What's a "gig work minimum wage": The important rate is what you're paid when you're waiting for a job.

Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr)

Attached: 1 image "Minimum wage" is one of those odd concepts that *seems* to have an intuitive definition, but the harder you think about it, the more complicated it gets. For example, if you want to work, but can't find a job, then the minimum wage you'll get is zero: https://web.archive.org/web/20200625043843/https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2020-06-24/forget-ubi-says-an-economist-its-time-for-universal-basic-jobs -- If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog: https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/17/no-piecework/#no-justice 1/

Mamot - Le Mastodon de La Quadrature du Net (mamot.fr)

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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/

4/

#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/

5/

#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

6/

Yesterday's threads: The online community trilemma; and more!

Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr)

Attached: 1 image Today's threads (a thread) Inside: The online community trilemma; and more! Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/16/fast-good-cheap/ #Pluralistic 1/

Mamot - Le Mastodon de La Quadrature du Net (mamot.fr)

7/

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:

Just a moment...

(us.macmillan.com)

--

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:

Just a moment...

(us.macmillan.com)

8/

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."

https://craphound.com/shop/

9/

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/

10/

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

11/

Upcoming appearances (cont'd):

* #HayOnWye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2

12/

Recent appearances:

* Panopticon :3 (Trashfuture)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/panopticon-3-150395435

* America's Enshittification is Canada's Opportunity (Do Not Pass Go)
https://www.donotpassgo.ca/p/americas-enshittification-is-canadas

* Everything Wrong With the Internet and How to Fix It, with Tim Wu (Ezra Klein)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-doctorow-wu.html

* How the Internet Got Worse (Masters in Business)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auXlkuVhxMo

* Enshittification (Jon Favreau/Offline):
https://crooked.com/podcast/the-enshittification-of-the-internet-with-cory-doctorow/

13/

You can follow these posts as a daily blog at pluralistic.net: no ads, trackers, or data-collection!

Here's today's edition: https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/17/no-piecework/

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If you prefer a newsletter, subscribe to the plura-list, which is ad-/tracker-free, and is utterly unadorned save a single daily emoji. Today's is "️️". Suggestions solicited for future emojis!

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eof/

I also like the idea of requiring young adults to do paid service jobs for a year--kind of like Peace Corps but expanded to include caregiver and the kind of social jobs that are now done by volunteers.

@pluralistic

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" ...

1/

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... but what it really is ... is slavery.

Koch Network is vehemently opposed to the concept of a minimum wage because they are white supremacists.
https://www.zinnedproject.org/if-we-knew-our-history/koch-brothers-want-students-learn-slavery/

The Koch Brothers Commissioned a Survey of Americans and Found Most Like a $15 Minimum Wage, Free College, and Universal Health Care

Where the Koch brothers see government tyranny, most Americans see common-sense solutions to basic problems, it turns out.

The Intercept (theintercept.com)

forbes.com

(www.forbes.com)

The Koch brothers tried to build a plutocracy in the name of freedom | Nathan Robinson

The Kochs have always believed that rich people had the right to rule over everyone else, democracy be damned

the Guardian (www.theguardian.com)

The Koch Brothers Are Waging War Against the Poor

Taking wage policy advice from Charles Koch is like taking advice on how to run a neighborhood watch program from George Zimmerman.

Truthout (truthout.org)

Anti-union Effort in Kentucky Is Ripped Straight from the Koch Playbook

Investigative reporting about corporate malfeasance and government wrongdoing, analysis of national and world affairs, and cultural criticism that matters.

In These Times (inthesetimes.com)

They are desperately trying to bring back every aspect of the economy of the Antebellum South of 1850, including disenfranchising women, POC, immigrants.

Koch Brothers Lobby for Broken Government, Burning Planet

Mayer’s book will long survive as a compendium of guilty men.

Progressive.org (progressive.org)

3/

"Kochonomics" is really white supremacy in drag.

Attention Required! | Cloudflare

(www.bostonreview.net)

White Supremacy and its Allies - New Politics

Perhaps the difficulty in capturing and defining the phenomenon of white supremacy lays in its ubiquity. Throughout American society (and more generally, across the Western world), ‘whiteness,’ symbolizes a status quo, a dominant set of norms and behaviors to which individuals are expected to adhere.

New Politics (newpol.org)

Uber, unions reach labor peace deal in exchange for dropping driver wage hike ordinance

Uber has agreed to support statewide legislation that would give drivers union rights but keep them classified as independent contractors, a union alliance said.

Chicago Tribune (www.chicagotribune.com)

Just a moment...

(www.opensecrets.org)

The Disinformation Machine - Orion Magazine

The strategy behind the Koch network’s climate denial campaign

Orion Magazine (orionmagazine.org)

Just a moment...

(www.opensecrets.org)

Minimum wage arguments and the Henry Ford model - MinnPost

A business model that locks wages at the lowest scale is not a business of the future.

MinnPost (www.minnpost.com)

Mothers Want Federally Funded Childcare. Why Are These Koch-Funded Women Opposing It?

The right-wing, anti-feminist, Koch-funded “Independent Women’s Forum” has been at the forefront of assaults on federally funded childcare.

Ms. Magazine (msmagazine.com)

@pluralistic

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

1/

2/

Attention Required! | Cloudflare

(www.epi.org)

How the American economy conspires to keep wages down | Gabriel Winant

The economy is growing but our paychecks are not. That’s because employers have, over decades, built a political apparatus to hold down pay

the Guardian (www.theguardian.com)

Attention Required! | Cloudflare

(www.epi.org)

POC wage suppression
https://racism.org/articles/basic-needs/economic-issues-and-race/12678-economic-apartheid

Attention Required! | Cloudflare

(www.epi.org)

Attention Required! | Cloudflare

(www.epi.org)

Latino workers are often segregated into bad jobs, but a strong U.S. labor movement can boost job quality and U.S. economic growth

Latino workers are often sorted into low-quality jobs, but greater worker bargaining power can boost job quality for all U.S. workers.

Equitable Growth (equitablegrowth.org)

Why A Historic Wave Of Latino Prosperity Is Under Threat Now

A few months ago, things were looking up for Latinos: wages were rising and unemployment was at a record low. Now, Latinos are the worst hit among all races: a record high unemployment rate of 18.9%.

NPR (www.npr.org)

LGBTQ wage suppression
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/557798-wage-suppression-not-stagnation-is-costing-workers-10-an-hour/

The Wage Gap Among LGBTQ+ Workers in the United States

In an HRC Foundation analysis of nearly 7,000 full-time LGBTQ+ workers, median earnings were about $900 weekly, about 90% of the $1,001 median weekly wage…

HRC (www.hrc.org)

Immigrants' wage suppression
https://www.epi.org/publication/immigrants-and-the-economy/

forbes.com

(www.forbes.com)

What Immigration Means For U.S. Employment and Wages | Brookings

Our nation’s immigration policy continues to be an issue of debate among policymakers, particularly the impact on the U.S. labor force. Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney highlight the economic evidence on what immigration means for U.S. jobs and the economy.

Brookings (www.brookings.edu)

The Immigration-Wage Myth

Does the American worker have good reason to fear immigration?

The Atlantic (www.theatlantic.com)

Understanding the Immigrant Pay Gap: Stephen Tino

Stephen Tino is a first-generation Canadian whose upbringing was rooted in the immigration experience. As a PhD candidate in the Department of Economics at the University of Toronto, he has been drawing on that experience to explore the pay gap between immigrants and non-immigrants in the country. "In various countries around the world, immigrants tend to earn less than non-immigrants,” Tino explained. “The pay gap in Canada is around 16%, and this is similar to the pay gap in other countries. A lot of previous research into the immigrant pay gap focuses on the skills of the workers, such as the language skills of immigrants when they come to a new country or their literacy, or how the different types of education they receive in their home countries might not translate to the same types of jobs in the host country.

(newsletter.economics.utoronto.ca)

How Tighter Curbs on Immigration Impact the U.S. Economy | Econofact

Immigration has accounted for almost half of U.S. labor force growth since 1995. Slower labor force growth would negatively impact employment and GDP growth.

Econofact | Key facts and incisive analysis to the national debate on economic and social policies. (econofact.org)

Attention Required! | Cloudflare

(www.epi.org)

@pluralistic

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.

Just a moment...

(funcrunch.medium.com)