Single correct option
The gig economy's promise of flexibility often obscures a harder trade-off. Workers value the freedom to choose their hours, but this freedom typically comes bundled with piece-rate pay, no guaranteed minimum earnings, and algorithmic management that can terminate access to work without explanation or appeal. Reform proposals that would guarantee a minimum wage floor while preserving flexible scheduling exist, but remain rare, largely because they cost platforms more than the current model, not because they are technically infeasible.
- A. Gig workers should stop valuing flexibility since it is always accompanied by exploitative pay and unfair termination practices.
- B. Combining flexible scheduling with basic earnings protections is feasible, but platforms mostly avoid it because it is costlier than the current, less protective model.
- C. Algorithmic management is the single biggest problem facing gig workers today and must be banned outright.
- D. Flexibility and fair pay are mutually exclusive by definition, so no platform can ever offer both simultaneously.
Show answer and solution
Answer: (B) Combining flexible scheduling with basic earnings protections is feasible, but platforms mostly avoid it because it is costlier than the current, less protective model.
The paragraph's key claim is in the final sentence: combined models 'exist, but remain rare... because they cost platforms more... not because they are technically infeasible.' Option B captures this precisely. Option A overreaches into a prescriptive claim not made. Option C isolates one detail (algorithmic management) as 'the single biggest problem,' which the paragraph doesn't rank this way. Option D is the exact claim the paragraph refutes by noting reform proposals 'exist.'
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