Tech Giants Are Building a Dystopia of Desperate Workers and Social Isolation

https://jacobin.com/2023/01/tech-friction-service-work-dystopia

by elorant • 3 years ago

105 52 3 years ago

jacobin.com

bell-cot• 3 years ago

Dup: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34762214

tablespoon4• 3 years ago

I don't think that's a dup, since that submission didn't seem to get much traction.

anonyfox5• 3 years ago

While I do agree with the sentiment of the article and that all these workers should be paid a good living wage (especially the ones labelled essential during covid!)... I love on-demand everything. There is no way I ever will go back to doing some chores manually, like grocery shopping.

_Some_ things will always stay ultimately, like great restaurants/bars/clubs/... _if_ they focus on the human experience. I do not drive to a italian restaurant any longer to have a great pizza - I could simply order me one nowadays! - but the experience maybe a few hours of the flair being there.

Lacerda69• 3 years ago

Sounds weird to me tbh.

I would never feel comfortable having someone else doing my shopping for me - unless i was severely incapacitated for some reason of course.

Same with cooking, cleaning, washing my clothes etc. I could pay someone to do that but I get a lot of joy out of basic chores I guess.

wing-_-nuts2• 3 years ago

I used to think the same, until my local walmart went self checkout only. From that point forward I started using the 'pickup' option. I flat out refuse to bag my own groceries.

I'm not sure what the thought process was there. Walmart went from me doing most of the work to them doing almost everything. The day pickup stops being free, I'll likely just throw in the towel and start paying more to get groceries from another chain.

kderbyma2• 3 years ago

same. It feels infantile and sure 'time is money' but that's just a way of making your self feel over important imho

uoaei3• 3 years ago

I am not sure if this is exactly your intention, but you are advocating the position that "my convenience is worth your agony". I think we can do better than that. A person's role in society goes far beyond that of the mere consumer.

geodel• 3 years ago

Yeah I think this is the vibe:

I need high quality supplies, restaurant food at my doorstep. If it somehow result in low wage/ worker agony, this is the sacrifice I am willing to make

anonymouskimmer2• 3 years ago

I think the way to have this cake and eat it too is to personally be an extraordinarily good cash tipper. You'll still be supporting the system, but you'll ameliorate your personal use of it.

anonyfox5• 3 years ago

I am willing to pay the workers accordingly? Explicitly stated that. I don’t get it why convenience _has to_ translate into agony for someone else.

rideontime• 3 years ago

Would you be willing to pay enough for your "on-demand everything" to provide a living wage to those who enable it?

msmenardi• 3 years ago

The more you have to pay for it, the fewer people have access to "on-demand everything". Meaning it'll become a luxury of the richer side of the arbitrary cut-off line where ordering groceries or getting an Uber is financially feasible. The less these services cost, the better for all of us.

The solution that solves that problem is to remove the infrastructure from the capitalist market - for example, by nationalizing UberEats or Amazon (although nationalization isn't the only option)

Doing so would allow the business to continue as usual but the expenses that are external to each transaction would be offloaded to a third party (the government for example, or just written off) thus allowing the maximum amount of people to access the service at the lowest price.

JustSomeNobody• 3 years ago

As opposed to paying more in taxes to provide a social safety net for those individuals?

6 in one, half dozen in the other.

anonyfox5• 3 years ago

Yes.

Getting what you want when you want it does not necessarily mean cheap exploitation.

We „only“ need to stop shareholders siphoning money and redirect that wealth back to the workers instead.

Worst case the working class would have money to spend, maybe even for other convenience on-demand stuff, recursively. I would be willing to accept a few dozen billionaires being degraded to millionaires as the prize, when in doubt they can protest on the streets against that.

mixmastamyk2• 3 years ago

Not long ago teens up to twenty or so did this kind of work. Fast food, pizza delivery, etc. The skills-required and profit margins for these jobs aren't the kind to support raising a family on. Everyone knew this and accepted it.

Transitioning folks into skilled/good-paying jobs would be better than trying to make service jobs a desired destination.

yunwal2• 3 years ago

There is no way I ever will go back to doing some chores manually, like grocery shopping.

Awesome, these companies can pay good wages to their workers and pass on the cost knowing they won’t lose you as a customer.

anonyfox5• 3 years ago

Actually, yes.

For example Edeka (German supermarket chain) increases prices when ordering significantly as well as adding a base fee for shipping. This roughly adds 30%-50% compared of buying the same things in the same store manually.

Sure, it’s a luxury position to say that, but I happily pay that.

armchairhacker• 3 years ago

It seems like DoorDash, Uber etc. really are great jobs for people who have trouble getting more traditional jobs: people without prior skills or connections who just want an easy job, "want to be their own boss", don't want rigid structure, etc. As they were originally and still are marketed.

They just need to be treated and payed better. The people using these services by design have money to spend, "outrageous" delivery tips and fees can be justified if the fees are actually going to the workers.

standardUser• 3 years ago

Not much different than arguments about fast food chains overtaking healthy food, or supermarkets eating up local groceries, or homogenous retail chains driving out the mom-and-pops.

The thing about those arguments is, they were right. Those trends did transform our lives in many negative ways (in addition to positive) and we did see it coming.

What I don't like is the prognosis, which seems to think we should somehow stop or reverse the current transformation. I just doubt that's possible. Instead, we should take some lessons from the past and this time around we can proactively ameliorate the worst aspects of the ongoing changes. Something we completely failed to do with chain takeovers or mega mergers or outsourcing or all of the other corporate trends that harm, either directly or through side effects, the vast majority of working people.

tablespoon4• 3 years ago

What I don't like is the prognosis, which seems to think we should somehow stop or reverse the current transformation. I just doubt that's possible.

Why not? Sometimes change is just plain for the worse. However, passivity and helplessness in the face of change are attitudes that are common and frequently encouraged in modern society, and that is another problem that needs to be addressed.

sidpatil• 3 years ago

Instead, we should take some lessons from the past and this time around we can proactively ameliorate the worst aspects of the ongoing changes.

That doesn't sound like passivity or helplessness to me.

q7xvh97o2pDhNrh• 3 years ago

That's a fair train of thought, and I do agree it's better to embrace the future than to resist it.

Instead, we should take some lessons from the past and this time around we can proactively ameliorate the worst aspects of the ongoing changes.

Yeah, I like this way of slicing it. What do you think are those downsides, and how could they be ameliorated?

sixstringtheory• 3 years ago

I’ve WFH’d for about 8 years now and have loved it, but have also heard so many times how it can lead to social isolation, and I can definitely see how that happens. I also didn’t start it until I was in my 30’s when I’d already had the benefit of working together with people and building a strong social network of friends and colleagues (and the skills to continue making new ones).

I think with a more remote-focused industry, it still makes sense to have coworking and neighborhood satellite offices. I think coworking was just a bit ahead of it’s time. The set wave really started breaking with COVID.

It might be a little tougher trying to complain about your code or describe your refactor to someone at another company altogether. But it could also be nice to have a completely disinterested (in corporate terms) party who can lend a sympathetic ear.

Meetups were already a thing but I’ve petered out on them, not sure if that’s a personal or widespread phenomenon. But I do crave that again. I’ve been wanting to start a book club, as well. The two aren’t entirely mutually exclusive. Sometimes old things can be new again. I also miss attending tech conferences and am looking at some this year.

And I know this idea has been done to death, but I also very much value my time at my community garden and athletic clubs (not a gym–a community organization). Doing clinics at both have introduced me to new people to continue enjoying the respective activities, as well as just making general friends that enrich each others’ lives.

I used to think social media could help with this kind of stuff but Corporate Social Media fell flat on that promise for me. The only social media I use now are this site, mailing lists for said organizations, and text/calls on my iPhone.

Maybe we need a speed-dating thing for making new acquaintances. Online people talk so much about social anxiety, we need to get comfortable with putting ourselves out there and embrace the fact that things might get weird. Sometimes that makes it interesting, and sometimes that is a good thing.

tablespoon4• 3 years ago

That's a fair train of thought, and I do agree it's better to embrace the future than to resist it.

Would you agree it's better to passively accept some future being pushed on you, or try to influence the shape of that future?

There's no such thing as "the future;" there are many possible futures. One of those possibilities "the future" being sold by Uber et. al is rejected, they go bankrupt or pivot to something entirely different, and all except a few are better off for it.

dehrmann• 3 years ago

What I don't like is the prognosis, which seems to think we should somehow stop or reverse the current transformation. I just doubt that's possible.

I just listened to a podcast episode on musicians going on a recording strike in the 40's because recorded music was killing the careers of live musicians. It did, but you weren't going to stop it, either.

theironhammer• 3 years ago

Maybe because musicians were able to make money from recordings is the reason why it wasn't stopped.

fulafel• 3 years ago

The tech industry’s economic dream is building a nightmare for the rest of us: a society more firmly divided between the served and their servants, where the “friction” of human interaction is replaced with digital interfaces. It’s an antisocial future — but it’s one that we still have time to stop.

This seems to me suggests adjusting the course toward something better, and we've seen that regulating the market can make a difference in that regard eg in how the EU is (mildly so far) regulating data and tech giants. It certainly seems possible. I wouldn't say "we can't stop so this isn't constructive".

rhaway84773• 3 years ago

I don’t think we should stop anything necessarily.

But we should insist that these companies employees are paid and provided benefits to like employees, and not allow companies to offload all expenses and risks into vulnerable people by calling them “gig workers”.

There is massive asymmetry, for example, in the ability of an Uber driver driving their own car and Uber, in the information they have about the actual risks and costs involved in driving that car. Companies take advantage of that asymmetry in information to exploit workers.

That is something we should indeed stop and make sure the employees are paid properly, given proper benefits and protections.

winternett2• 3 years ago

For me I think we should think about stopping or reversing some aspects of this toxic work environment transformation, it's about proper regulation against monopolies.

We have to admit that the current climate of "struggle until you go viral for 5 seconds" is going to devastate the world and only serve to enrich the already wealthy people that own and run tech platforms.

Trust fund babies are able to thrive and become leaders in this type of model because wealth hoarders can easily buy themselves past the threshold of visibility and profit... Right now, the people we are seeing most are people that spend a lot of money on ads and marketing to boost their visibility.. Organic visibility is a dead wish, perpetuated by social and other platforms to keep people struggling towards success without hope.

In order to start a business or other venture from scratch, the organization needs to have lots of capital for marketing alone over product development and overhead costs, that makes upward mobility for anyone middle class or below damn near impossible.

This is a plague on the entire world right now, as disadvantaged people resort to crime or other negative schemes to fund their goals in legitimate business. The entry bar is set abnormally high, and talent no longer is a measure of success, it simply becomes who had money to rise.

This type of controlled opportunity environment breeds negative predatory behaviors all around, wealth hoarding, mediocrity, more monopolies, and inherent unfairness that will eventually keep everyone unemployed and underemployed while creating even more powerful meritocracies and lobbies that impact everything form real estate to politics.

This is a very serious issue, and a deep threat towards world economic stability in my opinion.

jwestbury• 3 years ago

The entry bar is set abnormally high, and talent no longer is a measure of success, it simply becomes who had money to rise.

When was this NOT the case, though? The monetarily successful have always been overwhelmingly from monetarily successful backgrounds.

autokad2• 3 years ago

It goes through all that just to set up its ultimate agenda at the end, blame the right:

people on the political right often criticize public investment as wasteful and corrupt, but the reality is that the retreat of the state hasn’t resulted in some idyllic “free” market — it has just left wealthy, powerful, and ultimately unaccountable people in charge of shaping the economy.

which is hilarious, given that these companies exist in the most left geographies, owned and run by the most left oligarchs, owned by the left politicians, and it was the left policies forcing people to use these companies that entrenched them to begin with.

gretch2• 3 years ago

Can you explain when you said "left policies forcing people to use these companies that entrenched them". I can think of no instances of this

autokad2• 3 years ago

lockdowns, there's 1.

taylodl• 3 years ago

libertarian != left

I think you’ve forgotten that one of the most influential neocons, Ronald Reagan, hailed from California. As did Nixon, interestingly enough.

California != bastion of liberalism

mrguyorama• 3 years ago

California still has more conservative thinkers and voters than nearly any other state in the union, they just get somewhat disenfranchised by the way voting works in the US.

drewcoo• 3 years ago

There was a time when coal and ice and milk were delivered, a time when door-to-door salesmen were normal, going directly to your home to sell you things so you wouldn't have to leave. Why the news even used to be delivered directly to a household by children, back when they were allowed to roam more freely.

Those are some of the many delivery interactions that are gone now. Now that "big automobile" and their cabal have created a dystopia of having to leave the house. It's a horror so immense that even "big catalog" and "big telephone" and "big radio" can't fight it off.

ghusto• 3 years ago

Unpopular opinion in tech, but hear me out.

The word "progress" in technology is misused in the same way it is when talking about evolution. The evolution of the eye was not done with progressions, because that implies a destination or goal.

You _can_ look at the eye and think of the steps that led to it to be progressions, and that's fine! but only if you do it consciously.

Similarly, we need to be mindful when we see technological change as progress, because we're by definition implicitly stating that there's a goal towards something. Not acknowledging that give us the benefits of such an assumption, without the downsides of responsibility (i.e. examining that goal).

Now my point: There often isn't a conscious goal with technological change, and that is dangerous. If we look at the resultant change, there is nothing wrong with saying that things are headed in a bad direction, and we wish to change course. It is not Ludditism, and shouldn't be shamed.

Tech Giants Are Building a Dystopia of Desperate Workers and Social Isolation

Related Stories