# Gig Economy Companies and Anarchy



## Phishfry (Jan 5, 2020)

I really don't understand how Gig E companies are allowed to break the laws with such impunity.
Example:
Virginia Beach property rental laws are very strict. Every time a rental turns over the city department of 'Housing and Neighborhood Preservation' must come in and inspect it to ensure it is adequate and up to code.
AirBNB allows people to rent thier homes with no inspections at all.
Clearly illegal activity.

Example:
Virginia has very strict laws about motorized vehicles. Motorized scooters are illegal on all streets unless tagged and you wear a helmet.
Lime scooter rents scooters for people to drive on city streets with no tags or helmets.
Clearly Illegal Activity.

Example:
Virginia Beach has very strict laws on Taxi cabs. The cabs are regulated and drivers are screened.
Uber/Lyft has no screening and allows private individuals to transport individuals for profit. No chauffeur's license needed.
Clearly Illegal Activity

Why can't these companies follow the law. What does it say about our legal system when laws are so brazenly flouted.
Why should I follow the law if shyster companies do not have to?
This is corperate anachry and it really pisses me off. I am a law abiding citizen and I am offended.


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## CraigHB (Jan 5, 2020)

I think it's a matter of traditional systems of enforcement being unable to quickly incorporate application to new systems.  I've seen this so much over that last few decades.  I think those issues do get addressed in time.  Until then businesses take advantage of that shortcoming.

A good example is sales tax.  When I first started shopping online a couple decades ago there was no collection of sales tax from any vendor.  Now it's more common to see sales tax collection than not.  The old system was not capable applying enforcement to the new system, but it finally caught up.  It took quite a while too. 

In general it seems law enforcement has a hard time keeping up with cultural changes.  These are monolithic institutions highly resistant to adaptation and change.  I think it says quite a bit about the system we live under.  There will probably always be this lag between adoption and adaptation.


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## ralphbsz (Jan 5, 2020)

Same example is Uber/Lyft and taxi licenses. Clearly, they operate a taxi service. Clearly, they do not get the necessary licenses. But our enforcement systems didn't kick into gear. Why? Tough question. First: the enforcement is tuned to catch problems within the existing system, like a taxi license has to be displayed visibly on the dashboard, and if it is displayed upside down by mistake, or falls on the floor, then the driver gets a fine (yes, I've been in court when a taxi driver got a fine because the license had fallen off a few minutes before the inspection and was sitting visibly on the floor of the taxi). The enforcement has a hard time dealing with people who completely ignore the rules, instead of violating minor aspects.

An even more crazy example is marijuana growing here in California. For a long time, everything related to it was illegal, but it was grown and sold, so there is a whole ecosystem and sociology of people in that business, and they are very criminal (many are violent, and many have prior convictions, not just for drug offenses). Now we want to "legalize" it, so now users can buy, carry and smoke a little bit. To create the stuff that can be legally sold, the growing also needs to be legalized, but that's much harder. To begin with, it remains federally completely illegal. Here in California, growing it remains illegal, but the counties are issuing permits to growers, and are beginning to have regulations and taxes/fees on it. Some counties are even trying to create a craft or art growing business (with denominations, harvest years, like wine, so it will be worth more). The only problem is that it is not grown like a normal agricultural crop, in big fields, by law-abiding and responsible farmers. Instead the same criminal element that has always been in this business continues to grow it in hidden places in the hills or along the coast, they use crazy amounts of fertilizer, stolen electricity and grow lights at night, they use illegal rodenticides that cause a die-off of predators (like foxes and bobcats) in the area, and they continue to violently defend their grows. We live in a rural area, and regularly hear the gunshots coming from the dope farms: those guys get high at a kite, and then do target practice. The real problem is that law enforcement has been ordered to stay away from them: growing and smoking dope is politically correct and desired, so the sheriff's deputies can't go there and enforce things like laws about gun use or agricultural poisons, because that would be offensive to the people who want it to succeed.

In general, this is a symptom of laws being just a social construct, and as our society changes (like we love everything related to the internet, or we love dope), laws and their enforcement system get confused.


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## tingo (Jan 5, 2020)

Question: how can we change our society without changing (or breaking) the current laws? By committee? (yes, that has worked well ... no times).
Yes - laws are a social construct - the sole purpose is to allow our society to function after a fashion (anarchy isn't a society).
And yes - laws (and large parts of the society) are seldom in front of changes. Why? Because we humans in general doesn't like change to well (someone said that the only change we enjoy is the holiday which we have planned ourselves).


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## obsigna (Jan 5, 2020)

In all your examples (Airbnb, Lime, Uber, Lyft), the users of these services are violating the law, and not the brokering service. Therefore as long no special new laws prohibit this kind of brokering, law enforcement has to go after each single landlord, scooter driver, private person transport. And only catching scooter drivers is easy, stop and fine them immediately.


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## getopt (Jan 5, 2020)

Phishfry said:


> I really don't understand how Gig E companies are allowed to break the laws with such impunity.


They do not care about law. They do not care about society. They intentionally break what they can and try to get away with it. The damage done got a name: Disruption. Disruption makes monopolies possible and establishes some super rich individuals who think they even can work around their own death.

As long as there are people who are willing to contribute to such eco-systems the new digital slavery will keep on booming. The next disruption will be a bottom-up one, when enough ordinary people realize that they are nothing more than a surveiled biomass whose purpose is making the super-rich even richer. 

Think about persons like the Bezos or Thiels and imagine no single person on earth wants to work for them anymore.


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## Phishfry (Jan 5, 2020)

What bothers me is that all these rules and laws were put in place because something happened.
Some kid cracked his head open on a motorized scooter for example.
So they are a matter of safety.
Now imagine throwing out all these lessons learned for convenience.
I hate regulation as much as the next guy but sometimes you have to make laws for safety's sake.








						Airbnb guest finds spy camera in the shower
					

VIRGINIA BEACH — If there was ever a good reason to not book an Airbnb, this would be it.




					www.travelweek.ca
				




The city I live in has made new laws to accommodate "short term housing" from the likes of AiriBNB.
It really seems shortsighted.








						Virginia Beach passes sweeping new rules on Airbnb and other short-term rentals
					

The City Council voted 8-2 to make changes to code and zoning ordinances to regulate Airbnb and short-term rentals.




					www.pilotonline.com
				




I know a guy who has 6 houses in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. All rented out as AirBNB.
All of them mortgaged but he is making double payments. So it has been lucrative to him.









						Rental owners in Virginia Beach bracing for vacationers who have been scammed
					

Craigslist and vacation rental websites like Airbnb have made it easy for homeowners to rent their properties, and for consumers to find them. But the increase in Internet listings has brought more fake listings posted by scammers.




					www.pilotonline.com


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## ralphbsz (Jan 5, 2020)

getopt said:


> Disruption makes monopolies possible ...


Disruption also breaks existing monopolies. The existing monopolies tend to fight back (for example using the legal system, which they have paid for and that is de-facto on their payroll), but in the face of real economic pressure, they tend to lose. It goes both ways.



> Think about persons like the Bezos or Thiels and imagine no single person on earth wants to work for them anymore.


Don't know about Peter Thiel; his company Palantir seems to be doing well, although I don't know a single person who works there. That's probably an effect of what it does as a business, and my friends being of a different political orientation. It's not an effect of geographic distance: Palantir's headquarters is about 15 minutes from where I work, and pretty close to where lots of my friends live (in the city of Palo Alto).

I know lots of people who work for Amazon, including good friends. Some of them even enjoy it a lot, many are just normal, and a few don't like it and are actively trying to get out (in one case because a person wants a job that's physically closer to their partner, their relationship is suffering from the commute distance). I have interviewed for a job there, but ultimately I was glad to not work there, since I think the culture (either of the company as a whole or of the particular office where I interviewed) wouldn't have fit my taste.

The claim that "no single person on earth wants to work for them" is nonsense; oodles of people interview there and go to work there.


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## getopt (Jan 5, 2020)

ralphbsz said:


> The claim that "no single person on earth wants to work for them" is nonsense; oodles of people interview there and go to work there.


That was no claim at all but an invitation for an thought experiment. Sorry for not having been clear enough. So I'd like to make a 2nd offer to think about:

Think about a concrete logistics typhoon who has an armada of poorly paid workers and a division of security people for his safety. One day these people stop working for him and no other people want to be exploited by him either. 
As mass enlightenment is most unlikely, the help of a _Jeannie Out of the Bottle _is needed to imagine. All the staff around this individual also resists working for him. No one wants to move even a single finger to help him anymore. What happens next?

Does he start wearing pampers to walk around all his logistic compounds around the world and doing all himself? He cannot. But he still sits on his money.

Next day he gets hungry. No one is there who is serving him anymore. He needs to go shopping for survival. As he is known world wide as the richest person on earth, he will get goods only on an individual basis. Hehe, capitalism is still working ... 

When Jeff tries to buy loo paper he starts considering to use banknotes instead. And so on ... until he became a person without work, home and health insurance.

Oh, isn't that all fantasy? Once upon a time mobiles, killing robots and drones were pure fantasy too. People like fantasies become true.


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## ralphbsz (Jan 5, 2020)

It is a nice thought experiment, except for ...



getopt said:


> One day these people stop working for him and no other people want to be exploited by him either.



A: That simply won't happen. There are always idiots and suckers.

B: He can quickly fix the problem by increasing his wages, to not only market rates, but to pay a premium over other employers. Because I assume that he's a jerk, so a lot of people don't want to work for him, so to find sufficient employees he has to pay better (thereby shifting the labor demand/supply curve sideways).

Matter-of-fact, Amazon pays very well. That might sound insane (given that we always hear the horror stories about overworked and abused workers in Amazon warehouses), but the reality is that Amazon pays *better* for the same job than other warehouses (where they get similar overwork and abuse, minus some money). And among skilled workers (like silicon valley or Seattle software engineers and managers) it is well known that Amazon pays pretty well, significantly above average.

A lot of these sociology or politics thought experiments are stopped by the nasty reality of economics: money talks. And by that I don't just mean that the rich can do whatever they want, but also much simpler that paying workers typically overrides their beliefs, which are usually weak.


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## bookwormep (Jan 5, 2020)

The City of Detroit. Files for bankruptcy. Street after street of abandoned houses. Yet, the Big Auto executives have to come to  Washington D.C. with their crocodile tears, hat in hand. The last thing on the citizens mind is administrative law and regulatory enforcement.


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## bookwormep (Jan 5, 2020)

There are many start-ups and efforts to jump-start the Detroit economy on a grassroots level. This is where a Gig economy can really do well for society.


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## CraigHB (Jan 6, 2020)

Phishfry said:


> I hate regulation as much as the next guy but sometimes you have to make laws for safety's sake.



I'm really down or regulation as well.  But you have to have it or things can really go sideways.  My biggest concern is the things corporations do that hurt the average person or the welfare of the public as a whole.

I'd have to say I'm for well thought out and smart regulation that protects the public from nefarious corporate activity.  However regulation can often fail to cover that kind of thing.  In the USA we are heavily biased politically toward free enterprise so corporations may get a free pass.


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