Gig work is just turning the poor class into servants. And adding further debt to other poors trying to use these services.
2026-04-26 22:50 UTC
Replies (28)
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@roofuskit@lemmy.world 2026-04-27 10:51
Some people using their cars for gig work are barely making more than the value they are depreciating from their car through wear and tear.
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@BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 2026-04-27 20:39
The poor class has always been servants, don't let a office job fool you
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@Redvenom@retrolemmy.com 2026-04-28 21:18
Gig work is a scam, what business does Uber have if you wouldn't let them use your car? Normally a company should have for the employees and the tools used to do the work, I get that people can choose when they work and how much they work, but the companies should be paying benefits and maintenance to the vehicles used
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@ivanafterall@lemmy.world 2026-04-27 11:06
I'm driving Uber and it's been a real struggle to hit $20/hr gross (NOT NET) the past few weeks since gas prices skyrocketed. The best part is Uber just invested like $10 billion in driverless cars. So not only is there no plan to pay better, but we're directly funding our own replacements.
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@Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world 2026-04-27 03:42
I just couldn't stomach paying someone for nearly all the gig work option. The exception was uber. The taxi companies always pissed me off. Using a credit card was harder than it needed to be for a long time, and they just didn't bother to try new things to improve the experience. And of course there are the ones that controlled the supply so they could drive up prices. But I still only used it when on vacation, like in vegas. But shopping for me, and all that. Just couldn't do it.
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@normalentrance@lemmy.zip 2026-04-28 07:33
I don't understand the people paying $50+ to get McDonald's delivered.
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@rekabis@lemmy.ca 2026-04-27 04:42
The only things I have delivered to me are packages and envelopes through the mail. Granted, I am GenX, but I can’t recall a single time in the last half a decade where I’ve had anything like food delivered. Or used the services of any kind of gig company. And I simply can’t think of any benefit of doing so. It’s horrendously expensive, and simply not worth the expense.
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@HubertManne@piefed.social 2026-04-27 02:39
I honestly don't see how people do this and in a way that is in the black.
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@mlg@lemmy.world 2026-04-27 16:26
The funny thing is gig work (proportionally) makes a lot more in plenty of 3rd wold countries because the business owner isn't taking a massive chunk of the income, and because it started out with everyone paying cash so there's no shoehorned services fees at every transaction. Its so lucrative that I've seen office workers run it as bonus income on their way to and from work if they travel by car or motorcycle. I always thought about making a free equivalent platform to stuff like Uber, but I think people would be too scared of the individual liability, despite Uber offering the absolute bare minimum.
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@oce@jlai.lu 2026-04-27 01:25
> People don’t want to give up that luxury now that they’ve had it. Maybe people should also take some responsibility there?
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@CannedYeet@lemmy.world 2026-04-27 19:32
A full time employee isn't a servant? The economy is bifurcating into haves and have-nots. The haves paying for more services from the have-nots closes that gap. Maybe not by much, but at least in the right direction. Just because gig work makes inequality more visible, doesn't mean it's causing it.
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@CannedYeet@lemmy.world 2026-04-27 20:49
During COVID, wages for the lowest paid people increased more than other classes. I think it was partially the rise of gig work giving alternatives to people who were otherwise stuck working at Walmart because that's the only job in town.
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@grue@lemmy.world 2026-04-27 01:46
> How quickly we accepted that it's normal to pay someone to go get our groceries for us. To drive us around when public transportation is available. To run errands for us. To bring us fast food. Speak for yourself! I have *delivered* more food myself than I've paid to have delivered to me, and that was a job I had in college (working for a restaurant directly, as it was long before the rise of third-party delivery) that I quit after one shift because it sucked. And even in the few times when somebody else (e.g. an employer) insisted on getting a grubhub or uber for me at their expense, I wasn't happy about it! It always just feels incredibly wasteful -- and slower/worse -- than just doing it myself.
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@bridgeburner@lemmy.world 2026-04-27 08:41
What a fckn sh*thole the US is.
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@Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 2026-04-28 21:53
I feel like this is more of an argument against the American health insurance system and better national retirement programs, than anything else. If Medicare for All, or an equivalent system existed in whatever country, there aren't really any benefits other then their retirement that people care about. I feel like people rightly point out that it's fucked up our health insurance is tied to employment, but I don't see people point out how it's also fucked up that being able to survive our retirement is also based on employment. Social security alone isn't enough to live a healthy life off of. So if the government provided those things, I don't really see anything wrong with the entire gig work thing. It might be within my lifetime that we see economies transition to a mostly AI/automation production system that relies on a fraction of human labor currently needed that will be supplemented by a gig work economy. Then the governments would most likely need to implement a Medicare for all type system and some sort of UBI.
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@morto@piefed.social 2026-04-27 03:11
I even know a few families who are getting into debt because they want to have a lifestyle of having others do everything for them. This is so crazy. THe worst is that it makes people less likely to want to change our economic system in favor of reducing inequality, because in a system without inequality, it will be impossible to have people doing small things for us like that
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@bearboiblake@pawb.social 2026-04-26 23:50
Yes, you are completely right, it's yet another step away from the hard-won labor rights. Capitalism makes these kinds of changes inevitable, and must be abolished. ::: spoiler How does capitalism inevitably lead to fascism? >Basically, the issue with capitalism is that the more wealth you have, the easier it is for you to make more money. And since money can be used to buy goods, services and influence, there is always a way to use money to gain more political and social power. With that political and social power, you can push society and the legal system in the direction you want to go. So you can use your wealth to gain power, and then you can use your power to change laws and society so that you can make even more wealth and power. It’s a positive feedback loop. > >Obviously, though, if the billionaires and ruling class are accumulating more and more of our society’s wealth, that inevitably means that there’s less for everyone else to go around - therefore, working class people feel poorer and poorer. Meanwhile, the economy is going absolutely great for rich people, so inflation continues to go up - everything gets more expensive, but wages don’t increase. The wealthy just keep more and more of the wealth for themselves. To accumulate more and more wealth, they change the laws so that they can avoid paying taxes, so public services collapse. Politicians are lobbied to ensure that public funds are diverted away from where it is most needed - housing, healthcare, transportation, infrastructure - and instead into industries where their class interests most benefit from it, such as weapons manufacturing and extractive industries such as fossil fuels and mining. > >The working class are bound to notice that their lives are getting shittier and shittier, and if that situation is left unchecked, the working class would realize that the ruling class are fucking them over, rise up, and overthrow their rulers. Obviously, the ruling class need to do something about this, but there’s no solution that the ruling class can offer. They’re causing all of the problems, to fix them they’d have to give up some of their wealth and power - and that’s not something they’re going to do. So they need to find someone else to blame the problems we have in society on. Unfortunately, though, no matter who they blame the problems on, and no matter what they do to “fix” it, the issue will continue to persist, because the material conditions underlying the issues are, very intentionally, never addressed. > >So, the conundrum returns: The ruling class said that minority A caused all of the problems, minority A is persecuted and oppressed, but society doesn’t actually get any better. Either the problem wasn’t minority A, or minority A just hasn’t been oppressed enough yet. So the ruling class can either escalate the oppression, or they can shift the focus to another minority group. The division continues to escalate in terms of how vitriolic and extreme it is, and it also continues to divide the working class into smaller and smaller groups. > >To get the working class to buy into this hateful message, they need to take advantage of our worst instincts, and one of those instincts is the in-group bias. The majority are manipulated into being suspicious, then intolerant, then hateful, then violent, then genocidal, towards whatever the targeted minority of the day is. Anything that can be used to divide the working class - sexuality, nationality, immigration status, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender identity, age, all of these will be used as wedges to keep the working class split apart and not working together, because they know that if the working class actually unite against them, they are completely and truly fucked. > >That’s exactly how fascism manifests. It’s because it’s possible for people to accumulate power through wealth. This is why capitalism must be abolished. If we do not abolish capitalism, fascism will always return. It’s just a matter of time. ::: ::: spoiler But can't capitalism can be reformed? > While, of course, some laws to reform capitalism can be passed, and would definitely alleviate the worst harm caused, over the long term, capitalism cannot be reformed. > > Any attempts to reform, democratize or socialize capitalism may yield short term improvements to quality of life of the working class, but if capitalism is not abolished, it will always reassert itself, and capitalism inevitably leads towards fascism. > >The New Deal prevented the US from sliding into fascism in the 20th century, so that’s ultimately a good thing, but it did not go far enough, and that’s why we have the resurgence of fascism in the 21st century America. :::
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@Mountainaire@lemmy.world 2026-04-27 02:10
Wait, are you calling for a genocide of all people with inherited, terminal syndromes? Are you serious? What about CRISPR?
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@DarkMetatron@feddit.org 2026-04-27 06:58
Great idea, we still have some buildings here in germany that were used for such a cleansing purpose before! I am sure they only need a bit of maintenance. The above is sarcasm! Killing people, and even more so genocide or mass murder, is NEVER a valid option! Every idea, ideology or system that includes killing people is always rotten to the core!
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@psx_crab@lemmy.zip 2026-04-27 05:58
I think Hitler also think the same.
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@yoyoyopo5@lemmy.world 2026-04-27 04:17
You don’t permanently eliminate the ruling class by killing the people in it. Elites will continue popping up as long as the system itself allows it. Incentives are just too biased towards people betraying and becoming elite when there is an empty slot.
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@baggachipz@sh.itjust.works 2026-04-27 14:48
lol > hey guys dae love eugenics!?
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@MerryJaneDoe@piefed.world 2026-04-27 07:54
Forgive me, but this position is one of absolute impotence. Your solution is a "mass culling", but you are without the power to put such a plan into action. Furthermore, you know that this type of solution is unlikely to gain any sort of mainstream approval. Further, why would in-laws need to be culled if your solution relies on genetically based criteria? Personally, I don't think that greed or selfishness are traits of a psychotic mind. They are human flaws, present in nearly every person on this planet. You can't get rid of these traits - they are inherent survival instincts, found in all of us.
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@bearboiblake@pawb.social 2026-04-27 04:01
I completely understand your frustration, and I am completely on your side that we need to dismantle capitalism. The thing is, though, if we use mass violence to abolish the ruling class in the way you advocate, will **not** work at all. I'm not saying that the movement to abolish capitalism must be completely pacifistic and disavow all violence - on the contrary, we need to be willing and able to defend ourselves against the violence of the ruling class. Remember, the ruling class has almost all of the advantages, so we need to use the one thing we have: our numerical advantage. That means we need to build an inclusive, people-powered movement of the working class, based on solidarity. A violent movement will deeply alienate and push away vast swathes of the population. Humans are innately repulsed and disgusted by acts of violence and brutality - especially for acts of killing innocent people, and even children, as you're advocating here. The only way that such a movement can hold together for any time is with pure anger, rage, and hatred. That is not the soil that a healthy, non-violent society can grow out of. I would argue that in many ways the society we have today is because of how violent and brutal our past has been. If we want to get rid of exploitation and violence, we need to make the radical choice to break the cycle, and turn away from violence, except as a very last resort. I'd be happy to explain my theory of change and share ideas for how we can end capitalism in a non-violent way - and no, I don't mean just by voting every few years or whatever. Happy to chat. I really hope you'll hear me out. Much love, and solidarity forever.
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@daannii@lemmy.world 2026-04-27 02:44
No. The environment has to be changed. We can stop promoting the wrong people. We can have harsh penalties for lying. Exploitation In the Netherlands, any company found to be un ethical business are barred from getting government contracts. Also companies with better employee benefits, unions, and pay are prioritized for government contracts. That's how to combat the problem. But in the u.s and most of the world. The most ruthless gets the contact. The one that lies the most. Defrauds. Exploits. They get the contacts for decades. Most of musk's and palantir money is from u.s tax payers.
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@daannii@lemmy.world 2026-04-27 03:58
The system creates these bad people. You have to stop the cause. It's not genetics. Just look at Vivian Musk. Nothing like her father.
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@VonReposti@feddit.dk 2026-04-27 08:26
Uber bought the biggest taxi company in Denmark and the only one operating in my city. There's no way around them... Backstory is that Uber was banned from the market due to their gig model (and lobbying from taxi companies), so they returned half a decade/decade later in the only way they could. Funny how other gig models like food delivery isn't outlawed the same way.
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@quips@slrpnk.net 2026-04-27 16:53
I mean food delivery is a totally legitimate good thing to have, getting food when you can’t is whats what its for. The problem is people who absolutely have the means to get their own stuff relying on it almost exclusively just because they are lazy.