{"id":37695,"date":"2018-02-21T11:23:52","date_gmt":"2018-02-21T16:23:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=37695"},"modified":"2018-02-21T11:23:52","modified_gmt":"2018-02-21T16:23:52","slug":"moral-calculus-in-the-gig-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2018\/02\/moral-calculus-in-the-gig-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"Moral calculus in the gig economy"},"content":{"rendered":"

What will you do the next time your client drops you into a real-world instance of the prisoner\u2019s dilemma<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Our careers and daily work have moral implications, because everything we do has moral implications. Over time we get used to the explicit and implicit agreements that govern our work and we come to take them for granted. But the boundaries we set and the compromises we make become more obvious when they have to be renegotiated weekly, daily, or once in the morning and again the afternoon. In the gig economy \u2013 a catch-all designation for short-term piecework or contract work of bewildering variety \u2013 what you do and what you earn may change with each new client, and the moral implications and pitfalls along with them. At the same time, freelance work dispels any illusion of serving a greater purpose that employees of larger institutions may have. A freelancer is only in it for the money, along with everyone else he or she may work with \u2013 and that\u2019s when things are going well. Mercenary work offers fewer salves for the conscience.<\/p>\n

Take Sabbath observance, for example. At any given moment, it\u2019s not Sunday somewhere in the world, and some client might be trying to contact you. What if your dinner on Tuesday depends on your work on Monday, which depends on your finding a paying client on Sunday? If you depend on your current gig and finding the next one, it\u2019s easy for every car parked in a puddle to look like an ox in the mire.<\/p>\n

In the gig economy, every hour comes at a price, so you can calculate the exact cost of pausing for family meals or church attendance, and the law of consecration takes on new urgency. If we\u2019re serious about giving of our time and talents, we can\u2019t object to giving away for free the work we\u2019re accustomed to charging money for. People need help reading difficult records in old languages for their family history work. When do you charge for your expertise, especially when your marketable skill is something people too often take for granted? How much of your time and product can you afford to give away? The moral calculus may be similar for people working full time in other professions, but hustling for the next contract makes it a daily issue in the gig economy.<\/p>\n

While some of the gig economy is local and personal \u2013 driving for Lyft or Uber, for example \u2013 online freelance work can be disconcertingly impersonal, with little indication of what your role might be in a worldwide chain of value creation.<\/p>\n

Somebody has a document. They want something done to the document. You don\u2019t know for certain if your client is the author, or the author\u2019s client, or someone plagiarizing the author\u2019s client\u2019s client\u2019s client. You don\u2019t know if you\u2019re playing a bit part for the defense or the prosecution, if you\u2019re contributing to someone\u2019s public-facing presentation or to developmental research or to fraud. All you know is that someone is willing to give you money to do something to a document. And so you do the thing. Can you demand more context before you agree? Can you trust the client to tell you the truth? Are there types of document or media you won\u2019t touch for any amount of money?<\/p>\n

While some gigs are arranged in complete anonymity, in other markets the ability to attract work is tied to the identity you project. You may not be a racist, sexist, nationalist, but the rates you can demand are bound up with your gender, race, native language, and nation of origin, and there\u2019s no way you can escape from benefiting from (and suffering from) prejudice at some point. In the gig economy, starving oppressed people in misruled, impoverished nations are not an abstract concept. You might be competing directly with them for every project. Your daily bread is their daily hunger.<\/p>\n

Every market is different, but over time you\u2019re not just selling a skill, but also a reputation for integrity and honesty \u2013 moral values that are acquired at great expense but can be sold away cheaply. Even \u2013 or especially \u2013 in a world of disaggregated anonymous labor, morality is implicated in everything you do.<\/p>\n

(As for the prisoner\u2019s dilemma, the type of client who puts you in that situation has a way of cheapskating the reward for keeping quiet, and looking for solidarity among a mercenary workforce is a mistake. The only winning strategy is being first to snitch.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What will you do the next time your client drops you into a real-world instance of the prisoner\u2019s dilemma?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37696,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37695\/revisions\/37696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}