The Gig Economy Is Failing. Say Hello to the Hustle Economy. (medium.com) 109
An anonymous reader shares a report: "We have nothing to sell besides physical touch." The thought jarred Amber Briggle awake some nights. It kept her from eating in the first week of the Covid-19 shutdown when she lost six pounds fretting over the sudden collapse of the business she'd built up her "entire adult life." For seven years, Briggle has owned a massage studio called Soma in Denton, Texas. She grew the operation from a pop-up in her house to a mini-empire with a wall of local "best of" awards. But when Texas Governor Greg Abbott closed businesses statewide on March 21, Briggle realized in an instant it could all be over. Her bills totaled more than $3,000 per month, and it wasn't as if she could give massages from home. "I had nothing, literally nothing," Briggle said. "And this is my life's work. I spent the entire first week crying. What else could I do about it?" Then, in the second week of the shutdown, during a pro-bono consultation with a local business advisor, she was asked if she'd ever considered a Patreon.
As the consultant explained, the digital-subscription platform -- once home mainly to YouTubers and podcast hosts -- had also become an ad hoc safety net for thousands of teachers, cashiers, line cooks, and hairstylists who lost work with the onset of stay-at-home orders. It wasn't just Patreon, either, which added more than 100,000 new users between mid-March and July. OnlyFans reported daily six-figure sign-ups on its popular cam site. Etsy logged 115,000 new sellers in the first three months of the year, more than double the past two years' user growth. Teachable, which lets people make and sell online courses, signed on 14,000 new creators between March and July, and in July reported its first quarterly revenue over $10 million.
As the consultant explained, the digital-subscription platform -- once home mainly to YouTubers and podcast hosts -- had also become an ad hoc safety net for thousands of teachers, cashiers, line cooks, and hairstylists who lost work with the onset of stay-at-home orders. It wasn't just Patreon, either, which added more than 100,000 new users between mid-March and July. OnlyFans reported daily six-figure sign-ups on its popular cam site. Etsy logged 115,000 new sellers in the first three months of the year, more than double the past two years' user growth. Teachable, which lets people make and sell online courses, signed on 14,000 new creators between March and July, and in July reported its first quarterly revenue over $10 million.
Say hello? (Score:1)
More like Welcome Back!
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As if it ever went away.
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OnlyFans reported daily six-figure sign-ups on its popular cam site.
Great advice. Become a cam-whore.
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Only up to a point - until people run out of money they can spend on non-essential things.
What the actual fuck? (Score:2)
"OnlyFans reported daily six-figure sign-ups on its popular cam site.
Great advice. Become a cam-whore"
And what kind of shit is this? How the fuck are we supposed to sustain an economy selling ideas, and video feeds of ourselves to each other?
Goddamn, it wasn't all that long ago when the US designed *and* manufactured engines, computers, tractors, refrigerators, television sets, washing machines, steel, chemicals, heavy industrial machinery, just about everything you can think of, and we were one if the best
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Two generations ago at least, to my memory. Actually, the complaints about losing market share to "foreigners" pre-date my generation, so more like three generations.
Nope, that was definitely before my time. I've seen
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More like Welcome Back!
Welcome Back Kotter.
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Juan Luis Pedro Philipo de Huevos Epstein didn't kill himself.
Re:Say hello? (Score:5, Interesting)
A business that is profitable until literally forcibly closed by the government is not "bullshit".
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Re:Say hello? (Score:4, Insightful)
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There are too many bullshit businesses (e.g., "massage studio")
Hey, sex workers deserve some respect. Hopefully the lack of demand will put an end to the sex slave trade, though, which is common in massage parlors. That's something worth advocating for change over. But that sort of shit happens whenever a business is illegal.
Yelling at the trolls? (Score:2)
You must be new here.
Patreon (Score:1, Funny)
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Well this makes me sick (Score:5, Informative)
It's frustrating how so few people are furious about how little help they're getting.
Re:Well this makes me sick (Score:5, Insightful)
It's frustrating how so few people are furious about how little help they're getting.
Give them time, this isn't over yet, nor are their troubles.
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People are really starting to react extremely negatively to the shut down, far more than the 'KARENS' enamoured of the shutdown and the power it gives them. Right now, it is the Democrats pushing a forever shutdown in the USA and the Republicans trying to end the shutdown in the USA, it does not bode well for the Democrats at election time, they will now be blamed for the shutdown and all of it's economic woes.
You know what they say, rip that bandage of fast or slow, it does not matter it will hurt either w
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Your hallucinations are fucking INTENSE.
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Yee-haw, git yer freedum fries cookin', macho up and the virus can't see you.
It may turn out that the economic impact of overflowing ICUs and dead people will be greater than the impact of partial shutdowns and mask wearing.
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Well I for one enjoy isolation. Today I'm building a 3-phase inverter out of 74-series logic ICs to run a BLDC motor from a HDD. And nobody is going to bother me, except perhaps digitally, but that will be on my break because I don't use push notifications.
People who are freaking out need to start doing breathing exercises, and if you put on the mask, stores will let you in.
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Why the hell should she be outraged at the Dems or Repubs for her run of bad luck? Maybe you should take a minute and observe that nobody owes you anything except the right to be left alone.
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They should, and many will, blame whoever is refusing to help them now.
That bootstraps bullshit ignores every single aspect of the policy debate.
I had a kid (Score:1)
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Re:Well this makes me sick (Score:4, Interesting)
while the peons beg for handouts online we've fully socialized Wall Street and most of the PPP loans went to big businesses and cronies with connections to the current administration.
It's less corrupt now than the 2008 looting of the treasury by the banksters, but not by much. At least it's not just finance guys taking my money this time. Some was mailed directly to individuals, even if it was only a low percentage.
For all my skepticism about any kind of UBI it's 100% better than any money given to banksters under any pretext.
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They should have starved the US churches too.
Less corrupt? (Score:2)
The Dems might throw us a slightly juicier bone though, so they get my vote. The GOP have made their intentions crystal clear, e.g. we all need to get back to work and pandemic and overflowing ICUs be damned. Like Metalica sung, "Back to the Front! Y
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More slashvertisements (Score:3, Interesting)
Patron fees seem arbitrary. 5% or your sales. Credit card processing fees that can be 30%. Plus additional fees to pay for their ârobust billing structureâ(TM). Then fees to get your money to your account so you can use it. I mean these people keep your money hostage until you pay a ransom.
Most small business owners I know, especially service providers, have to switch models every few years because the market changes. Competitors come in, pricing changes, market needs change.
This is not unlike when I was in college and the entire economy imploded mostly because of efficiencies delivered by computing resources. We had family freinds who were bankrupt overnight because they depended on people paying for inefficient service, and making a bundle in the process.
All of these are the scam, charges huge fees to connect customers and providers. It is a legitimate and necessary scam, but it is like Amazon, EBay, Uber, etc. they are not always doing the heavy lifting, outside of maybe Amazon.
There is no free lunch.
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NY is fairly safe at this point. DeBlasio and Cuomo made sure that the virus burned through the elderly population early on, so they're clear now. It's like a controlled burn. Get rid of all the dried up stuff on the ground, and the forest is more resistant to a large fire. Texas and Florida still have a lot of that over-70 underbrush that they have to worry about.
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Re:Should have been wearing masks. (Score:4, Insightful)
Key word: "rolling".
If you're talking about "leadership" and "stupid people" which haven't changed over last year, you should be looking at totals, not arbitrary cut off for "this moment". Because this virus hits in waves, and if one region is on the bottom of their wave and another is peaking, you can accuse even someone who did much better than another of "being worse in the moment".
Basic statistics.
Which is why disingenuous liars such as AC that started this particular subthread are destructive. They warp statistics to achieve their political goal, which is "blame Trump for everything".
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Key word: "rolling".
Indeed, it gives a more accurate representation than day-to-day fluctuations.
you should be looking at totals, not arbitrary cut off for "this moment"
That rather depends on whether you want to know something about current risks, surely?
Texas is at 206 deaths/million, California 230/million, so over the whole pandemic California is doing worse. But if the number added in CA remains at 120/d and TX at 260/d, those positions will be narrowly reversed on Wednesday.
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Considering that this is a second open lie, the claim that linear progression is a good way to measure waveform function which is the progressions of this virus within the population, and the fact that you're continuing to insist that "region at the bottom of the wave vs region at the top is a great way to compare two regions", I have to draw the conclusion that you're not an honest actor in this discussion.
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Considering that this is a second open lie, the claim that linear progression is a good way to measure waveform function which is the progressions of this virus within the population, and the fact that you're continuing to insist that "region at the bottom of the wave vs region at the top is a great way to compare two regions",
Of course there are probably much better fits, but over a period of less than a week a linear progression, given the apparent shape of the graphs, is a good first approximation.
I have to draw the conclusion that you're not an honest actor in this discussion.
I am using the best first approximation to the data. It's a valid analysis for something where the overall trend is pretty flat in the short term and is often used in science and engineering. The trick is knowing the period for which it is valid. It's also not impossible that longer term fluctuations will change the relative position
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>Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean they are lying.
And if you had a genuine explanation for disagreement, rather than a self-evident mathematical absurdity, which is to claim linear progression from a single point snapshot being a viable tool to evaluate a waveform, I'd certainly entertain your disagreement and gladly proceed to even change my mind if you had a point that I could not refute.
However you chose to instead engage in self-evidently disingenuous arguing instead on two occasio
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Of course there are probably much better fits, but over a period of less than a week a linear progression, given the apparent shape of the graphs, is a good first approximation.
No. It's not. It isn't even close.
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No. It's not. It isn't even close.
I take it you didn't study a hard science subject at university then. If you had then you would have been taught that for sufficiently short periods of projection then a linear fit is acceptable as a first-order approximation for many types of function. For example, for small changes of theta then sin(theta) is close to linear, and such simplifications are very much used in science and engineering to simplify equations (for example if you had a term theta/sin(theta) where delta theta is going to be small).
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I would like to congratulate you on getting a statistical anomaly right with sample size of one. And find myself extremely amused that you took time to come back to this thread to gloat, with "I'm not happy" to spice it up.
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And back to anecdotal evidence we go.
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Cases lag infections. Hospitalizations lag cases. Deaths lag hospitalizations.
Did you live under a rock last few months and miss the first wave and how it went?
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How do "techniques that have been developed" alter the natural cycle of this virus?
Hint: correct answer is "they haven't". Techniques we've developed helped us understand it better. We have no techniques that modify the cycle. It remains the same.
Death rates are down because of two factors in total. One is that there are now many areas that are at the low point. Most of Europe, most of large cities in US for example. They had their first wave peak a while ago. Whereas areas that did't get hit in the first w
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exans didn't like wearing masks, and now today Texas had the most deaths yet at 340 and counting.
Texas is fine, thanks. The death rate has shot up from meaningless to trivial, still unimportant. It will end in herd immunity, as I've been saying all along. If we do it right, the vulnerable can be kept isolated until the healthy get there and the disease stops.
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But yes, continue to deny the cheapest solution of wearing a mask for political reasons.
Everyone is wearing masks now, It's legally required where most people live. Has been for a while.
Re:Should have been wearing masks. (Score:4, Insightful)
If we do it right, the vulnerable can be kept isolated until the healthy get there and the disease stops.
With that level of death rate it suggests that is not being done right, then.
The death rate has shot up from meaningless to trivial, still unimportant.
If 340 people a day were dying from gang violence, for example, I don't think you'd consider it trivial.
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With that level of death rate it suggests that is not being done right, then.
Retirement communities are largely ignoring the problem. You won't see a mask on a golf course in one, despite them being legally required. But that's their choice, and it's not for you to say it's the wrong one. If your life expectancy is 5 years or so, it makes sense not to let a low risk threat stop you from enjoying the time you have left.
If 340 people a day were dying from gang violence, for example, I don't think you'd consider it trivial.
Chicago is not in Texas, though.
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But that's their choice, and it's not for you to say it's the wrong one.
It's you that brought up 'doing it right.
If 340 people a day were dying from gang violence, for example, I don't think you'd consider it trivial.
Chicago is not in Texas, though.
And Chicago doesn't have that level of violence, so your point is what? What other thing resulting in 340 deaths a day would you be happy with?
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They are doing it right, is my point! Your idea of right is different from theirs, because you have a different goal in mind. People find it amazingly hard to accept that this can be true, in general, and I don't get why.
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Problem is, this virus appears to be in sweet spot of infectivity, where it's infective enough to be threatening, but not infective enough to hit large enough portion of population to create an effective herd immunity.
At least not in one wave. That has become clear with Sweden's example. And considering that China is starting to see a third wave, it seems that two waves isn't enough either.
We'll probably need masks for a while to keep transmission low enough to be able to keep economy open, because deaths d
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It is working well in Texas. Almost all businesses are open, and the economy is doing pretty well. Herd immunity is just a matter of time in the dense areas, and in the rest of Texas (the vast majority of counties) it's just not an issue.
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Problem is that Sweden's example has demonstrated that "a matter of time" for this virus in relationship to "herd immunity" is likely measured in years rather than months, if it is achievable at all.
I.e. we don't know if memory cells survive long enough for virus to actually get around to go through sufficient amount of populace.
Holding Caulfield (Score:5, Funny)
I was way ahead of this hustle economy back when I was a junior in high school and sold nickle bags of seeds and stems to freshmen and told them it was sensimilla. It instilled in me a lifelong appreciation for free market capitalism.
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I haven't had coffee yet so I misread that as you sold "Nickelback" and I straight away thought *you monster!*. But if it's only drugs and fraud, that's okay :)
It's the disenfranchisement economy. (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's be honest and call this what it is and has been, a disenfranchisement economy.
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Let's be honest and call this what it is and has been, a disenfranchisement economy.
Let's be honest and call this what it is and has been, a fishing-expedition economy.
There, FTFY..
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No, the point is so that the executives get rich and don't give a shit about the workers. If you don't understand that then you don't understand the current economy.
Have you been hustled? (Score:4, Informative)
Also, the gig economy, as I understand it, is small side jobs in addition to your main job. Mainly because wages are being outpaced by everyone and everything wanting an additional expense or tax.
Poor Briggle, her occupation is in danger, not some side gig; this makes the entire example not even apply to the subject heading.
"Gig economy" and "hustle economy?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop using stupid euphemisms to try to normalize the practice of fucking over your workers ("gig") and a complete lack of basic social safety nets ("hustle").
US economy is falling apart (Score:2, Insightful)
We (the US) hardly manufacture consumer goods anymore, we have been coasting on fake money backed by debt that has been impossible to pay back, and now businesses are going under left and right.
How much longer can we keep up the charade we call "the economy". Empires collapsed throughout history, and we will just be another item on that list.
All of the MAGA, and woke, and other bullshit games won't change the fact that we are about to roll over the tall, steep cliff.
It's become a complete circus, bu
Re: US economy is falling apart (Score:3)
"Services is exactly where US wants to be"
A service economy is bullshit. A country needs to be able to manufacture durable goods in order to be independent and survive. Right now China has us by the balls, and they are squeezing them hard.
I don't know if you are a shill or an apologist, but our manufacturing base got undermined and sold out because of GREED, and we are going to pay the price.
Re: US economy is falling apart (Score:2)
P.S. don't embarass YOURSELF by sucking the dicks of the people who sold us out to line their own rotten pockets.
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In real world on the other hand, foreign investors were queueing up just to be able to lend FED money for the record bailout, massive amount of foreign money fled to US in last few months, effectively putting the last nail in Euro's "international reserve currency" hope's coffin.
And US CPI is still down for this year, with drops in march, april and may and only some rebound in june almost entirely due to rise in oil prices from the ongoing instability in oil markets.
In other words, not only is money buying
Re: US economy is falling apart (Score:2)
"give nearly interest-free debt to US as long as it just would take it. In many cases now, they're willing to take significant hits just to get the money into US"
Yes, to add to the monster debt that is alteady impossible to pay back. It does not matter if it's interest free or not.
I don't know exactly their motivation for continuing to inflate this bubble, other than their reasons are sinister, or they got duped somehow into thinking "oH oUr mOnEy iS sAfE wItH tHe uS" (yeah right), but the US has been coast
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That's not even in the ballpark of how nation state lending functions. State loans are not backed by state assets. They are promissory notes. That's it. They are backed up by a "promise to pay money back". There are no guarantees other than this promise.
And you also appear to think that foreign investors can just take the physical assets like land and take it with them. This is also not how land works. You don't actually "own land", you "own" government's guarantee to respect your claim to this land. I.e. a
Re: US economy is falling apart (Score:2)
What I know for sure is when the bubble pops, it ain't going to
be pretty. They are lending with the knowledge of the possibility thatnthey won't get it back, or so it says on paper. The reality is is that they *will* want to be
paid back in full, and they are going to get very angry if that does not happen.
"US is the best place to put their money"- for now.
This is very subject to change at a moment's notice. It looks like at this point they have their backs against the wall, and are being forced to chose th
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>and my gut instincts are telling me that this is all going to end very badly.
I would suggest going to a lavatory and remembering to flush and wash your hands after, instead of making complex macroeconomic predictions based on your bowel movement.
Re: US economy is falling apart (Score:2)
"I would suggest going to a lavatory and remembering to flush and wash your hands after, instead of making complex macroeconomic predictions based on your bowel movement"
So by this comment, I take it that I won the argument?
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If you remembered to flush and washed your hands, you did.
It's called an economic crash. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't you just call it what it is? An economic crash. Tens of millions without a job in the U.S. doesn't need a fancy word. I expect a measurable amount of this type of problem to ripple around the globe within the next 24 months.
I'm in Germany and we're doing pretty good right now, because we actually have a working social market economy. I'm out of a job but entitled to Level 1 unemployment support which gives me a cushy 65% of my last post-tax salary which I'm using to up my skills and get some certifications. I can even keep saving.
However, I expect things to go further south even here. We already have 10% decline in economic throughput, and the real wave of the German equivalent of "Chapter 11" hasn't hit us yet. But it is coming.
Looking across the pond it is absolutely clear that the U.S. needs a bottom-up redo of the system. Healthcare is a joke, wealth transfer is just about non-existant, the penal system is at level with Xingjang in China but not with true first world countries and the electorial system with its perpetual 2-party gridlock has become a democracy trainwreck. When the fecal matter has hit the rotary air impeller, as it basically is happening right now, I hope you guys can finally get some *real* reform through and come out with a U.S. that has some serious 20th/21st century-style updates.
As for us here in Europe, we've just decided, much like in the US, to print another quadrobazillion Euros to keep the weak economies happy and this EU thing going. Don't know how that will turn out, but I expect a fluttering inflation/deflation to kick in big time real soon now, for basically anyone on the planet, including us. Once this is over and the robots will move in to replace our jobs the world is going to be all-out Cyberpunk for everyone to see. And yes, I guess you could call that the hustle economy, but right now it's just a big-ass global recession that's eating up social stability.
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I only have one rebuttal to everything you just said. Wealth transfer isn't non-existent in the US. It just works in one direction only. Upward. Every time we see a slight economic dip, our wonderful government steps in to shove tax dollars towards wall street and the banks who ever so desperately need it, while families starve and lose their homes. It's the American way!
Re: It's called an economic crash. (Score:2)
"quadrobazillion Euros to keep the weak economies happy and this EU thing going."
So do you have gold, or other resources to back it up? If not, his is how countries get themselves into real trouble.
The adult entertainment (Score:3)
Re: The adult entertainment (Score:2)
There is the problem of market saturation, and it gets to the point that there is too many wank streams for the amount of available Viagra in the world.
Wow, if people 100 years ago could see us now. We went from the greatest industrialized nation in the world to a wank economy, :{
Wait, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
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That's apparently been the solution to layoffs/lack of decent health insurance/astronomical medical costs so far, so why not? Who needs social safety nets when you've got GoFundMe?
(But yeah, it's probably only a matter of time before people are setting up GoFundMe's to find the GoFundMe's they're donating to.)
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