Not everyone has that choice, which is why so many people depend on gig economy jobs as their livelihood.
If you do not have in-demand skills for the market, have a family to feed, and the cost of training exceeds your expenses, Uber/Lyft might be one of your only job options.
Why would anyone take a crap gig job if they can get a steady paycheck? There are people that like the flexibility
I think you're underestimating how important that flexibility is to a large contingent of people. I have talked a lot of Uber/Lyft drivers and have heard a ton of stories about how valuable that flexibility is. It's huge for students who are in school, for people who already work another job but want supplemental income, people who are mostly retired (or never worked) but have some new expense come up (one lady I spoke to recently started driving for Uber just to help pay for her daughter's upcoming wedding), people who are pursuing careers in music or other artistic endeavors, entrepreneurs who need a way to pay the rent while getting their business bootstrapped, etc.
For a lot of people in those situations, the control over their time really is a crucial aspect of what makes Uber/Lyft desirable.
Granted, that's just one aspect of the gig economy, but it seems to be a big one.
I know of no one who drives for Uber/Lyft who doesn't think they are doing well. Seriously, where did this meme come about where they are all slaves to Uber? Between what two bring in each week and their mileage deductions they are tempting me at times.
the real tripe in the gig economy is all the pontificating coming down from top how they all care about rights of people, except it only is Western people they care about while those in China and other countries get run over by their governments.
The simple fact is, no employer has to make the job solve all your financial needs. It is up to you to find the job that fulfills your requirements and you can perform safely and well. if that takes more than one job then so be it, many of us have been there before and did it. you don't get anywhere waiting for someone else to fix your life
No one forces anyone to drive for Uber or Lyft. If they don't like the money they're making, they can go work at a regular job. With sub-4% unemployment there are PLENTY of jobs out there.
Gig working started with Uber as an extension of cab driving. Cab drivers do not get 401k and health insurance. So it makes no sense at all that gig working would only exist because companies didn't want to pay benefits. Your pizza delivery guy wasn't getting benefits either. Neither your waiter, or bartender.
However, Uber and other companies did start right after the dot-com recession, when people needed to both save money, and make extra money. It turns out a lot of people needed to do both. Sure, there were advantages over the previous incumbents (cabs suck), but that's not why there are so many drivers.
Ask your Uber or Lyft drivers sometime how often they work. Many of them, since the early years, told me they work as many hours as they can, for as many companies as they can, just to make ends meet. Of course they're paying for their car and all that themselves, too, so it's not like they're getting ahead. And they definitely would rather not be driving for 14 hours a day.
These companies exploit people in an unequal system in order to make profits.
If they don’t want, there are plenty of other jobs out there
Maybe there are lots of jobs there, but do these jobs give the flexibility of working whenever one wants, like Uber does? In life, nothing is as simple as that. Applying the same logic, we can say if a woman is mistreated by her husband/bf, she can simply leave him. If a manager is bad, find another job. If a country is hostile to immigrants, leave and move back home or to another country. And so on. The reality is somewhere in between "just pack up and go" and "stuck indefinitely".
Uber/Lyft/Instacart etc are in fact exploiting their drivers simply because they can. The drivers aren't unionized, they aren't getting much help from government regulations (it isn't illegal yet, just immoral and unethical), so they are at the mercy of these gig economy companies.
Here is an exercise. Can you name one gig economy company that is treating its workforce well? I am trying, and failing.
Well, they maybe aren't forced to work for Uber/Lyft specifically, but they are forced to work for someone. I guess for most Uber/Lyft is preferable to other options, but that doesn't mean that Uber/Lyft aren't bad, it's just that other jobs are worse.
But I'm sure there's many who really only have Uber/Lyft as an option. They are forced to work for them. They need a 2nd job, and they need a job that provides the flexibility in schedule that Uber/Lyft does. There's really not any other options if that's what is needed.
I don't think most Uber/Lyft drivers look at this as a career; at least, none of the ones I've met do. It's a way of making a few bucks without a lot of commitment while they prepare to do something else.
You want to help these people out? Get rid of most occupational licensing.
Gig work is already not feasible. The only reason anyone undertakes it is financial illiteracy. Uber is largely funded by the irrational sacrifice of numerous individuals of the residual value of their own cars.
Sure. But can anyone honestly argue that driving for Uber/Lyft is the only employment option they have? I mean, what would they have done before those companies existed?
The unemployment rate is extremely low these days, yes they do have other options in most places. Many choose to work for uber because they prefer the flexibility to having to work shifts with very limited options to alter your schedule.
People do in fact have options. They look at them and they choose. Lots of people choose to work in the gig economy for reasons you obviously don’t value. Working Uber beats working many other jobs, as should be obvious by the fact people continue doing it. People aren’t idiots. You can fool some of them some of the time. You can’t fool many people about their own lives and experiences for long.
> The value of flexible work: Evidence from uber drivers
> Using data on hourly earnings for Uber drivers, we document the ways in which drivers utilize this real-time flexibility and we estimate the driver surplus generated by this flexibility. We estimate how drivers’ reservation wages vary from hour to hour, which allows us to examine the surplus and supply implications of both flexible and traditional work arrangements. Our results indicate that, while the Uber relationship may have other drawbacks, Uber drivers benefit significantly from real-time flexibility, earning more than twice the surplus they would in less flexible arrangements. If required to supply labor inflexibly at prevailing wages, they would also reduce the hours they supply by more than two-thirds.
Lyft and Uber work great for what they are: gig jobs. The problem is people trying to turn them into something completely different. If these companies don't offer the terms you want, maybe seek employment elsewhere?
No, a lot of gig economy companies employ their people either directly or through third party. It's not problem. It's just that Uber has this fix idea of never hiring anyone. It's stupid.
Yet the canonical example of gig work is the Uber driver – a job that requires a tremendous amount of knowledge and skill.
The trouble, economically, is that most people have had a vested interest in acquiring that particular knowledge and skill, making it common, and thus, by the properties of supply and demand, not terribly valuable.
I totally get the negative consequences of gig jobs: no benefits, security and so forth. But whenever I take an Uber or Lyft (maybe 100 in the US and UK) I ask the driver how they feel about the job. Almost all of them are happy with it - some gripe about the pay but they like the flexibility. It's possible they aren't thinking far enough ahead - and I'm talking to the self selected group who didn't get a disabling injury or illness and fall into poverty.
I wasn't aware that people working in Uber/Lyft advocate for not being employees? Do you have a source for that?
Are people engaging in gig work because it has several advantages over "every other available option"? What other options do people who drive for Lyft/Uber as a day job have? And what are the advantages Uber/Lyft & working as a contractor offer?
Maybe zoning effects should be part of a discussion on the cost of living in California, exploitation of immigrants is deplorable and awareness should be raised and actions taken, but does that make Uber/Lyft exploiting workers a non-issue?
I'm not from the US and am not aware of the specifics in California, but being from a country which has faced severe economic crises I've seen people "choosing" a shitty option despite every other shitty option.
I can't say I understand where you're going with most of what you're saying, or how informed you are of gig workers situation.
I saw a pretty good movie by Ken Loach: _Sorry We Missed You_, that thought was really spot on on the issues of gig work:
What a low effort rebuttal. Why are you comparing gig work to indentured servitude? Is Uber forcing people to drive cars? If your argument is people don’t have any other options, is that really uber’s fault or is that fault of the society?
Thew whole point of the gig economy is that drivers can work for anyone. If Uber's bubble gets burst, they'll just shift to Lyft or whichever mushrooms pop up locally. "Won't anybody think of the drivers?" has no weight.
If you do not have in-demand skills for the market, have a family to feed, and the cost of training exceeds your expenses, Uber/Lyft might be one of your only job options.
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