I thought we already knew they spun, given the incredible amount of angular momentum in their accretion disks. Seems like a “duh” thing to prove with image data that the physics data already implied.
I thought so as well but the article says the spin doesn’t match the accretion disc, I’m not sure if that’s s significant aspect of the discovery possibly? I’m not well versed in relativity to be honest
Edit: forgive me, someone below said pretty much this
I don’t see how this doesn’t kill business for these companies.
Edit: I’m not defending the decision not to pay people more in general. It’s more about the service going away altogether because the wage cost will be passed into the customers. But if that’s what you fuckers want ok. I don’t live in NY so it doesn’t affect me. Enjoy losing access to all your delivery services.
Normally I wouldn’t give a shit. But for these P2P businesses the unit economics for the business to be profitable requires passing on that expense to the end customer.
I’m not going to pay an extra $10+ dollars or whatever for my meal when I’m already tipping, paying tax, and service charge.
So I’m saying while it sounds awesome to pay people more, in this case it will just cause these services to go away.
Everyone down voted me like I’m defending the companies, but that’s not my intention. It’s more that these services as they are won’t exist, so everyone loses. The employees lose the job and their customers lose the service. The company goes out of business too but that’s not the issue I care about. We will effectively all lose delivery services except those willing to pay a lot for it, which stifles demand and makes the problem worse.
Anyway… I’m totally willing to hear counterarguments and certainly on the side of the workers, but the knee-jerk downvote and talk about how everyone needs a living wage isn’t helping dive into the nuance of how these businesses operate and make money and what impact this decision will have on the business model.
Capitalism requires regulation. If you don’t have regulation you can only have capitalism for an incredibly short amount of time. This was all detailed in Adam Smith’s book when he invented capitalism.
Lemmy seems to dream up this strawman of Capitalism while having a very rose tinted outlook on Communism. Everyone seems to miss that these are all problems with humans, not your favorite economic system.
Especially if it’s a service. Maybe if your service business can’t generate enough revenue to pay your employees then it’s a service that doesn’t need to exist?
They can make less profit in order to cover paying employees a fair wage.
They will still be make a profit, which means all of their business expenses are covered. Those who pocket that profit will also be richer than you can ever hope to be.
I don’t see how this doesn’t kill business for these companies.
That’s because you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Guess who’s about to keep all employee tips… A minimum wage is a great first step, but stricter regulation will be needed to curtail the absurd levels of greed from these megacorps.
How does this work with the way these delivery apps work?
Correct me if I’m wrong since I’ve never worked for one of these outfits, but the way I understood it was anytime you want to work you just log into the app and make yourself available, and you randomly get assigned nearby jobs. If there are no jobs to do (middle of the night or w/e), then you get no pay. With this change, when are you eligible for the minimum wage? If everyone in NYC logs into the app at once, will everyone get minimum wage?
It’ll be exciting to see who steps in and provides this service to in the void being left… Surly Netflix won’t try and stop somebody coming in and running a boutique service for those still interested in this…
Also I’ve now learned that gamefly both still exists and has a DVD by mail service
To those who live there: How does $18/hour in NYC compare to $20/hour in California (for the fast food thing recently passed here)? Is that a living wage there?
Not a resident of either but it’s worth mentioning that this is NYC not NY state and California probably has suburban and rural areas that are much, much cheaper cost of living than NYC.
Household income for me and my wife was around $150k and we got priced out of the city. A lot of Dashers take late night trains deep deep outside of the city, or they live with half a dozen other Dashers on alternating schedules, sharing beds.
The sad thing is that they’re probably just gonna shut down shop there and hurt these workers. Not justifying their low payment at all. Just fuck. Capitalism is fucked up.
Restaurants used to just have their own delivery drivers. Crazy, right? Like Phillip J. Fry.
I delivered pizza and later Chinese food for years, working directly for a restaurant. I get the sense you got a way better level of service from that arrangement, as well, versus the Uber Eats randos you get these days. You sure as shit did from places where I was a driver.
My wife and I have gone back to when we order food, like our pizza night, ordering directly from the place. I know the drivers are getting paid a decent wage and without all the extra fees it’s more reasonably priced. Plus the food actually arrives in a timely fashion and is still hot rather than the driver doing a bunch or other deliveries before us and the food being cold.
Why is the Deliverator so equipped? Because people rely on him. He is a role model. This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them. As a result, this country has one of the worst economies in the world. When it gets down to it – we’re talking trade balances here – once we’ve brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they’re making cars in Bolivia and microwaves in Tadzhikistan and selling them here – once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel – once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani bricklayer would consider to be prosperity – y’know what? There’s only four things we do better than anyone else:
I was blown away the first time. Only had the audio book but sat there, ok he’s describing the internet, vr, and a country ruled by corporate interests… Big Whooop. Wait, published in 1992? There’s some interesting predictions, and ideas surrounding technology but still grounded in reality. A bit of Alt-history.
I get the legal distinction between 1099 and W-2 worker but it’s pretty crazy that it’s allowed to pay someone below minimum wage because of that distinction.
Like, SOMEONE is doing an hour of labor, and it’s allowed that they get paid less than the minimum wage? Is there actually any reason we as a society should be OK with that, or is it just a legal technicality we can’t get rid of without making a bunch of plumbers making $80/hr fill out paperwork ensuring they make more than the minimum?
Remember when minimum wage driver work went up for a vote in California under prop 22 and we still voted against it? Im always so mad every election cycle i feel like everyone is a complete moron working against themselves
In those workers’ defense, the delivery companies spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a disinformation campaign to trick the public into thinking that voting for 22 was in their own interest.
It’s absurd that it was on the ballot in the first place.
Is it fair to call people stupid when they’re facing a literal corporate propaganda campaign? I’d sooner reach for “corporations are evil” than “people are stupid” in that case. Remember how people used to treat you if you were against the Iraq war? And today, we know that thing was unnecessary and awful. Sometimes powerful people just manage to convince us of things that aren’t true.
I agree in so far as the human brain is pretty fucking stupid and easily “hacked.” Especially when companies literally pay psychologists to get better at brain hacking.
This is the real answer. If your business relies of billions in VC money every year to stay afloat, then you don’t have a sustainable business and probably shouldn’t keep doing what you’re doing. Last time I checked Uber eats has a negative margin on every order…
If your business relies of billions in VC money every year to stay afloat, then you don’t have a sustainable business and probably shouldn’t keep doing what you’re doing.
This right here. We need to see unprofitable “disruptors” close before they wreck existing systems and drive up the cost of living and/or drive down the quality of life for everyone. How many previously profitable businesses who provided decent jobs closed because they couldn’t complete with Amazon while Amazon wasn’t even technically making a profit? How much of the current housing crisis is driven by AirBNB and such? They drove up housing prices in the name of cheap weekend rentals and now the weekend rentals aren’t even cheap anymore.
There used to be lots of delivery models that were profitable while paying people fairly. Door dash and others just convinced us all to cut each other’s throats for a brief window of savings.
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