Source: Uber
“You need to spend money, to make money” says an old
business adage. In other words, you need capital to start a business. This
meant only a select few can actually start an enterprise with ease. For those
who lost the birth lottery, the answer would come either in loans or
accumulating said capital from a previous job.
The sharing economy was packaged or at least, reframed by
their proponents, to shake up those basic capitalist tenets. In a world where
being saddled by debt is the norm and where pop culture loves to portray the
modern office as dead end jobs, the sharing economy paints everything as an
under-utilized asset.
The car that you use to work isn’t just a medium for you to
get to work. You’re sitting on a micro business waiting to be unleashed. Have
an extra room in your house that you bought through a bank loan? Turn it to a
guest room and you have created your own DIY inn. You’ve been sitting on money
makers all this while and the tech world via the internet just provided the
portal to your new found customers.
Like all businesses however, no one likes to talk about the
hidden costs.
Your Lifestyle Is a Product
Source: Reuters via Forbes.PL
Spin it anyway you want, but the major players of the
sharing economy is complicit in this modern post-capitalist fairy tale. Click
on the driver page on Uber’s website the tagline says it all; “Earn cash with
your car.” Not a car that is lent to you by another company, but the car that
is implied that you own.
Uber’s CEO Travis Kalanick appeared on Late Night with
Stephen Colbert, repeating the same talking points. The drivers don’t have to
rent a car from a taxi company. What it isn’t mentioned is that Uber don’t pay
your car’s maintenance cost and the operating cost.
Because why not? It’s your car; it’s a personal vehicle that
you benefit from, outside of your work schedule. It does not help that Uber
classifies the drivers as independent contractors. Which meant everybody is
responsible for their operational cost, despite the fact that Uber dictates a
substantial amount of what they do, how they carry out their jobs and what are
the standards applied.
Despite such degree of control, its drivers are not part of
the company. This has led to several law suits going on against them. In the
state of California, Uber is facing a class action law suit as drivers claim
that they should be reimbursed for maintenance and gas prices.
The suit, threatens Uber’s expansion as this meant more cost
needed to be covered. If they were to be treated as employees, as opposed to a
small tech team in each city, a huge chunk of their hypothetical revenue would
have to be channelled back.
However, too many have already been trapped in this
conundrum. Drivers incurred losses as in order to keep up to the standards imposed
by Uber, they have to spend more. Uber on the other hand, relies on huge number
of drivers in order to be competitive. Thus despite spending sums of money,
there aren’t any guarantee, Uber as an intermediary or not, would provide them
those “jobs.”
Uber or any other company in the sharing economy, if they
want to maintain their image, needs to revamp their message. They are not
assisting people to create businesses without capital, but are only
intermediaries. If they were to expect to survive this new legal onslaught,
being honest about the status of workers is the only way.
Remember, the old adage still applies. “You need to spend
more money, to make money.”
Originally written for Opinions Unleashed
Terence Aaron is a contributor for Eccentric Journal
