this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2026
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About cab companies, not really. Often times they operate as a cartel. But they do have better working conditions for drivers and less precariousness
Otoh, rideshare offers far more flexibility for workers. And they created legitimate value via the user-friendliness of their apps. And as much as it is bemoaned, the star rating system made taking a cab far more pleasant.
I'm honestly quite confused by this idea that every job in the economy must provide the job-holder with full and unequivocal economic security. In my view, many jobs simply are gigs. They need to get done, but the nature of the work means that they will never be a super-consistent source of income. And that's okay - many people are quite happy to piece together their income from multiple sources in order to have more flexibility.
Cool, I'm sure when your job becomes a gig you will enjoy the extra "flexibility". I have this very radical idea that people doing something that other people need, for a large portion of their available working hours, should have economic security.
I'm a concert rigger. My job is already a gig. I like it. I just got back from spending 3 months in mexico. Texted my boss "hey, I'm back in town", and he started putting me on shifts again.
Flexibility is only useful if you already make a decent wage and don't have a megacorporation constantly trying to steal your wages and avoid local regulation so it can shit on your rights. Otherwise it's just an euphemism for being a treated like a disposable cog.
Idk dude, me and my coworkers seem to like it alright. It sounds like you're projecting some personal issues here
As opposed to you, who is projecting your enjoyment of a gig job that doesn't require you to pay money to be able to do your job with someone who does have to pay literally every time they try to work. I wonder if that, and the obvious differences in pay and work environment, would make a difference in how the two workers think about their jobs...
It seems like a lot of Uber drivers, the ones we were talking about, don't like it, considering all the striking, unionizing, and lawsuits against Uber: https://jacobin.com/2023/01/new-york-city-uber-drivers-raise-strike-court-hearing
But please, do turn this into a "personal issue", and ignore the facts.
If we had UBI or our basic needs met on the regular I'd agree with you
In my view, it is more the difference between something that is pretty good vs something that is perfect. After all, supposing you are getting paid the same hourly rate, would you rather get paid for 20 hours of work, or 0?
Taking the example of ridesharing, for example - if you are looking for a job, and it is all restricted to traditional cab companies, they might not be able to afford to pay you full time plus benefits to work for them, so you get $0 working as a cabbie. And the result is that there are fewer people driving cabs, and therefore higher prices for cabs, and therefore fewer people taking cabs (and maybe driving drunk). The result of requiring full time pay for all rideshare drivers isn't that all the drivers get full time pay - it is that a lot of them get laid off.
In either the case of having UBI or not having it, presumably you would prefer to be making some income over no income?
Again, this "minimum wage causes unemployment" fantasy. This is just nonsense meant to justify poverty wages.
https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/107415/1/manning_edit_revision.pdf
What?! WTF talks like this? This reads like it was written by a marketroid.
Idk, an autist who hangs out on lemmy who understands basic economics?
You say you understand basic economics, but you don't understand why "every job in the economy must provide the job-holder with full and unequivocal economic security"? Lol, sure you do friend.
I might recommend you do some reading and maybe you'll realize that these gig jobs are just a new way to do wealth extraction from the poor. Between giving no economic security, low wages and no benefits, this is just yet another way to implement a form of neofudalism.