Seems to me that there’s at least two large industries that many people interact with but suffer from centralization. Short-term rentals (e.g. Airbnb) and gig-work (e.g. Uber, DoorDash, TaskRabbit). These companies act as middlemen, control who is allowed on the platform, take a large cut of funds, and remove you or remove work from you at any arbitrarily defined moment. This can be disruptive for people who rely on these platforms to earn income. nostr could fix this. Give the end users the tools and the freedom to choose who to trust to proceed with the transaction. Give people their full earnings, and allow people to pay what it actually costs.
Discussion
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Some really good ideas.
There is definitley still "snubbery" here.
We should be careful not to underestimate how much people love having someone to blame.
Often centralised businesses’ provide a value that is a little like insurance, where if things go wrong, you have somewhere to go, yell at, sue, get refunded, split costs, etc.
How can decentralised services help address that need/value is to be determined.
was centralized, but I used to use a rideshare app called sidecar, you could select from a list of cars and drivers, and drivers could set their own percentages so, at least in Los Angeles, you had some pretty interesting cars on there… took a convertible out to warehouse parties a couple of times. Definitely felt more like “rideshare” than the taxi apps of today.
Someone else mentioned liability, middle men don’t treat their gig workers right in these regards, but certainly don’t want to be putting gif workers in a worse position. Maybe get the tooling working for non motor vehicle work first.