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Ghost work economies sell themselves as software that can eliminate the expensive frictions of searching, matching, training, communicating with, and retaining workers. Yet, as Coase might have warned, communication and coordination among workers, and between workers and their employers, not only is necessary but is actually money well spent. For all the claims that ghost work can combine algorithms, artificial intelligence, and platform interfaces to replace the company's function as "the entrepreneur-coordinator, who directs production," there is evidence to the contrary. The transaction costs of ghost work don't melt away. Instead they are shifted to the shoulders of requesters and workers. Requesters must juggle all the management that typiaclly comes with scoping a new project and handing it to a new employee. They spend extra time and energy explaining tasks that they thought needed no explication once converted to code and relayed via APIs. Workers pay a disproportionately higher price: they lose their time, even their paychecks, with no opportunity to appeal any mistreatment. Many of the transaction costs passed on to requesters irror those shouldered by workers. Each hurdle faced demonstrates that ghost work isn't working smoothly for anyone involved.
it works well for the founders/invsetors/etc, the only thing that's frictionless is growth of their net worth
[...] Requesters overwhelmingly expected workers to have their own software tools to bring to the job [...] A full-time employee would be given all the software tools necessary to do his or her job. But in the on-demand labor setting, this cost is transferred to the workers. [...] Requesters can improve their bottom line, since they don't have to provide software tools for on-demand workers.
Because platforms get their revenue from the requeters, it is not surprising that they, intentionally or not, confer more market power to requesters. Platforms also have the power to unilaterally decide who does and doesn't hjave access to their platform. [...]
remember who the customer is
One of the challenges for those doing ghost work is that there's no agreement about the social status or baggage that comes with it. Is it a dead-end trap, no different from the piecework of the first decades of the last century, or a hip gig that ggives someone the ultimate flexibility? People who've decided to pursue ghost work presumably did so after weighing the costs and benefits. They decided, at least for the immediate future, that ghost work was a better option. Their decisions hinged on both what they valued more than money and on taking stock of what "regular jobs" look like in their lives. Their job prospects reflect the growing and sobering reality of what is available to working-age adults around the globe.
i guess the answer is it can be both. but because the pay is usually so low, it's way less likely to be the latter
What seems straightforward to many Westerners is often a hurdle for workers in India, where people's homes often lack a formal address. This was the case for Joseph. Unable to offer a postal address that satisfied MTurk's requirements, he bought an account for an agency and used its address - a common work-around. Shortly after Joseph bought that account, it, too, got suspended, likely because the address didn't match his government-issued identification. The third time Joseph tried to get an account, he bought one on Facebook. As he put it, "I found a person on Facbeook who was from Thrissur [a city two hours away], but he does not work on it [MTurk] anymore. I work using his account and give him 20 percent of my salary."
wonder if this has been fixed (on amazon's side) yet or if they just dont give a shit
For instance, Anand, 24, is a student working on MTurk and living with his parents in Chennai. Anand uses his income from MTurk to pay for personal expenses. He told us that his parents don;'t understand what he is doing in front of the computer so much, but he hopes to prove them wrong by eventually getting a formal position with Amazon.com. [...]
:'(
[...] Doordash offers a same-day pay feature, called Fast Pay, that lets Dashers cash out earnings, much like Amazon Payments lets workers draw their pay into a direct deposit account. Fast Pay charges $1.99 to cash out. [...]
fuck u
FIX 9: UNIONS AND PLATFORM COOPERATIVES AS THE NEW BETTER BUSINESS BUREAU
We need a third-party registry that allows on-demand workers to build their work resumes and accrue reputations, independent of the platform. Workers should be able to take their record of accomplishments with them, no matter where they pick up their next gig. Unlike a typical resume, a registry, managed by workers' representatives, would allow workers to display validated feedback from previous employers and requesters, no matter the platform of origin. Platforms could be required to post this portable stack of letters of recommendation as part of the worker's platform-specific profile. These registries could operate as the on-demand economy's Better Business Bureau, authenticating workers' identities and reputations and saving companies the engineering costs curretnly poured into blocking the relatively few bad actors bombarding platforms with shoddy or fradulent work. In exchange for bringing greater scrutiny for workers' reputations, registries could be used to hold companies accountable to workers' demands. For example, companies could be required to register suspensions and removals of workers.
agreed
ability to contest suspensions would be part of this. US DoL involved too
[...] if the future is dependent on workers who cannot turn to theri employers of record to provide healthcare, society needs an alternative that reflects reality. Some make the case for unviersal healthcare, taking a charitable stance. The sick deserve our collective care. The cold bottom-line truth of on-demand economies is that companies need a healthy labor pool, and preventive, comprehensive care for all is the most cost-effective way to keep a pool of people healthy. And because being "between jobs" will not longer make sense, all citizens of adult working age should have access to paid afmily leave so that no one has to choose between caring for aloved ones or a newborn and maing a living.
interseting ... the business case for M4A
Proponents of UBI today, who put it forth as a salve for the wounds cut by automation, frame the conversation as "Those poor sops who are at the bottom of the skills laddder! Let's be charitable and give them a hand." This ignores how dependent the future of work will be on contract on-demand labor. Our response to the call for UBI is the economic case for companies and consumers to share in underwriting a retainer for anyone contributing to on-demand economies. Retainers, like those paid to lawyers and other professionals, acknowledge the collective need to have a healthy, available, continuously updating workforce to make on-demand economies sustainable. These new portable benefits would come from all adults of working age, government funds currently spent on adminstering public benefits, and corporate taxes collected and poured back into a commons pool to cover the social security benefits for retirement, retraining, and paid leave and health costs for each worker. This workforce will require - and deserves - a differenset of benefits and safety nets. THe labor of hardworking people around hte worl dhsould not be rendered invisible or opaque by the rise of AI. Other industries have already taught business the value of shoring up the more sustainble albor practices of thier supply chians.
i like this (uncommon) angle on UBI: post-work solutions are not necessary yet since there is no foreseeable shortage of work