why would they need to do that? that's just how cell towers work. the government can and does also buy the location data on the market like anyone else.
yeah, the important part is that the government via third party surveillance gets much of the domestic spying they need without "technically" breaking the law, even though if they directly did any of the activities they would be breaking the law.
i consider myself fairly knowledgeable about tracking techniques and countermeasures. despite constant effort and techniques that are extreme or impossible for the average individual, i believe my evasions are minimally effective.
it's also increasingly difficult to use the internet or even exist in public at all without some kind of compromise that invalidates most of that work.
you can solve this by direct action. when your cleaner arrives, explain you'd like to make a direct arrangement next time, and ask for their phone number.
no app can patch this 'analog hole' of the gig industry.
That might work for cleaners, but not for rideshare, food delivery and vacation rentals, which probably account for the vast majority of the "gig economy".
For vacation rentals, I have had the owner give me their card afterwards.
For food delivery (at least takeout) and ride share, the app actually provides a real value; it handles matching drivers and customers who want to make a deal now, for a service that is not really super differentiated. It makes sense to stay in their ecosystem and it seems fair that they would be continuing to make a profit.
> For food delivery (at least takeout) and ride share, the app actually provides a real value
The problem with a food delivery network is that it should be a dumb network, not a big profit center. It should be like an ISP, with the food being the high value packets being delivered to you.
If you look at pre-UberEats times, each restaurant employed a couple of delivery drivers on scooters. Some might have shared those if the restaurants were on the same street, but that's about it.
During low times these drivers would laze around doing nothing, effectively wasting productivity, whereas during peak times, the restaurant didn't have enough drivers.
Having one delivery driver network for an entire city should have made things more efficient and cheaper. But because for example in Europe, JustEat-TakeAway and UberEats have inserted themselves as the middleman and crushed out all competition. Delivery has gotten more expensive and inconvenient because of it.
These days delivery costs €3-5 and there is a €15 delivery minimum. Before, no delivery charge and there was no official minimum. One time one of my friends order a 6-pack of cola, although I doubt they would have delivered that to the edge of the city.
Worst of it is, restaurants are not allowed to charge lower prices themselves than they offer on the app. On top of that, JustEat-TakeAway will make a branded store site on restaurantname.localdeliverycompany.com, of which they get a cut versus if you used the restaurant's own site.
If delivery is more expensive, more inconvenient and often slower now than before 2015, what 'real value' was added?
In the US, delivery was pretty spotty in the pre-app days (pizza places tended to have it almost always, other restaurants were case-by-case). The idea of more community organized joint delivery services is really interesting, it just didn’t exist anywhere I lived in the pre-app-days (maybe it was a thing in major cities, that wouldn’t surprise me).
I wonder why the apps out-competed it. Delivery apps are often not even supported officially by the restaurants, right? It’s just sort of like—if somebody comes in for the pickup and gives the right name, they don’t typically care and will just give the delivery guy your order. So it isn’t like some vendor lock-in thing, seems just like network effect from the users or something…
Sure because you had to distribute sales and place product. You shifted marketing off to the retail location and distributor and you still controlled the price / mark up.
Pizza is already sold, the last mile delivery should have zero impact on its retail. Right now the last mile delivery has a near monopoly on retail of a restaurant. Pretending that toast/grubhub/seamless somehow benefit the customer is pure rubbish.
>> If you look at pre-UberEats times, each restaurant employed a couple of delivery drivers on scooters.
> This was not my experience. Hardly any restaurants had delivery other than pizza.
Your parent commenter appears to be European. Europe enjoys better city living in many ways than the United States does because the US is relatively underpopulated. (On the other hand, urban Americans have much larger homes.)
I live in Netherland, and here UberEats was a latecomer to what Thuisbezorgd had been doing for ages, but other than that it rings true. Before Thuisbezorgd, it was mostly just pizza that got delivered. Maybe also other Italian food, and maybe a little bit of Asian. Since Thuisbezorgd we can get any cuisine you can imagine delivered to your door.
But the standard Dutch takeaway food has always been Chinese (Dutch Chinese-Indonesian, actually), and I think even now that might still be more takeaway than delivery.
> Before Thuisbezorgd, it was mostly just pizza that got delivered. Maybe also other Italian food, and maybe a little bit of Asian.
> But the standard Dutch takeaway food has always been Chinese (Dutch Chinese-Indonesian, actually),
Well, those and things like spareribs, burgers, kapsalon, etc., which makes it a rather broad spectrum of takeaways that already had delivery.
In case you didn't know, Takeaway = Thuisbezorgd (or rather, the other way around). And in the 2010s, Thuisbezorgd and Just Eat had a pretty active fight for marketshare, until they decided the most profitable course of action was for Just Eat to operate in the countries where it held a majority marketshare, and Takeaway to do likewise, creating regional monopolies. Later on they merged, which any sane regulatory agency would have blocked.
What is interesting is that UberEats hasn't tried to compete on price at all. They charge similar, semi-extortionate prices. They just offer delivery from more and more upscale places.
Anecdotal but I have found that at least some times, rideshare drivers are willing to take cash for rides under some circumstances. Not at all common though, most of the time I have asked I’ve been unceremoniously shot down. The one time I distinctly remember it working out was during a packed event in Vegas (EDC LV, music festival). I just asked if they were going to be driving for the concert the second day, since it was so ridiculously packed and hectic to get a ride the first day, and they said yes and I just offered $100 for the ride tomorrow (I was already paying that much with uber, but with poor service from the app and many cancelled drivers). They agreed, they got a double-rate fare for one unsanctioned ride, I got better service since they were better incentivized to get my ride done, and overall everyone was happy. Except Uber I guess. YMMV
I'd like to say I feel a lot better about having AirBnB help handle any problems or disputes that makes it worth paying some overhead... but it's really the other way around.
>I usually find the place I'd like to stay on AirBnB and then google the title & description and the property management website usually pops up.
Maybe it's selection bias but 80%+ of the airbnbs I stay at are mom and pop establishments with 0-2 other properties listed on their profile. I doubt they have enough scale to bother set up a separate booking website for their properties. That said I have noticed hotels advertising on airbnb, but they represent a small fraction (ie. <10%) of listings that I see.
> For vacation rentals, I have had the owner give me their card afterwards.
This simply doesn't work.
I'm half a century old, go on vacation several times each year, and it happened only once in my lifetime that I wanted to go to the same rental as before. I pulled the card from the owner, called him, and found out that it's not free at the time I can go there.
I also don't know anyone who was in the same rental more than once.
So yes, Booking, Check24 and similar always take their cut in my case.
I do have some relatives that like to rent the same place year-after-year for family events, for whatever reason. They are a little picky so I think they just like to go back to a place if it worked out. I’m actually not sure if they go through apps at this point, or what…
My family and friends (sometimes up to 5 families together) have gone to the same summer beach rental for more than 25 years. I know dozens of families who do the same thing. I have several large groups of friends from college who have rented the same mountain places since we graduated (we are almost 2 decades older than you).
Once again, "I don't do that" is not the same as "no one does that".
The app is also providing real value for maids; the point of consulting a trusted maid registry is to hire a maid who won't steal everything in your house.
That value doesn't persist over time because you already know the maid. So there's an expectation that you make a direct arrangement with her.
I know several people who tried this and the cleaner said no. I think (not sure) the cleaner signed some kind of contract/agreement with the website not to do that and worries that if they are discovered they will be banned from the site and thus lose the other 90% of their income. Dunno how rational that fear is.
It's very real, according some folks in the business I know. They are very aggressive in trying to prevent this, because otherwise why wouldn't someone paid what a cleaner is paid try and cut the middleman out.
It will not work for discovery, but if you develop an ongoing relationship it can work for that.
Apps seem to be very good at bringing people together initially, it is up to us to develop relationships after that, and apps are not as good for that.
I heard a pitch by a company, its name escapes me, but it's like AirBnB for Muslims. The idea is to bring back the community aspect of hosting families, where values are aligned (ie you know that the cookware has never been used to cook bacon for example).
Households pay $200 a year, they get 2 credits. Each credit grants you a stay at another member's house. Anytime someone stays at your house, you earn a credit.
I think something like this, if it finds traction, is really cool. Of course, that probably means you probably wouldn't be able to use this network to stay in some random remote area, but if it's in a host happens to be in an area you want to stay in, it can be even cheaper than AirBnB.
It does work pretty well for rideshare in my experience. I've settled cash with an uber driver before. Neighbor has a specific driver they use for the airport they pay a flat rate for.
Good point. I think lack of competition inflates the 'share of revenue' online marketing services can extract. And competitive alternatives are nerfed due to the app store hegemony and the anti-competitive behavior and dark patterns of giants like Google & FB. They needed to nerf the open web to maximize their profits, so they did.
It 100% works for vacation rentals. I found an AirBnB I liked in Spain, went there 3 more times over the past few years. One time it was already booked and the owner put me in an even better, larger (4BR) place at a discount.
Caveat: your SO must not be allergic to going to the same place more than once in a lifetime. My ex was.
Because rideshare drivers and food deliveries are not done by a single individual only, they are in contract and they are doing it as an employee of a company.
When you call up your local plumber, you are doing everything under the counter.
I'm not convinced. What makes an app like Uber efficient is that it connects you to the closest driver when you need it. If you have the number of a driver, they may not be working at that time, or they may be far away.
Same for food delivery.
Very different for a cleaner: you never need a cleaner "right now", you can schedule it.
> Directly contacting the person driving you, 12 hours in advance, is a much better way to guarantee a ride.
...if they haven't had any car trouble, and haven't quit providing car service, and are intending to work then, and haven't scheduled another ride for the same time, and are willing to schedule something when they don't know where their unscheduled fares are going to leave them just before.
The apps that match workers with customers are actually doing something useful. The main problem is that people keep trying to get them to be considered employers, which increases their costs, and then those costs get passed on so that more of what you pay goes to overhead and less of what you pay actually goes to the worker.
Which is a cost, because then you have to call around trying to find someone who is willing to do it then, which is exactly the thing the app does for you.
In practice you have one or maybe two people you call, and then fall back to using the app anyway if that fails. So the person comes out ahead, in that they have a decent shot at a guaranteed ride, better service, and lower cost. The absolute worst case scenario is the standard app experience.
I'm not sold on the food delivery front. In the UK you used to be able to just ring up a local restaurant and order a free local delivery, especially indian, chinese, kebab, pizza, and chip shops. My family did it once a week in the 90s and early 2000s and it was always quick and easy. The restaurants clearly had enough demand to offer it as a service each night they opened.
I suspect that delivery apps crafted a moat by building a network effect with cheap prices, and now people just use them out of habit. If you know what kind of food you want it can be cheaper just to order directly from the restaurant, and you often get better service. Our local Indian restaurant has a 10% discount for directly ordering through their own app website instead of a delivery app.
Then you are losing out on the insurance the company is supposed to provide, usually through bonding, in case the cleaner pockets your favorite jewelry, for example. Or they knock over the Faberge egg while dusting.
Every service I know of explicitly bans this practice, so unless you can employ the cleaner full time then if they accept your arrangement they risk getting fired.
I don’t know the service company in question, but if it’s a gig-style matchup, how would the company know what their contractors are doing? Also, wouldn’t this incentivize the contractors to develop as many personal relationships as possible, as a hedge against getting arbitrarily kicked by the contracting company?
If I'm not mistaken, services like Upwork and Fiverr will look at certain metrics for outliers, like repeat business in a particular industry. And for eBay, I think they’d look into cancelled bids on high-value items and check messaging history.
Paying in cash absolutely helps commit tax fraud. It doesn't mean your contractor will commit fraud, but if they wanted to, it's a lot easier if you pay with cash compare to check or credit card.
That's 100% on them. I'm under no obligation to give some credit card company my personal information just so more fingers are in the pie when accusing the contractor of fraud.
Cash is good and I accept 0% of the blame of what other people do in response to me paying them with cash instead of something else.
> That's really more of a "Want to pay more than your fair share of taxes? Help them commit tax fraud".
This seems like a trope put forth by the middle men other than the government who want to keep getting their cut of every transaction in the world. "Don't cut out Visa and PayPal, that's practically stealing from your neighbor!"
You can obviously accept payment in cash and report it as taxable income, and not doing this is a good way to get caught, because if you're spending thousands of dollars a year more than you're declaring in income and the government asks you where it came from, you're going to have a bad time.
Meanwhile people who want to risk going to jail can do it just as well by deducting personal expenses as business expenses, or just making up business expenses and hoping nobody comes to check. All while letting payment processors siphon off something like 5% of your gross revenue, which for these kinds of things is often in excess of half your net income because your net margins were less than 10% to begin with.
Given that America is a democracy, it would appear that a majority of Americans do not share your morals, so on the contrary it is your moral duty to pay your taxes.
I would bet that in aggregate, more than half the taxes you pay go to your state, or some local polity smaller than state. Local political entities (county, city, town) are absolutely democracies and also have the maximum amount of actual impact on your life. The federal government is mostly irrelevant.
By avoiding paying taxes, you first and foremost damage the community you live in.
I don't know if I would agree with that take taken by itself without qualifiers. "if you're American" is doing some lifting but could mean anything. But otherwise I kind of agree, the average American is getting fleeced while the ultra wealthy are avoiding massive tax costs while benefiting the most from state infrastructure and economic policy.
No taxation without representation, so if your Congresscritter declares they don't represent you (because you identify as the opposite party and therefore are the enemy) then you have no responsibility to pay tax, a uniquely American sensibility
Of course the legal and ethical way to perform a tax protest is to simply have so little income that you don't owe them a thing
> Of course the legal and ethical way to perform a tax protest is to simply have so little income that you don't owe them a thing
That's the way it works. If you're really wealthy your team of accountants can find all sorts of ways to hide income and reduce it to zero or less. The more money you have coming in the less income you have to report, until the government you bought fair and square ends up owing you. Taxation is wonderful extra teat at which to suckle.
Bulk of income taxes go to the feds. Plumber will still pay plenty of sales tax. I'd say the value of having a plumber that likes you outweighs what benefits one receives from government programs, making it rational to stiff the man.
You cannot directly hire a housecleaner in the US without that person becoming your "household employee". You will need to withhold Federal Social Security tax and Medicare tax. In some states you will need to withhold state income tax and pay unemployment insurance.
in seattle's pike market, left bank books has been a collective operation for over fifty years now. it doubles as an event space and community center. and it's not just a static group of old comrades, many young people are involved.
finally, we've achieved clarity of purpose and target as predicted by the classic internet meme Poe's Law. from now on our statements shall no longer be mistaken for nor contribute to that which we intend to criticize
i even added some mise config lines to my global gitignore because i often use it in projects by others that don't set up mise config.
reply