An evolution that would be really good for the gig economy would be the evolution of decent risk-pooling models. The kind described in “portfolios of the poor” but higher ticket price.
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Example, 12 people form a pool of putting $100/mo into club, 1 person gets an $1100 payout per month. Winner drawn from a bag of names OR someone with an emergency gets to jump the queue. Limit 1 per year. Nobody needs to hold funds long-term. Built purely on trust.
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Lots of mechanisms like this are routinely used by developing world poor and lower-middle class. But they’ve fallen into disuse in the west. Instead we on,y have organized banking/credit OR awkward reliance on friends/family.
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I've tried to figure out a way to facilitate this at scale, but never figured out a way that I believed would work. Trust, transaction costs and adverse selection always seem to doom it.
Still interested, if you have ideas though.
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A few apps do this, Moneypool comes to mind. I think people are so obsessed with appearances and social signaling in America it stifles this kind of thing, at least on the coasts. Once US digests that poverty is structural and not a personal choice, maybe these would get popular
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I’m not sure it’s a tech problem. It’s an interpersonal trust problem. In my example, 12 people need to trust each other enough.


