The Gig Economy: RIP?

hey there it’s David H Lawrence the 17th
and here we are five ten depending upon
how you measure it ears into what’s
variously called the sharing economy the
gig economy I see articles all over the
place really calling the Emperor out for
having no clothes when it comes to the
benefits and the promises of this gig
economy and it has application to us as
performers these articles are just
eviscerating the actual results for
people who provide services to sites
that are catering to that gig economy
you know drivers for uber and for lyft
and delivery people for doordash and
GrubHub and Airbnb people and and who
all knows there’s like there’s tons and
tons it’s been a big buzzword for a long
time and like one of the articles was
titled the sharing economy was always a
scam that’s a little harsh but it seems
to be more and more the truth and we
have our own gig economy in the world of
performance and probably the most
obvious example of that is fiber fiber
began as a site where you could get
people to do things for you for five
bucks but then if you wanted it done
faster or if you wanted it done with
options or if you wanted a bigger
version of it there were add-ons and
instead of five bucks it was twenty
bucks or fifty bucks
right
and I know that there are a lot of
voiceover talent on Fiverr they go there
because there’s no barrier to entry and
they can undercut the entire population
by doing things for five bucks or 20
bucks or 50 bucks that isn’t even close
to the minimum rates for doing things
which begins in the upper 300s when it
comes to Union stuff anyway I just
wonder how long it’s going to take for
everybody to realize just how
destructive this process is I mean that
the promise was anybody can play you can
charge what you want you can offer what
services you want you can do it when you
want and for how long you want and how
often you want and the promise is made
by some of these sites like uber and
lyft was like you know you can make a
great second income or even make it your
own income if you want to do it
full-time
so but it becomes a race to the bottom
and the race to the bottom continues
they just reduce the rates that they’re
paying drivers by the mile on uber and I
don’t know if lifts gonna follow lyft is
gonna be the first one to go public but
it’s kind of interesting that this
sharing gig economy which has a lot of
socialist and you know populist
overtones to it people are just sharing
they’re just like you know hey let me
let me give you a lift
let me give you a ride you know surf my
couch you know it but it turns out that
in the end these big economies these
sharing economies each one of these is
controlled by these big massive
companies you know uber has 60 billion
dollars in the bank 60 billion dollars
that’s not socialist that’s not
communist that’s not a sharing economy
that is a pure megalopolis mega you know
mega capitalist thing you know and it’s
really interesting it’s it’s not for the
commoner it’s for the company and I’m an
unabashed capitalist you can
you can’t sway me in any way shape or
form away from capitalism I I think the
people engage in capitalism and commit
fraud should be punished but I still
think capitalism is a damn sight better
than anything else that we have and what
happens is when you get into this you’re
like oh I’ll get a car and I’ll do over
and I’ll do lyft and then I can do my
auditions during the day and I can lift
at night and re whatever and these
companies get so big and they have these
cultures that are just toxic and then
the money isn’t what they promised like
ever unless you really do a lot more
work than they said you’d have to to
make decent money right and then the
novelty wears off and then people start
cutting corners and gaming the system
there’s this thing that uber drivers
sometimes do not so not so honest uber
drivers where they do things that let
them cancel a ride and get a fee for it
or they’ll pretend somebody who was
drunk threw up in their car and they’ll
get a cleaning fee when that never
happened but the drunk person doesn’t
remember whether it happened and they
also stop looking at this as an
independent contractor situation they’re
like you know what we’re actually
employees and we’d like to unionize and
we’d like to have benefits and okay well
you’re going right back to the typical
worker company a relationship and
looking for those protections right so
with fiber
there’s no union there’s no protections
there’s no nothing but what there are
are people who are willing to do this
work for five or ten or 15 bucks
and what that does is it pulls down the
value of what everybody does now if
you’re working on Fiverr and doing
things to make ends meet I don’t I’m not
demonizing you for doing that
but what I am saying is consider the
money that you’re leaving on the table
and what you are doing to your fellow
voice talent in terms of value right in
the video that I did about IKEA and the
way they sell based on price and we sell
based on the value to our customer and
their ability to sell better products
and services make more money it’s a
different way of pricing and so fiber is
kind of like trading on the idea that
somebody is willing to undercut a fellow
a talent now again I said I’m certainly
all for capitalism and I’m all for
competition but I think when it gets
down to the point where somebody’s
willing to do a commercial for 5 bucks
I’m not so sure that first of all you’re
not gonna get what you pay for as a
client but I’m not so sure that’s
healthy for everybody and if you look at
other examples of competition you know
there’s price anchoring going on uber
and lyft are undercutting taxi services
but that is kind of the standard and so
fiber then undercuts non-union rates
union rates
I think it’s time to pay attention to
where we’ve come in this space and I’m
not saying you shouldn’t take uber or
while I am saying you shouldn’t take
over I would I would never take uber I
always take lyft
I mean ubers committed way too many
corporate offenses for me to support
them as a company and I’ve always had a
great experience except for one time in
a lyft car one time a guy picked me up
and he didn’t it didn’t feel like he
could see very well and I was frightened
for my life anyway
and I know I have people watching this
who not only our air talent or our voice
talent or on-camera talent but they’re
also drivers or delivery people or
there’s some other thing that they do in
the gig economy or the sharing economy I
would love to know what you think of all
this are you happy doing that are you
happy with the results where the results
that you got the results that you were
promised how do you feel about the
company for whom you do the work the
lifts and the door dashes and the
Hoover’s and the grub hubs and the
Airbnb ease of the world I would really
love to know leave me a comment and let
me know what you do how often you do it
and kind of your level of satisfaction
is it what they said it was going to be
I have my idea and I’d love to know
yours if you’d like to subscribe to my
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I’m David H Lawrence xvii I so
appreciate you watching and listening
and I will talk to you tomorrow.