top of page
Search

Alternative Income Models: From Gig Work to No-Money Living

  • Writer: horizonshiftlab
    horizonshiftlab
  • Apr 17
  • 15 min read
People working intently on laptops in a modern office with white shelves. Focused mood, soft lighting, and neutral colors.
Source: Anna Shvets via pexels.com

In this episode, we explore the rise of alternative income models—new ways people are earning, sharing and surviving in a shifting economy. We discuss the spread of gig platforms into retail, the emergence of B2B asset-sharing, and how IKEA is paying employees to work inside Roblox. We also spotlight one woman’s choice to live without money, relying on social capital instead of cash. From shift-based apps to trust-based communities, we examine how values, technology, and necessity are reshaping what it means to make a living. 





Selected Links:





Episode Transcript:

Raakhee: Welcome to Signal Shift, by Horizon Shift Lab. We're your hosts, Lana Price, Raakhee Natha, and Sue Chi. Each episode, we explore the latest signals in technology, culture, and society, uncovering insights that will impact our daily lives in the future. Join us as we shift perspectives, explore possibilities, and delve into real changes in our world. Curious to learn more? Go to horizonshiftlab.com.

Raakhee: Hello and welcome to another episode of Signal Shift. It's Lana and me here again. And, you know, as you would have known from last week's episode, we have kicked off a theme around future careers and jobs. 


Last week we shared about AI in recruitment and hiring, showcasing how different that experience will be for the few that it may apply to in the future. That's a whole other topic in itself. 


So, entrepreneurship, ownership, those are going to be really very important avenues, I think, of work, of income, what the future looks like for many of us. But it's going to also take very different forms.


Today we are going to delve into signals that showcase either new ways of business operations or business structure, just new business models, or even new ways of earning income, right? Ways we just haven't thought about before.


We've seen some unique models in the last decade. Crowdsourcing, right? Nobody knew about that until the last couple of years. The sharing economy. You know, Uber, Airbnb, who have never owned a single home or a car, [those] businesses are really interesting. The whole concept of SaaS being really big, you know, software as a service, it really fuels so much of what we all take as our everyday kind of for granted. And that's just going to extend into AI now. So we know things like that are going to absolutely exist and be even bigger in a different way. The circular economy, which has become more and more important, a lot of businesses are trying to adopt this way of working. 


I was really surprised to find this as well. So World Economic Forum says that fewer than 10% of companies’ business models are actually economically viable as we're going to digitize.


You know, the most successful business model in the world today, right? We know it's the digital platform business model. From the perspective that 70% of your one billion plus unicorn startups, right, make up this type of business. But, when we look at the rest of the businesses in the world, only 2% do. So I was really surprised to hear these kinds of numbers about, you know, how businesses operate, how digital they are and how ready they are for the changes that are coming our way. 


Digital platform business models are going to make up 30% of the global economic activity by 2030. We're in this transition phase that I think is so interesting. 


So to harness this fourth industrial revolution, the whole concept of business model reinvention, I think is going to be critical over the next few years. And I think businesses, they know they're not doing this, right? According to PwC, their 28th annual global CEO survey revealed that 42% of CEOs believe that they must significantly change their business models in the next five to ten years to remain in business. So people do know the reality. It just hasn't happened. And so I think we're going to see these dramatic shifts.


So starting us off with a little bit of that information. Yeah, Lana, what was your first signal in this domain?


Lana: To what you're saying, you know, we're thinking about alternative business models, alternative types of income. And really, the majority of the US workforce is still a, what we call a W2 employee, like a salaried worker, right. 


But I was thinking about, you know, you mentioned the gig economy, and these digital platforms. So I was really thinking about the future of the gig economy. 


And I saw a signal in the Financial Times about how this is coming to retail stores. So in the Netherlands and in the UK, there's an app called Young Ones, which is a platform for day gigs or shift workers, primarily for retail stores and restaurants. And there's a similar app called Temper. 


And so the folks who are working these shifts on the app, they work on average at 24 different businesses, right? They're a floating workforce. And so a lot of pretty big name retail stores are offering shifts. So like Uniqlo or like Urban Outfitters, right? And so there's like a couple of implications for this.


One, is that we're really moving from careers to contracts, like jobs, and now to shifts, right. And so on the worker side, this is pretty precarious because a shift can open up and you have to compete. 


And it's just like you were saying last episode, Raakhee, because it's not like you're uploading your resume. You get a score, like a rating, just like you would for like an Uber driver. And so every worker has a score from their previous gigs. 


And so like a waiter shift could open up and 32 people apply right away. Right. So it's very unpredictable. Like if you're going to get it, where is it? Who are you going to work with? What's your job going to be like for that day? 


And then the rating system opens up this really kind of unfair power dynamic between the employer and the employee. Because let's say something's happening at the job, you might be afraid to speak up. Because if that person gives you a bad rating, that's going to impact your ability to get jobs in the future. 


And even though they say, it goes both ways -- uh, not really, right? Because one side is paying the other. And so it doesn't really go in both ways. 


So, and of course, like for society, this opens up really big implications because, you know, right now, for us, like a full-time job is tied to health benefits, right? It's tied to retirement, it's tied to paid sick days. And if you're a shift worker, a “freelance retail specialist”, which is what they call them, you don't have any of those things.


And the bigger kind of, I guess, sort of scandal with this, the Young Ones app is that they also… they have their payment system. And so if you want to get paid in one minute, the worker pays a fee, 4.8% for instant pay. It's almost like Venmo has this too, right? Like if you want to get the cash, you pay a fee to get it faster. And so you could pay a fee of 2.9%, you get paid in three days. But if you don't pay the fee, you will not get paid for at least 30 days. 


And so, especially for people who are, if this is like a source of income where you're working day by day, and then you're not getting paid for 30 days. 


So the whole, this I think, all of this, and then I'm just gonna add on the “young ones.” We just saw in Florida, they are considering passing a bill to lower the age of workers. So essentially children, people who are not yet, considered legally adults, they're “opening up” new opportunities for child labor. 


And so if you think about the combination of all of these things, it is not great, if we think about this as if we consider the implications of kind of the gig economy, which a lot of people say, you one of the benefits is it gives you flexibility, but that flexibility does come with a lot of trade-offs as well.


Raakhee: Yeah, I think, wow, so interesting to see the scoring system tying back here and how negatively, it could work for individuals. Yeah, it's fascinating because you'd think this gig economy situation is supposed to be beneficial, but I'm hearing all the flaws you pointed out and I'm like, kind of the winner in all of this is the financial services payment provider and the fees on having your money, right? I mean, they are the real winners out of this. 


Yeah, I think this flows into my signal.


And it's really around, yeah, the sharing of resources, right? And here, we've kind of spoken about it from the personnel perspective.


But what was really interesting is this whole idea of asset sharing and companies doing that. And you can see it in certain models already. Technically, that's exactly what Uber and Airbnb are doing in a different way with a different cover to it. 


But I found a company that is offering business-to-business sharing marketplace. And again, we may have seen this. Maybe the example that I think will resonate with most people is during COVID, certain small restaurants or places that were still very high on their delivery value kind of paired up with other people, you know, or they were like these ghost kitchens or people would come together and kind of operate out of the smaller premises that they shared with other restaurants, just to get those meals out in terms of delivery, right? So they were really sharing these kitchen spaces in essence. And it's a little bit like that.


But this whole idea of business-to-business sharing and there's a company called FLOOW2 that claims to be the first business-to-business sharing marketplace. And what they enable is for companies, any sorts of companies, institutions, to share their assets, their knowledge, and yes, even their personnel and the skills of their personnel.


A little bit different than purely gig economy and just the workers' there. It's really putting up anything that you want to from your business, technically anything you want to. It's like stepping really deeper into this idea of sharing resources across businesses because of what we see in the marketplace. 


I think this really changes business particularly and how they think because they really work with the reductionist mindset in essence that if I'm not having enough revenue, I'm gonna sell one machine and cut two employees. Right? That's the typical thinking. 


And here it's kind of reversing it and saying, oh, maybe what you can do is rather share those resources with other businesses because the machine you want to sell somebody else is looking for. And simply putting it back into the marketplace, like selling it to someone else, doesn't support the circular economy either. So this is really about saying we all need less and we need to come together and use those things appropriately, right? 


You've got to be a registered company, of course, and it's all kinds of sectors. And I see this being really popular in health care, construction, those sorts of industries. 


They've got about 50,000 users, small, but their intent is to be globally operational and kind of have a big expansion plan. So really interesting, I think. I don't know about, again, 15 years from now or 20 years from now, But I think this is going to be really useful in this transition phase.


Lana: Absolutely love that. I really, you I think it's, you're right that it's a completely different mindset. And you're, to me, it's going from competitors to collaborators, right? Like if you, let's say you do have like that retail business, like that nail salon, and you think about the other nail salons in your neighborhood as competitors, and then, you know, this sort of… flips the switch on that, right? Like, is there a way that you can actually share resources and lift each other up?


I do actually have a positive retail story that counteracts the gig economy one. And I borrowed, this was yours, actually, Raakhee, that you mentioned last week, but you just mentioned it in passing.


And you had mentioned IKEA and Roblox, right? And so what that, just to explain that a little further. So basically IKEA, was offering, it's one of the first, if not the first, store to offer paid positions in its virtual store on the gaming platform, Roblox. 


And so I've never been in Roblox, but Roblox is a, it's a virtual universe essentially. And there's endless games or what they call experiences. And so lots of stuff can happen in Roblox, like virtual concerts, digital fashion shows, and a lot of brands are setting up these virtual brand worlds. 


And so what I didn't fully realize until I read the story is that IKEA's virtual video game is called “The Coworker Game.” And so they want folks to experience what it's like to have a career at IKEA. And so… they are trying to attract and inspire the next generation of coworkers. And so this gives players a taste of the IKEA culture and insight into what makes IKEA such a special place to work. And so the interesting thing is that they did pay, right? Just they paid the same wage that they do for their London-based IKEA employees. So they paid folks to work in the virtual IKEA world.


And so folks had to apply for these jobs. They were paid for it and they performed their tasks  -- such as they assisted customers, they organized showrooms, and they even served virtual meatballs. And so these are really inspired by real life jobs at IKEA. And it's, you know, they're kind of showcasing the brand's unique approach to careers. 


And so I just, to me, like, this was what I thought, you know, was one of the big, one of the many trade-offs of the gig economy approach, right? Is that you're not instilling that culture and that sort of like customer service orientation or even that mission when folks are kind of in and out every single day, right? And so this is really like an opposite ethos where they're trying to, but really specifically attract younger people, right, the target demographic of Roblox, to envision and experience a career at IKEA. And so, you know, I thought this was interesting…


Raakhee: I think like we mentioned last week and still holding true now, just the idea of this digital working world, you know, and I think especially for younger generations who will be able to navigate that, I think it's going to be so interesting.


I would imagine maybe for somebody, you know, I don't know, they might have literally two jobs and one might be this whole other digital identity that maybe no one will ever even know is linked to them. You know, like they would only know that.


Two really interesting things that you brought up there. I'll share this one, which is now a completely different concept from what we've been talking about.


So my second signal is really around, and I think I didn't mention this in passing one of the last week or the week before as well, but it's the lady who, her story was quite popular, I think in February this year, who signed up for the No Money Lifestyle and really showing an example of saying, actually, you know, her thing is she's opted out of the economy, right?  


And so we see these different models, right? We've spoken about guaranteed basic income, all these different ways of working, the gig economy, asset sharing. There's going to be so many different models, but one of them is that somebody could say, I'm out. And it's really a value systems-driven choice. You know, it's somebody who's saying, I don't want to partake in this economy that is so transactional.


Even this idea of like bartering and giving value to things and questioning and saying who even assigns those values? What does any of this mean? Right. So it's really a complete values based shift kind of concept. 


And so, you know, this lady was inspired. She, her parents were retired farmers and they lived really frugally and they passed on this book by, it's called “The Moneyless Man.” It's by Mark Boyle. It's a year of, he called it, freeconomics or something, and he did this like three years like a non-money life and he kind of I think lays out the steps for how you can do this how this is achievable and doable. And so I you know, she kind of you know, once she was introduced this idea she said I'm gonna do it and this was like 2016, it's almost a decade now she's doing it. So she's a great example of somebody who's done it, right? 


And for the first three years, she lived on a friend's farm where she had like a small shack and she used discarded kind of building materials to kind of set it up and that sort of thing. And then she did a bit of off-grid living in like a little blue wagon. And now she's in a multi-generational home that she shares with her friend, her own daughter, she's got a daughter as well, and others. And she's based in Australia. This particular story is about a lady based in Australia. 

And instead of paying rent, she cleans, she manages the vegetable garden, those sorts of things. But it's not done again in a barter system. It's not like you have to clean for 50 hours to have. You know what I'm saying? To live here, it's not at all transactional. It's just sharing and trusting and just living in community with people who are like, yeah, be here. And she will reciprocate that in a way that works best for her and that trust that exists, you know. Because, of course, the people are living their benefit from her cleaning and her cooking and all those things, right, in a way that they claim they benefit even more. 


So really interesting. So she doesn't own a home, no property. She doesn't receive any welfare payments. That's part of it. It's like opting out of the system, right? She doesn't have any savings. For her, it's really about how do you live with the least amount and still be happy? And being somebody who's been in this experiment for really long, believes she is happy that she doesn't have these burdens and these concerns that you kind of do living in the economic system that we do. 


And it was really interesting, I know that the person that she shares this place within this multi-generational housing was even saying there’s certain things like, chocolate has become, it's like something they don't, you know, they don't go out and buy, it's a specialty. And like when I think the local store had extra surplus, they were giving it out, they had chocolate after so long, but that's what made it really amazing, right? Like, wow, this is so good. And just different experience. Like, this is maybe how we should be indulging in this rare resource that's so beautiful. But she, you know, kind of just attributes again and says that…


One, it's kind of fun, it's like a game, like how do I figure out living and figuring this out? But second, really being happier and feeling more secure, living in community and she kind of spoke, and this is gonna lead into a topic I think we're gonna get into in the next few weeks, which is social and relationship capital. But she speaks about having social currency, is that she's with community, she's with people, her time, her effort is spent being with them and cultivating relationships.


And just by giving back, she gets taken care of and she trusts that fully now after so many years. And so she has social currency, which globally we all lack in huge amounts now. So yeah, I thought just turning everything on its head and saying, is the no income a way of, is that a way of lifestyle, right?


Lana: Yeah, think I'm glad that you pointed it out because I think that, I think that's really interesting, because maybe it's not like, it's a different type of economy like instead of a non-economy, but I think pointing out this the social and relational capital like she's essentially rich in that right because that's what she's using to, that that is the currency that she's using and exchanging, I guess is the way that is really the way to put it.


But I think the point is that there are different ways. There are different paths and different choices.


Raakhee: And I think you kind of summed this up really actually beautifully for today in the sense that these are just different options and choices. And I think we really covered an interesting spectrum on today's call, which I love. So I hope that just gets people thinking about, you know, now is the time to really ask yourself those big questions about your values and how do you see your life within this. As scary as everything is right now. And it will continue to be a little bit over the next few years. 


It's also a time where it's a time of creation. It's things are very open and there's opportunities, right? There's risks, but there's opportunities. They always go together.


Yeah, I think we'll leave you with all of that to think about for today.


Thank you so much for listening and being here and supporting our YouTube. So yes, please do go and like and subscribe. I think it's a great way to consume the podcast if you are a visual person. And yes, sign up to the website as well so we can stay in touch and keep in contact. But thank you as always for listening and we will see you again next week. Bye for now.


Comments

bottom of page