Can the Sharing Economy Provide Good Jobs?

[flintlock]

Re: Can the Sharing Economy Provide Good Jobs?

I think the best solution is to get the word out on these schemes, like you are doing here. Why does the Liberal media, who claim to support the working class, not shed more light on this?

[jk]

Re: Can the Sharing Economy Provide Good Jobs?

Why does the Liberal media, who claim to support the working class, not shed more light on this?

my observation is that the so-called "liberal media" are liberal on social/cultural issues. when it comes to money, not so much.

[GRG55]

Re: Can the Sharing Economy Provide Good Jobs?

I think the best solution is to get the word out on these schemes, like you are doing here. Why does the Liberal media, who claim to support the working class, not shed more light on this?

The title of the thread is about the "Sharing Economy" and the debate seems mostly about the portion of the economic rent to be captured by those providing the labour input; probably not much different from the same debate when workers came off the farms during the Industrial Revolution. Uber and its contemporaries seem to be experiments. Will any of them become a 100 year old company like the equally hated GE or Standard Oil of New Jersey (Exxon)? Does it matter?

Uber et al may well turn out to be nothing more than transitional experiments. Seems to me the prime enabler of the "sharing economy" is technology, not cheap labour. And that wouldn't appear to be going away any time soon, regardless of how many places outlaw Uber et al. So how is this rapid technology revolution going to next facilitate what is obviously something a lot of (apparently mostly younger, urban dwelling) people want?

I would be interested in everyone's views about what seems (to me) an alternative/competitor to Uber's sharing model...Car2Go. I see them all over the streets around my downtown office. Do you see similar issues with this sharing model? It is, after all, another threat to the traditional taxi industry.

One of my staff is mid-20s and uses these shared cars extensively. As explained to me, one wave of a valid subscriber account card unlocks the door and away you go. There is a geographic limiter that prevents the vehicles from being driven to the 'burbs. There is also a "cheap labour" aspect to it - a driver can choose to devote some time to refill the fuel tank on a Car2Go in exchange for some sort of time/mileage credit to their account. Said employee gets paid more than well enough to be able to own a car. The only lament was there is no similar shared vehicle service to get to the mountains to go skiing on weekends (surely there's an app in the works to fix that). When queried the response I got was car ownership is "a big hassle".

And therein lies the generational contrast.

Since I got my driver's licence at age 16 and bought a beater VW Beetle I have never been without a car of my own - being without one would be "a hassle" from my perspective. Not surprisingly then, my reaction when I first saw four or five Car2Go vehicles parked in the same downtown block was that one should buy a white Smart Car, paint it in the Car2Go scheme and thus be able to park it anywhere downtown for free and with impunity - a personal, non-shared Car2Go.

Car2Go is a subsidiary of Daimler (another 100+ year old company). I also expect the City is getting part of the take in exchange for providing the on street downtown parking privileges.

[don]

Re: Can the Sharing Economy Provide Good Jobs?

Uber has already forced taxi companies to be more technologically efficient. That may ultimately be the final result of the Uber companies - better taxi service.

I have a granddaughter that lives and works in the SF and uses mass transit exclusively. The right urban environment can provide that and its popular with her age cohort.

What's the business model for shared cars?

[GRG55]

Re: Can the Sharing Economy Provide Good Jobs?

Uber has already forced taxi companies to be more technologically efficient. That may ultimately be the final result of the Uber companies - better taxi service.

I have a granddaughter that lives and works in the SF and uses mass transit exclusively. The right urban environment can provide that and its popular with her age cohort.

What's the business model for shared cars?

Said staffer uses the light rail transit system to commute into the downtown core. Once there the shared cars go where the rail transit does not.

[don]

Re: Can the Sharing Economy Provide Good Jobs?

Said staffer uses the light rail transit system to commute into the downtown core. Once there the shared cars go where the rail transit does not.

That's how its used, not how it pays for itself with a profit. Do you know the business model?

[lektrode]

Re: Can the Sharing Economy Provide Good Jobs?

That's how its used, not how it pays for itself with a profit. Do you know the business model?

looks to me like the future: with 'smart' cars for the masses (proles) - to keep em off the roads - so the maybach bunch (and their lackeys in the political class) gets a quicker ride into towne, with cheaper parking...

its getting more obvious by the day thats the plan in some places
(and such a grandelusion it is... not that thats unusual... kinda par for that course actually = Team Blue in action...)

[GRG55]

Re: Can the Sharing Economy Provide Good Jobs?

That's how its used, not how it pays for itself with a profit. Do you know the business model?

I don't know what Daimler's business model is in detail. The service is designed around a point-to-point pricing model (one way trips just like a taxi or discount airline service). In this city there is a one time sign up fee (currently CAD $35), no recurring membership or subscription fees. Users pay for time, not distance. There is per minute, per hour and per day pricing. I assume like most rental car agencies the initial sign up requires one provide a credit card for the insurance deductible security.

There is no reservation required; you just walk up to a car and pass your card across the reader on the lower left side of the windshield. However, there is a mobile phone app that allows you to locate the nearest vehicles, and you can reserve one through that app up to 30 minutes before you need it to assure it is still there when you walk over. Not sure how they price that.

[jk]

Re: Can the Sharing Economy Provide Good Jobs?

I don't know what Daimler's business model is in detail. The service is designed around a point-to-point pricing model (one way trips just like a taxi or discount airline service). In this city there is a one time sign up fee (currently CAD $35), no recurring membership or subscription fees. Users pay for time, not distance. There is per minute, per hour and per day pricing. I assume like most rental car agencies the initial sign up requires one provide a credit card for the insurance deductible security.

There is no reservation required; you just walk up to a car and pass your card across the reader on the lower left side of the windshield. However, there is a mobile phone app that allows you to locate the nearest vehicles, and you can reserve one through that app up to 30 minutes before you need it to assure it is still there when you walk over. Not sure how they price that.

zip car is somewhat similar, though i think it has more flexibility on where you can drive it. i wonder about the insurance aspect of car2go or zipcar. who has what kind of liability? [there's an american concern.]

i think if you live in a city having a car is a pretty big and expensive hassle.
Buy Condo, Then Add Parking Spot for $1 Million

[dcarrigg]

Re: Can the Sharing Economy Provide Good Jobs?

looks to me like the future: with 'smart' cars for the masses (proles) - to keep em off the roads - so the maybach bunch (and their lackeys in the political class) gets a quicker ride into towne, with cheaper parking...

Ceiling-less congestion-priced toll lanes are the ultimate example of this. Take public land, and make it a rich-only highway. Make the plebs sit in traffic on the bridges we're never going to repair. And add $40 round trip per weekday on the cost of a traffic-less ride into DC/LA/SF/ATL/whatever.

Two-tiered public infrastructure.

It's very obvious with all this rent-a-car BS too. Every city I see is jacking up parking meter rates, tickets, enforcement, boots, towing, all of it. Meanwhile they're giving away free parking spots in prime locations to these companies on public land. AND some of them are talking about ceiling-less variable congestion meter pricing. Only the rich shall park here!

The problem I have with it, besides the obvious one, is that there already are several private parking options all over these cities. These companies could find their own spots without swallowing up public land. That's what all those Google Bus protests were about after all - not that Google had a bus - that a bus only for Google employees took over public land and public bus stops.

And there are already several private or semi-private transit options people can take to get around traffic. The point of the meters was to provide a public parking option that anyone can afford no matter where in the city you were. The point of highways was to provide a level transit option that anyone could afford no matter where in the country you were going.

Once you break it off into a two-tiered system, where parking in downtown at a meter costs $50, but it's $5 on the outskirts of town, and you build all new highway lanes for only commuters who can afford to flush $20,000 down the drain on fees every year, you are essentially saying to working class people:

"We don't want you in the city any more. Get out! Now!"

It's basically what they do in Singapore, which is the dream model for all these hooligans.

To GRG's point, I'll tell you this: Walk around Cambridge right outside of Harvard. You'll see plenty of ZipCars. Walk around Dorchester right outside of UMass Boston. You'll see lots of kids' '95 Civics. But no ZipCahs. It's not just a generational thing. It's a class thing. $70/day for ZipCars or even $20 for 2 hours aren't going to cut it for kids who are lucky to manage to find cars for $700 and gas them at $30 once every week or two.

Wealthy college kids and 20-somethings whose parents get them set up with Credit Cards and who have lots of disposable income to burn play this game. I've never met a millennial kid from even a median income household who uses this stuff. This ain't snapchat or instagram. It's not for everyone. It's for the convenience of one small class of people.

Lek's right. Anywhere in some glitzy downtown you find ZipCars, there's a good chance you'll find Teslas or Maybachs about. But take a little walk to the edge of downtown and go across the tracks...

Where the viaduct looms,like a bird of doom
As it shifts and cracks
Where secrets lie in the border fires,
in the humming wires
Hey man, you know
you're never coming back
Past the square, past the bridge,
past the mills, past the stacks

And you'll find a place where Teslas, Maybachs, and ZipCars fear to tread.

There are the kids who use Uber.
Then there are the kids who work for Uber.
Then there are the kids who've never heard of it.

Upper; Middle; Lower

It just gets egregious when you ask the Middle and Lower to give up public land and funding for the exclusive benefit of the upper.

And the absolute worst part is that you luxury-up the city centers so workers can't afford homes near work, and now you're luxury-ing up the path into work, so they can't afford to commute in, even if they live where housing's affordable.

Talk about barriers to market entry.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Can the Sharing Economy Provide Good Jobs?

zip car is somewhat similar, though i think it has more flexibility on where you can drive it. i wonder about the insurance aspect of car2go or zipcar. who has what kind of liability? [there's an american concern.]

i think if you live in a city having a car is a pretty big and expensive hassle.
Buy Condo, Then Add Parking Spot for $1 Million

Don't worry jk, there's a sharing economy solution for this too!

Yes - they actually was a VC-backed company that made an app for selling public parking spaces...and it's not gone. Now you can rent out your driveway...or your neighbor's driveway...or just that spot that blocks them in...they'll never know...

[GRG55]

Re: Can the Sharing Economy Provide Good Jobs?

...

Two-tiered public infrastructure.

It's very obvious with all this rent-a-car BS too. Every city I see is jacking up parking meter rates, tickets, enforcement, boots, towing, all of it. Meanwhile they're giving away free parking spots in prime locations to these companies on public land. AND some of them are talking about ceiling-less variable congestion meter pricing. Only the rich shall park here!

...

I doubt you would get a lot of the citizens of the city I currently keep an office in to agree.

For quite some years now Calgary, the Canadian petroleum industry headquarters, has been on a mission to discourage the use of cars, especially into the downtown core. The corporation of the City of Calgary owns a considerable amount of the downtown parking over and above on-street. It led the way jacking up parking rates and the private sector parking lot owners of course followed suit. An argument could be made that it is the responsibility of elected city officials to maximize the return from public assets like downtown parking, on behalf of all its citizens.

The headline is a year old, but the stat is likely still valid:

Only New York tops Calgary in downtown parking rates

CALGARY HERALD04.01.2014

Calgary has the highest monthly downtown parking rates in the country and it’s second only to New York in North America, says a new survey by commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield.

For generations Canadian cities were habitually controlled by property development interests. Zoning was skewed to benefit friends of the mayor, who almost invariably came from the real estate industry. We might have grown out of that finally.

Calgary has had a series of popular "progressive" mayors with supportive councils. The city has one of the most extensive urban bike pathway networks in North America (despite the fact winter lasts for 6 months) and entire lanes of downtown core streets are now being segregated as bicycle only lanes (complete with safety barriers and their own separate traffic signals at intersections).

Although there was some criticism about the cost ($25 million each), in the past 5 years the city has constructed two more bridges crossing the Bow River into downtown. Both are pedestrian and cyclists only.

All of this, and more, seems to have considerable public support, with the mayor being elected to a second term with 74% of the vote in the 2013 civic elections.

But I will note that in virtually every respect this city is CONSIDERABLY more expensive to live in than it was in 2000 when I sold my home and moved to live overseas.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Can the Sharing Economy Provide Good Jobs?

An argument could be made that it is the responsibility of elected city officials to maximize the return from public assets like downtown parking, on behalf of all its citizens.

I suppose that argument all depends on whether you have to drive to work or not. The real estate development set are winning in this scenario too. Much more profitable to set up smaller numbers of luxury apartments in high-priced areas than large numbers of mid-range housing. And I actually think if you make the costs of tolls and fees of commuting into a city high enough, you probably can juice real estate values in the city. If it's an extra $3,000+ per year or something in fees to get in and out to work, you may as well add $50,000 to the value of housing in the center.

But the real winners are maybe the absentee landlords. Very nice to own a place with sky-high rents you never have to visit, especially when they're sucking their revenue off the renters that live their and park instead of out of property taxes. But like I said, it might just be a twofer. The higher you make the toll to get into town, the more property values rise, the more revenue comes in on the property tax side too - and all without juicing rates. Works well, so long as people can afford it.

First world roads are turning into little more than a revenue enhancement scheme. It's a backdoor way into regressive taxation if you ask me. Little more. I've actually seen cities around here "budget in" an additional 150,000 parking tickets per year as a method of filling revenue holes, along with jacked up excise rates, gas taxes, and DMV fees, as they slash the top-end income tax bracket and corporate tax rate.

And I have no doubt you won't find a shortage of 'progressives' who are all too happy to get cars out of the city areas they're in the process of gentrifying. Yuppies gonna yup. But my guess is there are probably plenty of citizens outside the city center who make a hell of a lot less and feel differently on the matter.

But then again, I have plenty of personal quarrels with people who call themselves progressives. Not the least of which are the set that are popping up everywhere in the US these days offering "domestic micro loans" to poor people at "non-profits" charging 35% interest. They advertise this crap as a way out of poverty. It blows my mind. So I have little doubt that many are all about Uber and ZipCar too. I still think it creates a two-tiered public infrastructure though.

[jk]

Re: Can the Sharing Economy Provide Good Jobs?

public infrastructure is mirroring what is happening throughout our society and economy. [price] gated communities and [toll] gated high speed lanes, assortative mating, privately subsidized public schools in pricey neighborhoods for those with money who are too public spirited, or not quite wealthy enough, to send their kids to the proper private schools, low social mobility, financialization coupled with stagnating or diminishing incomes for most of the population, it's all of a piece. if gov't itself is for sale [and who can doubt it], i guess we shouldn't be surprised that it shows up in every aspect of its functioning.

i ask myself "what is to be done?" and come up empty. so i focus on taking care of me and mine, and watch the world unfold.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Can the Sharing Economy Provide Good Jobs?

public infrastructure is mirroring what is happening throughout our society and economy. [price] gated communities and [toll] gated high speed lanes, assortative mating, privately subsidized public schools in pricey neighborhoods for those with money who are too public spirited, or not quite wealthy enough, to send their kids to the proper private schools, low social mobility, financialization coupled with stagnating or diminishing incomes for most of the population, it's all of a piece. if gov't itself is for sale [and who can doubt it], i guess we shouldn't be surprised that it shows up in every aspect of its functioning.

i ask myself "what is to be done?" and come up empty. so i focus on taking care of me and mine, and watch the world unfold.

I try for small victories. Found out a couple years ago that we had a strange arrangement in town. The town would provide town land for free to the Electric Utility to have a telephone pole. The electric utility then would turn around and charge the town rent for the space on the pole where the streetlights go. And not a small chunk of money either. Sometimes over $100 per pole (it varied). Added up to millions per year across the service area. It turned out they were paying more in rental fees than they were in electricity and operations and maintenance. The split was about 65/35. So I got together with some folks. Made a report. Got together with politicians. Got a lawyer on board. Changed it so the cities and towns could buy the lights back off them. Saved an ongoing $8 per capita per year in rentier fees. Small victory. And maybe they recouped it by now by jacking electric rates up on the other side of the ledger. But it's the principle of the thing.

How many little things like this are out there? Small little accounting tricks buried somewhere. Oh, it's just a dollar a head per month here - a dollar a head per month there - and so on and so forth. Until it adds up. Sometimes I have fleeting fantasies of kicking off what I'm doing and starting a career just sussing out very specific rent fees and inciting people against them. Toll booths - seen and unseen - somebody's getting rich off them.

In the darkest moments, it's easy to imagine taking care of me and mine and coming up with rentier scams to do it. When you've seen enough operate and understand them in depth and detail, it doesn't seem particularly hard to imagine a few ways one might go about setting up a few "invisible toll booths." There's always the cynical argument - If we're going to live with ever increasing inequality and decreasing social mobility, better get on the right side of that wave, and soon before it breaks. And it's hard to judge anyone for putting their children on that path if they are able.

But largely I think you're right. It's like somebody's pulling a knife out of the peanut butter. Or stretching one small end of the silly-putty. We'll see how far they can pull until it breaks.