by
Tom Slee
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Before this most recent trial, Uber CFO Brent Callinicos mentioned in a meeting with potential investors that Uber could easily raise rates to between 25% and 30%. Venture capitalist Mike Novogratz asked him a question: “You’ve got happy employees, you’ve got happy customers, you’ve got happy shareholders. The holy triumvirate are all really excited about your company. Why are you going to risk that and push the employees’ salary down 5%?” Callinicos responded “because we can."
it's about powerrrr. even the execs openly admit it
Uber has taken advantage of its drivers’ vulnerability by imposing more and more strenuous rules. Drivers must accept 90% of ride requests or they get a notification to “Please improve your acceptance rate if you want to continue to use the Uber platform.” Drivers claim to have been deactivated for being critical of the company on Twitter.
can set arbitrary metrics and drivers basically have to acquiesce. no regulators stepping in here and, as of yet, no established union structures to advocate on their behalf
also remember they must keep their rating really high (no appeal process, since there isnt a work contract)
Sharing Economy reputation systems have become fronts for hierarchical and centralized disciplinary systems, which have nothing to do with notions of “peer-to-peer” reputation, “algorithmic regulation” or regulation with a “lighter touch” through ratings. We trust strangers on Sharing Economy platforms for the same reason we trust hotel employees and restaurant waiters: because they are in precarious jobs where customer complaints can lead to disciplinary action. [...]
this is good
Linux is no longer the product of “part-time hacking.” Most of the programmers who work on the project earn a good living for doing so, just as do those who work on proprietary software. The companies that sponsor and contribute to Linux do not do so out of the generosity of their hearts, they do so for solid commercial reasons.
Linux is no longer subversive. It has moved steadily away from being an outsider to taking its place as a comfortable part of the existing commercial world. In a way, if there was a revolution, Linux has won, but it’s an Animal Farm victory. In winning, Linux has become like those it displaced: more professional, more structured, more carefully governed. Linux has not undermined powerful institutions and companies (although it has made some operating systems obsolete); instead, those institutions have learned to live happily with Linux, and even profit from it.
oh man this is so eerily similar to my open source piece for logic!
for diss: cite how open source on its own is not subversive, easily co-opted by capital, co-exist
The Web 2.0 platforms in the cultural industry have taken advantage of the winner-take-all tendencies of digital markets to take money from each and every transaction (by advertising or by direct sales) and have used their position, standing between the consumer and the service provider, to build enormous market power over service providers. The dispute is often presented as one between scrappy startups and big corporate incumbents (Airbnb versus chain hotels in particular) and yet history suggests that these big players will find a way to coexist. Instead, those who are more likely to be hit are the smaller bed and breakfasts and independent hotels. And the new entrants, those who have the promise of easy access to consumers dangled in front of them, may find that the platform they depend on takes the lion’s share of the money.
i like the implication that the mainstream old vs new narrative is a distraction from what's actually happening
As an openness movement grows, the smart money learns how to work with it. Sometimes that smart money comes from those who seemed to be threatened: IBM was an establishment software company with its own operating system, which learned to love Linux, and the music industry learns to put ads on (and in) YouTube music videos. So businesses grow around the open commons.
Big companies are often better placed to influence the development of the movement than the amateurs who appear in the stories. Alliances with such companies (“Blockbuster strategies,” in Anita Elberse’s phrase) can be tempting for openness initiatives, and are often accompanied by a change in language. Visions of community are replaced by arguments that openness provides a better experience for consumers or is a more efficient production method. In the Open Data world, arguments for citizen engagement get put to one side in favor of arguments about new consumer services (Google Maps, real-estate listings); Linux’s goal of providing users with more control over their computing environment takes second place to powering Wall Street and the US security state.
oooh i like this
[...] By qualifying loan applicants, Lending Club is managing a commons resource for lenders. Once it became clear that Lending Club was a source of potential borrowers, big financial firms realized they could take advantage of this commons. Hedge funds were the first institutions to join the opportunity and now “big financial firms, not small investors, dominate lending on the two platforms [Lending Club and its competitor Prosper].” While peer-to-peer loans were primarily “fractional,” in that several small lenders would combine to fund a loan, by March 2015 “65% of the more than $3 billion loans on the two platforms [Prosper and Lending Club] came from investors snatching up whole loans, which are almost always made by institutional investors rather than individuals.”
good example of how these platforms by themselves dont necessarily promise disintermediation and are in fact vulnerable to corporate power dynamics etc
According to the ABC theory of Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET) that I (AE) originated in 1955, and according to the other cognitive-behavioral therapies that followed RET, this is what usually occurs when you make yourself neurotic. That is, when you make yourself anxious, depressed, enraged, self-hating, phobic, or addicted. You take your preferences and desires for healthy Goals (such as success, approval, comfort, and pleasure) and you turn them into strong, rigid shoulds, oughts, musts, and commands. Like the rest of us, you are fallible and imperfect. Because others and world conditions often thwart your grandiose musts, you make yourself needlessly miserable when you devoutly believe a must. In RET we coined the term musturbation to highlight humorously this un-humorous process by which you make yourself miserable. An old saying in RET is “Musturbation leads to self-abuse.”
cheesy but not unhelpful
If you drink alcohol so that it interferes directly or indirectly with achieving your goals, you have a problem with it. You can make drinking a problem when you give it excessive power to enable you to cope better, to feel good, or to help you reduce emotional distress. It’s a problem when you believe you need it for those or other purposes. Problem behavior is defined by how much it hinders you in reaching your goals. Because different people have different goals, your problem in one situation may not be a problem for other people in a different setting. If, for instance, you go out every night with your crowd and drink, and then fail a big test, your drinking is a problem if you believe it is more important in the long run to pass the test.
Your best bet for changing your self-defeating behavior is first to admit you are responsible for your behavior and for changing it. Second, accept yourself as a person who currently is defeating yourself. Third, refuse to label yourself as a loser or a victim. If you call yourself a victim, you focus on the unfortunate Activating Events or Adversities (A’s) in your life. But in doing so you may give these A’s too much and yourself too little power and control over you. If you adopt the role of “victim,” you make yourself powerless to do anything about your Belief System (B) concerning the Adversities (A’s). When you neglect changing your Belief System, you will fail to change your disturbances and addictions (Cs) and your Adversities (A’s). Then you make yourself into a “helpless victim.”