They must pay

Let’s think about money.

Maybe you like money. It buys things. It in fact offers power: Would the lady who brought me my breakfast sandwich and coffee this morning in fact have done so if she were not being paid by another lady whom I paid? She did it and she did it with a smile on her face. (I tip well, too, so I guess that helps.)

The “smile on her face” part is an issue on its own: There is something very weird about being required to smile as part of a job, smiling regardless of whether one is happy. There is no glamour in a breakfast sandwich, coffee, or any of the other offerings at this cafe. She derives no direct benefit from my nourishment. Why should she be so happy? The fact she’s a young woman and I’m an old (nearly 60) man introduces its own additional issues which I’m just not taking on right now. But yeah, something’s up and a proper power relationship analysis (I’ll return to this) would probably wipe away that smile and maybe even take away my breakfast in short order. Read more

What Uber and Lyft get right

A couple of months ago, Yves Smith penned a column suggesting that Uber is headed for a crash. She calls the company a “textbook ‘bezzle’ — John Kenneth Galbraith’s coinage for an investment swindle where the losses have yet to be recognized,” points to sizable losses, argues that “[n]o ultimately successful major technology company has been as deeply unprofitable for anywhere remotely as long as Uber has been,” thinks its initial public offering valuation is ridiculous, and complains that it conceals financial information—in her view, a huge red flag.[1] Read more

  1. [1]Yves Smith, “Uber Is Headed for a Crash,” New York, December 4, 2018, http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/will-uber-survive-the-next-decade.html

About ‘seizing’ human rights

It sounds clever, doesn’t it?

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  1. [1]dog respecter [pseud.], [microblog post], Twitter, February 4, 2019, https://twitter.com/redmadheshi/status/1092334361524011008