Gig-Economy Workers Are the Modern Proletariat

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-09-25/gig-economy-workers-are-last-of-marx-s-oppressed-proletarians

by koolhead17 • 8 years ago

186 121 8 years ago

emayljames• 8 years ago

Plot twist: There is no such thing as "the middle class".

Exactly right! The reason that politicians talk about there being 3 classes is that 3 is a nice, round number that just sounds nice, and also it allows everyone to pretend that they're middle class.

geezerjay• 8 years ago

There's a collosal social difference between living paycheck to paycheck without any disposable income, thus depending on retaining your job to be able to keep a roof over your head, and being economically self-sufficient to the point where you are free to take multiple holidays throughout the year and even be free to quit your job and live off your savings through long stretches of time.

Middle class does exist, and it's existence is rather obvious. Trying to conflate middle class with low class or poverty makes no sense at all, because the plight of a low class worker has absolutely nothing in common to the problems and challenges faced by middle class workers.

elvinyung9• 8 years ago

I have a pet theory that goes one step further.

In Discipline and Punish, Foucault talks about how in the early modern era, the actions of subordinate individuals (workers, students, soldiers, etc.) became increasingly regimented through more and more precise specifications of procedures as sequences of elementary actions. Then in the 19th and 20th centuries, we started to see "rationalist" economic efficiency projects like scientific management/Taylorism, which essentially tried to deskill factory workers by fragmenting their work based on time and motion studies.

The gig economy is the neoliberal revival of these scientific management principles, plastered over with the neoliberal ideals of marketization and entrepreneurialism. Just like before, it aims to improve efficiency by quantifying and compensating work at finer-grained scales than ever before.

It has the potential to drastically increase economic efficiency, but at the expense of financial security and the psychological wellbeing of entire generations.

lotsofpulp6• 8 years ago

That sounds like a fancy way of saying advances in technology displace the need for certain (and increasing) types of work, increasing the supply of labor, but not the demand, and therefore decreasing the price of labor.

Plus globalization and adding women to labor supply.

elvinyung9• 8 years ago

It specifically isn't about that.

The idea is that these projects aim to make more and more kinds of manual work fungible and exchangeable by breaking them down into small enough subtasks. Each of these elementary tasks get commoditized into a market of near-perfect competition when they become deskilled this way. It's not automation, it's a hyper-division of labor, like a worldwide assembly line connected by ethernet and optical fiber.

It is specifically that it isn't automation that makes it a problem. If you were totally replaced by a machine, then at least you wouldn't have to work. But here, you aren't being replaced by machines -- you are part of the machine, like a component that's completely replaceable and interchangeable.

xfs• 8 years ago

Then there is good news for you. This Foucaultian critique of the neoliberal notion of entrepreneurialism is precisely what Italian philosopher Maurizio Lazzarato has articulated in his book, The Making of the Indebted Man.

He argues that (to quote Zizek), "in daily ideology, our servitude is presented to us as our freedom. He demonstrates how we are all treated as capitalists who invest in our lives. Indebtedness implies a functional discipline. It is today a new way of maintaining control over individuals, all whilst promoting the illusion of free choice. Even the fragility of our career path and chronic insecurity is presented to us a chance to reinvent ourselves every two or three years. And it works very well."

elvinyung9• 8 years ago

Interesting. I've only vaguely interacted with Lazzarato's work through Hardt and Negri. I'm guessing the book builds on what Deleuze says about the society of control, e.g. "Man is no longer man enclosed, but man in debt."

pmorici4• 8 years ago

What do you mean by economic efficiency? It seems like the model of a lot of gig jobs encourages the employer to waste the worker's time.

This happens because the employer pays per job. For example, Bird and Lime waste workers time by letting them all chase after the same scooters to be charged so a worker might spend time going to pick-up a scooter only to be beat to it by another by a few moments. It seems highly suspect that this is the most efficient way to get this done unless your idea of efficiency only means lowest cost to the company.

elvinyung9• 8 years ago

I meant something like "fraction of the employee's time spent on what the employer considers to be productive/useful work".

Contrast it with a typical salaried job. In such a position, people basically get paid to take bathroom breaks, chat with coworkers, check social media, eat lunch, etc. and they might not even be in the office for the full 40 hours a week. They get to eat up even more resources by participating in benefits like health insurance, paid time off, and pensions. Isn't that such a waste of resources?

perfunctory• 8 years ago

unless your idea of efficiency only means lowest cost to the company

I believe this is exactly what economosts mean when they talk about efficiency. It’s professional jargon. And yes it differs frim the common sense definition of efficiency.

s73v3r_3• 8 years ago

"What do you mean by economic efficiency? It seems like the model of a lot of gig jobs encourages the employer to waste the worker's time."

But the employers aren't paying for that time.

amykyta• 8 years ago

Your comment brings to mind a fascinating short story that follows this idea: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

I am pretty sure I found it on HN a few years ago.

elvinyung9• 8 years ago

Oh wow, thanks so much for linking this story! I was actually thinking of it as I was writing the post, but I couldn't remember the title.

eternalban• 8 years ago

I share that point of view. (My pet theory is that the ruling classes are rolling back the "educated peasants' intermezzo".)

clairity• 8 years ago

i'm late to the discussion, but i think you buried the lede here (so to speak).

it's not so much that we're reaching for some neoliberal efficiency (whatever that means) at the expense of humanity, but that such kinds of industrial regimentalism allows the managerial class to place themselves above and apart from the proletariat in the corporation.

regimentalism marginalizes workers such that managers dehumanize and treat workers indiscriminately. it allows managers to make rational yet ruthless decisions without considering worker impact. it sets them apart; it others the workers, and thereby gives managers all-important status over workers, even where otherwise undeserved.

at the same time, the proletariat worker self-disciplines themselves (as foucault likes to put it) around the ever-intricate rules and ever-tighter tolerances, so much so that they cannot pay attention to the man behind the curtain pulling the strings (and realizing that he is pitiful and small).

this is the most important aspect of regimentalism, and the most insidious. the proletariat gig-economy worker loses money, power, and esteem in the transaction, but they're too busy jumping through hoops to do anything about it.

rectang• 8 years ago

Where would the employment rate be if you eliminated "gig economy" jobs?

jimnotgym2• 8 years ago

I have deleted my whole comment. I didn't mention the Labour party, and I don't think party politics belongs here, but commenters tried to make it about the Labour party. I hope the mods kill the whole thread

NeedMoreTea4• 8 years ago

I'm confused. UK Unions have been neutered. The Labour party sounds keen to reform the gig economy and zero hours contracts as both now affect so many, and we're not short of reports of abuses. I've heard no plans about coal - hardly surprising as we barely use any, but Labour have proposed to ban fracking.

You may not like their proposals, or believe that they'll fix the issues, but they don't seem to want to hand power back to the NUM to restart 70s power cuts and the three day week.

I'd even venture to suggest they are more connected to this century than the current Tory administration. Whether Labour deserve to govern, or whether they have right combination of plans, well there I'm far less certain.

tonyedgecombe• 8 years ago

Not really, they are constantly raising the issue of zero-hours contracts. Nobody in the Labour Party talks about coal miners because there are none left.

jimnotgym2• 8 years ago

I didn't specifically mention the Labour party (because they are not the only socialist group, and also within my life-time were considered a centre-left party) and don't like party-politics on HN, but it seems to me that coal mining is still a big part of their identity[0].

I also wasnt talking about zero hour contracts at all???

I hope HN doesn't become yet another arena where you can't discuss broad categories of political theory without being savaged by Corbynites.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jul/07/corbyn-crit...

confounded• 8 years ago

The UK’s (democratic socialist) Labour Party have many policies specific to the gig economy and zero-hours contracts, training, and housing for young adults. I haven’t heard them mention coal miners in a while. I’m sympathetic to much of your comment, and policy gets reported far less than parliamentary pantomime, so if you’re not trolling and are genuinely unaware, take a look[0].

I have no interest in a long thread about how the policies make people on HN feel. But it seems worth pointing out that the ‘precariat’ are a primary issue for Her Maj’s shadow cabinet.

[0] https://labour.org.uk/manifesto/

fogetti2• 8 years ago

Yes, the proletariat disappeared. That's true. Enter precariat instead. Awesome change isn't it!

tomjen32• 8 years ago

You mean that people stopped not having enough clothing and food and got to a point where they only had to fear that they might not have enough clothing and food in the future?

Yes actually, that sounds like a great improvement.

fogetti2• 8 years ago

That's a nice strawman argument you have there. Nobody said that the proletariat means `not having enough clothing and food`. Not even Marx. Don't try to put words in my mouth. Maybe you should look it up what it actually means.

So basically you are arguing with yourself in effect which again I don't understand why would you do...?

prolikewh0a2• 8 years ago

The proletariat did not disappear, it didn't go anywhere. The working class does not own the means of production, and gig economy workers do not own their means of production either. The majority of the country are wage slave proletariat.

ozim• 8 years ago

As you can notice parent introduced precariat, which in turn is new type of proletariat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precariat

Illniyar6• 8 years ago

"In that classic form, Marx’s favorite class doesn’t really exist in the rich world today, except in the so-called gig economy."

What? how? What about service workers (which constitute a major section of US workforce)? Do burger flippers at mcdonald's own their means of production? Cleaners? Waiters? Heck even truckers don't own their truck.

On the contrary, in the classical sense most gig-economy workers (at least those we associate with the gig economy) are not Proletariat - uber drivers own their car, AirBnB own their houses, Marketplaces (etsy, fiverr etc... which Amazon turk is nominally a part of) own the tools and knowledge to make whatever they sell.

Amazon Turkers are really not representative of the Gig Economy (a term that came much later then Amazon's Mechanical Turk) and at least for me I don't really think of them as part of the Gig Economy.

tomjen32• 8 years ago

Most people don't understand Marx idea about the ownership of production, they see it as rich vs poor and a trucker can make a decent amount of money, enough to buy a house and own a personal car.

That was never seen as possible in the squalor of 18th Europe.

So it is not that weird that people get the two wrong.

CapacitorSet2• 8 years ago

Crucially, gig workers do not own an important part of their means of production: the platform that processes rides/rentals/etc, payments and users, which allows the traditional bourgeois to extract surplus value (Mehrwert) in the usual way, and the workers fit the definition of proletarians.

Illniyar6• 8 years ago

True, but they own some of it, and there is competition between platforms for them (I.E. lyft vs uber). In fact many people "work" for multiple platforms. It's similar to a farmer selling his ware in a marketplace, which he must pay rent for. Would you say that because he doesn't own the marketplace (or store) he doesn't own his means of production?

Now the question is whether they must own all of the means of production to be considered bourgeois? I would say no, especially in today's world, where most production is a complicated multi-tiered process.

But even if you do think so, they are still much better off, Marxist-wise, from virtually every service worker, who own no means of production.

In any case, that doesn't mean that there is no exploitation or that the gig economy should not be regulated, but it really doesn't have anything to do with Proletariat.

b5• 8 years ago

Just because you own the tool you use -- be it a hammer, a screwdriver, or a car -- doesn't mean you own the means of production except in the very narrowest sense. The tools you use are worthless if there's no work to do with them, or nobody willing to pay you for that work.

"The means of production" in the gig economy is the marketplaces and apps. They parcel out the work to people to carry out using the tools they have at their disposal -- a car, a bike, a toolkit, whatever. It's established, much like a factory is, to break up the work into discrete steps to be carried out by people who are largely replaceable. In this case the app is just the replacement for the top-hatted capitalist factory owner.

AirBNB hosts are slightly different since they more closely resemble petit bourgeois smallholders and innkeepers rather than members of the proletariat.

Illniyar6• 8 years ago

Actually I would argue that a marketplace is not part of the "means of production", at least not in any sense that Marx meant.

In a similar way that if a blacksmith (or a farmer) made something and went to the market square to sell it, he isn't a Proletariat just because he doesn't own the market square (which by the way, some would require rent to use).

Most gig-economy workers operate in multiple platforms (at least when possible) - drivers are on both Lyft and Uber, AirBnB apartments are also rented directly or through other platforms.

It's not the fact that the sellers don't own the marketplace that leads to exploitation, it's the fact that the marketplace exploits it's monopoly to extort too much freedom away from the drivers. I visited Ukraine a few weeks ago and drivers in the dominant ride-hailing app (Uklon I think) can refuse a ride if the pay is too low - this opens kind of a bid system. While the experience was terrible as a user it does change the dynamics completely.

John_KZ• 8 years ago

Yeah, the vanishing act of the proletariat was hilarious. I was shoked thinking Bloomberg might be writing an article from a left-wing point of view. It took 1 line to prove myself wrong.

unknown_apostle3• 8 years ago

I know it pays little and is repetitive. But my question with this kind of analysis is always: why do they keep finding people to do it?

There is another problem which I find more worrisome: we are expecting gig workers (and most other workers) to subject to hardcore competition for their jobs, wages and terms. The argument (also my argument above) is that it leads to efficient and honest outcomes because it involves little to no coercion.

But at the same time, governments are colluding with and bailing out the financial elites with every market crash. We did it with LTCM, in 2001, in 2008 and who knows when again. The bailout involves mass coercion of savers and an implicit punishment of those who were careful.

It may have profoundly changed the mentality of the wealthy. For the last 10 years, "if it gets bad enough, there will be a bail out" has become standard investment wisdom.

Socialism for those who own, free markets for those who don't. This contradiction is what'll ultimately do us in.

choot3• 8 years ago

It's because some people have low IQ so they are not able to navigate through the meandering job. All they want is a simple job with a well defined task on which they can speed up and later achieve more objective output and not have to please a boss for subjective remark.

Illniyar6• 8 years ago

Actually from what the study says a sizable chunk does this because they prefer work from home or unable to work in an office. Some anecdotes are provided of people with sick parents or young children who for them taking a full time caretaker would be a net loss.

afuchs• 8 years ago

From my casual observation, someone's IQ and intelligence doesn't seem to be a dominant factor beyond the point where it is considered a disability.

People with a level of intelligence that is measurably above average can still have difficulty finding and retaining jobs. There is a large group of people who can be expected to take whatever jobs they can find, out of necessity, regardless of their skills and aptitudes.

Latteland2• 8 years ago

That comment is unfair, untrue, and like a statement from "1984" to justify removing health insurance and food stamps. "Those people are happy to have a simple, subsistence job, they don't need more."

Illniyar6• 8 years ago

In regards to mechanical turk, the linked study[0] has some answers for you:

For AMT US (roughly since they don't give out exact numbers): 8% - could not find other employment 10% -can only work from home 23% - prefer to work from home 1% - pay is better then other available jobs 43% - to complement pay from other jobs 4% - to ear money while going to school 3% - as a form of leisure 7% - enjoy it

For AMT india (roughly since they don't give out exact numbers): 4% - could not find other employment 12% -can only work from home 24% - prefer to work from home 8% - pay is better then other available jobs 25% - to complement pay from other jobs 5% - to ear money while going to school 2% - as a form of leisure 14% - enjoy it

[0] http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcom...

NeedMoreTea4• 8 years ago

Well in the case of the UK, in response to the model some of the well known new entrants use, just about every delivery company now forces their drivers to be self employed, zero hours. There have been countless reports of extreme abuses by companies.

What used to be a quite rare mode of employment that just a few chose, has become endemic, and seems like it's become near the default for the lowest paid fifth of our economy. That growth has been entirely in the last 15 years.

They do it because the choice has become that or unemployment. Unemployment that will probably sanction them for not accepting a zero hour contract, or a self-employed driving or labouring job.

billyggruff4• 8 years ago

Too much opacity in these markets, from the worker's side.

eeZah7Ux2• 8 years ago

For the last 10 years, "if it gets bad enough, there will be a bail out" has become standard investment wisdom.

Plenty of private companies receive public funding disguised as defense costs and the output of their research goes to private investors. The transistor, GPS, Arpanet, etc ...

Socialism for those who own, free markets for those who don't.

I get the point but the sentence is an oxymoron.

goliatone• 8 years ago

An oxymoron that seems to depict very well what the OP sees as the current state of affairs. You might not agree with the assessment, different matter

s73v3r_3• 8 years ago

"I know it pays little and is repetitive. But my question with this kind of analysis is always: why do they keep finding people to do it?"

Why do you keep finding people to go into prostitution?

unknown_apostle3• 8 years ago

Forced prostitution and trafficking aside, I think quite literally because some people want to.

shodan666• 8 years ago

why do they keep finding people to do it?

hunger

unknown_apostle3• 8 years ago

Actually only 4-8% claim "could not find other employment".

Source: see other commenter's reply, he looked it up.

choot3• 8 years ago

Gig economy isn't bad if state ensures universal healthcare, food, housing etc...

Entire economy should be setup this way so that no one is tied to a specific career outside of the limited number of professions like doctors etc...

prolikewh0a2• 8 years ago

We should absolutely not be subsidizing multi-billion dollar companies like this when they have the ability to provide a living wage.

lotsofpulp6• 8 years ago

The money for it will have to come from “multi-billion” dollar companies or their owners anyway, via taxes.

crdoconnor2• 8 years ago

If the state ensures healthcare, food, housing so few people will want these jobs that the business model will break.

swiley2• 8 years ago

No, plenty of people would do gig economy jobs if they knew they wouldn't have to worry about rent and food. The flexibility is way worth it. I'm pretty sure I even would and I get paid way above the median income.

ilaksh• 8 years ago

Mechanical Turk and Uber are likely to be taken over by AI in the next 10 years or so.

So the situation will probably get worse.

ferongr• 8 years ago

Imagine getting paid a salary to recite tankie nonsense.

atrilumen• 8 years ago

I'm building magic software that will require humans to operate and train. I really want them all in house for security, so I'm going to start hiring locally here in Colombia, and fill houses as necessary.

But anyway, I am hoping to make this role of teaching and babysitting AI as fun and rewarding as possible. Like a fun video game, along with a sacred duty to take care of users and protect their privacy.

I will also ship some form of this to end users eventually, so that it can run entirely offline, or at least without our services.

I'm thinking that systems trained with interactive learning might create an entirely new category of job, operating AI. Sure, trained domains will require less babysitting over time, but that just frees up the labor force to expand to more domains.

stillbourne• 8 years ago

Proletariat? I think the proper word is Precariat.

Gig-Economy Workers Are the Modern Proletariat

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