Modern Feudalism In The Digital Age
Airbnb, Uber, Lyft and the corporate-led ‘gig economy’ is not what we wanted.
Pinch me I must be dreaming.
The gig economy. The natural evolution of the workplace with the ability for anyone, anywhere to advertise their skills and receive pay for their expertise. It all seemed so good, back in the early 2010’s, — where everything seemed to be on the rise and people started to realize they could make a living using the wide reach of the internet to find potential customers or investments. You sit down. Ping. You have a new notification on your phone. You fold open your laptop at your favorite coffee shop to further investigate this query for your online shop. Your default webpage is your own business page. You finally get to be your own boss, while making well over everyone’s favorite target number one-hundred thousand dollars. 100k. “Another million-dollar inquiry.” you think to yourself while closing your laptop. You sigh, not because you’re missing out on an opportunity — but because you don’t get the chance to expand your brand by taking this offer that’s a bit beneath your price range, besides you have a hot yoga class that night, followed by game night with your friends, retiring the evening with glass of scotch, cigar, and a fireside “Netflix and chill” session with your strictly platonic roommate of the opposite sex. Of course, this is nowhere near reality — as the moment you wake up from your own fantasy — you realize what you are doing is driving uber on a flat tire barely making enough to cover the gas. Your 1099 contract doesn’t provide you with the healthcare you need, but you avoid the doctor because the symptoms ‘actually aren’t that bad’ and ‘a little cough never hurt anyone’. The thing is, you’ve been sold shit, and now you’re lying to yourself about it because if you told yourself the truth, you’d realize you got the bad end of the gig economy deal. Remember when supermarkets happened and stable small businesses forcing them out with convenience and prices? This is kind of like that, except things are more expensive and the jobs pay less. “. The big platforms — Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb — have been exposed for paying poverty wages, destabilizing urban neighborhoods, and accelerating carbon emissions. “(Schor 2) How did it happen where we are now supposed to accept the loss of benefits for the opportunity to get lower pay? Why is it that there is a middleman, either a corporation or application in between every personal service provided? Why are people hypnotized at the thought that they just aren’t being 10x productive, or working hard enough, and instead aren’t enraged that what was supposed to democratize and create autonomy in the workforce decreased the quality of services, and quality of life for its working-class participants while simultaneously giving more power to corporations, applications, and institutions than ever before.
You’re Losing out
Between taxes, platform fees, paying you for your own equipment and quite possibly other licensing fees and hidden costs of starting up any corporation-provided avenue for gig work, how percentage of your take home pay are you getting to keep? “…the costs associated with doing business, like having a reliable car for you to do deliveries from, to paying for gas, to having a smartphone to act as a GPS and to accept orders and whatever other costs they might incur, are all put on the workers. These upfront and recurring costs ultimately just serve to make it even harder to make money as a gig worker.” (Morrison 3) The next time you hear someone say they’ve been making thirty dollars an hour with uber or Instacart, if them if they’re factoring in the extra driving they’re doing against the depreciation of the vehicle, the cost of more expensive insurance, the extra gas and any possible car repairs that spring up because of the consistent use of the vehicle. Anxiety in this country (and maybe others) is on the rise right now, and financial insecurity induces some of the most mental stress on people in general. You can’t work consistently when you’re sitting there waiting on your phone waiting for the red box to hit. The resentment sets in because now, it appears your life in in the customer’s hands and whether they tip — the embers of resentment ignite and suddenly you can’t believe people for not tipping for the overpriced service. It’s okay to be mad, but it’s misplaced, instead be mad at the platform for not paying you a working wage. A question that comes to mind is that is the illusion of being able to choose your own work really with the bcost that comes with the insecurity?
Be your own boss?
At least with the option of being your own boss, you have more freedom and autonomy when it comes to where and when you’ll work. You choose to download the app, then the app uses its algorithm to determine everything. The who, what, where, and when, and the why is only between the person using platform and the powers that be. Turns out, you actually have very little control according to the researchers from “Young Workers on Digital Platforms.” Although digital platforms claim to be mere facilitators of transactions between entrepreneurs and customers, they exert a high degree of control over workers, particularly through algorithms that, for instance, control the matching, ranking and sorting of jobs and workers known as algorithmic management. (Laursen and others 66). Just because your boss is no longer a person, doesn’t mean you’re suddenly in the clear in being free with how you work, it just feels that way because you fill out a form and curate unfair reviews instead of being called in for a one-on-one.
Don’t accept the pittance
While it may be true that employers have the freedom to hire who and when they choose, and it is an ongoing debate whether an employer is obligated to pay someone, so they are making a living, but it is criminally, morally wrong to exploit people on a massive scale with management tactics that lack a soul and pay that can feed about half of a single person household’s living expenses. It was a slow ride down, from the sharing economy, to gig work to modern feudalism but I would bet the way out is not going to be as smooth if we do not take steps to solve this now.
Works Cited
Schor, Juliet B., et al. After the Gig How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked and How to Win It Back. University of California Press, 2020.
Morrison, Holly. “The Gig Economy is Bad News for Workers — .” University Wire, Oct 06, 2020. ProQuest, https://lib-proxy.sunywcc.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/wire-feeds/gig-economy-is-bad-news-workers-xa0/docview/2448633646/se-2.
Laursen, Cæ, Mette L. Nielsen, and Johnny Dyreborg. “Young Workers on Digital Labor Platforms: Uncovering the Double Autonomy Paradox1.” Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies, vol. 11, no. 4, 2021, pp. 65–84. ProQuest, https://lib-proxy.sunywcc.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/young-workers-on-digital-labor-platforms/docview/2634889299/se-2.