The Dark Side Of Disruption: ‘The Gig Economy’ Is The New Term For Serfdom

[DamianTV]

https://www.technocracy.news/the-gig...m-for-serfdom/

As Free Enterprise and Capitalism crumble at the disruptors of Technocracy, a very real human cost emerges and it isn’t pretty. Technocracy will lead the world back into the dark ages, with serfdom being the norm and property ownership reserved for a very few. ⁃ TN Editor

A 65-year-old New York City cab driver from Queens, Nicanor Ochisor, hanged himself in his garage March 16, saying in a note he left behind that the ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft had made it impossible for him to make a living. It was the fourth suicide by a cab driver in New York in the last four months, including one Feb. 5 in which livery driver Douglas Schifter, 61, killed himself with a shotgun outside City Hall.

“Due to the huge numbers of cars available with desperate drivers trying to feed their families,” wrote Schifter, “they squeeze rates to below operating costs and force professionals like me out of business. They count their money and we are driven down into the streets we drive becoming homeless and hungry. I will not be a slave working for chump change. I would rather be dead.” He said he had been working 100 to 120 hours a week for the past 14 years.

Schifter and Ochisor were two of the millions of victims of the new economy. Corporate capitalism is establishing a neofeudal serfdom in numerous occupations, a condition in which there are no labor laws, no minimum wage, no benefits, no job security and no regulations. Desperate and impoverished workers, forced to endure 16-hour days, are viciously pitted against each other. Uber drivers make about $13.25 an hour. In cities like Detroit this falls to $8.77. Travis Kalanick, the former CEO of Uber and one of the founders, has a net worth of $4.8 billion. Logan Green, the CEO of Lyft, has a net worth of $300 million.

The corporate elites, which have seized control of ruling institutions including the government and destroyed labor unions, are re-establishing the inhumane labor conditions that characterized the 19th and early 20th centuries. When workers at General Motors carried out a 44-day sit-down strike in 1936, many were living in shacks that lacked heating and indoor plumbing; they could be laid off for weeks without compensation, had no medical or retirement benefits and often were fired without explanation. When they turned 40 their employment could be terminated. The average wage was about $900 a year at a time when the government determined that a family of four needed a minimum of $1,600 to live above the poverty line.

The managers at General Motors relentlessly persecuted union organizers. The company spent $839,000 on detective work in 1934 to spy on union organizers and infiltrate union meetings. GM employed the white terrorist group the Black Legion—the police chief of Detroit was suspected of being a member—to threaten and physically assault labor activists and assassinate union leaders including George Marchuk and John Bielak, both shot to death.

The reign of the all-powerful capitalist class has returned with a vengeance. The job conditions of working men and women, thrust backward, will not improve until they regain the militancy and rebuild the popular organizations that seized power from the capitalists. There are some 13,000 licensed cabs in New York City and 40,000 livery or town cars. The drivers should, as farmers did in 2015 with tractors in Paris, shut down the center of the city. And drivers in other cities should do the same. This is the only language our corporate masters understand.

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Full article at link. That means I didnt copy and paste the whole damn article, its a copyright infringement, so click the damn link before telling me that I didnt copy the whole thing. SMH

[gaazn]

The serfdom point is well on. As a customer, I can 1-star all these gig worker ratings, and they can get dropped by whichever platform they are on, whether it be Amazon, Uber, Taskrabbit, etc. There's something wrong with that because I can have a bad day, don't understand the ratings, have unrealistic expectations, or be a total jerk and 1-star everyone for no reason.

[Brian4Liberty]

And the irony is that many of these low wage workers that are complaining also probably support more immigration of people who will compete with them for those jobs.

“Due to the huge numbers of cars available with desperate drivers trying to feed their families,” wrote Schifter, “they squeeze rates to below operating costs and force professionals like me out of business. They count their money and we are driven down into the streets we drive becoming homeless and hungry. I will not be a slave working for chump change. I would rather be dead.” He said he had been working 100 to 120 hours a week for the past 14 years.

Here’s a novel idea, don’t do it if it isn’t profitable. That’s called a hobby or charity, not a job. Get a real job.

[Zippyjuan]

Due to the huge numbers of cars available with desperate drivers trying to feed their families,” wrote Schifter, “they squeeze rates to below operating costs and force professionals like me out of business.

Hmm. Sounds like a free market. Somebody comes along offering to do the same job for less. Maybe we should institute a wage floor to prevent somebody from under-pricing somebody else? Or restrict new actors from entering the market? Licensing? We could sell those to the highest bidder.

re-establishing the inhumane labor conditions that characterized the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The return of child labor up to 19 hours a day, 70 hour work week seven days a week for everyone. No days off. No safety protections. Millions maimed or killed on the job. Sounds just like driving for Uber!

https://www2.needham.k12.ma.us/nhs/c...hildlabor.html

Wages and Hours:

Children as young as six years old during the industrial revolution worked hard hours for little or no pay. Children sometimes worked up to 19 hours a day, with a one-hour total break. This was a little bit on the extreme, but it was not common for children who worked in factories to work 12-14 hours with the same minimal breaks. Not only were these children subject to long hours, but also, they were in horrible conditions. Large, heavy, and dangerous equipment was very common for children to be using or working near. Many accidents occurred injuring or killing children on the job. Not until the Factory Act of 1833 did things improve. Children were paid only a fraction of what an adult would get, and sometimes factory owners would get away with paying them nothing. Orphans were the ones subject to this slave-like labor. The factory owners justified their absence of payroll by saying that they gave the orphans food, shelter, and clothing, all of which were far below par. The children who did get paid were paid very little.

[CaptUSA]

a condition in which there are no labor laws, no minimum wage, no benefits, no job security and no regulations.

Sounds like a damned Utopia, to me!

[devil21]

The illusion of wealth created by infinite imaginary money printing by the Fed is falling and the realities of the laws of nature, such as being responsible for one's own survival, is becoming more apparent again. Serfdom, yes, but also the true nature of life in this world throughout most of history.

[Zippyjuan]

The illusion of wealth created by infinite imaginary money printing by the Fed is falling and the realities of the laws of nature, such as being responsible for one's own survival, is becoming more apparent again. Serfdom, yes, but also the true nature of life in this world throughout most of history.

Wealth is not measured in dollar signs. Wealth is what you have and what you value. If you are materialist and measure wealth in what you can buy with your labor, we are about the wealthiest we have ever been- even poor people have more stuff than ever. If you value family, dollars can make things worse.

[Swordsmyth]

There wouldn't be a problem if the elite weren't robbing us all of the shirts on our backs and regulating us to death, the market would take care of itself.

[dannno]

The serfdom point is well on. As a customer, I can 1-star all these gig worker ratings, and they can get dropped by whichever platform they are on, whether it be Amazon, Uber, Taskrabbit, etc. There's something wrong with that because I can have a bad day, don't understand the ratings, have unrealistic expectations, or be a total jerk and 1-star everyone for no reason.

Giving an Uber driver a 1-star rating will rarely drop their star rating by .01, sometimes it stays the same (i.e. 4.88 driver gets a 1 star ride, it will probably stay 4.88 but may drop to 4.87 if it is near the threschold)

Conversely, you can give a passenger a bad rating and make it more difficult for them to get rides unless they have a lot of 5 star rides under their belt.. but they can always call a Lyft.

[heavenlyboy34]

Peak irony-socialist arguments being seriously put forward on a webbernet site named after a libertarian capitalist. LOL. One of many articles out there about uber, et al written by capitalists: @DamianTV
https://mises.org/library/left%E2%80...aring-and-poor

[heavenlyboy34]

btw, "gigging" is not inherently a bad thing. It's a type of freelancing. If you're good at what you do, freelancing pays better than being a wage slave and is more fun.

[DamianTV]

Im all for entrepreneurship and individualism. The Gig Economiy isnt a result of entrepreneurship tho, it came about because we still have 23% unemployment, a devalued US Dollar, and never actually recovered from 2008.

[Zippyjuan]

Im all for entrepreneurship and individualism. The Gig Economiy isnt a result of entrepreneurship tho, it came about because we still have 23% unemployment, a devalued US Dollar, and never actually recovered from 2008.

Who would you classify as "unemployed"? What would that way of calculating it look like in 2008 vs today? Has it stayed the same? Improved? Are we always in recession? What qualifies as a "good" economic time?

[DamianTV]

Who would you classify as "unemployed"? What would that way of calculating it look like in 2008 vs today? Are we always in recession? What qualifies as a "good" economic time?

Id say an Economic Good Time qualifies when we have a Middle Class. We dont.

[Zippyjuan]

Id say an Economic Good Time qualifies when we have a Middle Class. We dont.

What do you consider "Middle Class"? Long article attempting to figure that out: (there is no single definition). https://www.brookings.edu/research/d...ls-or-culture/

The economist Robert Solow noted that “there is no shortage of talk about the middle class”—and that was 10 years ago. Concern about the fate of the middle class is now almost universal. But there is nothing approaching a universal definition. There is a kaleidoscopic range of definitions of the middle class, from a wholly subjective set of aspirations to a highly specific measure of household income, and everything in between.

Disagreements over who counts as middle class are not merely scholarly quibbles. It is difficult to describe the condition and challenges of the middle class without some clarity about who comprises the group in question. The crucial questions we need to answer are: why are we analyzing the middle class and its shifting fortunes, what are the main challenges they face, and how can the quality of life of the middle class be improved? All of this requires a reasonably clear idea of who we are talking about.

This doesn’t mean slavishly adopting only one narrow criterion, to be used at all times. In the final analysis, any definition of the middle class will be more or less arbitrary. But it does mean identifying the middle class with sufficient precision to be able to accurately measure progress, as well as develop and assess policy. For scholars, the value of any definition depends on the question they are trying to answer.

Do people consider themselves "middle class"? About half the population does. Does this mean there is "no middle class"?

[NorthCarolinaLiberty]

...even poor people have more stuff than ever.

Then why do all you progressives keeping whining about "poor" people and aim to steal money from others?