• merdaverse@lemmy.zip
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    15 hours ago

    About cab companies, not really. Often times they operate as a cartel. But they do have better working conditions for drivers and less precariousness

    • blarghly@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      Otoh, rideshare offers far more flexibility for workers. And they created legitimate value via the user-friendliness of their apps. And as much as it is bemoaned, the star rating system made taking a cab far more pleasant.

      I’m honestly quite confused by this idea that every job in the economy must provide the job-holder with full and unequivocal economic security. In my view, many jobs simply are gigs. They need to get done, but the nature of the work means that they will never be a super-consistent source of income. And that’s okay - many people are quite happy to piece together their income from multiple sources in order to have more flexibility.

      • merdaverse@lemmy.zip
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        14 hours ago

        Cool, I’m sure when your job becomes a gig you will enjoy the extra “flexibility”. I have this very radical idea that people doing something that other people need, for a large portion of their available working hours, should have economic security.

        • blarghly@lemmy.world
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          14 hours ago

          I’m a concert rigger. My job is already a gig. I like it. I just got back from spending 3 months in mexico. Texted my boss “hey, I’m back in town”, and he started putting me on shifts again.

          • merdaverse@lemmy.zip
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            13 hours ago

            Flexibility is only useful if you already make a decent wage and don’t have a megacorporation constantly trying to steal your wages and avoid local regulation so it can shit on your rights. Otherwise it’s just an euphemism for being a treated like a disposable cog.

        • blarghly@lemmy.world
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          14 hours ago

          In my view, it is more the difference between something that is pretty good vs something that is perfect. After all, supposing you are getting paid the same hourly rate, would you rather get paid for 20 hours of work, or 0?

          Taking the example of ridesharing, for example - if you are looking for a job, and it is all restricted to traditional cab companies, they might not be able to afford to pay you full time plus benefits to work for them, so you get $0 working as a cabbie. And the result is that there are fewer people driving cabs, and therefore higher prices for cabs, and therefore fewer people taking cabs (and maybe driving drunk). The result of requiring full time pay for all rideshare drivers isn’t that all the drivers get full time pay - it is that a lot of them get laid off.

          In either the case of having UBI or not having it, presumably you would prefer to be making some income over no income?

      • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
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        14 hours ago

        And they created legitimate value via the user-friendliness of their apps.

        What?! WTF talks like this? This reads like it was written by a marketroid.