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.
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.
They wanted cash so they could not pay taxes on it. They rode that one all the way into the sunset.
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.