A Patron of Economic Update asks: "I would appreciate hearing your thoughts about how this Canadian Truckers movement aligns with the international workers' ...
Sure, it's pretty simple to establish that a rig isn't meager capital, while a car is (it's not entirely, either - the car is also capital, it's just that it's a small fraction of the relevant capital and the social relations are still of employment).
You have to ask yourself, what is the constant capital necessary to the job of a trucker? There is the truck, there is the road, and that's it. The load isn't constant capital, because it's perfectly fungible and it's not expended by use. The road is collectively owned, so it can be pushed away, and all that remains is the truck, so an owner operator owns essentially all of the capital necessary for their job.
On the other hand, if you take a ridesharing driver, what is the constant capital? The road, the car, and the ridesharing platform, right? The car itself may be worth 20000$, however not all of it is expended for the ride. Fortunately, we can piece out the depreciation and wear cost per ride, which for Uber with an average distance is around 10km. The cost per km to run a commercial car is around 0.3$/km, of which around 0.13$ is constant capital cost, which is depreciation and maintenance. So we have a car capital cost per ride of 2$ on average. That's on aggregate Uber-round 2 billion dollars of capital expended per year, so we could say in aggregate perhaps 10 billion dollars total. By comparison, Uber cost around 28 billion dollars in investment to build, so certainly there is simply a lot more capital in the ridesharing platform than the actual car.
This reflects the observed social dynamics, of ridesharing providing slightly more autonomy than the average job, but on the balance being essentially the same - in a similar way the car an Uber driver operates is around 1/4 of the total capital their job requires, so they are essentially working class still.
In this case, simply comparing the capital the worker owns to the total capital for their job is a pretty good metric to find which one dominates. Unsurprisingly, if one did actually have the lion's share of the capital, they wouldn't have to let themselves be dominated by a single other entity.
Sure, it's pretty simple to establish that a rig isn't meager capital, while a car is (it's not entirely, either - the car is also capital, it's just that it's a small fraction of the relevant capital and the social relations are still of employment).
You have to ask yourself, what is the constant capital necessary to the job of a trucker? There is the truck, there is the road, and that's it. The load isn't constant capital, because it's perfectly fungible and it's not expended by use. The road is collectively owned, so it can be pushed away, and all that remains is the truck, so an owner operator owns essentially all of the capital necessary for their job.
On the other hand, if you take a ridesharing driver, what is the constant capital? The road, the car, and the ridesharing platform, right? The car itself may be worth 20000$, however not all of it is expended for the ride. Fortunately, we can piece out the depreciation and wear cost per ride, which for Uber with an average distance is around 10km. The cost per km to run a commercial car is around 0.3$/km, of which around 0.13$ is constant capital cost, which is depreciation and maintenance. So we have a car capital cost per ride of 2$ on average. That's on aggregate Uber-round 2 billion dollars of capital expended per year, so we could say in aggregate perhaps 10 billion dollars total. By comparison, Uber cost around 28 billion dollars in investment to build, so certainly there is simply a lot more capital in the ridesharing platform than the actual car.
This reflects the observed social dynamics, of ridesharing providing slightly more autonomy than the average job, but on the balance being essentially the same - in a similar way the car an Uber driver operates is around 1/4 of the total capital their job requires, so they are essentially working class still.
In this case, simply comparing the capital the worker owns to the total capital for their job is a pretty good metric to find which one dominates. Unsurprisingly, if one did actually have the lion's share of the capital, they wouldn't have to let themselves be dominated by a single other entity.