gets us there."
"...there are two ways of making money. The first is what most of us do: work. That means tapping into our knowledge and know-how (our “human capital” in economic terms) to create something new, whether that’s a takeout app, a wedding cake, a stylish updo, or a perfectly poured pint. To work is to create. Ergo, to work is to create new wealth.
But there is also a second way to make money. That’s the rentier way: by leveraging control over something that already exists, such as land, knowledge, or money, to increase your wealth. You produce nothing, yet profit nonetheless. By definition, the rentier makes his living at others’ expense, using his power to claim economic benefit.
For those who know their history, the term “rentier” conjures associations with heirs to estates, such as the 19th century’s large class of useless rentiers, well-described by the French economist Thomas Piketty. These days, that class is making a comeback. (Ironically, however, conservative politicians adamantly defend the rentier’s right to lounge around, deeming inheritance tax to be the height of unfairness.) But there are also other ways of rent-seeking. From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, from big pharma to the lobby machines in Washington and Westminster, zoom in and you’ll see rentiers everywhere."
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Ceptr.org - the most promising attempt I've seen who are trying to better make visible, and then democratize and distribute, the rents.
Would it really be the first time we were lied to/surveilled?
When will we stop giving the hyper-growth oriented Silicon Valley startup world the benefit of the doubt?