Where has Redpossum been?

Teaching English

If you have been wondering where the hell I've been hiding, the answer is that I've been working. I started a new job about three weeks ago, teaching English online, and it's taking up all my time and energy.

The annoying part is that I only get paid for time I spend actually teaching, and the time I spend online waiting for students pays me nothing. Now, as a certified TEFL instructor with four years of experience, I usually charge 11-15 US dollars per hour for face-to-face lessons. Or rather, I should say "charged", past tense. With the severe recession in Argentina, I have lost most of my face-to-face students, which is why I am now teaching online.

But this teaching online gig pays much less; roughly half as much on a good day. On a bad day, I can make next to nothing. On my worst day, I worked a 5 hour shift and earned a total of 14 US dollars, or less than three dollars an hour.

Predatory Capitalism

This presents us with a good example of the downside of modern technology. Tech which was supposed to set us free, has in fact enabled new models of capitalism which bypass all labor laws, all hard-earned workers' rights, and reduce us to the sweatshop wages of 100 years ago, bereft of all benefits or protections.

Al diablo con Glovo y Rappi

Glovo and Rappi are also examples of this insidious new model high-tech exploitation of the workers based upon smartphone apps. Here is an article in The Bubble about Rappi workers here in Argentina trying to form a union to fight back against such exploitation -
https://www.thebubble.com/deliver-app-unionizing-argentina/

Yeah, but...

But anyhow, back to me. For the foreseeable future, I'm afraid my time on Steemit is going to be limited. You see, I don't make jack shit here. I write an article, and the net return for my time is pennies. Teaching online pays relatively little, but investing my time and energy in Steemit pays literally almost nothing. Unless and until that changes, I have to go where the money is, if I don't want to wind up out in the street begging passersby for change and scrounging food out of the garbage cans.

(the picture at the top of this article is Tehran by night. That thing left of center that looks like the Seattle Space Needle is called the Mllad tower. This photo is not my own work, but provided courtesy of wikimedia)