this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2026
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

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How quickly we accepted that it's normal to pay someone to go get our groceries for us. To drive us around when public transportation is available. To run errands for us. To bring us fast food.

Covid capitalized on it.

People don't want to give up that luxury now that they've had it. Even if it makes things cost 2x-3x as much.

Even when we all know its exploitive labor.

It's true delivery and driver services have been around for hundreds of years but now instead of companies with full time employees (with benefits) , the gig employee gets paid less while taking on risk that aren't compensated by the employer (car accidents, gas, car repairs, injury or attacks).

Gig work is a much worse thing than maybe a lot of people realize. And it's also making more people servants to others.

It's moving full time employees with benefits and using company property to no benefits and using their own property that they have to pay for.

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[–] Redvenom@retrolemmy.com 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Gig work is a scam, what business does Uber have if you wouldn't let them use your car? Normally a company should have for the employees and the tools used to do the work, I get that people can choose when they work and how much they work, but the companies should be paying benefits and maintenance to the vehicles used

[–] daannii@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

There is no reason why they can't have a fleet of company vehicles for these services.

[–] normalentrance@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I don't understand the people paying $50+ to get McDonald's delivered.

[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Yeah, a lot of mom and pops burger places have better food.

[–] BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 14 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The poor class has always been servants, don't let a office job fool you

[–] daannii@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

I think you are missing my point.

Servants with zero benefits using their own "tools" they pay for (like a car), are different from labor jobs with benefits and a living wage. Not that there are many of those so called benefits for minimum wage workers either.

I mean it all sucks under capitalism. But gig work is ramping up end stage capitalism. It takes more, and takes it more aggressively from the working class.

Gig work is exasperating the inequality that already existed. It's robbing and exploiting people far more aggressively than seen before.

I think people don't realize how harmful these systems are.

Capitalism crash is inevitable. Through a few possible routes. But the suffering it will inflict and how widespread can be curtailed by stopping these predatory practices.

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[–] roofuskit@lemmy.world 38 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Some people using their cars for gig work are barely making more than the value they are depreciating from their car through wear and tear.

[–] Tiral@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago

Yeah, as a car guy knowing what things cost to repair these people who do this shit 5x a week aren't even making money in the long term. The only way to be ahead is do like Uber during an event or on weekend nights at a bar area 10-3am. Even then you might not make money if there's too many people doing it.

[–] Dozzi92@lemmy.world 19 points 2 days ago (2 children)

People rent cars to do it, which just blows my mind. I don't get how they can be making any money at all.

[–] roofuskit@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

A lot of gig workers just treat it like a paycheck and don't compare revenue to expenses like the independent business it really is.

Edit: poor wording, I don't believe it's entirely an independent business but that is how they are paid.

[–] Dozzi92@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It's essentially an independent business, but you can rent the car and get insurance and get paid all by the same entity, essentially. At least that's what I've gathered listening to the testimony of some of the drivers.

[–] Wolf314159@startrek.website 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's just a taxi company with extra steps, extra wage theft, and fewer worker protections.

[–] Dozzi92@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

In fairness, taxis in NYC were the wild west for a bit, it was bullshit, and Uber put them in their place. But yeah, as with all things, it's all fucked now.

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Wouldn't renting be the ultimate way to know if it was profitable as there's no hidden costs?

No insurance, no depreciation, no maintenance, no repairs.

You do a shift and whatever you make you make.

[–] Dozzi92@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (7 children)

Renting doesn't mean no insurance. If you're operating a vehicle, you need to be an insured driver. Where you get the insurance is up to you.

Depreciation, maintenance, those are lumped into the cost of the rental. Whomever you are renting from isn't giving you the car and taking a loss on it.

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[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

I'm driving Uber and it's been a real struggle to hit $20/hr gross (NOT NET) the past few weeks since gas prices skyrocketed.

The best part is Uber just invested like $10 billion in driverless cars. So not only is there no plan to pay better, but we're directly funding our own replacements.

[–] justaman123@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Gross would include money made before gas spent. But you're absolutely correct taking a huge pay cut because Trump is beholden to foreign powers is awful

[–] ivanafterall@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Right, thus I'm netting even less than that.

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[–] bearboiblake@pawb.social 27 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yes, you are completely right, it's yet another step away from the hard-won labor rights. Capitalism makes these kinds of changes inevitable, and must be abolished.

How does capitalism inevitably lead to fascism?

Basically, the issue with capitalism is that the more wealth you have, the easier it is for you to make more money. And since money can be used to buy goods, services and influence, there is always a way to use money to gain more political and social power. With that political and social power, you can push society and the legal system in the direction you want to go. So you can use your wealth to gain power, and then you can use your power to change laws and society so that you can make even more wealth and power. It’s a positive feedback loop.

Obviously, though, if the billionaires and ruling class are accumulating more and more of our society’s wealth, that inevitably means that there’s less for everyone else to go around - therefore, working class people feel poorer and poorer. Meanwhile, the economy is going absolutely great for rich people, so inflation continues to go up - everything gets more expensive, but wages don’t increase. The wealthy just keep more and more of the wealth for themselves. To accumulate more and more wealth, they change the laws so that they can avoid paying taxes, so public services collapse. Politicians are lobbied to ensure that public funds are diverted away from where it is most needed - housing, healthcare, transportation, infrastructure - and instead into industries where their class interests most benefit from it, such as weapons manufacturing and extractive industries such as fossil fuels and mining.

The working class are bound to notice that their lives are getting shittier and shittier, and if that situation is left unchecked, the working class would realize that the ruling class are fucking them over, rise up, and overthrow their rulers. Obviously, the ruling class need to do something about this, but there’s no solution that the ruling class can offer. They’re causing all of the problems, to fix them they’d have to give up some of their wealth and power - and that’s not something they’re going to do. So they need to find someone else to blame the problems we have in society on. Unfortunately, though, no matter who they blame the problems on, and no matter what they do to “fix” it, the issue will continue to persist, because the material conditions underlying the issues are, very intentionally, never addressed.

So, the conundrum returns: The ruling class said that minority A caused all of the problems, minority A is persecuted and oppressed, but society doesn’t actually get any better. Either the problem wasn’t minority A, or minority A just hasn’t been oppressed enough yet. So the ruling class can either escalate the oppression, or they can shift the focus to another minority group. The division continues to escalate in terms of how vitriolic and extreme it is, and it also continues to divide the working class into smaller and smaller groups.

To get the working class to buy into this hateful message, they need to take advantage of our worst instincts, and one of those instincts is the in-group bias. The majority are manipulated into being suspicious, then intolerant, then hateful, then violent, then genocidal, towards whatever the targeted minority of the day is. Anything that can be used to divide the working class - sexuality, nationality, immigration status, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender identity, age, all of these will be used as wedges to keep the working class split apart and not working together, because they know that if the working class actually unite against them, they are completely and truly fucked.

That’s exactly how fascism manifests. It’s because it’s possible for people to accumulate power through wealth. This is why capitalism must be abolished. If we do not abolish capitalism, fascism will always return. It’s just a matter of time.

But can't capitalism can be reformed?

While, of course, some laws to reform capitalism can be passed, and would definitely alleviate the worst harm caused, over the long term, capitalism cannot be reformed.

Any attempts to reform, democratize or socialize capitalism may yield short term improvements to quality of life of the working class, but if capitalism is not abolished, it will always reassert itself, and capitalism inevitably leads towards fascism.

The New Deal prevented the US from sliding into fascism in the 20th century, so that’s ultimately a good thing, but it did not go far enough, and that’s why we have the resurgence of fascism in the 21st century America.

[–] SolacefromSilence@fedia.io 10 points 3 days ago

Gigwork is the piece-work system, 2.0

[–] CannedYeet@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

A full time employee isn't a servant?

The economy is bifurcating into haves and have-nots. The haves paying for more services from the have-nots closes that gap. Maybe not by much, but at least in the right direction.

Just because gig work makes inequality more visible, doesn't mean it's causing it.

[–] mlg@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

The funny thing is gig work (proportionally) makes a lot more in plenty of 3rd wold countries because the business owner isn't taking a massive chunk of the income, and because it started out with everyone paying cash so there's no shoehorned services fees at every transaction.

Its so lucrative that I've seen office workers run it as bonus income on their way to and from work if they travel by car or motorcycle.

I always thought about making a free equivalent platform to stuff like Uber, but I think people would be too scared of the individual liability, despite Uber offering the absolute bare minimum.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I know right? How easy would it be to tie open street maps into a fiverr style so run this errand for me and make it almost free?

But the second someone gets hurt, molested, their house broken into, or carjacked, you're going to need some huge legal team and have a good chance at getting fucked in the process

[–] AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Wonder if you could add an arbitration clause or something so they can't sue you. Like how Disney did when someone died from food allergies at one of their parks but the husband had disney+ so they couldn't sue or something crazy

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 days ago

They have the luxury of owning a large building full of lawyers. You can make it so that it's hard for people to win, but it's impossible to stop them from suing you. Getting your own lawyer just to defend you from the lawsuits gets expensive really quickly.

[–] faintwhenfree@lemmus.org 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I recently saw a presentation form Uber executives panicking because Indian government launched an Uber competitive app, but that takes no cut at all, 100% of what customer pays goes to driver.

[–] mlg@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Yeah Uber (thankfully lol) actually died in a ton of countries because of this.

Either government sponsored or just local competition that actually pays well.

There's even tiered niches for each app that go for quality/speed etc, so no one app becomes supreme.

[–] Shindo66@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Did you know, the government of any country can do this for any service? Government sponsered amazon anyone?

[–] Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world 14 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I just couldn't stomach paying someone for nearly all the gig work option. The exception was uber. The taxi companies always pissed me off. Using a credit card was harder than it needed to be for a long time, and they just didn't bother to try new things to improve the experience. And of course there are the ones that controlled the supply so they could drive up prices. But I still only used it when on vacation, like in vegas. But shopping for me, and all that. Just couldn't do it.

[–] daannii@lemmy.world 11 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I've also had some bad experiences with taxi services. So I totally get that. It's just too bad that instead of improving their service and fees, that they just got replaced with gig work .

I've always heard it said that you can't really be an ethical consumer in capitalism.

We often don't have ethical alternatives.

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[–] CannedYeet@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

During COVID, wages for the lowest paid people increased more than other classes. I think it was partially the rise of gig work giving alternatives to people who were otherwise stuck working at Walmart because that's the only job in town.

[–] daannii@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Supply and demand. Unemployment benefits were extended. People didn't have to work. To attract employees they had to increase wages. But they fixed that by increases in product cost that far exceeds wage increases.

Plus rent went up for everyone.

[–] rekabis@lemmy.ca 10 points 2 days ago (9 children)

The only things I have delivered to me are packages and envelopes through the mail.

Granted, I am GenX, but I can’t recall a single time in the last half a decade where I’ve had anything like food delivered. Or used the services of any kind of gig company.

And I simply can’t think of any benefit of doing so. It’s horrendously expensive, and simply not worth the expense.

[–] JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You're GenX and have never had a pizza or Chinese food delivered!? Do you live in the sticks? Town I live in now has never had a delivery restaurant (weird for a tourist town) and nobody runs Uber eats or whatever, but when I was a kid in suburbia delivery food was super common, mostly pizza and Chinese.

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[–] daannii@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

I'm not against delivering services. Just gig jobs.

Lots of people really need these. Like disabled people and the elderly.

But those two groups are least able to afford it.

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[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 9 points 2 days ago (11 children)

I honestly don't see how people do this and in a way that is in the black.

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[–] bridgeburner@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

What a fckn sh*thole the US is.

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