by A friend of mine who has made it into his sixth decade without ever sullying himself with gainful employment is now doing deliveries, shared-economy style. (Packages, not people via Uber or Lyft.) I thought he was going to rail against the system when he described what is new in his life, but his attitude surprised me. Transcribed, to the best my of my recollection, his comments were: So I went down for orientation. There were a bunch of people just like me. Basically, @$$holes who don’t deal well with people. @$$holes who don’t want a job, and couldn’t keep a job if they could get one. What I love about the shared economy is that it allows @$$holes like me to participate. I work when I want, and I’m getting somewhat regular income for the first
Topics:
Mike Kimel considers the following as important: @$$holes, airBnB, Lyft, sharing economy, uber, Uncategorized
This could be interesting, too:
Editor writes Water Flowing Upwards: Net financial flows from developing countries
John Quiggin writes Machines and tools
Eric Kramer writes An economic analysis of presidential immunity
Angry Bear writes Protesting Now and in the Sixties and Seventies
A friend of mine who has made it into his sixth decade without ever sullying himself with gainful employment is now doing deliveries, shared-economy style. (Packages, not people via Uber or Lyft.) I thought he was going to rail against the system when he described what is new in his life, but his attitude surprised me. Transcribed, to the best my of my recollection, his comments were:
So I went down for orientation. There were a bunch of people just like me. Basically, @$$holes who don’t deal well with people. @$$holes who don’t want a job, and couldn’t keep a job if they could get one. What I love about the shared economy is that it allows @$$holes like me to participate. I work when I want, and I’m getting somewhat regular income for the first time in my life.
Obviously, not everyone in the sharing economy is an @$$hole. I’ve met some nice people while taking Lyft, for instance, or staying somewhere through airBNB. And my wife is a superhost on airBNB. I’d be afraid to call her an @$$hole. On the other hand, the only person with whom I have an acquaintance who regularly drives for Uber and/or Lyft has a personality that is best described with words like “volatile” and “belligerent.” In any case, I don’t think he is capable of holding down an actual job but he doesn’t seem to have a problem driving strangers around on short trips.
So maybe one unexpected benefit of the sharing economy is that it has made some otherwise unemployable people into productive citizens.
Update: 10/22/2017, 4:57 AM – corrected first sentence by changing word “fifth” to “sixth.”