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.
Covid capitalized on it.
People don’t want to give up that luxury now that they’ve had it. Even if it makes things cost 2x-3x as much.
Even when we all know its exploitive labor.
It’s true delivery and driver services have been around for hundreds of years but now instead of companies with full time employees (with benefits) , the gig employee gets paid less while taking on risk that aren’t compensated by the employer (car accidents, gas, car repairs, injury or attacks).
Gig work is a much worse thing than maybe a lot of people realize. And it’s also making more people servants to others.
It’s moving full time employees with benefits and using company property to no benefits and using their own property that they have to pay for.
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.
People rent cars to do it, which just blows my mind. I don’t get how they can be making any money at all.
A lot of gig workers just treat it like a paycheck and don’t compare revenue to expenses like the independent business it really is.
Edit: poor wording, I don’t believe it’s entirely an independent business but that is how they are paid.
It’s essentially an independent business, but you can rent the car and get insurance and get paid all by the same entity, essentially. At least that’s what I’ve gathered listening to the testimony of some of the drivers.
Wouldn’t renting be the ultimate way to know if it was profitable as there’s no hidden costs?
No insurance, no depreciation, no maintenance, no repairs.
You do a shift and whatever you make you make.
Renting doesn’t mean no insurance. If you’re operating a vehicle, you need to be an insured driver. Where you get the insurance is up to you.
Depreciation, maintenance, those are lumped into the cost of the rental. Whomever you are renting from isn’t giving you the car and taking a loss on it.
Insurance comes with the rentals or your credit card in most cases.
And duh. Thats my point. You pay, and that’s it. No more hidden costs.
Any given day is profitable or not, and you immediately know.
edit: we even have a car share service here that includes gas in the rental.
Please don’t duh.
Renting a car for use as a ride share is not covered under any rental agreement, nor under whatever your credit card may provide, which as far as I know covers damage to the vehicle at most. Liability insurance is a whole separate animal and the one that’s most necessary.
If you’re allowed to rent the car for gig work, they’ll almost assuredly offer the insurance for it, and not all gig work is ride share.
Depreciation, maintenance, those are lumped into the cost of the rental.
And the duh was about that, I handled the insurance comment separately.
edit: e.g
https://www.hertz.com/rentacar/misc/index.jsp?targetPage=delivery_rentals.jsp
They offer the rental and insurance. They don’t let you carry another person though, so not all gig work, at least on this specific plan.
So Avis, for example, offers an insurance from Uber for rideshare via Rasier and Portier, and so you’re basically renting and insuring cars from the company you’re being paid by. Yes, Avis is an intermediary there, but the whole idea is crazy to me, that you’d pay your employer to work.
So are they having profitable days? I guess I’m as curious as you are, but I just can’t imagine a scenario where you’re making decent money in exchange for the time you put in. I suppose reliance on tips makes the difference, but Uber is over here cleaning up, charging you and the customer.
Not only that, but basic liability usually doesn’t cover gig work either, you need a special and more expensive policy for that.
There are limited exceptions where you can self insure, I think New Hampshire is the only place you can do that in the US. However if you can self insure then you probably aren’t doing gig work.
You can add gap to your regular insurance to cover your job as a rideshare. You just need to tell your carrier.
The thing is, if you’re renting, you’ve added someone in between you and the insurance carrier. Uber does not self insure. I see them often using Progressive. So you rent a car from Uber, pay for the insurance from Uber, but there’s also Avis and Progressive now taking their cut.
It’s just scammy, and the fact that they’re getting people to rent cars to do so is just crazy to me.
Yeah, as a car guy knowing what things cost to repair these people who do this shit 5x a week aren’t even making money in the long term. The only way to be ahead is do like Uber during an event or on weekend nights at a bar area 10-3am. Even then you might not make money if there’s too many people doing it.
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.
I’ve also had some bad experiences with taxi services. So I totally get that. It’s just too bad that instead of improving their service and fees, that they just got replaced with gig work .
I’ve always heard it said that you can’t really be an ethical consumer in capitalism.
We often don’t have ethical alternatives.
Yeah, very true. Even when I spend money at a small business, I think about how often I have seen owners kids sitting at a table or something. Either doing schoolwork or playing on a tablet. And that reminds me that they often are living on small margins and working tons of hours. We can do better as a society.
The poor class has always been servants, don’t let a office job fool you
I think you are missing my point.
Servants with zero benefits using their own “tools” they pay for (like a car), are different from labor jobs with benefits and a living wage. Not that there are many of those so called benefits for minimum wage workers either.
I mean it all sucks under capitalism. But gig work is ramping up end stage capitalism. It takes more, and takes it more aggressively from the working class.
Gig work is exasperating the inequality that already existed. It’s robbing and exploiting people far more aggressively than seen before.
I think people don’t realize how harmful these systems are.
Capitalism crash is inevitable. Through a few possible routes. But the suffering it will inflict and how widespread can be curtailed by stopping these predatory practices.
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.
Gross would include money made before gas spent. But you’re absolutely correct taking a huge pay cut because Trump is beholden to foreign powers is awful
Right, thus I’m netting even less than that.
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.
I’m not against delivering services. Just gig jobs.
Lots of people really need these. Like disabled people and the elderly.
But those two groups are least able to afford it.
You’re GenX and have never had a pizza or Chinese food delivered!? Do you live in the sticks? Town I live in now has never had a delivery restaurant (weird for a tourist town) and nobody runs Uber eats or whatever, but when I was a kid in suburbia delivery food was super common, mostly pizza and Chinese.
No, I have always phoned ahead to order, but I have always picked up the order personally.
The savings having done so have always been more than the fuel spent to retrieve the order.
Getting food delivered is handy when I’m looking after my kids by myself, but not something I’m in the habit of using, probably use it once per year
I had to use uber once in the last year when the taxi failed to turn up and I needed to get to the airport.
I avoid them for the most part as I can find other ways of doing things cheaper
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.
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.
I mean as a country. Not you or me personally.
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.
What a fckn sh*thole the US is.
the Planet*
(US is not the only country is the world where people are suffering, less US-Centralism pls)
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.
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.
Supply and demand. Unemployment benefits were extended. People didn’t have to work. To attract employees they had to increase wages. But they fixed that by increases in product cost that far exceeds wage increases.
Plus rent went up for everyone.
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.
Sure Gig work would be fine if there was universal health insurance, short term disability for injuries (workman comp). Reimbursement for car use, and guaranteed living retirement.
But it doesn’t have any of those things. That’s most of why it’s bad.
Idk, maybe it’s just semantics. But to me it’s a tool and it’s the inherent systems that are bad.
Many people who actually do the gig work would argue positive examples like they wouldn’t have had the opportunities to do the work, as they have chronic illness that prevents them from working at random times or they are able to work just enough to provide supplmental income without accidentally losing benefits.
The tool is exploitave because these scenarios exist and there are people to be exploited. It’s not causing these scenarios, it’s taking advantage of them. Its a symptom.
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Wait, are you calling for a genocide of all people with inherited, terminal syndromes? Are you serious? What about CRISPR?
If the gene is one that allows psychopathy, inherent greed, and lack of empathy, then yes.
There is no evidence that psychopathy is determined by a gene.
Like most human traits, the environment makes a bigger impact on outcomes.
Until we as a society/species stop rewarding psychopathy , things will keep ending up here.
Genetics are irrelevant.
However I do agree that capitalism cannot work.
It is inevitable destruction.
Also pretty sure capitalism wasn’t the structure during French revolution. Wasn’t it serfdom ?
I mean. That’s almost the same. But yeah.
We need to stay fully objective here and acknowledge that @devolution@lemmy.world is at least partly correct:
“Some genetic heritability studies have noted there may be baseline deviations in emotional processing circuitry (such as in the amygdala or reward centers of the brain) and neurotransmitter profiles (such as serotonin or dopaminergic deficits) in people meeting criteria for psychopathic traits that may eventually lead to callous behaviors and indifference towards social norms (but interestingly not always).” - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/culture-shrink/202203/are-psychopaths-born-or-made
Denser reading:
In the specific genes that may be involved, one gene that has shown particular promise in its correlation with ASPD is the gene that encodes for monoamine oxidase A (MAO-A), an enzyme that breaks down monoamine neurotransmitters such as serotonin and norepinephrine. Various studies examining the gene’s relationship to behavior have suggested that variants of the gene resulting in less MAO-A being produced (such as the 2R and 3R alleles of the promoter region) have associations with aggressive behavior in men.[77][78]
This association is also influenced by negative experiences early in life, with children possessing a low-activity variant (MAOA-L) who have experienced negative circumstances being more likely to develop antisocial behavior than those with the high-activity variant (MAOA-H).[79][80] Even when environmental interactions (e.g., emotional abuse) are taken out of the equation, a small association between MAOA-L and aggressive and antisocial behavior remains.[81]
The gene that encodes for the serotonin transporter (SLC6A4), a gene that is heavily researched for its associations with other mental disorders, is another gene of interest in antisocial behavior and personality traits. Genetic association studies have suggested that the short “S” allele is associated with impulsive antisocial behavior and ASPD in the inmate population.[82] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder
I didn’t know this until now myself (I’ve seen the above article earlier but must have skimmed through it long ago and missed or forgot all that). However, there’s also a lot about the environment further exposing or shutting down sociopathic tendencies, as I noted in another comment here. It could be more difficult to round up these people (who are masters at lying anyway) versus enacting your systemwide proposal to forcefully integrate empathy through all levels of society. The problem is applying it to the highest echelons where it matters most—and, frankly, who @devolution@lemmy.world’s proposed guillotine should apply to the most either way; they’d both be hard to do… maybe together?
Psychopathy is a combination of genetics and environmental factors. Genetics does not cause this condition. You can have the genes associated with higher prevalence but that does not mean you will have it.
This is why eugenics for behavioral or personality factors is irrelevant.Also these are not necessarily hereditary but likely are common mutations that will persist in the gene pool regardless if current people with said gene are sterilized.
Genetic research, not to sound pretentious, is largely misunderstood.
When a study says genetics are 30%. It means genetics account for 30% of the variance.
The variance is not “effect”. Or how much a gene contributed to the trait.
It’s a bit more complicated. But to make a simple example.
Let’s think of height.
Let’s say someone has a gene(s) for being tall.
But the person grew up malnourished. It doesnt matter, the kid won’t be tall. But will the kid be taller than other malnourished kids with out the gene. ? Probably. But it’s hard to say by how much.
Will the kid be taller than other kids that werent malnourished.
Maybe. Maybe not.
If extreme malnourished, the answer is no.Ultimately the environment determines how much effect a gene(s) can determine a trait.
That’s why you can’t measure a general effect % from a gene(s).
Instead we measure how much variation in a group of people with a given trait is predicted by a gene.
“The wiggle room”. A gene is best thought of as the limits of a trait. Each extreme.
When it’s in optimal environment to be expressed and when it’s in the most restricted environment to be expressed.
Even in average environments, genetics still usually doesn’t account for more that 30-40% of the variance for people who score within 1 standard deviation of the mean/average of a trait. And that number declines the farther you get from the mean.
And also most genetics don’t score that high. Very few are as high as 30%.
Interesting, thanks for the enlightenment! I have admittedly not delved into it this much before…
Many people/news outlets present genetic data as “effects” or as percentage of a trait.
Like if someone scored 80% on a trait, people say genes determined 30% of that score.
Which is incorrect. But this interpretation is pushed all the time. I see it a lot with intelligence IQ score. Yes intelligence is genetic but only 30% of variability is predicted by genetics.
And if you think about it. That’s only for people with an IQ of 70 to 130 (1 standard deviation).
For the really smart people and the really dumb people, genetics has a lower ability to predict variance.
The reason genes aren’t as predictive as you would think they would be , is just like my example of height.
If the environment doesn’t allow for potential to be fulfilled, it won’t be.
Human development has what’s called “sensitive periods” . Where if some function isn’t learned by that age, it likely will never be mastered. Because the brain does a lot of pruning at young age. If you aren’t using it, you lose it. This is why learning a second language is hard as an adult and easy as a child.
So taking that into account. You can see how limited genetics are for determining an outcome of a random child.
It certainly has an impact. But it is limited by the environment.
How many amazing geniuses are born every day in 3rd world countries that have the potential to solve big world problems who will never reach that level because the stimulation they need to reach that potential is unavailable to them?
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No. The environment has to be changed.
We can stop promoting the wrong people.
We can have harsh penalties for lying. ExploitationIn 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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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.
Oh, I thought you were referring to physical disabilities, like all Down-syndrome people, etc.
Well, I’ve never read of a sociopath who had said, “I was raised in a normal family.” I thought this was a really interesting read:
The gene loaded the gun, but the environment pulled the trigger.
This gene-environment interaction helps explain why two siblings with similar genetics can turn out very differently. The child who experiences abuse or neglect while carrying a susceptibility gene faces compounding risk, while the sibling who grows up in a safer environment may never express those traits at all.
- https://scienceinsights.org/is-sociopathy-genetic-nature-nurture-and-the-brain/
God no.
Exceptional people can be exceptional. My daughter is thrice exceptional (asd, ADHD, gifted). I would never advocate the elimination of people born with physical disabilities. They are some of the best and most resilient people if not tainted by the environment.
My issue is the ruling class and psychopathy that has been passed along since well before 5000 BC. The ruling class has never been fully purged in all aspects except very close during the French Revolution and the Bolshevik revolution.
Both of those failed long term because of usurpers like Robespierre (psycho) and Stalin (false revolutionary).
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.
Who do you think shapes the system to allow it?
lol
hey guys dae love eugenics!?
