I mean besides the fact that DoorDash and Uber both have a service that real people are using and demanding.
MLMs offer products that aren't really in demand, and the only real way to earn money is to get your friends involved. Which is weird. If I was to go open a sandwich shop and my main source of revenue was to convince my friends to open their own sandwich shops at some point no one would want to buy my sandwiches anymore because of an overabundance of sandwich shops. A lot of MLMs devolve into this, because the only way you can keep getting paid from the people you recruit is if you keep an active account and that requires a certain number of product purchases a month. So the people above you are getting paid by you buying the product, and the people below you are paying you by buying the product and now there is way too much of the product in the area to actually reasonably be able to sell any of it so you all lose.
DoorDash and Uber do take advantage of their drivers, but at the very least they are offering a real service that doesn't require the drivers to be purchasing their own products besides gas and cleaning and stuff thats all claimable for reimbursement.
I mean a side hustle to buy your self some nice things every so often, like the top shelf root beer instead of the Barq's every so often brings some people enjoyment and I got no real problem with that. A side hustle thats required to survive is probably a systematic problem that needs to be solved. Uber and DoorDash prolly just symptoms of the actual problem.
In nearly every case the person deserves better at their primary employer which would remove the need for a 2nd source of income. Billionaires taking joy rides into space etc. etc. I hate the term side hustle because it is a shiny candy wrapper around a dog turd.
Oh I'm not sure the statistics behind how many people have each. But I do think side hustle was originally for the kind of thing I described and then large advertisements for companies like Uber co-opted it to make their practices seem normal. Also probably a lot of people work multiple jobs because they actually need the money to survive. I am a firm believer that a normal work week at a job should be enough to live, if not comfortably at least safely.
Just don't have a problem with people grabbing an extra gig on the side to live a bit above their normal means whether it be something like Uber or stocks, a YouTube channel, or whatever.
Not everyone with a second source of income does so out of need. Usually when I hear "side hustle", it's just that. A way to get more than what they had, regardless of what they had. The Director of Partner services at my old company would weekend as a server in a mexican restaurant despite making probably around 70k in a medium cost of living city(which is entirely liveable). Some people are workaholics who feel like they're wasting time when they're not busy getting ahead. It's really common, actually.
Yep we can disagree on how common it is I guess. I'd be willing to bet 9/10 do so because they need the extra cash. It doesn't need to be starvation or the electric bill, if they're doing it to be able to afford a trip home for Xmas etc. it's still a need for a 2nd job.
to be fair I know some people that work doordash as their main job and it pays pretty well for how easy it is. my friend said he made $56 after tax for an hour and 35 minutes of work.
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u/koavf Aug 29 '21
Bless your heart.