Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: What's a "gig work minimum wage"; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/17/no-piecework/
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Post
Today's threads (a thread)
Inside: What's a "gig work minimum wage"; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/17/no-piecework/
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As I mentioned in my own blog on the subject of work: I recall a conversation here on Mastodon where one person said that everyone needs employment. Another responded that no, everyone needs food, clothing, shelter, and health care. We just happen to have a society where in order to get these things, you (normally) need to be employed in a job.
https://funcrunch.medium.com/redefining-work-3c4e85614fb0?sk=5dcdc83576f11c803b709bdc517bc52e
Adore this definition of economics:
... neoclassical economist (someone who has experienced a specific form of neurological injury that makes you incapable of perceiving or reasoning about power)
It's like doing statistical analysis without examination of bias.
Republican administrations suppress wage growth
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/13/business/economy/middle-class-pay.html
Women's wage suppression
If women counted : worth and value in the global economy
Marilyn Waring; introduction by Gloria Steinem
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The people who kept Uber, & other gig economy startups alive for a decade, The Epstein Class ...
... they really want unpaid work i.e. slavery
Imagine a job like receptionist, where the person only actually gets paid when there's clients to deal with or a phone call to answer
The between-times, waiting for a call or for clients to arrive wouldn’t be paid
Required to be sitting in an office on a slow day, but unpaid
This rip-off is called "simplifying a business model"
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What's a "gig work minimum wage": The important rate is what you're paid when you're waiting for a job.
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116085742947462240
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Fun fact: This kind of stuff has a long history. For instance, in the Harz Mountains of Germany, miners were only paid for the time they were working within the tunnels, but not for the time they needed to get down to their designated tunnel.
This was a problem, since for the deepest mine - such as the Samson Pit in Sankt Andreasberg, which had a depth of 800 meters - it could take one hour to get down and two hours to get back to the surface.
Eventually, a technical solution was developed - the "Fahrkunst" or "Man Engine", which cut down the time to 20 minutes in each direction. You owe it to yourself to read up on it - it's one of the more unhinged modes of transportation out there.
Hey look at this
* Privilege is bad grammar https://tadaima.bearblog.dev/privilege-is-bad-grammar/ (h/t Hacker News)
* Closing the Stablecoin Yield Loophole in the Post-GENIUS Era https://clsbluesky.law.columbia.edu/2026/01/23/closing-the-stablecoin-yield-loophole-in-the-post-genius-era/ (h/t Greta Artelli)
* The century of the maxxer https://samkriss.substack.com/p/the-century-of-the-maxxer (h/t Marginal Revolution)
* Why the "AI God" Narrative is Actually a Corporate Power Grab https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-stop-telling-me
* All Your Base, slight remaster https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/all-your-base-slight-remaster/
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#20yrsago HOWTO resist warrantless searches at Best Buy https://www.die.net/musings/bestbuy/
#20yrsago RIAA using kids’ private info to attack their mother https://web.archive.org/web/20060223111437/http://p2pnet.net/story/7942
#20yrsago Sony BMG demotes CEO for deploying DRM https://web.archive.org/web/20060219233817/http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060210/germany_sony_bmg_ceo.html?.v=7
#20yrsago Sistine Chapel recreated through 10-year cross-stitch project https://web.archive.org/web/20060214195146/http://www.austinstitchers.org/Show06/images/sistine2.jpg
#15yrsago Selling cookies like a crack dealer, by dangling a string out your kitchen window https://laughingsquid.com/cookies-sold-by-string-dangling-from-san-francisco-apartment-window/
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#15yrsago Midwestern Tahrir: Workers refuse to leave Wisconsin capital over Tea Party labor law https://www.theawl.com/2011/02/wisconsin-demonstrates-against-scott-walkers-war-on-unions/
#10yrsago Back-room revisions to TPP sneakily criminalize fansubbing & other copyright grey zones https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/02/sneaky-change-tpp-drastically-extends-criminal-penalties
#10yrsago Russian Central Bank shutting down banks that staged fake cyberattacks to rip off depositors https://web.archive.org/web/20160220100817/http://www.scmagazine.com/russian-bank-licences-revoked-for-using-hackers-to-withdraw-funds/article/474477/
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#10yrsago Stop paying your student loans and debt collectors can send US Marshals to arrest you https://web.archive.org/web/20201026202024/https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/02/us-marshals-forcibly-collecting-student-debt.html?mid=twitter-share-di
#5yrsago Reverse centaurs and the failure of AI https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/17/reverse-centaur/#reverse-centaur
#1yrago Business school professors trained an AI to judge workers' personalities based on their faces https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/17/caliper-ai/#racism-machine
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Yesterday's threads: The online community trilemma; and more!
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116079436848872126
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My latest novel is "Picks and Shovels," a historical technothriller set in the Weird Era of the PC, about Ponzi schemes, techbros, and the dawn of enshittification:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels
--
My latest nonfiction book is the internationally bestselling "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," from MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
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My ebooks and audiobooks (from FSGxMCD, Tor Books, Head of Zeus, McSweeneys, Beacon, Verso and others) are for sale all over the net, but I sell 'em too, and when you buy 'em from me, I earn twice as much and you get books with no DRM and no license "agreements."
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Upcoming appearances:
* #SaltLakeCity: Enshittification at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (Tanner Humanities Center), Feb 18
https://tanner.utah.edu/center-events/cory-doctorow/
* #Montreal (remote): Fedimtl, Feb 24
https://fedimtl.ca/
* #Oslo (remote): Seminar og lansering av rapport om «enshittification»
https://www.forbrukerradet.no/siste-nytt/digital/seminar-og-lansering-av-rapport-om-enshittification/
* #Victoria: 28th Annual Victoria International Privacy & Security Summit, Mar 3-5
https://www.rebootcommunications.com/event/vipss2026/
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Upcoming appearances (cont'd):
* #Victoria: Enshittification at Russell Books, Mar 4
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cory-doctorow-is-coming-to-victoria-tickets-1982091125914
* #Barcelona: Enshittification with Simona Levi/Xnet (Llibreria Finestres), Mar 20
https://www.llibreriafinestres.com/evento/cory-doctorow/
* #Berkeley: Bioneers keynote, Mar 27
https://conference.bioneers.org/
* #Berlin: Re:publica, May 18-20
https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow
* #Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 19
https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow.html
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