gig economy

The Gig Economy: A Critical Introduction
by Jamie Woodcock and Mark Graham
Published 17 Jan 2020

CONTENTS Cover Front Matter Introduction What do we mean by the gig economy? Why did we write this book? What will the book cover? Notes 1 Where did the gig economy come from? The preconditions that shape the gig economy The rise of the gig economy Notes 2 How does the gig economy work? What is a platform? The case of Uber The geographically tethered model The cloudwork model Understanding how platforms work Notes 3 What is it like to work in the gig economy? Delivery work Taxi work Domestic and care work Microwork Online freelancing Notes 4 How are workers reshaping the gig economy? Emerging forms of resistance in geographically tethered work Cloudwork and resistance Towards a new kind of trade unionism?

…

The fourth is ‘a growth of non-standard work arrangements and contingent work’, which we have already identified in the gig economy. The fifth is an ‘increase in risk-shifting from employers to employees’, a process that we also argue is taking place in the gig economy. This leaves us with the question of the implications of the growth of the gig economy, a topic we return to later in the book. We have outlined this brief history of work to make the point that the precarious nature of work in the gig economy is not new. However, the gig economy represents a transformation and reorganization of work significant enough for us to be concerned about it.

…

These preconditions certainly vary in importance between places and times, but we would argue that, together, they influence how most people think about today’s gig economy. Although we use the term ‘gig economy’ in its singular form, we acknowledge that there are actually myriad gig economies all over the world that are experienced in significantly different ways. In other words, the experiences, practices and labour processes within gig economies are far from homogeneous. Nonetheless, speaking about the ‘gig economy’ allows us to draw out broad similarities amongst those practices and experiences. Platform infrastructure While we will return to the concept of ‘platforms’ in detail in chapter 2, it is worth noting how important platform infrastructure is as a precondition to the gig economy.

Humans as a Service: The Promise and Perils of Work in the Gig Economy
by Jeremias Prassl
Published 7 May 2018

L. 176 Chen, Keith 122 Davies, Paul 174 Cherry 38 Davies, Rob 151 Cherry, Miriam 97, 99, 132, 173, 174, 184 Day, Iris 177 chess robots 1, 6 Deakin, Simon 36, 112, 130, 131, 152, 172, China 12, 38, 153 174, 177, 178, 184, 185 Chowdhry, Amit 181 deductions from pay 15, 19, 60, 63, 67 Christenson, Clayton M. 39 Deep Blue 1 ‘churn’/worker turnover 68 Deliveroo 2, 11, 12, 13, 115 Clark, Shelby 46 collective action by drivers 113 classificatory schemes 13, 28–9, 147 contractual prohibitions 66–7 misclassification 95, 96–100 employment litigation 99 Clement, Barrie 162 internal guidelines 43–4 Clover, Charles 153 safety and liability 122–3 Coase, Ronald 19, 94, 101, 172 wage rates 65 Coase’s theory 19, 20 delivery apps 2 Codagnone, Cristiano 150 demand fluctuations 78 Cohen, Molly 36, 37, 152, 157 Denmark 36 ‘collaborative consumption’ 42 deregulation 37, 40 (see also regulation) collective action 113–15 Dholakia, Utpal 150 collective bargaining rights 48, 65, 82 Didi 2, 12, 38 commission deductions 15, 19, 60, 63, 67 differential wage rates 109–11 commodification of work 76, 77, 110 digital disruption 49, 50 competition 88 ‘digital feudalism’ 83 consumer demand 17–18 digital innovation see innovation consumer protection 10, 112, 121, 128–9 digital market manipulation 123 safety and liability 122–3, 128–9 digital payment systems 5 * * * Index 193 digital work intermediation 5, 11, 13–16 borderline cases 100 disability discrimination 62, 121 identifying the employer 100 discriminatory practices 62, 94, 113, easy cases 102–3 121, 180 functional concept of the disputes 66 employer 101–2, 104 disruptive innovation 39–40, 49, 50, 95 genuine entrepreneurs 103 dockyards 78, 79–80 harder cases 103–4 ‘doublespeak’ 31–50, 71, 95, 97–8, 133 multiple employers 103 Doug H 160, 163 platforms as employers 102–3 down-time 60, 65, 76, 77 ‘independent worker’ 48 Downs, Julie 180 misclassification 95, 96–100 Drake, Barbara 168 ‘personal scope question’ 93 drink driving 133, 184–5 employment taxes 125–7 Dzieza, Josh 163 Engels, Friedrich 81, 168 ‘entrepreneur-coordinator’ 101 economic crises 145 entrepreneurship 6, 8, 21, 32, 42, 43, economic drivers 7, 18–24 45–6, 50, 52 (see also micro- Edwards, Jim 146 entrepreneurs) efficiency 7 autonomy 53–5 Elejalde-Ruiz, Alexia 175 algorithmic control and 55–8 ‘elite worker’ status 61, 67 sanctions and 61–3 ‘emperor’s new clothes’ 71 wages and 58–61 empirical studies 28–9 freedom 8, 14, 27, 29, 47, 49, 51, 52, employer responsibility 104 53, 55, 65–8, 69, 85, 96, 108, 110, employment contracts 94 112, 113 bilateral relationships 100 on-demand trap and 68–70 employment law 4, 9, 10, 38, 84 risk and 86 (see also regulation) genuine entrepreneurs 102, 103 continuing importance 139–40 misclassification 96–7, 98, 101 control/protection trade-off 93–4, 95 ‘personal scope question’ 93 European Union 107, 111, 112, 178 self-determination 63–5 flexibility and environmental impacts 21, 26 innovation and 90 Estlund, Cynthia 137, 185 measuring working time 105–7 Estonia 127 mutuality of obligation 174 Estrada, David 41 new proposals 46–9 euphemisms 44–5 rebalancing the scales 107–8 European Union law 107, 111, 112, 178 collective action 113–15 exploitation 26–7 portable ratings 111–13 Ezrachi, Ariel 150 surge pricing 108–11 ‘risk function’ 131, 132 Facebook 35, 57 workers’ rights 105 FairCrowdWork 114, 179 rights vs flexibility 115–17 Farrell, Sean 164 employment litigation FedEx 97 FedEx 97, 173 feedback 5, 15–16 France 99 Feeney, Matthew 35, 151 Uber 45, 48, 54–5, 98, 99, 106, 115 Field, Frank 26 UK 45, 48, 98–9, 106, 115 financial losses 22–3 US 54–5, 97, 98, 99 ‘financially strapped’ 29 employment status 21, 45, 47 Finkin, Matthew 74, 84, 166, 169 * * * 194 Index Fiverr 12, 13, 24, 78 historical precedents and CEO 17 problems 72, 73–85 Fleischer, Victor 20, 147 rebranding work 4–6, 32 flexibility 8, 10, 12, 107, 108 labour as a technology 5–6 vs rights 115–17 market entrants 88 food-delivery apps 12 matching 13, 14, 18–20 Foodora 2, 12 monopoly power 23–4, 28 Foucault, Michel 55, 159 network effects 23–4 founding myths 34–5 overview 2–3 Fox, Justin 182 perils 6, 26–8, 31 fragmented labour markets 83, 84, 86, platform paradox 5 90, 113 platforms as a service 7–8 France 78 consumer protection 10 employment litigation 99 potential 6, 7, 12, 24–6, 31 Labour Code 114, 176, 179 regulation 9–10 (see also regulation) regulatory battles 36 real cost of on-demand services 119, tax liability 126 121–2 (see also structural ‘free agents’ 28–9 imbalances) Freedland, Mark 174, 175 regulation see regulation Freedman, Judith 111, 178 regulatory arbitrage 20–2 freedom 8, 14, 27, 29, 47, 49, 51, 52, 53, size of the phenomenon 16–17, 145–6 55, 65–8, 69, 85, 96, 108, 110, work on demand 11–29 112, 113 gigwork 13 on-demand trap and 68–70 Giliker, Paula 183 risk and 86 global economic crises 145 Frey, Carl 136, 185 Goodley, Simon 173 Fried, Ina 183 GPS 5, 57 Greenhouse, Steven 66, 164 Gardner-Selby, W. 185 Griswold, Alison 164, 181 gender parity 144 (see also Grossman, Nick 46 discriminatory practices) Gumtree 20 Germany Gurley, Bill 161 regulatory battles 36 Guyoncourt, Sally 178 workers’ rights 114 gift vouchers 105 Hacker, Jacob 86, 170 gig economy Hall, Jonathan 60, 162, 165 business models 12–13, 44, 100 Hammond, Philip 126, 182 cash burn 22–3 Hancock, Matthew 46, 166 clash of narratives 8 Handy 18 classification 13, 28–9 Hardy, Tess 176 critics 2, 3, 8 Harman, Greg 163 digital work intermediation 5, 11, Harris, Seth 48, 49, 105, 157, 175 13–16 Hatton, Erin 82, 169 economic drivers 7, 18–24 Heap, Lisa 177 empirical studies 28–9 Helpling 2 employment law and see employment Hemel, Daniel 147, 170 law Hesketh, Scott 181 enthusiasts 3, 4, 8 hiring practices: historical gigwork vs crowdwork 13 perspective 78, 79 growth 17–18 historical perspective 72, 73–85 ‘humans as a service’ 3–6 Hitch 38 * * * Index 195 Hitlin, Paul 162 Internet Holtgrewe, Ursula 169 collective action 113 HomeJoy 132 Third Wave 73 Hook, Leslie 153 Irani, Lilly 6, 114, 142, 162, 179 Horan, Hubert 22, 148 Isaac, Mike 170, 171 Horowith, Sara 144 Issa, Darrell 41 hostile takeovers 111–12 Howe, Jeff 7, 11, 142 jargon 42–5 Huet, Ellen 153 Jensen, Vernon 167, 168, 170 Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) 60, 93 Jobs, Steve 35 ‘humans as a service’ 3–6 joint and several liability 104 historical precedents and problems 72, Justia Trademarks 143 73–85 rebranding work 4–6, 32, 40–50 Kalanick, Travis 43, 86 Hunter, Rachel 106, 176 Kalman, Frank 16, 144 Huws, Ursula 27, 141, 150 Kaminska, Izabella 22–3, 44, 90, 148, 156, 169, 171, 172 ‘idle’ time 60, 65, 76, 77 Kaplow, Louis 184 illegal practices 57 Kasparov, Garry 1 immigrant workers 77 Katz, Lawrence 16 incentive structures 67–8 Katz, Vanessa 116, 179 independent contractors 21 Kaufman, Micha 17, 145, 149 Independent Workers Union of Great Kempelen, Wolfgang von 1 Britain (IWGB) 113, 179 Kennedy, John F. 135, 185 industrialization 75 Kenya 36 industry narratives 32–3, 49–50 Kessler, Sarah 151 information asymmetries 32, 54, 87, 131 Keynes, John Maynard 135, 185 innovation 3, 6, 8, 9, 10, 31, 32, 42, 45–6, King, Tom, Lord King of Bridgwater 71 110 cheap labour and 89 Kirk, David 133, 184 disruptive innovation 39–40, 49, 95 Kitchell, Susan 166 historical precedents and problems 72, Klemperer, Paul 165 73–85 Krueger, Alan 16, 48, 49, 60, 105, 106, incentives 86–90 157, 162, 165, 175 myths 72, 83 Krugman, Paul 170 obstacles to 88–90 Kucera, David 186 paradox 72, 87 problematic aspects 85–90 labour law see employment law productivity and 87 Lagarde, Christine 86, 170 shifting risk 85–6 Leimeister, Jan Marco 13 workers’ interests and 89–90 Leonard, Andrew 33, 151 innovation law perspective 36 Lewis, Mervyn 168 ‘Innovation Paradox’ 9 Liepman, Lindsay 184 insecure work 9, 10, 12, 27, 42, 107 Lloyd-Jones, Roger 168 historical perspective 80, 81 loan facilities 68 insurance 123 lobbying groups 32, 47, 48 intermediaries 83 (see also digital work Lobel, Orly 11, 37–8 intermediation) low-paid work 9, 26–7, 40–2, historical perspective 79–80 59, 61 International Labour Organization low-skilled work 76, 77, 82 (ILO) 4, 83, 97, 169, 173 automation and 138 * * * 196 Index Lukes, Steven 159 Murgia, Madhumita 182 Lyft 2, 12, 13, 38, 41, 42, 76 mutuality of obligation 174 algorithmic control mechanisms 56 network effects 23–4 regulatory battles 35 Newcomer, Eric 148, 165 Uber’s competitive strategies 88 Newton, Casey 164 Nowag, Julian 183 McAfee, Andrew 137, 138, 185 Machiavelli, Niccolo 93, 172 O’Connor, Sarah 43, 155 machine learning 136, 137 ODesk 60 McCurry, Justin 186 O’Donovan, Caroline 144, 164, 181 Malone, Tom 73 Oei, Shu-Yi 124, 125, 132, 147, 182, 184 Mamertino, Mariano 161, 163 Ola 2, 12 market entrants 88 on-demand trap 68–70 market manipulation 123 on-demand work 11– 29 Markowitz, Harry 184 real cost of on-demand services 119, Marsh, Grace 182 121–2 (see also structural Marshall, Aarian 186 imbalances) Martens, Bertin 150 Orwell, George 31, 151 Marvit, Moshe 142 Osborne, Hilary 164 Marx, Patricia 119–20, 180 Osborne, Michael 136, 185 matching 13, 14, 18–20 outsourcing Maugham, Jolyon 182 agencies 40 Mayhew, Henry 77, 78, 79, 167 ‘web services’ 2 Mechanical Turk 1, 2, 6 outwork industry 74–5, 76–7, 79, 80, 89 mental harm 57–8 Owen, Jonathan 178 Meyer, Jared 149 ‘micro-entrepreneurs’ 8, 21, 46, 49, Padget, Marty 186 52–3, 63 Pannick, David, Lord Pannick 110 ‘micro-wages’ 27 Pasquale, Frank 8, 40, 154 middlemen 80 Peck, Jessica Lynn 26 minimum wage levels 3, 9, 21, 26, 27, 59, peer-to-peer collaboration 42, 43 94, 104, 105 Peers.org 32–3 minimum working hour guarantees 108 performance standard probations 61 misidentification 95, 96–100 personal data 112, 178 mobile payment mechanisms 5 ‘personal scope question’ 93 monopoly power 23–4, 28 Pissarides, Christopher 19, 147 Morris, David Z. 171 platform paradox 5 Morris, Gillian 174 platform responsibility 122–3, 128 MTurk 2, 3, 4, 11, 12, 24–5, 76, 139, platforms as a service 7–8 161–2, 163 consumer protection 10 algorithmic control mechanisms 56 regulation 9–10 (see also regulation) business model 100, 101, 103, 104 Plouffe, David 154 commission deductions 63 Poe, Edgar Allen 1 digital work intermediation 14, 15 Polanyi’s paradox 138–9 matching 19 political activism 114 payment in gift vouchers 105 portable ratings 111–13 quality control 120 Porter, Eduardo 171 TurkOpticon 114 ‘postindustrial corporations’ 20 wage rates 59, 60, 61 Postmates 57, 63, 121 * * * Index 197 Poyntz, Juliet Stuart 168 structural imbalances 130, 131 Prassl, Jeremias 174, 175, 176, 177, robots 136–7 178, 183 Mechanical Turk 1, 6 precarious work 9, 10, 12, 27, 42, 107 Rodgers, Joan 177 historical perspective 80, 81 Rodriguez, Joe Fitzgerald 181 price quotes 121–2 Rönnmar, Mia 175 surge pricing 58, 108–11, 122 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 133, 185 Primack, Dan 148 Rosenblat, Alex 54, 56, 65, 123, 131, 159, productivity 87 160, 163, 164, 182, 184 public discourse 69 Rosenblat, Joel 165 public health implications 27 Rubery, Jill 84, 169 punishment 57 (see also sanctions) Ryall, Jenny 181 quality control 5, 80, 120 safe harbours 47, 49 safety and liability 122–3, 128–9 rating mechanisms 5, 15–16, 53–4 sanctions 61–3 (see also punishment) algorithms 54, 55, 87–8 Sandbu, Martin 87, 170 discrimination 62, 113 Scheiber, Noam 164 portable ratings 111–13 Schmiechen, James 167, 168, 169 sanctions and 61–3 Schumpeter, Joseph 133 rebranding work 4–6, 32, 40–50 self-dealing 123 regulation 9–10 (see also employment law) self-determination 36–7, 47, 63–5 industry narratives 32–3, 49–50 (see also autonomy) new proposals 31, 46–9, 50 self-driving cars 89, 137 opponents 31, 33–4 sexual assaults 121, 180–1 Disruptive Davids 34–7 sexual discrimination 62, 144, 180 disruptive innovation theory ‘sham self-employment’ 97 39–40, 49 sharing economy 7, 20, 51 New Goliaths 37–40 critics 32–3 regulatory battles 35–7, 47–9 disruptive innovation 39, 49 safe harbours 47, 49 enthusiasts 61 self-regulation 36–7, 47 Sharing Economy UK 33, 37 shaping 32–3, 45–9 sharing platforms 116 regulatory arbitrage 20 –2, 147 Shavell, Steven 184 regulatory experimentation 36 Shleifer, Andrei 111, 178 Reich, Robert 108, 176 Shontell, Alyson 161 Relay Rides 46 Silberman, Six 61, 114, 162, 163, 179 ‘reluctants’ 29 Silver, James 156, 158 reputation algorithms 54 Singer, Natasha 43, 155, 156 ride-sharing/ridesharing 2, 21, 38, 41 Slee, Tom 32, 53, 142, 151, 155, 158, 159 (see also taxi apps) Smith, Adam 73 algorithmic control mechanisms 55–6 Smith, Jennifer 170 business model 102–3 Smith, Yves 148 discriminatory practices 62, 121 social media 114 maltreatment of passengers 121 social partners 10, 94 ride-sharing laws 47 social security contributions 21, 125–7 Ries, Brian 181 social security provision 3, 48, 131 Ring, Diane 124, 125, 132, 147, 182, 184 sociological critique 27–8 Risak, Martin 102, 175 specialization 75 risk shift 85–6 Spera 51, 158 * * * 198 Index Sports Direct 40–1 taxi regulation 21, 36, 37, 38, 114 Standage, Tom 141 vetting procedures 121 standardized tasks 76 tech:NYC 33 Stark, Luke 54, 56, 65, 159, 160, 163, 164 technological exceptionalism 6, 128 start-up loans 68 technological innovation see innovation Stefano, Valerio De 84, 169 technology 5–6, 27 Stigler, George 32, 151 unemployment and 135, 137, 140 Stone, Katherine 67, 165 terminology 42–5 structural imbalances time pressure 57 business model 130–2 Titova, Jurate 183 digital market manipulation 123 TNC, see transportation network levelling the playing field 127–32 company platform responsibility 122–3, 128 Tolentino, Jia 166 real cost of on-demand services 119, Tomassetti, Julia 20, 147, 156, 171 121–2 Tomlinson, Daniel 163 safety and liability 128–9 trade unions 65, 113, 114, 178, 179 sustainability 132–3 transaction cost 19 tax obligations 123–4, 129, 131, 132 transport network company (TNC) employment taxes and social regulation 47–8 security contributions 125–7 Truck arrangements 105 VAT 124–5, 129 Tsotsis, Alex 151 Stucke, Maurice 150 TurkOpticon 114, 162, 163, 179 Sullivan, Mike 180 Summers, Lawrence 111, 131, 178, 184 Uber 2, 11, 12, 43 Sundararajan, Arun 36, 37, 41, 73, 74, 75, algorithmic control mechanisms 56, 151, 152, 157, 166, 167 57, 58 Supiot, Alain 130–1, 177, 184 arbitration 165 surge pricing 58, 108–11, 122 autonomous vehicles and 89 survey responses 120 ‘churn’/worker turnover 68 Swalwell, Eric 41, 154 commission deductions 63 competitive strategies 88 takeovers 111–12 consumer demand 18 ‘task economies’ 76, 77, 79 control mechanisms 54 Task Rabbit 2, 12, 13, 46, 143–4, 163 creation of new job business model 100, 101, 160 opportunities 77–8 company law 56 digital work intermediation 14, 15 contractual prohibitions 66 disruptive innovation 39 digital work intermediation 14, 15–16 driver income projections 51 financial losses 22 Driver-Partner Stories 25, 149 founding myth 34–5 driver-rating system 158, 160 regulatory arbitrage 20 employment litigation terms of service 44, 53, 122, 158, 181 France 99 wage rates 64 UK 45, 48, 98, 106, 115 working conditions 57 US 54–5, 99 Taylor, Frederick 52–3, 72, 158 financial losses 22, 23 tax laws 84 ‘Greyball’ 88, 170 tax obligations 123–4, 129, 131, 132 ‘Hell’ 88, 170 employment taxes and social security loss-making tactics and market share 64 contributions 125–7 monopoly power 23 VAT 124–5, 129 positive externality claims 132–3 taxi apps 12, 20 regulatory arbitrage 20 * * * Index 199 regulatory battles 35, 36 Vaidhyanathan, Siva 40, 154 resistance to unionization 65, 178 value creation 18–19, 20 risk shift 86 van de Casteele, Mounia 182 safety and liability 122–3, 180–1 VAT 124–5, 129 sale of Chinese operation 38 Verhage, Julie 147 surge pricing 58, 122 vicarious liability 128 tax liability 125, 126, 127 unexpected benefits 26 wage rates 58–61, 64, 65 wage rates 58, 59, 60–1, 64, 65, 127 Wakabayashi, Daisuke 171 working conditions 113, 178 Warne, Dan 115 UberLUX 14 Warner, Mark 16 UberX 14, 51, 60 Warren, Elizabeth 127, 183 UK Webb, Beatrice and Sidney 80, 168 collective action 113 Weil, David 83, 169 employment litigation 45, 48, 98–9, 106 welfare state 130, 131 tax liability 124–5, 126 Wilkinson, Frank 84, 130, 131, 169, unemployment 135, 137, 140, 145 172, 184, 185 Union Square Ventures 46 Wong, Julia Carrie 170 unionization 10, 65, 113, 114, 178, 179 work on demand 11–29 ‘unpooling’ 147 worker classification 28–9, 147 Unterschutz, Joanna 178 misclassification 95, 96–100 Upwork 12, 76, 144 workers’ rights 105 algorithmic control mechanisms 56 vs flexibility 115–17 business model 100, 160 working conditions 57, 68–9 commission deductions 63, 67 historical perspective 77, 81 US Uber 113, 178 discriminatory practices 121 working time 105–7 employment litigation 54–5, 97, 98, 99 Wosskow, Debbie 157 regulatory battles 36, 47 Wujczyk, Marcin 178 tax liabilities 126–7 taxi regulation 36, 114 Yates, Joanne 73 transport network company (TNC) YouTube 58 regulation 47–8 user ratings 5, 15–16, 53–4, 55 Zaleski, Olivia 165 portable ratings 111–13 zero-hours contracts 40, 41, 107 sanctions and 61–3 Zuckerberg, Mark 35 * * * Document Outline Cover Humans as a Service: The Promise and Perils of Work in the Gig Economy Copyright Dedication Contents Introduction Welcome to the Gig Economy Humans as a Service Rebranding Work The Platform Paradox Labour as a Technology Making the Gig Economy Work Platforms as a Service Exploring the Gig Economy Charting Solutions A Broader Perspective 1. Work on Demand Understanding the Gig Economy Digital Work Intermediation How Big Is the Gig Economy? Explosive Growth The Economics of the Gig Economy Matching and Intermediation Regulatory Arbitrage Cash Burn Network Effects and Monopoly Power The Promise—and the Perils—of On-Demand Work Looking on the Bright Side of Life The Dark Side of the Moon What Is Going On?

…

As Jeff Howe, the journalist who coined the very language of ‘crowd- sourcing’, notes in the introduction to his enthusiastic book on ‘the power of the crowd [to drive] the future of business’, companies who ‘view the crowd as a cheap labor force are doomed to fail’.15 The promise of the gig economy is great—but we need to make sure it lives up to its full potential, for everyone. Humans must never become a service; platforms should. Platforms as a Service To this end, the book is loosely structured into three parts. We will, first, explore the reality of life and work in the gig economy, before attempting to chart solutions to the problems identified. Finally, we will take a step back to think about the broader implications of the gig economy for consumers, taxpayers, and markets at large. Exploring the Gig Economy The thorniest of these tasks comes first—and will take up most of the first four chapters.

…

Several studies using a range of methodologies, from traditional surveys to an analysis of bank accounts to determine where income is derived from, have homed in on a figure of approximately 4 per cent of the working-age population both in the United States and the UK.18 A report by the RSA, a UK think tank, published in spring 2017 simi- larly estimates that there are currently 1.1 million gig workers in the UK and that approximately ‘3 per cent of adults aged 15+ have tried gig work of some form, which equates to as many as 1.6 million adults’.19 From an overall labour-market perspective, these numbers don’t necessarily sound like a major concern—until we consider the fact that most serious attempts at measuring the size of gig work in the broader labour market * * * Understanding the Gig Economy 17 tend to understate its extent. Current statistical measures often fail to take into account the full scope of gig-economy work, not least because they tend to focus on primary income sources; workers supplementing their income with gig-economy work are thus likely to be excluded from official statistics.20 The gig economy is also an increasingly global phenomenon. Digital work, in particular, can easily be outsourced across borders. In January 2017, colleagues at the Oxford Internet Institute published the results of an inten- sive three-year study into online gig work across the globe.

Gigged: The End of the Job and the Future of Work
by Sarah Kessler
Published 11 Jun 2018

November 2016. 4   Kessler, Sarah. The Gig Economy Is Also a Management Style. Quartz. January 17, 2017. https://qz.com/862319/the-gig-economy-is-also-a-management-style/. 5   70%: Manyika, James, Susan Lund, Jacques Bughin, Kelsey Robinson, Jan Mischke, and Deepa Mahajan. Independent Work: Choice, Necessity, and the Gig Economy. McKinsey Global Institute. October 2016. 80%: Wartzman, Rick. Working in the Gig Economy Is Both Desirable and Detestable. Fortune. April 27, 2016. http://fortune.com/2016/04/27/uber-gig-economy/. 85%: Wartzman, Rick. Working in the Gig Economy Is Both Desirable and Detestable.

…

So perhaps when entrepreneurs described for me a world in which work would be like shopping at a bazaar (a gig economy startup had picked up this concept in its name, Zaarly), it appealed to me more than it would have to someone with more gray hairs: I’ll take that vision of the future—no need to play that horrifying mass unemployment and poverty vision that I had all lined up and ready to go. I wrote my first story about the gig economy in 2011, long before anyone had labeled it the “gig economy.” The headline was “Online Odd Jobs: How Startups Let You Fund Yourself.”2 Though my job changed throughout the next seven years, my fascination with the gig economy didn’t. I first watched as the gig economy became a venture capital feeding frenzy, a hot new topic and a ready answer to the broader economy’s problems.

…

I first watched as the gig economy became a venture capital feeding frenzy, a hot new topic and a ready answer to the broader economy’s problems. Then, as stories of worker exploitation emerged, I listened as the same companies that had once boasted about creating the “gig economy” worked to distance themselves from the term. I saw the gig economy start a much-needed conversation about protecting workers as technology transforms work. The more I learned, the more I understood that the startup “future of work” story, as consoling as it was, was also incomplete. Yes, the gig economy could create opportunity for some people, but it also could amplify the same problems that made the world of work look so terrifying in the first place: insecurity, increased risk, lack of stability, and diminishing workers’ rights.

The Gig Economy: The Complete Guide to Getting Better Work, Taking More Time Off, and Financing the Life You Want
by Diane Mulcahy
Published 8 Nov 2016

Like elevator pitches, a personal pitch is a compelling statement that conveys your value proposition and skills. Traditional pitch: I’m a VP at an investment bank. Gig Economy pitch: I help companies raise the money they need to finance their growth. The difference is that the traditional pitch relies on a static title while the Gig Economy pitch emphasizes what value you deliver, and to whom. The challenge of the Gig Economy pitch is to consolidate and summarize your varied work experiences into a single compelling pitch: Bad Gig Economy pitch: Listing all your marketing gigs and projects over the past several years. Better Gig Economy pitch: “I help technology companies explain what their product is and the problem it solves so they can recruit the right customers, investors, and employees.”

…

If we think of the current world of work as a spectrum, anchored by the traditional corporate job and career ladder on one end, and unemployment on the other end, then the broad range and variety of alternative work in between is the Gig Economy. The Gig Economy includes consulting and contractor arrangements, part-time jobs, temp assignments, freelancing, self-employment, side gigs, and on-demand work through platforms like Upwork and TaskRabbit. Many of the topics in this book are based on what I teach, and many of the exercises are based on assignments that have helped my students succeed in the Gig Economy, and have led them to start new businesses, plan time off, restructure their finances, and begin to create lives that are more engaging, satisfying, and better aligned with their priorities. The Gig Economy is still in the early stages of disrupting how we work.

…

As it continues to grow, we can expect the Gig Economy to change not only the way we work, but also the way we live. How to Succeed in the Gig Economy The intention of this book is not simply to educate you about the Gig Economy but to guide you through it and provide a toolkit for succeeding in it. All of the chapters have practical exercises to help you apply the concepts to your own life. The chapters are structured as independent modules, so you can read and focus on areas that interest you or matter to you most. The question this book answers is: How do I successfully navigate the Gig Economy? The answers are broken out into 10 rules to succeed in the Gig Economy.

Hustle and Gig: Struggling and Surviving in the Sharing Economy
by Alexandrea J. Ravenelle
Published 12 Mar 2019

While food swaps and makerspaces are useful and raise a number of theoretically interesting issues regarding race, class, and the creation of “belonging,” I am especially interested in sharing economy platforms that provide a source of work and income and that claim to be bringing entrepreneurship or financial sustainability to the masses.18 I categorize these platforms as part of the gig economy, owing to their focus on short-term income opportunities. While not all aspects of the sharing economy are part of the gig economy, platform-based gig-economy services fall under the sharing economy heading, and I use these two concepts interchangeably. The guiding questions of my research are: What is life in the sharing economy like for workers? To what extent do the workers consider or experience themselves as entrepreneurs, workers, or sharers who are creating a new type of economy? What types of skills and capital do workers bring to the gig economy? My research draws on three main theoretical themes: the Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft trust divide; the increasing casualization of labor with a related shift in risk; and the resulting increase in social inequalities.

…

This book explores contradictions between the lofty promises of the gig economy and the lived experience of the workers, between app-enabled modernity and the reality of rolling back generations of workplace protections. The sharing economy promises flexibility and work-life balance, but while Baran works only four days a week, those days are twelve-hour shifts. Sarah and Shaun are free from reporting to a single employer, but the gig economy increasingly tethers them to work: they’re constantly on call, hustling to make money. Thanks to service algorithms, the decision to work isn’t always in their hands. The gig economy offers “flexibility,” but if they spend too much time away from the platform, they may discover they’ve been “removed from the community,” or “deactivated.”

…

Ashley and Amy illustrate the precarious nature of work in the gig economy, even for the college-educated middle class. The gig economy promises flexibility and more free time, yet workers are increasingly tethered to work because of the on-demand nature of the work. The work is seemingly flexible, but it doesn’t end. And while the workers are “self-employed” contractors and don’t answer to bosses, they remain under constant observation through a technological panopticon. But unlike Bentham’s original prison model, where prisoners cannot see the watchers and never know when they are being watched, in the gig economy everything can be collected and viewed at any point.

Uberland: How Algorithms Are Rewriting the Rules of Work
by Alex Rosenblat
Published 22 Oct 2018

Born between the 1980s and the early twenty-first century, millennials are touted as society’s most active technology users, and they often find their work in the on-demand, gig economy. The CEO of Intuit, a company that offers tax accounting software for independent contractors that is particularly popular with Uber drivers, echoed the idea that the gig economy is a millennial phenomenon when he commented, “We know the gig economy is real. It’s here. It’s a secular trend. It didn’t just start with Uber and Lyft. It started years ago. It’s a lifestyle choice for millennials.”62 Even though they have been the butt of jokes about their limited employment prospects, millennials are simultaneously credited with access to the boundless opportunities of the Internet.

…

Vili Lehdonvirta, “Considering the Taylor Review: Ways Forward for the Gig Economy,” Policy and Internet Blog, July 21, 2017, http://blogs.oii.ox.ac.uk/policy/considering-the-taylor-review-ways-forward-for-the-gig-economy/. 32. See, e.g., Barth, Davis, Freeman, and Kerr, “Weathering the Great Recession.” 33. Even companies that emerged at about the same time as Uber, like Airbnb, or preceded Uber, like TaskRabbit, are overshadowed by Uber’s prominence as the face of the sharing economy. For discussion of the “Uber for X” phenomenon, see Nathan Heller, “Is the Gig Economy Working?” New Yorker, May 15, 2017, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/15/is-the-gig-economy-working. 34.

…

Uber, “Uber | MADD,” www.uber.com/partner/madd/. 41. See also Gabriel Thompson, “What We Talk about When We Talk about the Gig Economy,” Capital and Main, July 27, 2017, https://capitalandmain.com/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-the-gig-economy-0727; on income volatility in the gig economy, see JP Morgan Chase, “Paychecks, Paydays, and the Online Platform Economy Big Data on Income Volatility,” February 2016, www.jpmorganchase.com/corporate/institute/report-paychecks-paydays-and-the-online-platform-economy.htm. 42. Amir Efrati, “Investors Rethink Uber’s Long-Term Value,” The Information, December 7, 2017, www.theinformation.com/investors-rethink-ubers-long-term-value. 43.

The Lonely Century: How Isolation Imperils Our Future
by Noreena Hertz
Published 13 May 2020

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the gig economy.49 In this environment, agreeing to being rated is often a condition of ‘employment’. An estimated 50 to 60 million workers are already part of the global gig economy. In the UK, the gig economy doubled in size between 2016 and 2019 and if current trends continue, by 2027 as many as one in three Americans will support themselves through gig work via online platforms.50 Given these figures, better understanding the factors that contribute to the alienation of gig economy workers is imperative. It’s not that the gig economy has no advantages. Like remote working, the flexibility it offers is undoubtedly both precious and empowering for many.51 Yet for others, the experience of being rated (coupled with an absence of secure wages, sickness pay, holiday leave and insurance, and often an extremely low hourly pay rate), can feel profoundly disempowering.52 This is more likely to be the case if you are a gig economy worker by circumstance not choice.

…

IR=T. 45 https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Bridgewater-Associates-RVW28623146.htm 46 https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Bridgewater-Associates-RVW25872721.ht. 47 https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Bridgewater-Associates-RVW25450329.htm; Allana Akhtar, ‘What it’s like to work at the most successful hedge fund in the world, where 30% of new employees don’t make it and those who do are considered “intellectual Navy SEALs”’, Business Insider, 16 April 2019, https://www.businessinsider.com/what-its-like-to-work-at-ray-dalio-bridgewater-associates-2019-4. 48 Ibid. 49 Amir Anwar, ‘How Marx predicted the worst effects of the gig economy more than 150 years ago’, New Statesman, 8 August 2018, https://tech.newstatesman.com/guest-opinion/karl-marx-gig-economy. 50 Richard Partington, ‘Gig economy in Britain doubles, accounting for 4.7 million workers’, Guardian, 28 June 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jun/28/gig-economy-in-britain-doubles-accounting-for-47-million-workers; Siddharth Suri and Mary L. Gray, ‘Spike in online gig work: flash in the pan or future of employment?’

…

, Forbes, 25 November 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2019/11/25/the-frightening-rise-in-low-quality-low-paying-jobs-is-this-really-a-strong-job-market/; see also Martha Ross and Nicole Bateman, ‘Meet the low-wage workforce’, Brookings, 7 November 2019, https://www.brookings.edu/research/meet-the-low-wage-workforce/; Hanna Brooks Olsen, ‘Here’s how the stress of the gig economy can affect your mental health’, Healthline, 3 June 2020, https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/gig-economy#6; Edison Research, ‘Gig Economy’, Marketplace–Edison Research Poll, December 2018, http://www.edisonresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Gig-Economy-2018-Marketplace-Edison-Research-Poll-FINAL.pdf. 59 See Karl Marx, ‘Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844’, in Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels: Collected Works, vol. 3 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1975), 229–347. 60 In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, many businesses laid off full-time staff only to replace them with contract workers and unpaid interns whose terms of employment were more precarious and who received few if any benefits.

Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain
by James Bloodworth
Published 1 Mar 2018

‘An extraordinary and unsettling journey into the way modern Britons work. It is Down and Out In Paris and London for the gig economy age.’ Matthew d’Ancona, Guardian columnist and bestselling author of Post-Truth ‘A tautly written exposé of the swindle of the gig economy and a call to arms.’ Nick Cohen, journalist and author of What’s Left? ‘I emerged from James Bloodworth’s quietly devastating and deeply disturbing book convinced that the “gig economy” is simply another way in which the powerful are enabled to oppress the disadvantaged.’ D. J. Taylor, author of Orwell: The Life ‘A truly devastating examination of the vulnerable human underbelly of Britain’s labour market, shining a bright light on the unjust and exploitative practices that erode the morale and living standards of working-class communities.’

…

‘There’s so many times I’ve heard that people have been threatened with [being] sacked for turning down work or actually getting sacked for turning down work ... The whole thing seems weird to me because the very idea of getting sacked ... I mean, I’m self-employed!’ Ultimately, it is judges who will decide whether or not the ‘gig’ economy workforce is genuinely self-employed. But it did feel as if there was an overwhelming wave of misinformation being unleashed on both those who used the apps for work and the wider public about the nature of the ‘gig’ economy. In his book on Dickens, the biographer Peter Ackroyd wrote that if a person living today were to somehow find themselves in a tavern or house of the period in which Dickens was writing, he or she would ‘be literally sick – sick with the smells, sick with the food, sick with the atmosphere around him’.

…

In his book on Dickens, the biographer Peter Ackroyd wrote that if a person living today were to somehow find themselves in a tavern or house of the period in which Dickens was writing, he or she would ‘be literally sick – sick with the smells, sick with the food, sick with the atmosphere around him’. I suspect that if some of those who today make a comfortable living writing newspaper columns extolling the virtues of the ‘gig’ economy were to find themselves doing some of the lowly jobs that keep London afloat, they too would eventually sink to their knees prostrate with illness. As the grievances of the ‘gig’ economy contractors have become louder, so it feels as if journalists and commentators have become more willing to acquiesce in the fiction that workers’ rights are the sworn enemy of autonomy and flexibility.

After the Gig: How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked and How to Win It Back
by Juliet Schor , William Attwood-Charles and Mehmet Cansoy
Published 15 Mar 2020

Schor and her team have created the most comprehensive and indepth account of the ‘sharing’ or ‘gig’ economy. This book tells the story of how and why this troubling, insecure model of work attracted so much investment, so many workers, and so many customers.” —SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN, author of The Googlization of Everything: (And Why We Should Worry) “Before the pandemic, the gig economy was structurally racist, ecologically destructive, and profoundly exploitative. There’s every danger that the reconstruction will be worse. Yet this nuanced and sophisticated study also shows, through the analysis of gig economy workers themselves, that flexibility, a shared sense of purpose, and a commitment to sharing more is well within our grasp.

…

For a discussion of Barcelona see Morell (2018). 88. For a comprehensive analysis of climate pathways see IPCC (2018). References Abraham, Katharine G., John C. Haltiwanger, Kristin Sandusky, and James Spletzer. 2017. “Measuring the Gig Economy: Current Knowledge and Open Issues.” In . Washington, DC: NBER. http://www.vox.lacea.org/?q=abstract/measuring_gig_economy. ———. 2018. “The Rise of the Gig Economy: Fact or Fiction.” In . Atlanta, GA. https://www.aeaweb.org/conference/2019/preliminary/paper/4r9TeS37. Abrahao, Bruno, Paolo Parigi, Alok Gupta, and Karen S. Cook. 2017. “Reputation Offsets Trust Judgments Based on Social Biases among Airbnb Users.”

…

“California Labor Bill, Near Passage, Is Blow to Uber and Lyft.” New York Times, September 9, 2019. ———. 2019b. “California’s Contractor Law Stirs Confusion Beyond the Gig Economy.” New York Times, September 11, 2019. Cook, Cody, Rebecca Diamond, Jonathan Hall, John List, and Paul Oyer. 2018. “The Gender Earnings Gap in the Gig Economy: Evidence from over a Million Rideshare Drivers.” NBER Working Paper w24732. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w24732. Cortese, Amy. 2016. “A New Wrinkle in the Gig Economy: Workers Get Most of the Money.” New York Times, July 20, 2016. Cox, Murray. 2017. “Airbnb as a Racial Gentrification Tool.”

Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us
by Dan Lyons
Published 22 Oct 2018

Apps like Uber might feel like magic for consumers, but the gig economy is not so magical for the people trying to make a living in it. Nevertheless, gig-economy jobs represented 34 percent of the U.S. economy in 2017 and will hit 43 percent by 2020, according to software company Intuit, maker of TurboTax. Consulting firm McKinsey estimates there are sixty-eight million gig-economy “freelancers” in the United States, and that twenty million of them, or roughly 30 percent, have resorted to gig-economy work not because they find it appealing, but in desperation, as a last resort, because they can’t find real jobs with better pay. The gig-economy model is coming for white-collar workers, too.

…

And his company, which he and everyone else just call Q—the name comes from the James Bond character Q, who develops the gizmos and gadgets for secret agents—is not the typical gig-economy start-up. The biggest difference has to do with how Q treats its workers. Unlike almost every other gig-economy company, Q categorizes workers as W-2 employees. The company provides health insurance, a 401(k) plan, and stock options. Starting pay is $12.50 per hour, and there’s a generous paid-time-off policy. Most important, Q promotes from within, offering people who start out as cleaners the chance to get roles inside the corporate offices. Conventional wisdom among Silicon Valley venture capitalists has been that gig-economy companies can’t survive unless they categorize workers as 1099 contractors.

…

He fell into debt. He missed a mortgage payment and was in danger of losing his home. “I have been financially ruined,” he wrote. “I will not be a slave working for chump change. I would rather be dead.” Silicon Valley promotes the gig economy as an innovative new industry that is creating jobs for millions of people. But the jobs being created are mostly bad ones. Meanwhile, gig-economy companies threaten established industries. Airbnb steals business from hotels. Uber and Lyft have hurt business at car-rental companies like Hertz and Avis, and have utterly decimated the taxi and livery business. Pundits like to talk about “creative destruction” as if it were an abstract concept, but the sight of a driver parked in front of City Hall with his head blown off served as a reminder that all this change and so-called progress is coming at a very high cost to actual human beings.

Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley From Building a New Global Underclass
by Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri
Published 6 May 2019

See Siou Chew Kuek, Cecilia Paradi-Guilford, Toks Fayomi, Saori Imaizumi, Panos Ipeirotis, Patricia Pina, and Manpreet Singh, “The Global Opportunity in Online Outsourcing,” World Bank Group, June 2015; for related, in some cases more conservative, estimates, see Lawrence Mishel, Uber and the Labor Market, Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute, 2018, https://www.epi.org/publication/uber-and-the-labor-market-uber-drivers-compensation-wages-and-the-scale-of-uber-and-the-gig-economy/; James Manyika et al., Independent Work: Choice, Necessity, and the Gig Economy (Washington, DC: McKinsey Global Institute: October 2016), http://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/employment-and-growth/independent-work-choice-necessity-and-the-gig-economy; James Manyika et al., Harnessing Automation for a Future That Works (Washington, DC: McKinsey Global Institute: January 2017), http://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/digital-disruption/harnessing-automation-for-a-future-that-works; Till Alexander Leopold, Saadia Zahidi, and Vesselina Ratcheva, The Future of Jobs: Employment, Skills and Workforce Strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, World Economic Forum, 2016.

…

Sometimes these jobs are given heft as harbingers of the “Second Machine Age” or the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” or part of a larger digital or platform economy. Other times, they’re simply, glibly called gigs.9 No employment laws capture the on-demand gig economy’s odd mix of independence from any single employer and dependency on a web-based platform. As the taskmasters of the gig economy, on-demand platforms make their money by matching those buying and selling human labor online, generating a two-sided market of myriad businesses and anonymous crowds of workers. And, importantly, as media scholar and sociologist Tarleton Gillespie points out, platforms may not create the content that they host, “but they do make important choices about it.”10 On-demand work platforms can easily become silent business partners more aligned with the interests of those willing to pay a fee to find workers than with the workers searching for jobs.

…

Washington, DC: McKinsey Global Institute, January 2017. http://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/digital-disruption/harnessing-automation-for-a-future-that-works. Manyika, James, Susan Lund, Jacques Bughin, Kelsey Robinson, Jan Mischke, and Deepa Mahajan. Independent Work: Choice, Necessity, and the Gig Economy. Washington, DC: McKinsey Global Institute, October 2016. http://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/employment-and-growth/independent-work-choice-necessity-and-the-gig-economy. Marwick, Alice E. Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in the Social Media Age. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013. Mason, Winter, and Siddharth Suri. “Conducting Behavioral Research on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.”

How to Fix the Future: Staying Human in the Digital Age
by Andrew Keen
Published 1 Mar 2018

Farhad Manjoo, “How the Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It,” New York Times, March 15, 2017. 27. Ibid. 28. Diana Kapp, “Uber’s Worst Nightmare,” San Francisco Magazine, May 18, 2015. 29. “The Gig Economy’s False Promise,” New York Times, April 17, 2017. 30. Rob Davies and Sarah Butler, “UK Workers Earning £2.50 an Hour Prompts Calls for Government Action,” Guardian, July 6, 2017. 31. “The Gig Economy’s False Promise.” 32. Jia Tolentino, “The Gig Economy Celebrates Working Yourself to Death,” Guardian, March 22, 2017. 33. Chantel McGee, “Only 4 Percent of Uber Drivers Remain on the Platform a Year Later, Says Report,” CNBC, April 20, 2017. 34.

…

Carmel Deamicis, “Homejoy Shuts Down After Battling Worker Classification Lawsuits,” Recode, July 17, 2015. 40. Anna Louie Sussman and Josh Zumbrun, “Gig Economy Spreads Broadly,” Wall Street Journal, March 26–27, 2016. 41. Nick Wingfield, “Start-Up Shies Away from the Gig Economy,” New York Times, July 12, 2016. 42. Seth D. Harris and Alan B. Krueger, “A Proposal for Modernizing Labor Laws for Twenty-First-Century Work: The ‘Independent Worker,’” Hamilton Project, December 2015. 43. Tim Harford, “An Economist’s Dreams of a Fairer Gig Economy,” Financial Times, December 20, 2015. 44. Nick Wingfield and Mike Isaac, “Seattle Will Allow Uber and Lyft Drivers to Form Unions,” New York Times, December 14, 2015. 45.

…

I’m an independent contractor,” he tells me a little sadly. “I work for myself.” A pioneer of the so-called sharing or gig economy, Uber—borrowing from the Silicon Valley libertarian fantasy of absolute personal freedom—describes itself as a company that empowers people to work when and where they want, without having the restrictive commitments of a regular full-time job. Although this may be true in some ways, it doesn’t, in practice, feel very empowering to most of the now more than 1.5 million Uber drivers in seventy countries around the world. The problem is that the gig economy’s absence of commitment works both ways. Yes, the drivers don’t have to commit all their time to Uber, but then Uber isn’t committing anything to the drivers either.

Platform Capitalism
by Nick Srnicek
Published 22 Dec 2016

Reuters. 18 February. http://www.reuters.com/article/uber-china-idUSKCN0VR1M9 (accessed 27 May 2016). Joyce, Michael, Matthew Tong, and Robert Woods. 2011. ‘The United Kingdom’s Quantitative Easing Policy: Design, Operation and Impact’. Quarterly Bulletin, Q3: 200–212. Kamdar, Adi. 2016. ‘Why Some Gig Economy Startups Are Reclassifying Workers as Employees’. On Labor: Workers, Unions, and Politics. 19 February. http://onlabor.org/2016/02/19/why-some-gig-economy-startups-are-reclassifying-workers-as-employees (accessed 27 May 2016). Kaminska, Izabella. 2016a. ‘Davos: Historians Dream of Fourth Industrial Revolutions’. Financial Times, 20 January. http://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/01/20/2150720/davos-historians-dream-of-fourth-industrial-revolutions (accessed 30 June 2016).

…

Bloomberg Businessweek, 18 September. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-18/can-the-mittelstand-fend-off-u-s-software-giants- (accessed 29 May 2016). Wheelock, Jane. 1983. ‘Competition in the Marxist Tradition’. Capital & Class, 7 (3): 18–47. Wile, Rob. 2016. ‘There Are Probably Way More People in the “Gig Economy” Than We Realize’. Fusion. Accessed 24 March. http://fusion.net/story/173244/there-are-probably-way-more-people-in-the-gig-economy-than-we-realize (accessed 29 May 2016). Wittel, Andreas. 2016. ‘Digital Marx: Toward a Political Economy of Distributed Media’. In Marx in the Age of Digital Capitalism, edited by Christian Fuchs and Vincent Mosco, pp. 68–104. Leiden: Brill.

…

Alex Andrews was an immensely helpful technical advisor, and thanks to everyone else who read earlier drafts – Diann Bauer, Suhail Malik, Benedict Singleton, Keith Tilford, Alex Williams, and two anonymous reviewers. Last but not least, thanks to Helen Hester for supporting me and for always being my most intellectually challenging and insightful critic. Introduction We are told today that we are living in an age of massive transformation. Terms like the sharing economy, the gig economy, and the fourth industrial revolution are tossed around, with enticing images of entrepreneurial spirit and flexibility bandied about. As workers, we are to be liberated from the constraints of a permanent career and given the opportunity to make our own way by selling whatever goods and services we might like to offer.

The Theft of a Decade: How the Baby Boomers Stole the Millennials' Economic Future
by Joseph C. Sternberg
Published 13 May 2019

Acemoglu and Restrepo, “The Race Between Machine and Man.” 45. Josh Zumbrun and Anna Louie Sussman, “Proof of a ‘Gig Economy’ Revolution Is Hard to Find,” Wall Street Journal, July 26, 2015. 46. Prudential Insurance Company of America, “Gig Economy Impact by Generation,” 2018. 47. Eli Dourado and Christopher Koopman, “Evaluating the Growth of the 1099 Work Force,” Mercatus on Policy series, Mercatus Center, George Mason University, 2015. 48. Patrick Gillespie, “Intuit: Gig Economy Is 34 Percent of US Workforce,” CNN Money, May 24, 2017, money.cnn.com/2017/05/24/news/economy/gig-economy-intuit/index.html. CHAPTER 3: HUMAN-CAPITAL PUNISHMENT 1.

…

But most younger workers are in greater risk of being crowded out of the labor market by older workers, who will have more skills and experience with which to make the best use of new technologies. Gigs Bite And of course we ended up with the biggest Millennial labor-market distortion of them all: the gig economy. What exactly is the “gig economy”? One thing it isn’t is new. Freelancers and part-timers have always been important parts of the economy. What also isn’t as special about the gig economy as many people think is the thing that always catches everyone’s attention about it—the technology. Smartphone apps like Uber or Lyft or TaskRabbit make it a lot easier for workers to offer themselves as temporary employees without going through an agency, and the lower cost thresholds associated with hiring individuals to do jobs via an app mean that “temporary” can become as short as a single car ride.

…

Official data suggest that around 95 percent of American workers are employed in the traditional, full-time way, a percentage that has held roughly stable in recent decades, and the percentage of people reporting that they’re self-employed has actually fallen during the so-called ascent of the gig economy.45 But those indicators can be deceiving because they’re based on survey data measuring what people say they do in the labor market. Or rather, surveys can be as confusing as the complex new gig economy itself, both for workers answering the questions and for the government data-collectors asking them. For example, will a full-time employee at a large company think of renting out her spare room on Airbnb for extra cash as a “job”?

Riding for Deliveroo: Resistance in the New Economy
by Callum Cant
Published 11 Nov 2019

Beynon (1973) Working for Ford. Allen Lane, p. 20. 17. N. Christie and H. Ward (2018) The emerging issues for management of occupational road risk in a changing economy: a survey of gig economy drivers, riders and their managers. UCL Centre for Transport Studies. 18. M. Escalante (2018) The perilous gig economy: why Caviar must pay for bike courier’s death. Philadelphia Partisan. https://philadelphiapartisan.com/2018/05/17/the-perilous-gig-economy-why-caviar-must-pay-for-bike-couriers-death. 19. Marx, Capital, volume 1, p. 401. 20. F. Pasquale (2015) The black box society: the secret algorithms that control money and information.

…

Deliveroo bears the marks of this wider crisis, whilst also being a ubiquitous part of urban life. But why pay attention to it specifically? The first reason is because of the role Deliveroo plays in the development of capitalism. You hear a lot about Deliveroo in relation to something called the ‘gig economy’. What exactly the ‘gig economy’ means isn’t very clear. It is a term that lumps together all different kinds of changes to society which only seem to share two things: they all look a bit tech and they all seem a bit new. This book junks that category. Instead, it uses ‘platform capitalism’, an idea developed by Nick Srnicek.14 The basic argument behind this change is that, rather than thinking about companies like Uber and Airbnb as tech start-ups with special tech start-up characteristics, we should think of them as capitalist companies with capitalist characteristics.

…

Penguin Books. 12. M. Roberts (2016) The long depression. Haymarket Books. 13. M. Fisher (2009) Capitalist realism: is there no alternative? Zero Books. 14. N. Srnicek (2017) Platform capitalism. Polity. 15. J. Woodcock and M. Graham (2019) The gig economy: a critical introduction to platform work. Polity. 16. Some estimates claim that 2.8 million people worked in the gig economy at some point in 2017. Of these, 700,000 earned below the living wage whilst they did so, and 21 per cent worked for food-delivery platforms. This would imply that around half a million workers worked for a food platform at some point in 2017, which intuitively seems very high.

Ours to Hack and to Own: The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, a New Vision for the Future of Work and a Fairer Internet
by Trebor Scholz and Nathan Schneider
Published 14 Aug 2017

Or, as one person in the audience at the Platform Cooperativism conference put it: “Please shut up and grow some class consciousness.” 11. PORTABLE REPUTATION IN THE ON-DEMAND ECONOMY KATI SIPP While the app-based gig economy derives a certain sexiness from its association with the tech world, the gig economy has existed offline for generations. Some workers have been pushed into the gig economy by circumstances beyond their control, while others have always chosen and will continue to choose it, either due to the nature of their occupations or for personal reasons. Workers in gig situations get new jobs through the strength of their reputations; the difference in the on-demand economy is that workers don’t own their reputations.

…

Twenty-first century democracy depends on this task. 38. LEGAL AND GOVERNANCE STRUCTURES BUILT TO SHARE MIRIAM A. CHERRY To date, the dominant economic narrative for the gig economy has been one in which platform owners extract a share of the income generated from the workers who use their platforms. This is troubling, since many forms of crowd-work are situated at the crossroads of precarious work, automatic management, deskilling, and low wages. Recent lawsuits by workers in the gig economy claiming employee status contain the demand for better pay, hours, benefits, and working conditions. However, these misclassification lawsuits do not seek to change the ways in which the underlying business relationship between workers and platforms are structured.

…

Why would becoming owners make sense as opposed to unionizing and acting collectively to bargain with an employer? With certain endeavors such as home cleaning, day labor, and home health, there are individual contracts but no one common employer with whom the workers can bargain collectively. Likewise, in the gig economy there are many individual customers using the platforms. As workers continue to struggle in the gig economy, platform cooperatives have emerged as an appealing possible alternative. On a practical level, what legal tools are available to help those who are trying to set up platform cooperatives? Some states have enabling statutes that set out tailor-made rules for worker cooperatives.

The Business of Platforms: Strategy in the Age of Digital Competition, Innovation, and Power
by Michael A. Cusumano , Annabelle Gawer and David B. Yoffie
Published 6 May 2019

There is nothing illegal or ethically wrong with following the logic of platforms and network effects into a dominant position. But once you become dominant, then different rules should apply. Platform companies need to anticipate the growing likelihood of antitrust intervention. In addition, platforms have enabled the sharing or gig economy, which has a logical extension: Every worker can become a temporary contractor. But, as we have seen in the backlash to Uber and other gig-economy platforms, that is not a viable labor strategy for the long term. Furthermore, fraud, violations of privacy, poor quality goods, and other platform “complications” have the potential to torpedo trust, which is fundamental to platform success.

…

“Top Facebook Executive Defended Data Collection in 2016 Memo—and Warned That Facebook Could Get People Killed,” BuzzFeed News, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/growth-at-any-cost-top-facebook-executive-defended-data#.iuq17wEa9 (accessed August 20, 2018). 28.Hannah Kuchler, “Inside Facebook’s Content Clean-up Operation,” Financial Times, April 24, 2018; and “Transcript of Mark Zuckerberg’s Senate Hearing,” Washington Post, April 10, 2018. 29.Jen Kirby, “9 Questions About Facebook and Data Sharing You Were Too Embarrassed to Ask,” Vox, April 10, 2018. 30.Kevin Roose, “How Facebook’s Data Sharing Went from a Feature to a Bug,” New York Times, March 19, 2018. 31.Thompson, “Mark Zuckerberg Talks.” 32.Reynolds, “When Digital Platforms Become Censors.” 33.Elaine Pofeldt, “Are We Ready for a Workforce That Is 50% Freelance?” Forbes, October 17, 2017. 34.Ibid. 35.Noam Scheiber, “Gig Economy Business Model Dealt a Blow in California Ruling,” New York Times, April 30, 2018. 36.Sarah Kessler, “The Gig Economy Won’t Last Because It Is Being Sued to Death,” Fast Company, February 17, 2015. 37.Andrei Hagiu and Julian Wright, “The Status of Works and Platforms in the Sharing Economy,” June 20, 2018, http://andreihagiu.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Liquidity-constraint-06202018.pdf (accessed September 11, 2018); and Andrei Hagiu and Rob Biederman, “Companies Need an Option Between Contractor and Employee,” Harvard Business Review, August 21, 2015. 38.Kia Kokalitcheva, “Lyft to Pay $12.3 Million as Part of a Proposed Labor Lawsuit Settlement,” Fortune, January 27, 2016. 39.Jeff John Roberts, “Is a Maid an Employee?

…

We can foresee a time when digital platforms and associated ecosystems will be the way we organize new information technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, the Internet of things, health care information, and even quantum computing. We can also see peer-to-peer transaction platforms replacing or competing with traditional businesses, especially as the “sharing” or “gig” economy expands and new technologies diffuse. Use of blockchains (distributed ledger technology that is extremely secure though not unbreakable) and cryptocurrencies (digital money, usually independent of banks and governments) may greatly reduce the need for many different services, from traditional banks to supply-chain contracts and monitoring.

The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism
by Nick Couldry and Ulises A. Mejias
Published 19 Aug 2019

Kücklich, “Michael Jackson and the Death of Macrofame.” See also Mejias, Off the Network. 79. Taplin, Move Fast, 99. 80. Newman, “UnMarginalizing Workers,” 24. 81. Heller, “Is the Gig Economy Working?” 82. Smith, “Gig Work.” 83. Larmer, “China’s Revealing Spin.” 84. Smith, “Gig Work.” 85. Smith, “On Demand.” 86. Field, “Inside the Gig Economy.” 87. Elan et al., “Inside the New Gig Economy.” 88. Mulcahy, Gig Economy. 89. Marx, Capital, vol. I, chap. 25. 90. Heller, “Is the Gig Economy Working?” 91. Uber, “Earning/Chilling.” 92. Rosenblat and Stark, “Algorithmic Labor,” 27. 93. Efrati, “Driver Churn”; and McGee, “Only 4 Percent.” 94.

…

But employers are empowered too, since they don’t have to pay payroll taxes, can avoid regulations concerning minimum wage and overtime work, and can get millions of microtasks performed that regular employees might resist doing. MTurk never became a huge success (Turkers have consistently complained it is nearly impossible to earn a living wage), but its real impact has been the inspiration it generated for what is now referred to as the gig economy. Also known as the sharing, peer, or on-demand economy, the gig economy continues the trend of replacing salaried full-time work with contingent part-time “gigs.” Part-time work now accounts for almost one-fifth of the job growth in the United States since the 2008 recession ended. According to one estimate, currently there are around fifty-three million freelancers in the United States80 who, like Turkers, don’t have the opportunity to earn a living wage or receive essential work benefits through their freelance work.

…

And yet, these trends are paradoxically being hailed—in the words of an Uber executive and former Clinton administration strategist—as “democratizing capitalism” and “driving wealth down to the people.”81 A Pew report from 201682 put the supposedly transformative impact of the gig economy into perspective: 24 percent of Americans in that year reported making money from gig platforms, with only 8 percent (around twenty-six million) doing so from employment, as opposed to other activities such as selling things on eBay. For comparison purposes, in China the sharing economy generated $500 billion in transactions involving six hundred million people in 2015 alone (although “sharing” in this context might simply mean renting a bicycle from one of the forty companies that facilitate fifty million rides every day).83 The gig economy, for all its limitations, has significance as an exemplar of where capitalism is heading.

Laziness Does Not Exist
by Devon Price
Published 5 Jan 2021

Many people don’t share Nimisire’s level of self-discipline. We get pulled into an endless loop of replying to messages, checking for new notifications, and doing unpaid work long after our time in the office is done. With the rise of things like the gig economy, work-life interference has become an even more pressing problem. We’re Caught in the Gig Economy Alex works full-time as an administrative assistant in the Chicago Loop. All day long he edits documents, takes meeting notes, makes copies, and runs errands. During rare moments of quiet in the office, Alex tries to catch up on creative projects.

…

See also Internet; social media; technology Digital Sabbath, 127 Dijkstra, Pieternel, 195–96 Dimiceli-Mitran, Louise, 101–3, 146–47, 149 Dio: and gig economy, 80 disabilities and achievements are not self-worth, 108 and influence/prevalence of Laziness Lie, 27 and killing the Laziness Lie, 209, 212 and saving the world, 198 distractions, 117, 119–20, 122, 149, 181, 186 documenting your life, 124–30 doing nothing, 64–67, 71, 211 Downer, Debbie, 116 Dragon Ball (TV show), 28 drug addiction. See substance abuse Dump Truck (pet chinchilla), 213–14 Duolingo (foreign-language app), 112 E eating disorders, 189–90, 191 economic issues. See gig economy; homeless people; poor people; wealth Ed (friend): burnout of, 9 education, 30–32, 135–36.

…

See also women shame and achievements, 105, 108 and body, 192 and healing, 69 and laziness as warning, 51 Laziness Lie and, 16, 33, 36, 206, 208, 209 and learning about laziness, 3, 7 and rethinking laziness, 51, 69 self-worth and, 105, 108 “shoulds” and, 192, 195–96 “shoulds” activism and, 196–203 body and, 187–92 and comparisons, 194–96 and compassion, 199–201 and fat, 187–91 and fear, 190, 191, 199–201 goals and, 193, 195, 196, 197, 199–201 and grieving for things you cannot change, 201–2 guilt and, 194, 195, 196, 198, 199–201, 202 Laziness Lie and, 184–85, 186–87, 188, 189, 192, 195, 196, 197 and lifestyle, 192–96 perfection and, 186–92, 193, 194 and questions, 200–201 resisting, 187 and saving the world, 196–203 shrugging off society’s, 183–203 See also conformity; specific topic Shut Up, 148 “side hustles,” 76 slavery, 23, 24–25, 75, 214 sleep, 45, 52, 58, 91 smartphones, 143 Smith, Kaitlin, 92–94, 103 social media and achievements, 111–12, 113–14, 117, 118, 124–26, 127, 129 and documenting your life, 124–26, 127, 129 filtering/deleting information on, 137–38, 145, 146 and influence/prevalence of Laziness Lie, 26, 29, 30, 32–33 and information overload, 136, 137–38, 145, 146 and relationships, 173 saving the world and, 198 and self-worth, 111–12, 113–14, 117, 118, 124–26, 127, 129 “shoulds” and, 192, 193, 194, 198 and why you feel lazy, 35 See also media; specific site social psychology, 206–7 spreadsheet, Stockwell, 62–63, 70 Star, Jeffree, 29 Stephanie (Bryan‘s wife): and relationships, 161, 163, 165 stereotypes, 209 Stockwell, August, 62–63, 70–71 stress and achievements/accomplishments, 118, 120, 127, 128 cyberloafing and, 52–54 and documenting your life, 127, 128 and expansion of workday/workweek, 77, 82 and healing, 65, 67, 69, 71 information overload and, 134, 139, 140, 142, 153 and judging laziness, 14, 15 and laziness as warning, 52–54 and learning about laziness, 3 and listening to laziness, 57 relationships and, 38, 161, 169 and rethinking laziness, 38, 39, 52–54, 57, 65, 67, 69, 71 and self-worth, 118, 120, 127, 128 “shoulds” and, 192, 202 and tenets of Laziness Lie, 18 and working less, 74, 77, 82, 87, 92, 96, 100, 102–3 See also anxiety students and achievements/accomplishments, 111–12 attention span of, 83–85 compassionate curiosity about, 207–8 and influence/prevalence of Laziness Lie, 30–32 and information overload, 135–36, 149–50 and judging laziness, 13, 15 and learning about laziness, 9 of Price, 83, 111–12, 185, 207–8 professor/teacher relationship with, 167–68 and race, 185 and self-worth, 111–12 “shoulds” and, 185 and working less, 83 See also education; specific person substance abuse, 12, 13, 14, 28, 89, 91, 206, 208 success and conformity, 184 and judging laziness, 15 Laziness Lie and, 29–30, 169 measuring, 114, 129 self-worth and, 106, 107–8, 114, 129 “shoulds” and, 184, 192, 196 in workplace, 184 See also achievements/accomplishments supplementary income. See gig economy surrender (tattoo), 41, 42 Swift, Taylor, 30 Sylvia: Grace’s relationship with, 157–58, 159, 164 T Tamms Correction Center, 199–200 Taylor (coder): and achievements are not self-worth, 110–11, 112–13 technology and increase in workday/workweek, 76 and influence/prevalence of Laziness Lie, 26, 32–33 remote work and, 79–80 and why you feel lazy, 35 working less and, 76, 79–80 See also digital age/tools; gig economy; Internet; social media Thompson, Rickey, 29, 196 TikTok, 33 time how you spend your, 168–69 See also cyberloafing Tobia, Jacob, 186 Tobias, Andrew, 105–6 Tom (Riley’s husband): and relationships, 165–67, 171–72 Towler, Annette, 56, 73–74, 78, 82, 85–86, 94, 96, 103 transgender people, 109, 137, 168, 186 TV shows: and influence/prevalence of Laziness Lie, 28–29 Twitter, 113, 118, 125, 129, 136, 144, 145, 147, 153 U unemployed people, 13 Upswing Advocates, 62–63 V vacations, 64, 212 values clarification of, 169–71 definition of, 169 and origins of Laziness Lie, 23 ranking of, 170 and relationships, 169–71, 182 Van Bavel, Jay, 84 veterans: healing of, 68 visual arts: and why you feel lazy, 33–35 W warning signs/system ignoring of, 20–21 and influence/prevalence of Laziness Lie, 36 and rethinking laziness, 49–57 and tenets of Laziness Lie, 20–21 and working less, 75, 96 See also specific sign wasting time.

The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class
by Joel Kotkin
Published 11 May 2020

Ziliak, “Decomposing Trends in Income Volatility: The ‘Wide Ride’ at the Top and Bottom,” Economic Inquiry, January 2014, http://www.bradleyhardy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Hardy-Ziliak-2014-Final-EI.pdf. 12 Tavia Grant, “The continuing decline of the ‘middle-skill’ worker,” Globe and Mail, June 3, 2013, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/jobs/the-continuing-decline-of-the-middle-skill-worker/article12303799/. 13 “Independent Work: Choice, Necessity, and the Gig Economy,” McKinsey & Company, October 2016, https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Featured%20Insights/Employment%20and%20Growth/Independent%20work%20Choice%20necessity%20and%20the%20gig%20economy/Independent-Work-Choice-necessity-and-the-gig-economy-Executive-Summary.ashx. 14 Annie Lowrey, “What the Gig Economy Looks Like Around the World,” Atlantic, April 13, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/gig-economy-global/522954/. 15 Alana Samuels, “The Mystery of Why Japanese People Are Having So Few Babies,” Atlantic, July 20, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/07/japan-mystery-low-birth-rate/534291/. 16 Alison Griswold, “People are joining the gig economy because of a powerful myth,” Quartz, May 31, 2018, https://qz.com/1293741/people-join-the-gig-economy-to-be-their-own-boss-but-the-algorithm-is-really-in-charge. 17 Nathan Heller, “Is the Gig Economy Working?” New Yorker, May 8, 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/15/is-the-gig-economy-working; Jeff Daniels, “Nearly half of California’s gig economy workers struggling with poverty, new survey says,” CNBC, August 28, 2018, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/28/about-half-of-californias-gig-economy-workers-struggling-with-poverty.html; Leonid Bershidsky, “Gig-Economy Workers Are the Modern Proletariat,” Bloomberg, September 25, 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-09-25/gig-economy-workers-are-last-of-marx-s-oppressed-proletarians. 18 Kate Aronoff, “How the On-Demand Economy Enables the Cycle of Racial Labor Discrimination,” Color Lines, July 5, 2017, https://www.colorlines.com/articles/how-demand-economy-enables-cycle-racial-labor-discrimination; Robert Reich, “The Share-the-Scraps Economy,” February 2, 2015, https://robertreich.org/post/109894095095. 19 Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010 (New York: Crown Forum, 2012), 125–27; Maria Koulogou, “The New Inequality; The Decline of the Working Class Family,” Quillette, June 13, 2019, https://quillette.com/2019/06/13/the-new-inequality-the-decline-of-the-working-class-family/. 20 E.

…

Ziliak, “Decomposing Trends in Income Volatility: The ‘Wide Ride’ at the Top and Bottom,” Economic Inquiry, January 2014, http://www.bradleyhardy.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Hardy-Ziliak-2014-Final-EI.pdf. 12 Tavia Grant, “The continuing decline of the ‘middle-skill’ worker,” Globe and Mail, June 3, 2013, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/jobs/the-continuing-decline-of-the-middle-skill-worker/article12303799/. 13 “Independent Work: Choice, Necessity, and the Gig Economy,” McKinsey & Company, October 2016, https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Featured%20Insights/Employment%20and%20Growth/Independent%20work%20Choice%20necessity%20and%20the%20gig%20economy/Independent-Work-Choice-necessity-and-the-gig-economy-Executive-Summary.ashx. 14 Annie Lowrey, “What the Gig Economy Looks Like Around the World,” Atlantic, April 13, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/gig-economy-global/522954/. 15 Alana Samuels, “The Mystery of Why Japanese People Are Having So Few Babies,” Atlantic, July 20, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/07/japan-mystery-low-birth-rate/534291/. 16 Alison Griswold, “People are joining the gig economy because of a powerful myth,” Quartz, May 31, 2018, https://qz.com/1293741/people-join-the-gig-economy-to-be-their-own-boss-but-the-algorithm-is-really-in-charge. 17 Nathan Heller, “Is the Gig Economy Working?”

…

The instability in employment is widely seen as one reason for the country’s ultra-low birth rate.15 Many of today’s “precariat” work in the contingent “gig” economy, associated with firms such as Uber and Lyft. These companies and their progressive allies, including David Plouffe (who managed Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008), like to speak of a “sharing” economy that is “democratizing capitalism” by returning control of the working day to the individual. They point to opportunities that the gig economy provides for people to make extra money using their own cars or homes. The corporate image of companies like Uber and Lyft features moonlighting drivers saving up cash for a family vacation or a fancy date while providing a convenient service for customers—the ultimate win-win.16 Yet for most gig workers there’s not very much that is democratic or satisfying in it.

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet
by Klaus Schwab
Published 7 Jan 2021

article=5483&context=flr. 48 “Sixth Annual ‘Freelancing in America’ Study Finds That More People Than Ever See Freelancing as a Long-Term Career Path,” Upwork, October 2019, https://www.upwork.com/press/2019/10/03/freelancing-in-america-2019/. 49 “The New Balkan Dream Is a $2,000 Per Month Telecommute,” Sandra Maksimovic, Deutsche Welle, August 2018, https://www.dw.com/en/the-new-balkan-dream-is-a-2000-per-month-telecommute/a-45258826. 50 “About Us, Gig Workers Rising,” https://gigworkersrising.org/get-informed. 51 “Court Orders Uber, Lyft to Reclassify Drivers as Employees in California,” Sara Ashley O'Brien, CNN, August 2020, https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/10/tech/uber-lyft-california-preliminary-injunction/index.html. 52 Ibidem. 53 “Human Capital: The gig economy in a post-Prop 22 world”, Megan Rose Dickey, TechCrunch, November 2020, https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/07/human-capital-the-gig-economy-in-a-post-prop-22-world/. 54 “The Government's Good Work Plan Leaves the Gig Economy Behind,” Sanjana Varghese, Wired Magazine UK, December 2018, https://www.wired.co.uk/article/good-work-plan-uk-gig-economy. 55 “This New Program Aims to Train the Growing Freelance Workforce,” Yuki Noguchi, NPR, January 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/01/04/681807327/this-new-program-aims-to-train-the-growing-freelance-workforce?

…

t=1597649731065. 56 “The Freelance Isn't Free Law,” Freelancers Union, https://www.freelancersunion.org/get-involved/freelance-isnt-free/. 57 “A Union of One,” Ari Paul, Jacobin Magazine, October 2014. 58 “Gig Economy: EU Law to Improve Workers’ Rights,” European Parliament, April 2019, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20190404STO35070/gig-economy-eu-law-to-improve-workers-rights-infographic. 59 Ibidem. 60 “Gig Economy Protections: Did the EU Get It Right?” Knowledge at Wharton, May 2019, https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/eu-gig-economy-law/. 61 “Want More Diversity? Some Experts Say Reward C.E.O.s for It,” Peter Eavis, The New York Times, July 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/business/economy/corporate-diversity-pay-compensation.html. 62 “Starbucks Ties Executive Pay to 2025 Diversity Targets,” Heather Haddon, The Wall Street Journal, October 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/starbucks-ties-executive-pay-to-2025-diversity-targets-11602680401. 63 “Black Lives Matter—for Pakistan's Sheedi Community Too,” Zahra Bhaiwala, Neekta Hamidi, Sikander Bizenjo, World Economic Forum Agenda, August 2020, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/08/black-lives-matter-for-pakistans-sheedi-community-too/. 64 Global Shapers Community, World Economic Forum, https://www.globalshapers.org/. 65 “Meet the First African-Pakistani Lawmaker,” The Diplomat, September 2018, https://thediplomat.com/2018/09/meet-the-first-african-pakistani-lawmaker/. 66 “Black Lives Matter—for Pakistan's Sheedi Community Too,” Zahra Bhaiwala, Neekta Hamidi, Sikander Bizenjo, World Economic Forum Agenda, August 2020, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/08/black-lives-matter-for-pakistans-sheedi-community-too/.

…

They encouraged drivers to shut off their mobile apps to make their case for more pay and better protections.15 But despite attracting a lot of media and political attention16 and leading to a one-off financial settlement for some drivers ahead of the IPO,17 the strike mostly revealed how hard it will be to replicate the influence taxi unions once had, as the structural demands of the drivers were not met. It showed how difficult it is to ensure the gig economy respects the rights of its workers. In a further development, in November 2020, California voted on a Proposition that would designate gig economy workers as employees, but after a campaign labeled as the “most expensive initiative in the state’s history”, the proposal was rejected, suggesting a resolution that works for all stakeholders has not yet been found.18 In stakeholder capitalism, the same level of representation in companies should also apply to political representation.

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet
by Klaus Schwab and Peter Vanham
Published 27 Jan 2021

article=5483&context=flr. 48 “Sixth Annual ‘Freelancing in America’ Study Finds That More People Than Ever See Freelancing as a Long-Term Career Path,” Upwork, October 2019, https://www.upwork.com/press/2019/10/03/freelancing-in-america-2019/. 49 “The New Balkan Dream Is a $2,000 Per Month Telecommute,” Sandra Maksimovic, Deutsche Welle, August 2018, https://www.dw.com/en/the-new-balkan-dream-is-a-2000-per-month-telecommute/a-45258826. 50 “About Us, Gig Workers Rising,” https://gigworkersrising.org/get-informed. 51 “Court Orders Uber, Lyft to Reclassify Drivers as Employees in California,” Sara Ashley O'Brien, CNN, August 2020, https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/10/tech/uber-lyft-california-preliminary-injunction/index.html. 52 Ibidem. 53 “Human Capital: The gig economy in a post-Prop 22 world”, Megan Rose Dickey, TechCrunch, November 2020, https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/07/human-capital-the-gig-economy-in-a-post-prop-22-world/. 54 “The Government's Good Work Plan Leaves the Gig Economy Behind,” Sanjana Varghese, Wired Magazine UK, December 2018, https://www.wired.co.uk/article/good-work-plan-uk-gig-economy. 55 “This New Program Aims to Train the Growing Freelance Workforce,” Yuki Noguchi, NPR, January 2019, https://www.npr.org/2019/01/04/681807327/this-new-program-aims-to-train-the-growing-freelance-workforce?

…

t=1597649731065. 56 “The Freelance Isn't Free Law,” Freelancers Union, https://www.freelancersunion.org/get-involved/freelance-isnt-free/. 57 “A Union of One,” Ari Paul, Jacobin Magazine, October 2014. 58 “Gig Economy: EU Law to Improve Workers’ Rights,” European Parliament, April 2019, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20190404STO35070/gig-economy-eu-law-to-improve-workers-rights-infographic. 59 Ibidem. 60 “Gig Economy Protections: Did the EU Get It Right?” Knowledge at Wharton, May 2019, https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/eu-gig-economy-law/. 61 “Want More Diversity? Some Experts Say Reward C.E.O.s for It,” Peter Eavis, The New York Times, July 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/business/economy/corporate-diversity-pay-compensation.html. 62 “Starbucks Ties Executive Pay to 2025 Diversity Targets,” Heather Haddon, The Wall Street Journal, October 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/starbucks-ties-executive-pay-to-2025-diversity-targets-11602680401. 63 “Black Lives Matter—for Pakistan's Sheedi Community Too,” Zahra Bhaiwala, Neekta Hamidi, Sikander Bizenjo, World Economic Forum Agenda, August 2020, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/08/black-lives-matter-for-pakistans-sheedi-community-too/. 64 Global Shapers Community, World Economic Forum, https://www.globalshapers.org/. 65 “Meet the First African-Pakistani Lawmaker,” The Diplomat, September 2018, https://thediplomat.com/2018/09/meet-the-first-african-pakistani-lawmaker/. 66 “Black Lives Matter—for Pakistan's Sheedi Community Too,” Zahra Bhaiwala, Neekta Hamidi, Sikander Bizenjo, World Economic Forum Agenda, August 2020, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/08/black-lives-matter-for-pakistans-sheedi-community-too/.

…

They encouraged drivers to shut off their mobile apps to make their case for more pay and better protections.15 But despite attracting a lot of media and political attention16 and leading to a one-off financial settlement for some drivers ahead of the IPO,17 the strike mostly revealed how hard it will be to replicate the influence taxi unions once had, as the structural demands of the drivers were not met. It showed how difficult it is to ensure the gig economy respects the rights of its workers. In a further development, in November 2020, California voted on a Proposition that would designate gig economy workers as employees, but after a campaign labeled as the “most expensive initiative in the state’s history”, the proposal was rejected, suggesting a resolution that works for all stakeholders has not yet been found.18 In stakeholder capitalism, the same level of representation in companies should also apply to political representation.

Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It
by Azeem Azhar
Published 6 Sep 2021

Lyft’, Bloomberg Second Measure, 2020 <https://secondmeasure.com/datapoints/rideshare-industry-overview/> [accessed 23 September 2020]. 54 ‘Gig Economy Research’, Gov.uk, 7 February 2018 <https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/gig-economy-research> [accessed 21 September 2020]. 55 Ravi Agrawal, ‘The Hidden Benefits of Uber’, Foreign Policy, 16 July 2018 <https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/16/why-india-gives-uber-5-stars-gig-economy-jobs/> [accessed 21 September 2020]. 56 Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, ‘Gig Economy Research’, Gov.uk, 7 February 2018 <https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/gig-economy-research> [accessed 21 September 2020]. 57 Directorate General for Internal Policies, The Social Protection of Workers in the Platform Economy, Study for the EMPL Committee, IP/A/EMPL/2016-11 (European Parliament, 2017). 58 Nicole Karlis, ‘DoorDash Drivers Make an Average of $1.45 an Hour, Analysis Finds’, Salon, 19 January 2020 <https://www.salon.com/2020/01/19/doordash-drivers-make-an-average-of-145-an-hour-analysis-finds/> [accessed 27 March 2021]. 59 Kate Conger, ‘Uber and Lyft Drivers in California Will Remain Contractors’, New York Times, 4 November 2020 <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/04/technology/california-uber-lyft-prop-22.html> [accessed 12 January 2021]. 60 Mary-Ann Russon, ‘Uber Drivers Are Workers Not Self-Employed, Supreme Court Rules’, BBC News, 19 February 2021 <https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56123668> [accessed 29 March 2021]. 61 ‘Judgement: Uber BV and Others (Appellants) v Aslam and Others (Respondents)’, 19 February 2021 <https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2019-0029-judgment.pdf> [accessed 19 March 2021]. 62 ‘Frederick Winslow Taylor: Father of Scientific Management Thinker’, The British Library <https://www.bl.uk/people/frederick-winslow-taylor> [accessed 29 March 2021]. 63 Nikil Saval, Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace (New York: Anchor Books, 2015), p. 42. 64 Saval, Cubed, p. 56. 65 Alex Rosenblat, Tamara Kneese and danah boyd, Workplace Surveillance (Data & Society Research Institute, 4 January 2017) <https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/7ryk4>. 66 ‘In March 2017, the Japanese Government Formulated the Work Style Reform Action Plan.’, Social Innovation, September 2017 <https://social-innovation.hitachi/en/case_studies/ai_happiness/> [accessed 6 October 2020]. 67 Alex Hern, ‘Microsoft Productivity Score Feature Criticised as Workplace Surveillance’, The Guardian, 26 November 2020 <http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/nov/26/microsoft-productivity-score-feature-criticised-workplace-surveillance> [accessed 1 April 2021]. 68 Stephen Chen, ‘Chinese Surveillance Programme Mines Data from Workers’ Brains’, South China Morning Post, 28 April 2018 <https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2143899/forget-facebook-leak-china-mining-data-directly-workers-brains> [accessed 6 October 2020]. 69 Robert Booth, ‘Unilever Saves on Recruiters by Using AI to Assess Job Interviews’, The Guardian, 25 October 2019 <http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/25/unilever-saves-on-recruiters-by-using-ai-to-assess-job-interviews> [accessed 6 October 2020]. 70 Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, ‘Workplace Technology: The Employee Experience’ (CIPD: July 2020) <https://www.cipd.co.uk/Images/workplace-technology-1_tcm18-80853.pdf> [accessed 19 May 2021]. 71 Sarah O’Connor, ‘When Your Boss Is an Algorithm’, Financial Times, 7 September 2016 <https://www.ft.com/content/88fdc58e-754f-11e6-b60a-de4532d5ea35> [accessed 3 August 2020]. 72 Tom Barratt et al., ‘Algorithms Workers Can’t See Are Increasingly Pulling the Management Strings’, Management Today, 25 August 2020 <http://www.managementtoday.co.uk/article/1692636?

…

In time, the term ‘crowdsourcing’ – which often referred to unpaid, non-commercial work – gave way to a new term: the ‘gig economy’. This whole new way of working was underpinned by the emerging exponential economy. Crowdsourcing depended on digital platforms. As we’ve seen, these platforms were able to scale because they were susceptible to network effects and had access to an exponentially increasing amount of computing power. The tasks – sifting through data, finessing product ideas – invariably related to the development of intangible assets. And it was all facilitated by two key general purpose technologies of our age: the internet, the smartphone. Ten years in, and gig economy platforms are continuing to grow exponentially.

…

Uber has demonstrated that platform-based gig work can work at an enormous scale. But these new working arrangements, rather than automation, are what raises the trickiest questions relating to employment in the Exponential Age. While Uber is probably the most successful platform-based freelance work company, it did not pioneer the concept. The origins of the gig economy – where short-term, freelance tasks are allocated by an online service – lie in the Amazon Mechanical Turk platform, launched in 2005, a few years before the term ‘gig working’ was coined. The service gets its odd name from a famous chess-playing device of the late eighteenth century. From the 1770s, the ‘Mechanical Turk’ – a mannequin affixed to a chessboard that was mounted on a wooden crate – made waves by beating successive royals, aristocrats and statesmen at chess.

Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology From Capitalism
by Wendy Liu
Published 22 Mar 2020

This Isn’t New.” by Rebecca Jennings for Vox, published July 22, 2019, at https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/7/22/20703636/doordash-instacart-tip-policy. 3 For an excellent primer on UBI, see “The False Promise of Universal Basic Income” by Alyssa Battistoni for Dissent Magazine’s Spring 2017 issue, at https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/false-promise-universal-basic-income-andy-stern-ruger-bregman. 4 For a critical analysis of the gig economy, see The Gig Economy: A Critical Introduction by Jamie Graham Woodcock and Mark Graham (Polity, 2019). 5 For details on what it’s like to work for a gig economy platform in the UK, see Callum Cant’s book Riding for Deliveroo: Resistance in the New Economy (Polity, 2019). 6 The World Transformed, which began as a fringe festival for the UK Labour Party’s annual convention, alternates between Brighton and Liverpool. 7 “Any industry that still has unions has potential energy that could be released by startups.”

…

But the people I met were welcoming; we had read the same books and had the same criticism of established institutions, and I was thrilled to finally meet people I could talk to about these things. One person I met worked part-time for a gig economy platform. His real passion was creative, but it was a highly insecure profession, and he did delivery work between auditions to pay the bills. This was my first time meeting, in a social setting, someone working on the other side of the gig economy. The side that someone like me would expect to join came with a decent salary, free food, stock options; on the other side, there was no way to negotiate pay — you had to accept whatever rates you were offered, hoping that it would be enough to cover your expenses.

…

The urge toward sabotage was no less rational than compliance, because at least it reclaimed some agency in a world that offered most workers very little. One speaker talked about his work delivering food in the gig economy. He usually worked in the evenings, right after a long shift at his other job; after six hours of biking around the city, he was typically exhausted. Afterward, I asked a question that made sense to me from my newly tech-hating vantage point, but which evidently struck the speaker as naive: given that the work was so awful, shouldn’t we just get rid of the gig economy? The speaker politely disagreed, saying that gig work was still better than any other job he had ever had; he just wished it paid better.

Don't Be Evil: How Big Tech Betrayed Its Founding Principles--And All of US
by Rana Foroohar
Published 5 Nov 2019

Over the past several years, it has cemented its role as the most prolific and pugnacious among companies shaping the “gig economy,” including Airbnb, TaskRabbit, and dozens more. They are all emblematic of accelerating shifts in the way we work: 24/7, directed by technology, and without many of the traditional protections and benefits enjoyed by the middle class. On the one hand, there is something magical about the way these companies allow people to monetize resources they already possess—a home, a car, their free time. On the other, this model is a slippery slope that, some argue, ends with workers being taken advantage of. Many experts believe that the rise of the gig economy is a key reason for stagnating wages, as it has accentuated the power imbalance between workers and companies that has been increasing for the past forty years or so with the decline of unions, and the deregulation of industry in general.

…

History has shown that in the end technology is always a net job creator; the question is how long the creative destruction lasts. Today it seems to be happening faster than our political and social systems can handle it. The depth and breadth of change being effected by the gig economy is unprecedented, and while the sheer number of workers that labor solely in the gig economy relative to the traditional economy isn’t yet as high as some academics once predicted it would be,12 the changes are still happening in nearly every industry, across pretty much every geography. What happens when everyone is, to a greater or lesser extent, a freelancer?

…

The result is that for a huge number of low-level workers (who represent the bulk of the gig economy), “you’ve got a labor market that looks increasingly like a feudal agricultural hiring fair in which the lord shows up and says, ‘I’ll take you, and you, and you today,’ ” says Adair Turner, chairman of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, one of many nonprofit groups studying the effect of companies like Uber on local economies. Turner’s conclusion, which mirrors that of a growing number of economists, is that the gig economy reduces friction in labor markets, meaning it solves a real need and creates convenience, but it also creates fragmentation that tends to work better for employers, who can leverage superior technology and information, than for workers.

Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation
by Anne Helen Petersen
Published 14 Jan 2021

“Independence” meant those who drove for Uber could make their own schedule, had no real boss, and worked for themselves. But it also meant these pseudo-employees had no right to unionize, and Uber had no responsibility to train them or provide benefits. Gig economies lured workers with a promise of that independence—with work that could actually bend to fit our lives, our children’s schedules, our other responsibilities. This work was framed as particularly suitable for supposedly self-centered, picky, self-righteous millennials; as the gig economy grew in visibility, Forbes declared, “The 9 to 5 job may soon be a relic of the past, if millennials have their way.”21 But that’s not how it worked out.

…

Not for Door Dashers, who until a massive online backlash was using tips to cover their independent contractors’ base pay—meaning that if a Dasher was guaranteed $6.85 per delivery and received a $3 tip, they still received just $6.85; users were essentially tipping DoorDash itself. And despite Uber’s past (and thoroughly debunked) claims that an Uber driver could make $90,000 a year, the majority of people driving or cleaning or renting their spare bedroom or clicking relentlessly on a mouse in the gig economy are doing it as a second or third job—a shitty job to supplement a different shitty job.22 The gig economy isn’t replacing the traditional economy. It’s propping it up in a way that convinces people it’s not broken. Freelance and gigging don’t make drudgery or anxiety disappear. Instead, they exacerbate them. Any time that you do take off is tinged with regret or anxiousness that you could be working.

…

Just as the work of teachers or mothers is devalued (or unvalued), jobs within the sharing economy aren’t figured as jobs at all—they’re attempts to monetize your hobby, to have fun conversations while driving around the city, to invite people into your home. Even calling these jobs “gigs,” with all the inherent connotation of brevity and enjoyability, elides their status as labor. It’s not the gig economy after all; it’s the always-frantically-seeking-the-next-gig economy. * * * “We’ve idealized the idea of portable work, promoting the notion of people roaming about with a portfolio of skills they can sell at a price they set themselves,” Standing argues. “Some are able to do that, of course. But to think that we can build a society on this platform, with no protections, is fanciful.”26 Many of Uber’s employees continue to fight for the right to bargain with their employer.

Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America
by Alissa Quart
Published 25 Jun 2018

Meanwhile, teachers working in increasingly expensive locales like San Francisco and Chicago are forced into the gig economy or have to work other side jobs, such as bartending, to survive. In 2016, I spoke to a number of schoolteachers besides Barry who were racking up miles as Uber chauffeurs. John Daniels, a history teacher at James Lick High School in East San Jose, California, started giving lifts for Uber in his Toyota 4Runner on Thursday and Friday nights. Anthony Arinwine, a first-grade teacher at Malcolm X Academy in San Francisco, started with the gig economy company last summer. He spent twenty hours a week giving rides in his Nissan Altima, sometimes driving until late into the night.

…

Dedication To my daughter, Cleo Contents Cover Title Page Dedication Introduction 1.Inconceivable: Pregnant and Squeezed 2.Hyper-Educated and Poor 3.Extreme Day Care: The Deep Cost of American Work 4.Outclassed: Life at the Bottom of the Top 5.The Nanny’s Struggle 6.Uber Dads: Moonlighting in the Gig Economy 7.The Second Act Industry: Or the Midlife Do-Over Myth 8.Squeezed Houses 9.The Rise of 1 Percent Television 10.Squeezed by the Robots Conclusion: The Secret Life of Inequality Acknowledgments Bibliography Notes Index About the Author Also by Alissa Quart Copyright About the Publisher Introduction Michelle Belmont’s debt haunted her.

…

The growth of this industry reflects the upheavals in American work lives. A huge and growing proportion of us now work an expanded workweek with unpredictable working hours. This reflects, among other things, the 24/7 business environment of the twenty-first century: both the digital economy and the freelance and gig economy, as well as the failure of wages to rise to match the growth in the economy, meaning that wages haven’t kept up with costs, even at a time of low inflation. The rise of 24/7 day care also reflects the disempowerment of unions and with that the extreme corporate schedules that have shattered the traditional workweek and hours for employees.

Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future
by Ben Tarnoff
Published 13 Jun 2022

Prop 22 campaign and pursuit of similar measures: Josh Eidelson, “The Gig Economy Is Coming for Millions of American Jobs,” Bloomberg Businessweek, February 17, 2021, and Kate Conger, “Gig Companies Want Massachusetts Voters to Exempt Workers from Employee Status,” New York Times, August 4, 2021. Judge’s ruling against Prop 22: Kate Conger and Kellen Browning, “A Judge Declared California’s Gig Worker Law Unconstitutional. Now What?,” New York Times, August 23, 2021. Carolan op-ed: Shawn Carolan, “What Proposition 22 Now Makes Possible,” The Information, November 10, 2020. Albertsons: Eidelson, “The Gig Economy Is Coming.” “It is too late …”: Schifter’s suicide note, available at imgur.com/gallery/M24BM. 131, For every worker … According to the staffing agency directory OnContracting, contingent labor accounts for 40 to 50 percent of the workforce at most tech firms; see Daisuke Wakabayashi, “Google’s Shadow Work Force: Temps Who Outnumber Full-Time Employees,” New York Times, May 18, 2019.

…

When they drive, how often their rides last, how fast they’re going, how hard they hit the brakes—the app records all these data points, among many others, and transmits them to the cloud for analysis, which improves the algorithms further. The routes become more efficient. The nudges to persuade drivers to keep driving become more personalized. Algorithmic management thus enables Uber and its many “gig economy” imitators to coordinate the labor of millions of workers without the need for middle managers, and with more technical sophistication than middle managers could ever achieve. Yet this is only one advantage. The other is that, by having software rather than humans telling workers what to do, and having the software use techniques like nudges and gamification, gig companies can pretend that nobody is telling the workers what to do, and therefore that they are not really workers at all.

…

This classification is a pillar of the gig-work business model, since it holds down labor costs by preventing firms from having to pay a minimum wage or comply with the other legal protections afforded to direct employees. “In the US, direct employment increases corporate costs by roughly one-third, so classifying workers as independent contractors significantly increases profitability,” notes Veena Dubal, a legal scholar who studies the gig economy. Precisely for this reason, companies of all different kinds have spent the past several decades outsourcing wherever possible. This has created what labor market expert David Weil calls the “fissured workplace”: rather than hiring workers directly, firms increasingly parcel out work to contractors.

The Retreat of Western Liberalism
by Edward Luce
Published 20 Apr 2017

, Financial Times, 19 February 2016, <https://www.ft.com/content/80c3164e-d644-11e5-8887-98e7feb46f27>. 63 Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, p. 13. 64 James Manyika, Susan Lund, Jacques Bughin, Kelsey Robinson, Jan Mischke and Deepa Mahajan, ‘Independent Work: Choice, necessity and the gig economy’, McKinsey Global Institute report, October 2016, <http://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/employment-and-growth/independent-work-choice-necessity-and-the-gig-economy>. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid. 67 Ibid. 68 Jaron Lanier, Who Owns the Future? (Simon & Schuster, New York, 2013 (ebook)). 69 Edward Luce, ‘Obama must face the rise of the robots’, Financial Times, 3 February 2013, <https://www.ft.com/content/f6f19228-6bbc-11e2-a17d-00144feab49a>. 70 Lee Drutman and Yascha Mounk, ‘When the Robots Rise’, National Interest, 144 (July–August 2016), <http://nationalinterest.org/feature/when-the-robots-rise-16830>. 71 Espen Barth Eide, ‘2015: the year geopolitics bites back?’

…

Roughly a third are free agents doing independent work because they want to, such as web designers or artists working for themselves. These are the last people we need worry about. Indeed, many of us might envy their freedom. But a third are full-time independents because they are financially strapped. In other words, there are already about 50 million Westerners trying to earn their living in the gig economy out of necessity rather than choice. France and Spain have the highest share of independent workers, with almost a third of their labour force doing so either full- or part-time. The US and Britain are somewhat lower, at just over a quarter. The largest platforms are household names, such as Uber, with 1 million drivers, Freelancer.com with 18 million users and Airbnb with 2.5 million listings.

…

All of America’s new jobs have been generated by independent work, which has risen by 7.8 per cent a year.65 The next time an economist boasts about America’s low unemployment rate, remember that number means something very different from what it used to. This is not your parents’ economy. It is not even your older sister’s. Nor is the gig economy dominated by millennials. Britain has more pensioners doing independent work than people under thirty. In America, the labour force participation rate for people aged between sixty-four and seventy-five has jumped by 4.7 per cent in the last decade, a time when the overall rate has dropped.66 We like to call it the sharing economy.

The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era
by Gary Gerstle
Published 14 Oct 2022

Irwin, Miller, and Sanger-Katz, America’s Racial Divide: Charted. 22.On the new gig economy, see Sarah Kessler, Gigged: The Economy, the End of the Job and the Future of Work (London: Random House Business, 2019); Jia Tolentino, “The Gig Economy Celebrates Working Yourself to Death,” New Yorker, March 22, 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/jia-tolentino/the-gig-economy-celebrates-working-yourself-to-death, accessed June 28, 2021; Nathan Heller, “Is the Gig Economy Working?” New Yorker, May 8, 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/15/is-the-gig-economy-working, accessed June 28, 2021; Nicole Kobie, “What Is the Gig Economy and Why Is It So Controversial?”

…

New Yorker, May 8, 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/15/is-the-gig-economy-working, accessed June 28, 2021; Nicole Kobie, “What Is the Gig Economy and Why Is It So Controversial?” Wired, September 14, 2018, https://www.wired.co.uk/article/what-is-the-gig-economy-meaning-definition-why-is-it-called-gig-economy, accessed September 8, 2021; Jill Lepore, “What’s Wrong with the Way We Work,” New Yorker, January 11, 2021, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/01/18/whats-wrong-with-the-way-we-work, accessed June 28, 2021; E. Tammy Kim, “The Gig Economy Is Coming for Your Job,” New York Times, January 10, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/opinion/sunday/gig-economy-unemployment-automation.html, accessed September 8, 2021; Aarian Marshall, “With $200 Million, Uber and Lyft Write Their Own Labor Law,” Wired, April 11, 2020, https://www.wired.com/story/200-million-uber-lyft-write-own-labor-law/, accessed September 8, 2021.

…

One could do this work part-time or full-time and thus combine it with other activities—going to school, parenting, caring for an elderly parent—far more easily than if one had to report to work from nine to five, five days a week. One could labour from home, or from a nearby café wired for internet. The gig economy was laced with hopes about being one’s own boss, enjoying freedom on a daily basis, making money, and living the American dream. Obama’s Affordable Care Act facilitated the growth of this economy by making it possible for freelancers and small entrepreneurs to acquire all-important health care insurance at a reasonable cost. Neoliberalism had provided the conceptual underpinning for the gig economy by theorizing how individuals could transform themselves into entrepreneurs able to monetize material and personal assets in new ways.

The Autonomous Revolution: Reclaiming the Future We’ve Sold to Machines
by William Davidow and Michael Malone
Published 18 Feb 2020

Newspapers,” Pew Research Center, May 22, 2015, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/22/the-declining-value-of-u-s-newspapers/. 25. Don Irvine, “Newspaper Jobs at 50-Year Low,” Accuracy in Media, January 1, 2010, https://www.aim.org/don-irvine-blog/newspaper-jobs-at-50-year-low/. 26. Tina Brown, “The Gig Economy,” The Daily Beast, January 12, 2009, updated July 14, 2017, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/01/12/the-gig-economy.html (accessed June 26, 2019). 27. Stacey Vanek Smith, “An NPR Reporter Raced a Machine to Write a News Story. Who Won?,” Morning Edition, NPR, May 20, 2015, http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/05/20/406484294/an-npr-reporter-raced-a-machine-to-write-a-news-story-who-won (accessed June 26, 2015). 28.

…

Kirsten Korosec, “GM Makes Big Push into a Hot New Business,” Fortune, January 21, 2016, http://fortune.com/2016/01/21/gm-car-sharing-maven/ (accessed June 27, 2019). 48. Darrell Etherington, “GM’s Maven Gig Is a Car Sharing Service Tailor-Made for the Gig Economy,” TechCrunch, May 3, 2017, https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/03/gms-maven-gig-is-a-car-sharing-service-tailor-made-for-the-gig-economy/ (accessed June 27, 2019). 49. Andrew J. Hawkins, “Car2Go Thinks We’d Rather Share Luxury Mercedes-Benz Sedans Than Smart Cars,” The Verge, January 30, 2017, https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/30/14437770/car2go-daimler-mercedes-benz-cla-gla-carsharing (accessed June 27, 2019). 50.

…

The management model that the railroads developed was quickly adopted by other businesses.43 Vertically integrated, professionally administered firms grew to massive scales, dominating markets.44 Today, in the early years of the Autonomous Revolution, the forms of organizations are changing again. Some hugely profitable corporations employ relatively few full-time workers, drawing instead on the services of people who work in the “gig” economy. Others are in the process of replacing their human workers with robots. Some service providers are moving their whole operation into virtual space, because they no longer need physical places of business to accommodate their customers and their workers are mostly robots. ACCELERATING TRANSFORMATION There is now talk of a Fourth Industrial Revolution.45 However, those words do not fit the future that we envision.

Angrynomics
by Eric Lonergan and Mark Blyth
Published 15 Jun 2020

But there are many more workers who supplement their stagnant wages in other sectors by joining in the gig economy. So the figure is recomputed to around 10 per cent and may be higher. But the fact remains that most workers are not in contingent employment. So how then do we understand the self-reported data on how workers feel about their employment being insecure? A moment from the UK Brexit campaign may help us understand how the deeper forces of insecurity we have identified matters more than the gig economy. During the Brexit campaign, “Remain” campaigners visited Newcastle in the north-east of England to debate the impact of Britain leaving the EU.

…

ERIC: So, let’s complement the macro focus of the third dialogue by dropping down to the micro to examine the more constant, micro-level drivers of uncertainty and insecurity that also generate, not just anger, but the preconditions that give rise to it. While many culprits can be identified, from the growth of the “gig economy” to the increasingly precarious nature of work, four factors in particular seem especially relevant to angrynomics. The first is the massive changes in the past 30 years which have occurred in product markets, or the different sectors of our economy, including consumer retail, technology, financial services and manufacturing.

…

As more and more sectors are affected by these forces, many of those stresses will be passed on to workers. We see this in the rise of zero-hours contracts in the UK, the rise in minimum-wage jobs, and the growth of platform driven employment such as Task Rabbit and Amazon Mechanical Turk – the so-called “gig economy”. MARK: The particular form technological innovation has taken has also created aggressive price competition. Today’s “monopolists” – such as Facebook and Google – provide their products (social media and online search) for free, while introducing intense competition in the market for advertising.

Cashing Out: Win the Wealth Game by Walking Away
by Julien Saunders and Kiersten Saunders
Published 13 Jun 2022

Other options in the high-urgency/low-upside camp are investment apps, which offer free stocks upon sign-up like public.com, acorns.com, and m1finance.com. Last, you may consider online survey companies like swagbucks.com that will pay out a small amount of money in exchange for your time. 2 | The Gig Economy (Mid- to High Urgency, Low Upside) If you are willing to put forth slightly more effort than keystroking, you can explore the gig economy. The gig economy was born after the Great Recession of 2008 as a way to empower people who had extra time to earn money taking on small tasks, powered by technology. This gave rise to ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft, grocery delivery companies like Instacart and Amazon Fresh, and handyman services such as taskrabbit.com.

…

Last, as these companies grow and more workers sign up to earn more through the platforms, your earning potential can decrease due to a growing number of people making themselves available in your area. But assuming you are willing to take on these risks, have some free time, and are looking for a noncommittal way to earn extra money, jobs in the gig economy are one of your best bets. In the past decade, the gig economy has expanded to include newer digital platforms that enable professionals to earn income based on their individual talents. One example is Fiverr, which is an online marketplace where skilled workers can exchange labor around the globe. Users can find everything from graphic designers, website developers, and writers to video editors within minutes and at a fraction of the cost compared with hiring a professional agency.

…

As Kendra discovered, at some point most of us will brush up against barriers at work, whether it’s unfair hiring practices or inconvenient layoffs that prevent us from moving up and making more money. The bottom line is that we can’t depend on our jobs alone to give us what we need or want. Your approach to creating an income portfolio can look like participating in the gig economy, starting your own business, or even investing in real estate as Kendra did. We’ll go in depth into some of the approaches in chapter 6, but for now we want to focus on one of the best and most popular ways to create income: real estate. Next to investments in the stock market, real estate has played a significant role in creating most of the world’s millionaires.

Fair Shot: Rethinking Inequality and How We Earn
by Chris Hughes
Published 20 Feb 2018

Of all of the effects that these economic forces have unleashed, the most pronounced is the destruction of full-time jobs and the rise of contract labor, often symbolized by the Uber drivers of the “gig economy.” Ironically, technology has taken us backward and made jobs look more like what they were for most of our country’s history: poorly paid and precarious. We tend to think that the gig economy is a new phenomenon, but the mid-twentieth century was a brief interlude in a long history in which jobs were more often than not unreliable. Before the second half of the twentieth century, work was more likely to be at home on the farm or in a short-term stint somewhere, in the kinds of jobs my grandfather had as a young man.

…

Working Paper no. 19836, National Bureau of Economic Research, April 2016. http://www.nber.org/papers/w19836. Manyika, James, Jacques Bughin, Susan Lund, Jan Mischke, Kelsey Robinson, and Deepa Mahajan. “Independent Work: Choice, Necessity, and the Gig Economy.” McKinsey Global Institute, October 2016. https://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/employment-and-growth/independent-work-choice-necessity-and-the-gig-economy. Marinescu, Ioana. “No Strings Attached: The Behavioral Effects of U.S. Unconditional Cash Transfer Programs.” Roosevelt Institute, May 11, 2017. http://rooseveltinstitute.org/no-strings-attached/. Marr, Chuck, Chye-Ching Huang, Arloc Sherman, and Brandon Debot.

…

A single worker at Walmart who works 25 hours a week for $10 an hour would see her income increase from $13,000 to $19,000. The guaranteed income would create a floor below which people could not fall, a reliable foundation for people to build on. It wouldn’t be enough money on its own for anyone to live on. It would supplement income from other sources like formal labor, a job in the gig economy, informal work, or other government benefits. Everyone who contributes to their community would earn the income, even if they’re not making money in the formal economy. That would include mothers and fathers of young kids, adults caring for aging parents, and college students. A fruit picker or Lyft driver would have a monthly cash stipend they could plan on, even if it were a bad season or if fewer people needed rides one particular month.

The Raging 2020s: Companies, Countries, People - and the Fight for Our Future
by Alec Ross
Published 13 Sep 2021

Dolber worked as an adjunct professor at California State University San Marcos and was in the process of writing a book on Jewish labor organizing in the early 20th century. Most adjunct faculty—the independent contractors of academia—earn less than $35,000 per year. With his class schedule changing each semester, Dolber needed some extra cash. He also saw rideshare driving as a research opportunity—what better way to study the gig economy than to join it? So off he went in his silver Honda Civic, shuttling passengers around the concrete jungle of Los Angeles County. Dolber first learned of Rideshare Drivers United at an academic conference. He decided to attend one of its meetings in Los Angeles, and while there he crossed paths with Ivan Pardo.

…

At the same time, the group had more than 1,400 members weigh in on different policies they would like to change in the rideshare industry. Leaders tailored their platform, the Drivers Bill of Rights, based on the responses they received from drivers. “One of the big problems in organizing in the gig economy is that there’s no central space … no factory floor where workers meet. Social media has provided an outlet for that,” Dolber told me. But while technology can enable an organization, he noted it is not a substitute for motivated members. “We’ve been able to bat above our weight in relation to what other unions would expect to have in terms of their numbers relative to the workforce.

…

The trick has been to use the technology as a tool … to actually build the relationships. We don’t work because of the technology, we work because we actually have some really good organizers who are putting in a lot of time and effort, and because the drivers are pissed. I think the technology in some ways has become a necessity because the gig economy disperses workers. It makes sense that a technology that allows for that disbursement then allows for them to reconnect.” By March 25, 2019, Rideshare Drivers United had grown to three thousand members. After Uber reduced per-mile pay for Los Angeles–area drivers by 25 percent, the group mobilized a citywide strike.

Paint Your Town Red
by Matthew Brown
Published 14 Jun 2021

The contemporary working class contains significant sections of workers who have historically not been unionised — either retail and service workers who have traditionally been considered too transient and inchoate a workforce to organise, or “new” forms of precarious and atomised workers in the gig economy. But in the last few years, these same sectors have been emerging as militant and organising successfully — the UK alone has seen actions in defence of pay and conditions by workers at Deliveroo, Greggs, Picturehouse Cinemas, McDonald’s and Wetherspoons. Responses to the pressures and exploitation of precarious and gig-economy work, by the workers directly affected by it, show the potential for positive change — even in conditions where ordinary people seem relatively powerless.

…

The alter-globalisation and international protest movements of the past few decades, from the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999 to Occupy, Black Lives Matter, and the numerous movements against environmental destruction, have played an important role in making visible the crisis’ global scale. Additionally, the organisational capacity of working people has been disrupted by decades of direct attacks on trade unions and privatisation of industries, and by the shift in the labour market towards casualised and precarious employment and the gig economy, meaning that established ways of defending jobs and conditions are decreasingly effective, or even possible.3 However, as shown in the resurgence of autonomous and non-traditional unions like the IWW and IWGB, and their inclusion of many traditionally non-unionised sectors and workers including young people and migrants, these conditions can be met by adapting methods of organising and pressure rather than by giving up.

…

Jobs in these sectors, despite their vital importance, tend to be insecure and poorly paid, and are dominated by young, female, BAME and migrant workers. As the pandemic took hold in the UK, the government’s lack of preparation and inefficient provision of protective equipment forced NHS staff to engage in frontline care without adequate protection, while those in precarious and gig-economy jobs which offered no pay for time taken off for illness, shielding or self-isolation were forced to either risk lives by continuing to work or go without a wage. Responses to lockdown — from the UK government pouring billions into the economy after decades of decrying and denying the possibility of increased state spending, to the revelation that remote working rather than costly, exhausting and environmentally damaging commuting is possible for millions, to the networks of mutual aid which developed spontaneously in many neighbourhoods — showed that previous economic and social certainties were never set in stone.

Vassal State
by Angus Hanton
Published 25 Mar 2024

Labour as a commodity, brokered from California While digital platforms now dominate the markets in goods and services, they are also transforming the labour market. One in seven of the UK workforce (4.4 million people) now gets work through a platform.41 These so-called ‘gig economy workers’ may often seem invisible, even if they do bring us our pizzas from Just Eat or Deliveroo and they deliver ‘your stuff’ from Amazon. These platforms have grown really fast: in the four years before 2020 the number of such workers doubled. They are working in what is often labelled the ‘gig economy’, a term implying that it is cool, flexible, individual, but the reality is that it is often tough, impersonal and insecure. Whatever the conditions, jobs are found through an app, which is often a US-owned platform taking a fee for matching workers with work.

…

But the official IRS numbers contradict this, and if you include recent US acquisitions of UK businesses and the effect of the gig economy the numbers are far higher. The 2020 IRS statistics – the latest available – show that, on an official basis, the largest US multinationals employ 1,333,727 British workers, but that doesn’t include the Brits working for the many smaller US employers.29 And 2022 saw an extra 110,000 workers added by a single takeover, when US private equity won the bidding for Morrisons supermarkets.30 On top of this, there are at least 400,000 gig economy workers, of whom more than 100,000 are making deliveries working through platforms like Amazon Flex.31 Added to these are the 70,000-plus Uber drivers who were nominally self-employed until 2021.32 It is reasonable to extrapolate that more than 2 million Brits work for US organisations, or about twice the figure casually estimated by establishment figures on both sides of the Atlantic.

…

v=3Fx5Q8xGU8k&ab_channel=YCombinator. 40 Marc Andreessen, ‘Why software is eating the world’, Andreessen Horowitz [website] (20 August 2011), https://a16z.com/why-software-is-eating-the-world/. 41 ‘Seven ways platform workers are fighting back’ [PDF], TUC [website], p. 3, https://www.tuc.org.uk/sites/default/files/2021-11/PlatformEssaysWithPollingData2.pdf. 42 Robert Booth, ‘Gig economy threatens government finances, says May adviser’, Guardian [website] (30 November 2016), https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/nov/30/gig-economy-threatens-government-finances-says-may-adviser. 5. Life-as-a-Service: The Twin Treadmills of Subscriptions and Debt 1 ‘Trip Adler’, Quote.org [website], https://quote.org/author/trip-adler-49853. 2 For more on Benioff, see Marc Benioff and Carlye Adler, Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company – and Revolutionized an Industry (San Francisco: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). 3 Marilyn Much, ‘How Salesforce’s Marc Benioff revolutionized the software industry’, Investor’s Business Daily [website] (11 February 2019), https://www.investors.com/news/management/leaders-and-success/how-salesforces-marc-benioff-revolutionized-the-software-industry/. 4 Phil Wainewright, ‘Microsoft CEO to business: your future as a SaaS provider’, Diginomica [website] (16 March 2015), https://diginomica.com/microsoft-ceo-business-future-saas-provider. 5 Erik Bullard, ‘The escalating costs buried in your Salesforce agreement’, UpperEdge [website] (26 February 2020), https://upperedge.com/salesforce/the-escalating-costs-buried-in-your-salesforce-agreement/. 6 Mario Grunitz, ‘Everything-as-a-service: a look into the subscription-based model’, WeAreBrain [website] (30 August 2022), https://wearebrain.com/blog/everything-as-a-service/. 7 Quoted in Catrin Jones, ‘Caterpillar release cloud-based system to boost performance’, Construction Briefing [website] (23 November 2022), https://www.constructionbriefing.com/news/caterpillar-release-cloud-based-system-to-boost-performance/8024919.article. 8 ‘Power by the hour (PBH)’, AJW Group [website], https://www.ajw-group.com/services/supply-chain-management/power-by-the-hour/. 9 ‘The Princess of Wales rents a gown for the Earthshot Prize ceremony in Boston’, Harper’s Bazaar (3 December 2022), https://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk/fashion/fashion-news/a42139785/kate-middleton-rents-green-dress-earthshot-prize/; Rebecca Cohen and Madison Hall, ‘AOC only paid for her Met Gala outfit and other possible “impermissible gifts” after investigators asked about it, ethics agency finds’, Business Insider [website] (2 March 2023), https://www.businessinsider.com/aoc-ethics-prove-paid-met-gala-outfit-house-report-2023-3?

Give People Money
by Annie Lowrey
Published 10 Jul 2018

one labor activist asked me. “Do they deserve all the subsidies and all the things that we give them and their employees have to still have low-income housing and food stamps and assistance?” * * * On a sunny spring afternoon, I was sitting with a few Uber drivers, talking about the “gig economy” over beers and fries at the back of a Pittsburgh burger joint. All of them had been working with Uber to make ends meet, and in some cases were struggling to do so. They had problems with their cars, problems paying bills, problems accessing medical care, problems with insurance, problems trying to save, problems getting food on the table.

…

“Well, they didn’t compensate for me doing the calls and stuff like that, but once I would meet with the person and do a mentor session, which is usually like thirty minutes, forty-five at the max, then I would be paid $35 just for that session,” she said. “That’s pretty good money,” I said. “If you can line them up, you can do really well.” “Was that enough to live on in Pittsburgh?” “No.” Companies like Uber can pay their workers so little because they are often not employees. On-demand, gig-economy firms usually do not hire their drivers or shoppers or delivery workers, instead classifying them as contractors and buying their services. That means that the companies are not subject to minimum-wage rules. They do not need to divert their workers’ paychecks into unemployment-insurance funds or Social Security.

…

Many Uber and Lyft drivers feel the companies had misled them, promising, if not employment in a traditional sense, a stake in something. “When you sign up, they refer to you as a partner,” Seth McGrath, a forty-year-old Uber driver, chimed in, as everyone around the table nodded. “Which is so not true. They keep you at arm’s length, right? You can’t call anyone. You can’t talk to a warm body.” The sudden rise of gig-economy jobs in many ways feels like the apotheosis of the past half century of workplace trends. Private-equity partners and venture capitalists have shunted billions and billions of dollars to start-ups seeking to disrupt brick-and-mortar businesses, vault over workplace protections, pay peanuts, employ close to no one, and offer no benefits or job security.

The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism
by Arun Sundararajan
Published 12 May 2016

Beyond Owyang’s “collaborative economy”—favored over “sharing economy” by the authors Rachel Botsman and Robin Chase, and, somewhat ironically, by OuiShare—writers and thinkers since 2010 have experimented with the use of the terms “gig economy,” “peer economy,” “renting economy,” and “on-demand economy” (the latter deemed most accurate by the venture capitalist Chris Dixon11). A study by Fortune magazine of term usage in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post revealed that “sharing economy” was used five times as frequently as “on-demand economy” and “gig economy” in the first six months of 2015, but that the latter two terms were gaining popularity.12 Before I delve into the intellectual precursors to today’s sharing economy, I’d like to consider the definitions implicit in two influential books that have appeared concurrent with the mainstream emergence of the sharing economy—Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers’s What’s Mine Is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption (2010) and Lisa Gansky’s The Mesh (2010)—and look as well at the ideas in Alex Stephany’s more recent book, The Business of Sharing (2015).

…

I have heard Teran discuss this at two separate events in the second half of 2015: the TAP Conference in New York on October 1, and the White House Summit on Worker Voice, October 7. See an op-ed by Sapone at http://qz.com/448846/the-on-demand-economy-doesnt-have-to-imitate-uber-to-win/. 6. Mark Warner, “Asking Tough Questions about the Gig Economy,” Washington Post, June 18, 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/asking-tough-questions-about-the-gig-economy/2015/06/18/b43f2d0a-1461-11e5-9ddc-e3353542100c_story.html. 7. Quoted in Christina Reynolds, “Reality Check: Hillary Clinton and the Sharing Economy,” The Briefing, July 16, 2015. https://www.hillaryclinton.com/p/briefing/updates/2015/07/16/reality-check-sharing-economy/. 8.

…

,” Blog posted October 29, 2011. http://john-joseph-horton.com/should-online-labor-markets-set-a-minimum-wage/. 16. Decisions and Orders of the National Labor Relations Board, v. 344, December 16, 2004, through August 17, 2005. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. 17. Mark R. Warner, “Asking Tough Questions about the Gig Economy.” Washington Post, June 18, 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/asking-tough-questions-about-the-gig-economy/2015/06/18/b43f2d0a-1461-11e5-9ddc-e3353542100c_story.html. 18. ”Common Ground for Independent Workers,” WTF, November 10, 2015, https://medium.com/the-wtf-economy/common-ground-for-independent-workers-83f3fbcf548f#.nxpr7mck5. 19. https://fu-web-storage-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/content/filer_public/c2/06/c2065a8a-7f00-46db-915a-2122965df7d9/fu_freelancinginamericareport_v3-rgb.pdf. 20.

The People vs Tech: How the Internet Is Killing Democracy (And How We Save It)
by Jamie Bartlett
Published 4 Apr 2018

Enforcement of minimum wages and sick pay in the gig or broader ‘precarious’ sector is derisory and needs to be toughened up. We also need to reverse the trend of profit accruing disproportionately to capital rather than labour. One way to do that is for governments to make it easier for members of the gig economy – drivers, cyclists, handymen – to become unionised, for example requiring gig economy companies to support a platform for their workers to organise. A competitive economy and an independent civil society FAIR TRADE BROWSING We users have built the modern mega-monopolies, and our ongoing addiction to free digital services (and cheap taxis) is making them stronger.

…

* For now at least – plenty of robotics companies are working to overcome Moravec’s Paradox, especially as computing power increases. * Uber and Deliveroo are part of an increasingly important sort of industry: the gig economy encompasses companies that monetise everything from borrowing cars (RelayRides), helping with daily tasks (TaskRabbit), lending bikes (Liquid) or money (Lending Club) and selling home Wi-Fi (Fon) or clothes (NeighborGoods). According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, approximately 1.3 million people are already working in the gig economy in the UK this number is predicted to grow substantially in the next few years. * Some of them are no doubt thinking of Karl Marx’s vision of a communist paradise, where people could ‘hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner’

…

The great defence against these trends for much of the twentieth century were trade unions, which ensured that the spoils of corporate profit were spread around. The unions’ slow decline has been disastrous for wealth equality and – in a cruel twist – new technology is likely to further militate against worker unionisation, by both making it harder for ‘gig economy’ workers to band together, and by giving bosses new ways to monitor and control their workforce.* At the most extreme end of this economic bifurcation, the world’s richest eight men own more than the bottom half of the world’s population – and four of them are the founders of technology companies.8 * * * • • • This is not a book about the economics of digital technology – there are plenty of those already – but about politics.

The Great Demographic Reversal: Ageing Societies, Waning Inequality, and an Inflation Revival
by Charles Goodhart and Manoj Pradhan
Published 8 Aug 2020

But what if public policy to maintain aggregate demand and full employment has its main practical domestic effect on low productivity service industries, and the ‘gig economy’? A plausible hypothesis. Let us put the question another way; why would such technological developments change the slope and/or position of the Phillips curve? With the same level of overall unemployment, why would the associated aggregate wage/price outcome be less? Here the suggestion is that workers in the unskilled (gig) economy may have less relative bargaining power, and are less unionised, than those who previously worked in semi-skilled areas. Perhaps; but this leads on to the next two issues which relate more directly to the comparative bargaining power of employees and employers, of workers and capitalists. 7.3.3 Concentration and Monopoly Power There is considerable evidence that concentration and monopoly power have been increasing in private sector industries in the USA in recent decades, see Stiglitz (2019, especially Chapter 3 and the footnotes relating to the prior literature) and Philippon (2019).

…

Even if banks could be recapitalised by the government, SOEs that wrote down substantial loans would not receive any further funding, and would probably have to lay off a substantial part of the workforce. Instead, banks ‘evergreened’ the loans granted to SOEs and allowed them to stay operational. The presence of ‘zombie’ firms in China is therefore at least partly a function of societal and political constraints. Instead of mass layoffs, workers voluntarily left for jobs in urban areas in the gig economy, or were let go in small numbers when SOEs merged. With capacity already having been cut, the slow release of labour from the manufacturing sector will actually raise the capital/labour ratio in the manufacturing sector and hence productivity. Consumption, however, is likely to remain subdued.

…

Fixing the labour ‘leakage’: Manufacturing and property in China (i.e. ‘Old China’) hard-landed back in 2015. Since then, activity in Old China has been range-bound at best, and falling in the aftermath of the campaign against shadow banking and a trade war in 2018 and 2019. Labour is moving to the cities and into the myriad services that the gig economy is creating. Once the ranks of labour in the SOEs thin out (a process that is already underway but will still take years to reach critical mass), cancelling the debt will cause far fewer negative spillovers. Second, debt-equity swaps are ongoing, but will take some time to make a dent in debt levels.

A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend Them Back
by Bruce Schneier
Published 7 Feb 2023

The response by these companies to state and local governments’ attempts to patch the vulnerabilities upon which they rely demonstrates how far they will go. Following a 2018 California State Supreme Court ruling and the 2019 state law mentioned above, several gig economy companies banded together to push a referendum (Proposition 22) that would remove many employee protections from their gig workers: employee classification, wage floors, unemployment insurance, healthcare insurance, and so on. Led by Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash, gig economy companies spent $200 million to support this referendum and convince workers that it was in their interests to endorse it. The measure passed in 2020, rolling back California’s efforts to protect workers.

…

In addition, Airbnb often deployed property owners as grassroots lobbyists. Airbnb would send a message out to owners saying the city was threatening their ability to make money, even sending information about specific meetings the hosts should attend. These companies are just two examples of the “gig economy,” which is characterized by attempts to hack labor law, consumer protection law, and other laws and regulations. TaskRabbit, Handy, and DoorDash all employ the same hacks. Amazon does it too, running what’s basically a private Uber-like system for its delivery vehicles. Because those drivers are independent contractors, the company can ignore all sorts of laws that conventional delivery drivers must follow.

…

Because those drivers are independent contractors, the company can ignore all sorts of laws that conventional delivery drivers must follow. That companies hack regulations is a surprise to no one. What’s important here, especially when talking about ride sharing, short-term rental, and short-term loan companies, is that regulatory evasion is central to their business model. Many “disruptive” gig economy services would be completely unviable if forced to comply with the same regulations as the “normal” businesses they compete with. As a result, they—and their venture capital backers—are willing to spend unbelievable sums of money to combat these regulations. This has two implications. The first is obvious: their regulation-compliant competitors are put at a disadvantage.

Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?
by Brett Christophers
Published 17 Nov 2020

This can result in a cheaper and more flexible supply of labour services, but at the expense of precarious conditions of work and employment for workers.85 If the UK government was minded to turn a blind eye to such conclusions, it will have become harder for it to do so since the publication in February 2018 of a report on the experiences of individuals in the gig economy specifically in the UK, which came to similarly damning conclusions – albeit featherbedded with the odd nugget of positivity – and which was commissioned, what is more, by its own Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Where the gig economy represents the main source of a worker’s income, such individuals suffer from ‘precariousness in terms of a lack of employment rights’. The majority of gig-economy workers receive ‘no formal training and limited informal or on-the-job training’. There is scant opportunity for career progression.

…

Because, while it is true that platform rentiers, like many other companies, frequently mask their real ‘employee’ numbers through outsourcing, it is nonetheless also true that they tend to be less labour-intensive overall than most ‘traditional’ businesses.75 This matters, because, as Sandbu says, such rentiers’ ‘vanishingly small need for human employees relative to the value they capture means that very little of the returns to investment need to be dissipated to pay for labour’.76 Much of the debate over the implications of the rise of platform rentierism for workers has dealt, unsurprisingly, with what I identified earlier as labour platforms – those where what is bought and sold through the platform is primarily human labour power itself, in what is often referred to as the gig economy. Such platforms – the likes of Uber, TaskRabbit, Deliveroo, Upwork, and so forth – essentially make, or rather remake, labour markets, insofar as they connect buyers and owner-sellers of labour power and the services it can deliver. One of the key concerns voiced by employment lawyers and gig economy workers themselves has long been that, because individuals securing work through a platform intermediary are not – or at least have generally not been legally recognized as – employees of the platform (or even of companies to whom the platform operator might outsource drudge work), they do not enjoy employee benefits, and are thus uniquely vulnerable to monopoly pricing in the form of elevated commissions.

…

77 There has certainly been robust resistance to the immiseration of gig economy workers, much of it centred on precisely this question of employment status.78 Moreover, there have been some noteworthy, headline-grabbing wins. In 2016, for instance, an employment tribunal ruled that Uber’s London drivers should be treated as employees rather than self-employed contractors, and were therefore entitled to holiday pay, paid rest breaks and the minimum wage.79 Yet Uber and its ilk, in their turn, have stubbornly resisted all efforts to constrain their ability to squeeze gig-economy workers and deny them their rights. Uber, for example, immediately appealed the 2016 employment tribunal ruling.

The Glass Half-Empty: Debunking the Myth of Progress in the Twenty-First Century
by Rodrigo Aguilera
Published 10 Mar 2020

In fact, the grand majority of “gig” workers in the Western world work through offline intermediaries like temp agencies, often working de facto jobs for a single employer without any of the benefits of a formal contract. Although gig economy employers (and sadly some governments) boast about the benefits of flexibility, it should be obvious that the main incentive for employers is cost: in a country like the US with a corporatist social protection regime — that is, one tied to holding down a formal job — employers can avoid paying benefits that can amount to as much as 30% of an employee’s wage. Estimating the size of the gig economy is not easy, but when the Economist boasts of a “jobs boom” in 2019 while claiming that the gig economy “accounts for only around 1% of jobs”, they are probably referring only to those with online intermediaries.12 A broader definition of all independent workers suggests as many as 20–30% of the entire working population of the US and EU operate under such arrangements, nearly a third of which do so out of necessity.13 Figure 3.2: Why the unemployment numbers don’t tell the whole story Notes: The global financial crisis led to a massive destruction of formal jobs in the UK, and their replacement by self-employment and part-time work.

…

, BBC Worklife, https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20170530-the-avocado-toast-index-how-many-breakfasts-to-buy-a-house 3 Belfield, C. et al., “Higher Education Funding in England: Past, Present and Options for the Future”, Institute for Fiscal Studies, 5 Jul. 2017, https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/9334 4 “Student Debt and the Class of 2017”, The Institute for College Access and Success, 28 Oct. 2018, https://ticas.org/affordability-2/student-debt-and-class-2017/ 5 Table 330.10 in “Digest of Education Statistics 2017”, National Center for Education Statistics, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d17/ 6 Friedman, Z., “Student Loan Statistics in 2019: A $1.5 Trillion Crisis”, Forbes, 25 Feb. 2019,. https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2019/02/25/student-loan-debt-statistics-2019/#4017ecc8133f 7 Marcus, J., “New Analysis Shows Problematic Boom in Higher Ed Administrators”, NECIR, 6 Feb. 2014, https://www.necir.org/2014/02/06/new-analysis-shows-problematic-boom-in-higher-ed-administrators/ 8 Conway, W., “University seeks £600 million bond to fund controversial project”, Varsity, 27 Apr. 2018, https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/15354 9 Parveen N., “Universities Staff Put Trips to Vegas and Strip Club on Expenses”, Guardian, 7 Aug. 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/aug/07/universities-staff-put-trips-to-vegas-and-strip-club-on-expenses 10 “QS World University Rankings 2019”, QS Top Universities, https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2019 11 Although online platforms like Uber and Deliveroo have become the face of the gig economy, in reality far more workers are contracted informally through contract firms and other forms of off-line outsourcing. 12 “The Rich World is Enjoying an Unprecedented Jobs Boom”, Economist, 23 May 2019, https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/05/23/the-rich-world-is-enjoying-an-unprecedented-jobs-boom 13 Manyika, J. et al, “Independent work: Choice, necessity, and the gig economy”, McKinsey Global Institute, Oct. 2016, https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/employment-and-growth/independent-work-choice-necessity-and-the-gig-economy 14 Katz, L.F., and Krueger, A.B., “The Rise and Nature of Alternative Work Arrangements in the United States, 1995–2015”, ILR Review, 72(2), Mar. 2019, https://doi.org/10.1177/0019793918820008 15 Bracha, A. and Burke, M., “Wage Inflation and Informal Work”, Current Policy Perspectives, 18-2, 2018, https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/current-policy-perspectives/2018/wage-inflation-and-informal-work 16 Lakner, C. and Milanovic, B., “Global Income Distribution : From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to the Great Recession”, World Bank Economic Review, 30(2), 2016, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/29118 17 Remes, J. et al., “Solving the productivity puzzle”, McKinsey Global Institute, Feb. 2018, https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/regions-in-focus/solving-the-productivity-puzzle 18 Farrell, D. et al, “Accounting for the cost of US health care: A new look at why Americans spend more”, McKinsey Global Institute, Dec. 2008, https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/accounting-for-the-cost-of-us-health-care 19 “A Typical American Birth Costs as Much as Delivering a Royal Baby”, Economist, 23 Apr. 2018, https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/04/23/a-typical-american-birth-costs-as-much-as-delivering-a-royal-baby 20 Greene, B., “When Childbirth Cost $100”, CyroCell, 31 Oct. 2018, https://www.cryo-cell.com/blog/april-2017/when-childbirth-cost-100-dollars 21 “The Graduate Employment Gap: Expectation Versus Reality”, CIPD, Nov. 2017, https://www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/work/skills/graduate-employment-gap-report 22 “Home Ownership and Renting: Demographics”, House of Commons Library, 9 Jun. 2017, https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/CBP-7706 23 In Enlightenment Now (pg. 254) Pinker quotes some estimates made in a 2013 Wall Street Journal piece that supposedly debunk the “myth of a stagnant middle class”.

…

However, most of them will then also enter a labor market where wages have remained largely stagnant for the entirety of the lifetime of a young millennial professional, or grown so little as to have not caught up with higher costs of living. The unluckiest of the bunch will end up working in the so-called “gig economy”, where they will be legally treated as self-employed entrepreneurs when in reality they are little more than serfs to a taxi or takeaway app,11 often juggling more than one of these jobs while getting no paid holiday entitlement, no paid sick leave, and no employer pension contributions either. But the gig economy is only the tip of the iceberg of modern worker precarity, mostly because it is most commonly associated with an online intermediary. In fact, the grand majority of “gig” workers in the Western world work through offline intermediaries like temp agencies, often working de facto jobs for a single employer without any of the benefits of a formal contract.

Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China's Countryside
by Xiaowei Wang
Published 12 Oct 2020

To meet someone who grew up with the expectation that he would have to take over a stale job, but who now runs his own agricultural service team using drones, making more money than his parents, is the kind of dream story that would be advertised all over San Francisco as a billboard for the gig economy. I can imagine the ad on BART trains: No college education? No problem. Turn your passion for flying remote controlled airplanes into a career as a drone pilot. Be your own boss. Support local farmers. It’s a win-win. I don’t know if Wei is truly his own boss, but I do know that he is now someone else’s boss, someone’s teacher and mentor. Unlike in the gig economy, his wages are not determined by an algorithm, nor did he swap a human boss for a computer one. He had, in the parlance of contemporary white-collar jobs, “opportunities for growth.”

…

Rather than seeing him and others like him as mere drone operators or contractors, XAG takes the feedback of its drone pilots seriously, involving them in the process of updating drone hardware and features. He also wouldn’t be where he is now without the luxury that most Chinese parents traditionally offer their children: free room and board until they get married. Most of all, it’s clear to me that Wei just loves drones, and he genuinely loves being part of XAG. While the gig economy workers I’ve talked to see themselves as free agents, temporarily making money under a company they typically were ambivalent about, Wei was excited by XAG. One of his hobbies is photography, and he’s developed a reputation with XAG marketing as a top-notch drone photographer. He shows me images of beautiful rice paddies and swaths of wheat.

…

They tell me they perform office tasks, dealing with admin duties and customer complaints. There are only about twenty couriers today in the city of Xifeng. Meituan is just getting started here. On the wall, recruitment flyers are tacked everywhere. The salary breakdown is also posted on the wall. Unlike most gig economy drivers in the United States, Meituan couriers are paid a base salary of RMB 2,000 (US$280) a month. They don’t receive any benefits besides accident insurance, so they rely on their government-provided health insurance. Each delivery earns RMB 4 on top of their base salary. Everything else listed on the salary breakdown sheet is a fine.

The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy
by Nick Romeo
Published 15 Jan 2024

Julian Bingley, “Exploited Gig Workers Need Industry Reform Claims New Flinders University Study,” ZDNET, May 30, 2022, https://www.zdnet.com/article/exploited-gig-workers-need-industry-reform-claims-new-flinders-university-study/. 7. Alex J. Wood, Nicholas Martindale, and Vili Lehdonvirta, “Dynamics of Contention in the Gig Economy: Rage Against the Platform, Customer or State?,” New Technology, Work and Employment, September 27, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12216. 8. Alexia Fernández Campbell, “The Recession Hasn’t Ended for Gig Economy Workers,” Vox, May 28, 2019, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/5/28/18638480/gig-economy-workers-wellbeing-survey. 9. Nick Higham, “Turning on the Waterworks,” History Today 72, no. 10 (October 2022), https://www.historytoday.com/archive/history-matters/turning-waterworks; and Nick Higham, The Mercenary River: Private Greed, Public Good: A History of London’s Water (London: Headline, 2022), passim. 10.

…

Gilbert, of the forest brawls, is a restaurant manager. 5 Disrupting the Disruptors Gig Work as a Public Utility One October morning in 2020, a week before California voters passed Proposition 22, denying gig workers the legal status of employees and associated benefits such as paid sick time and unemployment insurance, an Oakland nonprofit hosted a talk entitled “Beyond the Gig Economy.” Companies such as Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash had spent over $200 million campaigning for Proposition 22, outspending their opponents by a factor of ten to one in the costliest ballot fight in the state’s history.1 For the companies, this was a good investment: the valuations of Uber and Lyft increased by $13 billion after the proposition passed.2 For their workers, it was a different story.

…

In his early sixties, with dark hair, a lean face, and glasses, Rowan has a youthful affect and a quick wit honed through a former career as a journalist and TV host. He speaks in rapid, precise sentences bursting with data and details. Throughout the fall, Prop 22 had been a subject of intense debate. Those who opposed the measure wanted to move “beyond the gig economy” by regulating its dominant players, compelling them to offer workers a guaranteed minimum wage, paid sick leave, and other benefits. Rowan supported this, but he had a different idea for how to transcend the exploitative model of the gig companies. He called Prop 22 a “tempest in a teapot” and “a sideshow,” urging the audience not to think of it as “some sort of endgame in the fight for precarious workers’ rights.”

Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization?
by Aaron Dignan
Published 1 Feb 2019

But beyond that, the benefits in financial acumen, stewardship, and collective responsibility that this approach produces are unparalleled. Gig Economy. The platforms behind the gig economy like to talk about their movement as the savior of the American worker, empowering otherwise underemployed individuals to be their own bosses and live the entrepreneurial dream. After all, the drivers and laborers who make Uber, Lyft, Grubhub, DoorDash, Postmates, Fiverr, and TaskRabbit work can choose when and where they work with unprecedented control. Realistically, though, many of the workers in the gig economy need money. That’s why they’re side hustling. They’re underemployed or unemployed, and the minimal extra income they earn from these services—85 percent make less than $500 a month—is helping them make ends meet.

…

“title ‘Director of Engineering’”: Reed Hastings, “Netflix Culture: Freedom and Responsibility,” SlideShare, August 1, 2009, www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664. deck to invent the future: Stacey Leasca, “These Are the Highest Paying Jobs in the Gig Economy,” Forbes, July 17, 2017, www.forbes.com/sites/sleasca/2017/07/17/highest-paying-jobs-gig-economy-lyft-taskrabbit-airbnb/#e2d9eeb7b644. wage policy and productivity: MIT Press, summary of Wage Dispersion: Why Are Similar Workers Paid Differently? by Dale T. Mortensen, accessed September 1, 2018, https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/wage-dispersion.

…

They’re underemployed or unemployed, and the minimal extra income they earn from these services—85 percent make less than $500 a month—is helping them make ends meet. That doesn’t sound like the ultimate in entrepreneurial freedom. But there’s something more troubling about the fact that one in four Americans is now participating in the gig economy. By turning work into a series of app-mediated transactions, we’re actually narrowing the scope of their participation to something closer to the opposite of entrepreneurialism. When you work at Lyft full time, you’re (hopefully) looking for ways to grow and serve Lyft all the time. If you see something worth doing, you might just do it.

The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-First Century
by Ryan Avent
Published 20 Sep 2016

Etsy makes it possible for the person who made a hobby of creating sewing-sampler wall hangings with rock lyrics to find people who want to pay money for just such a product, and perhaps to sell enough as a result to earn a modest income.11 Some analyses suggest that these sorts of niche work could become part of a ‘gig economy’ that provides supplemental income and work for lots of people. That is, as ‘regular’ work, in well-defined jobs for large employers, provides workers with less wage growth and fewer hours, they will increasingly turn to a few hours driving an Uber, or a side business selling craft goods, to top up their income. In time, perhaps, the gig economy could become the regular economy; the flow of earning opportunities could grow large enough that workers could feel secure in their ability to earn a living through piecework. In emerging economies, the gig economy could permit workers to make the leap directly from the poverty of the developing world to full participation in global markets; a handful of residents of Mumbai slums have boosted their incomes tremendously through participation in a programme offered by eBay, which allows them to sell their wares (such as handmade leather goods) to customers around the world rather than to those in nearby Mumbai neighbourhoods.

…

In emerging economies, the gig economy could permit workers to make the leap directly from the poverty of the developing world to full participation in global markets; a handful of residents of Mumbai slums have boosted their incomes tremendously through participation in a programme offered by eBay, which allows them to sell their wares (such as handmade leather goods) to customers around the world rather than to those in nearby Mumbai neighbourhoods. How powerful could this gig economy become? It is growing every day, though from a very small base. Uber, one of the larger contributors to it, has several hundred thousand drivers worldwide.12 In a global labour force of billions that doesn’t begin to move the needle. Part-time work increased in importance during the economic crisis of 2008–9, but has ebbed as economic conditions have improved. Still, there is indisputably the opportunity for significant growth in the future. The question is whether the gig economy will lead to the suspension of the trilemma. The trilemma implies that to scare up enough consumer demand for ‘gigs’, the price – of the Uber trip or the TaskRabbit errand, for example – must be low.

…

A suspension of the trilemma means the arrival of a world of hyper-specialization, in which the market-expanding, match-generating power of the web becomes so powerful that most of the world’s billion workers can find themselves a tiny niche that is nonetheless lucrative enough to keep them fed and housed, but which isn’t, in the end, doable with software. We can hold out hope for that odd, intriguing world, but we probably should not hold our breath. The more probable future scenario is one in which new opportunities created by technology – through fracking, or through the disruption of service industries, or through the gig economy – destroy more work than they create, but also reduce the cost of critical goods and services for most consumers. That world has the potential to be a better one, and real standards of living could increase in that world even as pay to workers stagnates. But realizing that world almost certainly implies a significant evolution in societies’ social-safety institutions.

The Economic Singularity: Artificial Intelligence and the Death of Capitalism
by Calum Chace
Published 17 Jul 2016

Are the people hired out by these organisations “micro-entrepreneurs” or “instaserfs” - members of a new “precariat”, forced to compete against each other on price for low-end work with no benefits? Are they operating in a network economy or an exploitation economy? Is the sharing economy actually a selfish economy? Whichever side of this debate you come down on, the gig economy is a significant development: a survey by accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers found that as many as 7% of US adults were involved in it.[cclxv] But our concern here is not whether the gig economy is a fair one. It is whether it can prevent the automation of jobs by machine intelligence leading to widespread unemployment. The answer to that is surely No: as time goes by, however finely we slice and dice jobs into tasks, more and more of those tasks are vulnerable to automation by machine intelligence as it improves its capabilities at an exponential rate.

…

As we have seen, robots are becoming increasingly flexible, nimble and adaptable. They can also increasingly be remotely operated. Most of the situations a driver could deal with on the open road will soon be within the capabilities of a robot which does not need sleep, food or salary. On the rare occasion when human intervention is needed, the gig economy[ccx] can probably furnish one quickly enough. Once it is economically feasible to replace human drivers with machines, it is a very short step to being economically compelling. Drivers account for 25-35% of the cost of a trucking operation.[ccxi] You can't escape the invisible hand of economics for long.

…

Your job is the way you participate in the economy, and earn the money to buy the goods and services that you need to survive, and enjoy a good standard of living. If a machine carries out a job, there is no point a human replicating the work it is doing: she will not be paid, so she will have to look for some other way to generate an income. The gig economy We saw in chapter 3.2 how consultants at McKinsey noted that jobs can be analysed into tasks, some of which can be automated with current machine intelligence technology, and some of which cannot. This is an important insight and suggests that jobs will be sliced and diced, with some tasks being automated, and other tasks being retained by the human who previously did the whole job.

Reinventing Capitalism in the Age of Big Data
by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Thomas Ramge
Published 27 Feb 2018

displaces blue-collar and low- and middle-income: Ibid., 115–116. temporary gigs with limited or no benefits: Ian Hathaway and Mark Muro, “Tracking the Gig Economy: New Numbers,” Brookings Institution, October 13, 2016, https://www.brookings.edu/research/tracking-the-gig-economy-new-numbers; the gig economy is not limited to advanced economies; see, e.g., Mark Graham, Isis Hjorth, and Vili Lehdonvirta, “Digital Labour and Development: Impacts of Global Digital Labour Platforms and the Gig Economy on Worker Livelihoods,” Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, March 16, 2017, http://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/3FMTvCNPJ4SkhW9tgpWP/full.

…

For example, labor-participation statistics capture workers employed by a firm as well as the self-employed, thus obfuscating fluctuations between these two categories. The number of self-employed workers with no employees has increased substantially in the United States, from 15 million in 1997 to nearly 24 million in 2014. Researchers at the Brookings Institution believe that in part, this shift is the result of a growing “gig economy.” When self-employed white-collar workers take on temporary gigs with limited or no benefits, assignments that are often coordinated through digital platforms, they have little bargaining power over their incomes. Unlike unionized workers in old-fashioned manufacturing, they are rarely organized, and the supply of workers often outstrips demand.

…

See Great Recession/financial crisis financial intermediaries, 12, 146–156 choice expansion in, 215–216 payment solutions and, 146–147 regulations affecting, 139–140 traditional role of, 138–139 See also banks Finkel, Eli, 83, 84 Finland, 147, 191 fintechs, 11 banks investing in, 149–156 niche markets targeted by, 147, 152 worldwide investments in, 149 firms, 87–107, 109–131 Amazon as, 88–89, 106 automation in, 109, 111–112, 113–120, 128, 130–131 centralization in (see centralization) cognitive constraints and, 102–104 communicative coordination and, 26, 28–33, 90, 102 comparison of markets and, 28, 111 competition between markets and, 30, 107 decline in influence of, 12–13, 33 delegation in, 97–101, 106, 117 efficiency as focus of, 112–113 estimated number of, 28 human-centric, 214–215 internal talent management in, 126–129 intuition and heuristics in, 104–106 key difference between markets and, 32–33, 90 “noise” reduction strategies in, 100–101 organizational innovation in, 97, 110–111, 120–131 profits of, 195–197 reporting methods in, 90–97 rise in importance of, 33 shift to markets from, 10–11, 30–32, 125–126 structure of, 29–30 superstar, 195–197 tax credits for job creation proposed, 200–202 Flores, Fernando, 175–176 flying shuttle, 111 Forbes, 209 Ford, Henry, 29–30, 114 Ford Motor Company, 29–30, 31, 33, 98, 99–100 Fortune magazine, 208 Fox News, 178 Freightliner, 182 Friedman, Milton, 190 Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance, 109, 110–111, 113–114, 117, 120, 183, 188 fully automated luxury communism, 221 fundamental attribution error, 103 Funding Circle, 152, 163 Gates, Bill, 187 Gawande, Atul, 101 General Motors (GM), 98–99, 101 Germany, 134, 135, 136 gig economy, 186 Gigerenzer, Gerd, 105 Giza pyramids, 21 Glassdoor, 88 GoDaddy, 161 gold standard, 48 “Goobles,” 51 Google, 78, 110, 148, 151, 161, 196 antitrust case against, 165 feedback effects and, 30, 163, 169 prediction markets and, 50–51 Google Glass, 138 Google Shopping, 52 government, central planning for, 175–179 grain (as currency), 47 Great Depression, 51, 136 Great Famine (Soviet Union), 177 Great Recession/financial crisis, 134–135, 136, 215 See also subprime mortgage crisis Great Wall of China, 21, 24 Grünenthal, 42 Guardian, 221 Hagel, John, 31 Harvard Business Review, 99 Harvard Business School, 96 Harvard Medical School, 101 Harvard University, 45 Hayek, Friedrich August von, 39, 46–47 health care sector, 213–214 heuristics, 104–106 Higgs boson, 22 Hollerith, Herman, 96, 99 Holvi, 147 Honda, 30, 32 Huawei, 196 human choice.

Unleashed
by Anne Morriss and Frances Frei
Published 1 Jun 2020

QuikTrip, “QuikTrip Opens 800th Store, Celebrates Huge Growth Milestone in Its 60-Year History,” QuikTrip News, April 3, 2019, https://www.quiktrip.com/About/News/quiktrip-opens-800th-store-celebrates-huge-growth-milestone-in-its-60-year-history. 15. Joe Nocera, “The Good Jobs Strategy,” New York Times, July 7, 2015. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/07/opinion/joe-nocera-the-good-jobs-strategy.html. 16. Neil Irwin, “Maybe We’re Not All Going to Be Gig Economy Workers after All,” New York Times, September 15, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/15/upshot/gig-economy-limits-labor-market-uber-california.html. 17. David Gelles, “Stacy Brown-Philpot of TaskRabbit on Being a Black Woman in Silicon Valley,” New York Times, July 13, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/13/business/stacy-brown-philpot-taskrabbit-corner-office.html. 18.

…

By the way, one benefit of a great culture is that it actually pushes down employee WTS, which then grows their value surplus even more.d According to Ton, these choices generate an abundance of workforce delight that attracts and retains the best people in a talent market and unleashes them to make the business better.15 As she said to us one morning, during a walk along the Charles River (the only way we could catch her, as the entire world is excited about her work), “These aren’t just good jobs, they’re great jobs. And the firms that provide them are winning because of them.” Ton’s research is a provocative counterpoint to assumptions embedded in many of today’s business models, including the so-called “gig economy.” The standard gig business model creates a massive amount of customer delight by meeting a basic human need (e.g., food, transportation, the trash bags you just ran out of) with lightning fast, push-button convenience, all for ludicrously low prices. Because many of these services appear undifferentiated to the market, low price has emerged as a key competitive attribute, delighting consumers even further.

…

Because many of these services appear undifferentiated to the market, low price has emerged as a key competitive attribute, delighting consumers even further. The model seems to work as long as labor suppliers—contractors providing the final, consumer-facing step in the service—can capture a reasonable surplus.16 Many companies have struggled to pull this off, but an inspirational exception is TaskRabbit, the company that in many ways launched the gig economy. One of the lessons of TaskRabbit’s evolution is that even gig companies can create business models where everyone wins: customers, companies, and, yes, even suppliers. Strategic transformation at TaskRabbit TaskRabbit CEO Stacy Brown-Philpot (remember her from chapter 1?) made the leap from Google to TaskRabbit (initially in the COO role) when she felt a calling to do something new.

The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity
by Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott
Published 1 Jun 2016

The technology that connects an individual to companies who want to buy their skills is becoming more global, cheaper and more sophisticated. These connecting platforms are already proliferating, leading to growing commentary about the ‘gig economy’ and the ‘sharing economy’. Technological change reduces information costs and so enables buyers and sellers to find each other more easily as well as determine the reliability and quality of each other from independent sources. The gig economy refers to the idea that there will be a rising number of people earning their income not through full- or part-time employment, but rather through providing a series of specific tasks and commissions to multiple sequential buyers.

…

These platforms will become more significant as large corporations increasingly look to small groups or individuals for their insight and innovation, and small groups look to connect with each other to build scale and reach. Corporations will engage interested individuals and teams with prizes, partner with them for a specific project, or buy them – much as Uber bought the robotics team from Carnegie Mellon. Similar to the gig economy, the sharing economy as a commercial entity provides the promise of a flexible source of income. Through renting out spare room capacity with Airbnb, the most high-profile example, individuals can generate useful income. As well as providing a source of income, we expect these ecosystems will also help people better blend work, leisure and home.

…

After all, Jane’s generation has the greatest need to adapt to longevity and also the greatest flexibility to do so. So it is they who will lead the way in experimentation and the adoption of new stages. Being an explorer, an independent producer and creating a portfolio (for this age group by utilizing the gig economy) will all be actively used and developed. This is an age group that, perhaps more than any other, realizes the value of options and is prepared to work hard to investigate and create them. In financial theory, an option is the right to buy an asset at a fixed price. The longer the period over which an option works, the greater its value.

The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America—and How to Undo His Legacy
by David Gelles
Published 30 May 2022

What began with Welch’s forays into outsourcing—shifting workers off GE’s payroll and on to service providers—has been taken to a new extreme, with companies now turning to contractors, freelancers, and the gig economy for as much labor as possible. For companies, the incentives are unchanged: lower labor costs mean higher profits, they insist. What is new is that a whole infrastructure has been created to support this liminal state of employment, normalizing economic insecurity. Even at some of the country’s largest employers, there is a concerted effort to keep workers as close to temps as they can possibly be, with the aspiration of making people as interchangeable as the parts of a machine. The new downsizing takes many forms, depending on the industry. The rise of the gig economy has allowed new multibillion-dollar companies to be built on the backs of a shadow workforce.

…

But for many, gig work is a full-time occupation, only without the security of a steady paycheck, decent benefits, or an employer to hold accountable. The gig economy, which began as a way to connect people who needed an odd job done here and there with locals looking to make a little extra cash, has given rise to an entirely new kind of labor force. Corporations worth tens of billions of dollars, such as Uber, classify their primary workers—drivers—not as employees but as contractors, and they treat them accordingly. Gig economy companies have taken Welch’s fantasy—to “have every plant you own on a barge”—to an extreme he likely would have relished.

…

Gig economy companies have taken Welch’s fantasy—to “have every plant you own on a barge”—to an extreme he likely would have relished. Now they can operate while having practically no employees at all. Nor is it just gig economy employers playing havoc with the lives of their workers. At fast food restaurants, employees have their schedules jerked around by chains that are looking to minimize inefficiencies and make the most of lean workforces. Workers at Taco Bell sometimes have mere hours of free time between seven-hour shifts, leaving little time to care for their families or themselves. Companies like Starbucks have put workers on call for shifts that could be canceled at the last minute. Hourly employees have been scheduled to work the late shift, then open the same restaurant the next morning on just a few hours of sleep, a practice known as “clopening.”

How to Do Nothing
by Jenny Odell
Published 8 Apr 2019

Sleep deprivation is your drug of choice. You might be a doer.” Here, the idea that you would even withhold some of that time to sustain yourself with food is essentially ridiculed. In a New Yorker article aptly titled “The Gig Economy Celebrates Working Yourself to Death,” Jia Tolentino concludes after reading a Fiverr press release: “This is the jargon through which the essentially cannibalistic nature of the gig economy is dressed up as an aesthetic. No one wants to eat coffee for lunch or go on a bender of sleep deprivation—or answer a call from a client while having sex, as recommended in [Fiverr’s promotional] video.”17 When every moment is a moment you could be working, power lunch becomes power lifestyle.

…

Eric Holding and Sarah Chaplin, “The post-urban: LA, Las Vegas, NY,” in The Hieroglyphics of Space: Reading and Experiencing the Modern Metropolis, ed. Neil Leach (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2005), 190. 14. Franco Berardi, After the Future (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2011), 66. 15. Ibid., 129. 16. Bernardi, 35. 17. Jia Tolentino, “The Gig Economy Celebrates Working Yourself to Death,” New Yorker, March 22, 2017: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/jia-tolentino/the-gig-economy-celebrates-working-yourself-to-death. 18. Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It: The Results-Only Revolution (New York: Penguin, 2008), 11. 19. Berardi, 109. 20. David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology (New York: Vintage, 2011), 128–129. 21.

…

No one wants to eat coffee for lunch or go on a bender of sleep deprivation—or answer a call from a client while having sex, as recommended in [Fiverr’s promotional] video.”17 When every moment is a moment you could be working, power lunch becomes power lifestyle. Though it finds its baldest expression in things like the Fiverr ads, this phenomenon—of work metastasizing throughout the rest of life—isn’t constrained to the gig economy. I learned this during the few years that I worked in the marketing department of a large clothing brand. The office had instituted something called the Results Only Work Environment, or ROWE, which meant to abolish the eight-hour workday by letting you work whenever from wherever, as long as you got your work done. It sounded noble enough, but there was something in the name that bothered me.

Essential: How the Pandemic Transformed the Long Fight for Worker Justice
by Jamie K. McCallum
Published 15 Nov 2022

Rosenblat quoted in Bloomberg: “It was dire economic straits that gave birth to the gig economy in the first place. Uber and Lyft sprang from the 2008 financial crisis—a time when many people were willing to accept that any work was better than none at all. Americans rallied around the concept of a ‘side hustle,’ and governments effectively endorsed the practice by declining to get involved in the smartphone-based labor markets taking shape.” Joshua Brustein, “The Gig Economy Was Built to Thrive in a Downturn—Just Not This One,” Bloomberg, May 5, 2020, www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2020-05-06/the-gig-economy-was-built-to-thrive-in-a-downturn-just-not-this-one. 9.

…

Information for this statement was gathered via the link below, which has since been deleted, deemed “in violation of the Cybersecurity Law of the People’s Republic of China,” https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/ahXfoPXktDnpg-62bgMGSA. 7. “How Cooperative Gig Economy Companies Managed to Flourish During the Pandemic,” thetechnetwork.io, https://thetechnetwork.io/how-cooperative-gig-economy-companies-managed-to-flourish-during-the-pandemic/. 8. Megan Rose Dickey, “Gig Workers Have Created a Tool to Offer Mutual Aid During COVID-19 Pandemic,” Tech Crunch, March 18, 2020, https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/18/gig-workers-collective-covid-19/. 9.

…

In the wake of the recession’s economic fallout, Americans scrambled to find work, creating an opening for new start-ups to sell low-wage workers and the unemployed on the concept of a “gig” or “side hustle.”8 Once viewed as temporary, these types of jobs quickly became a permanent feature of the economy. Uber and TaskRabbit were both founded in 2008; they were joined in 2011 by Postmates, in 2012 by Instacart and Lyft, in 2013 by DoorDash, and by Shipt in 2015. The emergence of the gig economy worsened working conditions nationwide and rapidly expanded the ranks of low-wage, hyperexploited workers. Gig workers are functionally servants: they can act as your personal chauffeur, bring you dinner, do your grocery shopping, and assemble your furniture, all while the impersonal, app-based transaction lets you hire them without having to assume normal employer burdens, like safeguarding workers’ rights.

The Passenger
by AA.VV.
Published 23 May 2022

MONEY MOVES In 2020, Prop 22—also going under the title Exempts App-Based Transportation and Delivery Companies from Providing Employee Benefits to Certain Drivers Initiative Statute (the Yes on Prop 22 campaign claimed in a lawsuit that the title was biased, but the court did not agree)—was a groundbreaking proposition, not in that it was written by the corporate sector to subvert state law but because, with over $200 million in funding, it was the most expensive ballot proposal in California history. Prop 22 created a nebulous third class for gig-economy workers between independent contractor and employee, providing some additional benefits that independent contractors don’t have but falling far short of the full protection enjoyed by employees. This new third class of employment classification was obfuscated with tech-hipster jargon about entrepreneurship, partnership, and freedom, but in the end they were using the ballot initiative system as a reach past government to design their own employment laws.

…

AB5 was a state statute meant to codify a recent state supreme court decision that laid out clear delineations between an independent contractor and an employee. An independent contractor must control their own labor and time, engage in similar work on a regular basis, and be providing a service outside the scope of the business they are contracting with. Gig-economy businesses such as Uber and Lyft lobbied to have their companies placed on the exemptions list but were denied. They weren’t alone in their disapproval; musicians and truck drivers also often fell between the cracks of typical employment classification, and they, too, sought special consideration lest their professions be adversely affected.

…

Some estimates have brought this to below six dollars an hour when demand is low, less than half of any California minimum wage. What the proposition doesn’t provide is sick leave, overtime compensation, unemployment insurance, sexual harassment or discrimination protections, or the collective-bargaining rights that employees enjoy, but it also forces gig-economy workers to forego the small-business controls of independent contractors, such as cultivating their own client base or setting their own prices. It really is the worst of both worlds. Another novel aspect of Prop 22 is a small proviso that states that it would require seven-eighths of the legislature to agree to make any amendments, rather than the typical two-thirds needed, effectively quashing any legislative resistance to the measure.

The Economics of Belonging: A Radical Plan to Win Back the Left Behind and Achieve Prosperity for All
by Martin Sandbu
Published 15 Jun 2020

We all know Uber, eBay, and Airbnb, which connect buyers and providers of transport, goods, and lodging in one-off, fragmented interactions, thereby eliminating the need for businesses such as taxi firms, shops, and hotels. The actual taxis, goods delivery, and rooms still have to be where the customers physically find themselves. But the “gig economy” facilitated by online platforms also brings with it a global market for service jobs—or, rather, for piece-rate service tasks—in anything that can be done digitally and remotely. Coding, translation, copyediting, and other high-skilled and middle-class jobs are opening up to global competition even as computerised pattern recognition and artificial intelligence mean fewer people are required to accomplish the same amount of work.

…

For all these reasons, policies that improve employee representation in decision-making can potentially boost an economy’s productivity as well as enhance workers’ autonomy, agency, and sense of control directly.20 Statutory rights for nonemployment work relationships. Internet platforms such as Uber and TaskRabbit have made it possible to procure and offer work in a much more fragmented way than through traditional employment relationships. The “gig economy” may not yet be as extensive in proportion to the entire economy as the media attention would lead you to believe, but it constitutes a significant share of new jobs since the Great Recession of 2008, and it is likely to continue to grow as it becomes practical to outsource more and more tasks as “gigs”—including cognitive ones.21 That model is, moreover, well suited to technological developments that will require more frequent job changes.

…

But a fragmented workforce is a workforce with less of an organised voice or none at all, so there is a trade-off between flexibility (and the productivity that may come with it) and worker autonomy. Policy should aim to overcome this trade-off, which means finding ways to accommodate the new forms of freedom and flexibility the gig economy increasingly offers without returning to the exploitable informality of old piece-rate labour markets. In broad terms, the goal must be to ensure that workers enjoy the same balance of power vis-à-vis those they work for, regardless of their type of contract or the state of unionisation in their line of work.

Stolen: How to Save the World From Financialisation
by Grace Blakeley
Published 9 Sep 2019

Jerome Rogers, nineteen years old and with no history of mental illness, had killed himself because he was overwhelmed by debt. Jerome’s story — recently covered in a BBC documentary Killed By My Debt — is not unique. According to recent estimates, almost three million people had worked in the gig economy over the twelve months to February 2018, and the majority of them are aged between eighteen and thirty-seven.1 The same survey found that 25% of people working in the gig economy earned £7.50 per hour or less — not counting any additional expenses. Many people in the survey reported working several jobs just to make ends meet. Jerome’s reliance on various forms of unsecured debt are also a hallmark of the modern economy.

…

, European Central Bank. https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/conferences/shared/pdf/20170626_ecb_forum/T_Philippon_Is_there_an_investment_gap_in_advanced_economies_If_so_why_with_R_Dottling_and_G_Gutierrez.pdf 57 Foorhar, R. (2018) “Tech Companies are the New Investment Banks”, Financial Times, 11 February. https://www.ft.com/content/0ee3bef8-0d87-11e8-8eb7-42f857ea9f09 58 Eurostat (2018) “Non-Financial Corporations — Statistics on Financial Assets and Liabilities”, Eurostat. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Non-financial_corporations_-_statistics_on_financial_assets_and_liabilities 59 Ibid. Chapter Three Let Them Eat Houses: The Financialisation of the Household 1 Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (2018) The Characteristics of Those in the Gig Economy, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/687553/The_characteristics_of_those_in_the_gig_economy.pdf 2 Harari, D. (2018) “Household Debt: Statistics and Impact on the Economy”, House of Commons Briefing Paper 7584, 21 December. 3 BBC News (2019) “UK Household Debt Hits New Peak, Says TUC”, 7 January. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46780279 4 IPPR (2018) 5 Crouch, C. (2009) “Privatised Keynesianism: An Unacknowledged Policy Regime”, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, vol. 11 6 Strange, S (1986) Casino Capitalism, Manchester: Manchester University Press 7 Bank of England (2019) “Monthly 12 month growth rate of M4, seasonally adjusted”, Bank of England dataset LMVQJW. 8 Ryan-Collins, J., MacFarlane, L. and Lloyd, T. (2017) Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing, London: Zed Books 9 This analysis draws on: Hein (2012); Arestis, P.

…

This is partly due to the stagnation in earnings described above, but it also comes down to changes in working practices that have taken place since the crisis. Work has not just become less well-paid; it has also become more insecure. The numbers of people working part-time, on zero-hour contracts or on non-permanent contracts have all increased. Many of those working in the “gig economy” for companies such as Uber or Deliveroo also sacrifice benefits such as pensions and sick pay, meaning that their effective remuneration is even lower than what is captured in the headline wage statistics. Today, eight million people in poverty live in a working household.11 The link between employment and rising living standards has been severed.

The Capitalist Manifesto
by Johan Norberg
Published 14 Jun 2023

When researchers try to explain subjectively perceived insecurity, they can’t find that it correlates with technological change or labour market legislation. The only long-term and unambiguous correlation is that insecurity rises with the level of unemployment.30 There is a new and fast-growing part of the labour market that has much less security than the traditional one: the gig economy, where – rather than a permanent job – you have temporary, insecure assignments to drive taxis or deliver food. I must admit that when I see a food courier cycling fast in rain and headwind to deliver pizza for a few bucks, I also doubt if this is really a step forward for humanity. Even though this is a new sector and research is in its infancy, an interesting survey result is that, on average, gig workers seem to be roughly as satisfied with wages and working hours as permanent employees, even though the spread is large.31 It has to do with the fact that the absolute majority of gig workers state that they actively sought such jobs, not just because they have no alternatives.

…

When it comes to food deliveries, permanent employment means that workers must be very productive. They must, for example, cycle fast uphill in the rain, and the company must monitor them so that they know they are doing so. If you get the same salary no matter how fast you pedal, the slow cyclists will be thrown out. It thus turns out that some of the worst aspects of the gig economy are paradoxically the result of not having respected the flexible nature of the profession and wanting to regulate them as ordinary jobs. ‘And just like that, a simple bywork for anyone who can ride a bike, has turned into a qualified job for the strong, fast and physically fit,’ as economist Andreas Bergh puts it.33 The wave power of globalization Nothing I have written here is meant to imply that stories of abandoned industrial landscapes and decaying rust belts are fantasies.

…

Alan Manning & Graham Mazeine, ‘Subjective job insecurity and the rise of the precariat: Evidence from the UK, Germany and the United States’, CEP Discussion Paper no.1712, August 2020. 31. See, e.g., Thor Berger, Carl Benedikt Frey, Guy Levin, Santosh Rao Danda, ‘Uber happy? Work and well-being in the “gig economy”’, Economic Policy, vol.34, no.99, 2019. 32. Linda Weidenstedt, Andrea Geissinger & Monia Lougui, ‘Why gig as a food courier?’, Report no.15, Ratio 2020. 33. Andreas Bergh, ‘Låt giggarna gigga’, Arbetsmarknadsnytt, 2 December 2020. 34. Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, ‘All employees, manufacturing’, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ MANEMP and ‘All Employees, total nonfarm’, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ PAYEMS.

System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot
by Rob Reich , Mehran Sahami and Jeremy M. Weinstein
Published 6 Sep 2021

At two batches a year, that’s half a billion dollars of capital a year pouring into start-ups from one organization alone. As YC recently noted on its website, “Since 2005, Y Combinator has funded over 2,000 startups. Our companies have a combined valuation of over $100B,” and include names such as the gig economy companies DoorDash, Instacart, and Airbnb, as well as the self-driving car company Cruise. The YC program is so competitive that just being accepted into it is often touted as a badge of success by would-be entrepreneurs, even if their start-up ideas turn out to be failures. Not wanting to miss out on the action, in 2011 Andreessen Horowitz created a separate fund to invest $50,000 in each start-up accepted into YC’s program.

…

Big tech is also spending millions to lobby European regulators to ward off efforts to limit digital advertising, contributing to what some call a “Washingtonization of Brussels.” Those lobbying efforts are unlikely to abate anytime soon, even as those companies come under greater antitrust scrutiny. One of the recent battlefronts in tech companies’ push to influence regulation comes from California’s effort to reclassify gig economy workers, such as Uber and Lyft drivers and delivery people for companies such as DoorDash, as employees rather than contractors of the firms they work for. In 2019, the California legislature passed Assembly Bill 5 (AB 5), with the aim of reclassifying thousands of independent contractors as employees, thereby guaranteeing them numerous benefits such as minimum wage, unemployment insurance, and sick leave.

…

The proposition’s text also includes a provision that prevents the legislature from amending the provisions unless it can achieve a seven-eighths majority, a nearly impossible task. On November 3, 2020, the citizens of California voted in favor of Prop 22 by a nearly 20-point margin. The vote not only gutted AB 5 in California but also sent a clear message to other states that attempts to provide more rights for gig economy workers would be met with well-funded lobbying campaigns and would be likely to end in failure. Though it’s difficult to know the full range of reasons why voters approved the measure, the heavily funded advertising efforts of the companies whose interests were on the line were undeniable. And their ability to contact not only the drivers and delivery people who worked for them but also the users of their apps gave them a direct means of communication—and influence—with the people who would be most directly impacted by the passage of the proposition.

Power, for All: How It Really Works and Why It's Everyone's Business
by Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro
Published 30 Aug 2021

The first is that with each wave of technological change, power changes hands but doesn’t necessarily become more equally distributed. The digital revolution is one example among many of how new technologies can result in the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of a few individuals and organizations. Social entrepreneur Greg Brodsky put it this way: “Technology has disrupted almost every part of the economy: the gig economy, gaming, shopping, and how to book hotels. But the one thing the technology sector has not been willing to touch is ownership itself. In some ways, the tech sector is just recreating the wealth inequality in every other part of the economy.”81 The second lesson is one in humility: Even the most sophisticated technologies will never allow us to control everything, as Mother Nature keeps reminding us.

…

After six years of sleepless nights and busing domestic workers to the state capitol to protest and lobby, the organizers achieved a breakthrough: New York became the first state to sign the domestic workers’ Bill of Rights, which grants them overtime pay, paid time off, protections from harassment, severance pay, and more.52 The law isn’t perfect, and access to justice to fight delinquent employers remains a barrier; but it has contributed to shift the daily balance of power for workers like Sandra, another testament to the importance of collective organizing. In today’s gig economy, the absence of legal protections against abusive power is an issue that affects many other workers. Consider ride-share drivers and delivery food workers who, as we write, do not qualify as “employees” in many countries. Even though the companies that engage with these purportedly “self-employed contractors” cannot operate their businesses without them, they have unilateral control over their working conditions.

…

For instance, twenty million homes, workplaces, and schools in the U.S. are electrically powered by energy co-ops, aligning prices with the interests of the users.54 These differences in governance structure are far from trivial. They define who controls what in the workplace. Economist and sociologist Juliet Schor makes a compelling case for cooperatives and regulatory reforms to constrain the actions of platforms, so that the value generated by the gig economy can be shared more equitably.55 Once again, it all comes down to power sharing and accountability. Workplaces other than cooperatives remain both hierarchical and unaccountable to most of their workers; but not all of them. Germany, the Netherlands, and some Nordic countries have introduced codetermination laws, guaranteeing worker representation on Boards, which provides a space for top management, shareholders, and workers to negotiate and collaborate around the direction of the company.56 Yet even with codetermination, shareholders often have a tie-breaking vote, meaning that workers cannot outvote shareholders.57 This is why the social scientist Isabelle Ferreras proposes to go further by giving both representatives of the shareholders and the workers real decision-making power.58 This mutual dependence would force them to work together to decide the future of their company.

Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now
by Jaron Lanier
Published 28 May 2018

Delete your accounts.33 ARGUMENT EIGHT SOCIAL MEDIA DOESN’T WANT YOU TO HAVE ECONOMIC DIGNITY DOUBLE BUMMER Since BUMMER showed up, the economic lives of many people in the developed world have taken on an uncomfortable quality. More and more people rely on the gig economy, which makes it hard to plan one’s life. Gig economy workers rarely achieve financial security, even after years of work. To put it another way, the level of risk in their financial lives seems to never decline, no matter how much they’ve achieved. In the United States, where the social safety net is meager, this means that even skilled, hardworking people may be made homeless by medical bills, even after years of dedicated service to their profession.

…

Therefore, the transparency that must underlie democracy, literacy, and decency was thought to be incompatible with any business model but free. Free and open would be forever bound together. But how would programmers make a living if their code was freely copied? Maybe they could give away the code and make money from being paid to solve problems that came up. They’d enter a gig economy instead of a royalty economy. They’d be laborers instead of accruing capital. But at least source code would remain visible, so an open, democratic society would flourish. Nice sentiment, but it didn’t work. In the era when activists first demanded that software be made open, the computers weren’t connected yet.

Bezonomics: How Amazon Is Changing Our Lives and What the World's Best Companies Are Learning From It
by Brian Dumaine
Published 11 May 2020

But all signs point to the fact that they’re coming, except for those who exist in certain insulated professions—often ones that are high-touch or have an emotional component. Some of the dispossessed will find new jobs, others will survive on a universal basic income provided by their government, and others still will turn to the gig economy, trying to eke out a living any way they can. One way to do this, of course, is to start a business that sells stuff on Amazon. That, however, would mean having to compete directly with Amazon’s relentless AI flywheel. CHAPTER 9 Dancing with the Devil John Morgan looks back wistfully on his days running a kitesurfing shop on the coast of Spain.

…

To lower costs and boost speed, Amazon over the years has tried to outsource some of its local deliveries to smaller, independent couriers that charge less than FedEx or UPS. Amazon Flex is its same-day delivery service, which operates in some ways like Uber, using independent contractors who drive their own cars and get paid by the delivery. In fact, some Amazon Flex drivers are actually moonlighting Uber drivers. As is the case with many gig economy workers, these drivers find it hard to make a living. They might get paid $18 to $24 an hour for delivering Amazon packages to homes and apartment buildings, but after deducting gas, insurance, and maintenance costs, their pay ends up much less than that. Also, the Flex drivers, because they’re independent contractors, don’t receive corporate benefits, even though some wear Amazon uniforms and report to an Amazon manager.

…

Technology was allowing these people a good life, but it was just making me stressed and cranky. ‘NOT. A. GOOD. DEAL,’ I scrawled in my notebook after having walked down nine flights of stairs, sick of waiting for a freight elevator that may or may not have been broken, and returned to my car for another armful of packages.” In addition to the swarms of gig economy workers racing around neighborhoods delivering packages, Amazon hires small trucking companies that help handle the ever-increasing number of same-day deliveries. This approach saves Amazon money, but it comes with a slew of headaches. In 2018, Business Insider reported that some drivers who worked for these companies drove in trucks with “broken windows, cracked mirrors, jammed doors, faulty brakes, and tires with poor traction.”

Uncharted: How to Map the Future
by Margaret Heffernan
Published 20 Feb 2020

‘My replacement is being recruited now,’ Carter says. ‘A platoon commander who joins at the age of twenty-four is commanding a battalion fifteen years later. But we don’t know what they will be asked to do in fifteen years so we have to train now for a deeply adaptive mindset. It is exactly the opposite of the gig economy.’ Carter can’t know what challenges the army will face fifteen or twenty years from now. What he does know is that whoever leads the army then won’t be able to rustle up the skills he needs the minute he knows he needs them. The lead time to develop that talent is too long. So he works from a variety of models of the future that help define a range of possibilities for which his men and women will be trained.

…

Matthews was clearly great at motivating his team – but through a marathon of abuse and apology, what kept him going? ‘Longevity matters,’ Matthews reflected. ‘I was inspired by the people around me. When people have worked with you for a long time, they know you and trust you – and when you’re in a crisis, you’ve got that!’ It was, he added, ‘pretty much the opposite of the gig economy . . .’ Forced to be creative, the company found a way to sell insurance without commission via financial advisors who charged for their work, just as any lawyer, dentist or accountant would. When, in 2008, the banking crisis revealed just how corrupt and perverse commission structures had become, financial regulators insisted that the entire industry move to this new way of working.

…

But more than a few companies dissolve at this point too, when low levels of social capital surface all the lurking demons of rivalry, fear, blame, suspicion. Matthews is right; longevity does count, because teams grow stronger over time, more loyal to one another, more open, more trusting and more robust. Gig economies, by contrast, make complex systems more fragile; their very efficiency means there is nothing to fall back on. But going into a crisis with high levels of trust and solidarity provides an irreplaceable advantage.4 History can be an asset too, not because it repeats itself but because it can communicate values and standards and make people feel that they belong to something more meaningful than a temporary gig.

You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All
by Adrian Hon
Published 14 Sep 2022

It’s the first point that’s the real problem: “if you enter into it willingly.” These apps and games don’t exist in a vacuum. They’ve become popular for the same reason self-improvement books and courses and TV shows are so popular: our increasing sense of economic insecurity and precarity. For many, the job for life has been replaced by the gig economy, and even if you’re fortunate enough to have a job at a successful company, stasis is not an option—constant improvement is essential if you don’t want to end up being replaced by the younger, faster, fitter, hungrier competition. According to historian Jürgen Martschukat, our modern “age of fitness” dates back to the 1970s, at least in the US.77 That’s when the rise of neoliberalism and its obsession with individual responsibility and the market melded with a counter-cultural focus on individualism and self-fulfilment, pushing self-improvement and fitness directly into the mainstream.

…

But that’s the default.”8 The problem is, if you don’t complete Uber’s quests (also described as “opportunities”) such as making an extra six dollars for a three-trip series, or earning bonuses by working certain regions, it gets harder to make a decent overall wage.9 According to a 2020 survey by Ridester, the median hourly pay (including tip) for Uber drivers in the US was $18.97.10 But Uber drivers aren’t employees, so they’re responsible for a vast array of costs, such as car payments and fuel, which Ridester estimated at between $7.50 and $15 per hour. That gets you to under $10 per hour, which is coincidentally a lot less than the $15 minimum wage paid to Amazon warehouse workers. Uber isn’t the only gig economy company that plays with its workers’ compensation. Lyft gives “streak bonuses” to drivers who accept all ride requests back-to-back.11 Delivery companies like Instacart, Postmates, and Shipt give bonuses as a reward for completing a minimum number of jobs in a week.12 Some workers in New York call this gamified system the patrón fantasma, or the phantom boss, notes Josh Dzieza for Curbed.13 To achieve maximum productivity at minimum cost, companies tweak the value and complexity of their bonuses constantly, which has the benefit of obfuscating workers’ overall compensation.

…

An unofficial Reddit guide for new Shipt workers explains how “acceptance ratings,” customer ratings, and member matching combine to determine which workers get which jobs.14 It’s a dense 2,400 words littered with warnings added every few months that “THIS REPLY IS OUTDATED” and “READ THE STICKY POST FOR UPDATED INFO.” This obfuscation makes it hard for workers to notice when their pay declines, and impossible to predict their pay in the future. None of these quests and bonuses and promotions would matter if gig economy workers’ overall pay wasn’t so low. As it is, a few six-dollar bonuses offered to you multiple times a day could make up a substantial proportion of your income, at which point they’re not bonuses any more—they’re just pay contingent on following orders. It’s coercion of a different kind. And Uber doesn’t feel any need to play fair, as Harry Campbell, owner of the Rideshare Guy, told The Verge: “They encourage drivers to go to certain places during certain times but there’s no guarantee that you’ll get a ride.”15 There is a guarantee Uber will take drivers for a ride, though.

The Digital Party: Political Organisation and Online Democracy
by Paolo Gerbaudo
Published 19 Jul 2018

The bulk of new jobs that have been created by the digital revolution and its transformation of the world of work tend instead to be lowly qualified and lowly paid jobs. This trend is epitomised by the rapid growth of causalised workers such as call centre workers, riders for delivery companies such as Deliveroo, Uber drivers or warehouse workers as those of Amazon104 among many other typical profiles of the so-called ‘gig economy’.105 These figures can be considered as part of the ‘precariat’, an emerging class which, in his General Theory of the Precariat, Italian activist and theorist Alex Foti describes as ‘the underpaid, underemployed, underprotected, overeducated, and overexploited’.106 What is more, many fear the job-destroying avalanche of the incoming second automation revolution, with robots predicted to eliminate many manual jobs such as drivers substituted by self-driving cars, and artificial intelligence threatening to destroy clerical jobs, such as those in the legal and accounting sectors.

…

A good account of this development is provided in Trebor Scholz, Uber-worked and underpaid: how workers are disrupting the digital economy (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2017). 105. Valerio De Stefano, ‘The rise of the just-in-time workforce: on-demand work, crowdwork, and labor protection in the gig-economy’, Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal 37 (2015): 471. 106. Alex Foti, General theory of the precariat: great recession, revolution, reaction (Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2017). 107. Nicholas Kulish, ‘Direct Democracy, 2.0’, New York Times Sunday Review, 5 May 2012, retrieved from www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/sunday-review/direct-democracy-2-0.html. 108.

…

Parties without partisans: political change in advanced industrial democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. De Montesquieu, Charles. Montesquieu: the spirit of the laws. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989. De Stefano, Valerio. ‘The rise of the just-in-time workforce: on-demand work, crowdwork, and labor protection in the gig-economy.’ Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal 37 (2015): 471. De Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America, Vol. 10. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2003. Debray, Régis. Media manifestos. Trans. Eric Rauth. London and New York: Verso, 1996, p.161. Della Porta, Donatella, Joseba Fernandez, Hara Kouki and Lorenzo Mosca.

Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong About the Future of Transportation
by Paris Marx
Published 4 Jul 2022

Instead, there was an incentive to break new stories quickly, get in the good graces of the industry’s ascendent firms and founders, and to believe the claims they were making.6 Years later, even after a series of scandals among major tech firms kicked off a “techlash” that forced the mainstream press to adopt a slightly more critical perspective on the industry and its claims, companies like Uber could still get away with misrepresenting their earnings and even financial journalists would uncritically repeat them. The media’s representations of Uber and the wider gig economy served to mislead the public, politicians, and regulators about what effects they might have on society. Reporters’ uncritical stories gave people permission not to consider the implications of using on-demand services, and that has come with consequences. The promises that ride-hailing services would improve urban mobility have not come to pass, even as the conditions of drivers have steadily worsened.

…

The new standard assumed all workers were employees, unless the employer could prove otherwise under strict new guidelines. In September 2019, the decision was codified into law when California’s state legislature passed Assembly Bill 5, which set a deadline of January 1, 2020, for employers to reclassify their workers—and the emphasis was placed on companies in the gig economy, including Uber and Lyft. January 1 came and went without gig workers’ status changing, but they kept pushing lawmakers to ensure the law was observed. In May 2020, California’s attorney general and the city attorneys for San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego took Uber and Lyft to court for misclassifying their workers, and the following month the PUC ruled that drivers for Uber and Lyft were employees, not contractors.

…

On August 10, a judge ruled that the companies had ten days to reclassify their workers as employees, but at the last minute the ruling was delayed until after the election on November 3. As these challenges were playing out, the gig companies had another plan to evade reclassification. Uber and Lyft had joined forces with other companies in the gig economy like DoorDash and Instacart to prepare a ballot measure to be considered by California voters that would cement their workers’ status as independent contractors. Proposition 22, as it was named, also promised those workers a minimum wage and some benefits, but the wage guarantee was only for the time when a worker had a passenger or was completing a delivery order, meaning it effectively came to an estimated $5.64 per hour.27 The benefits were similarly restricted, so few workers would actually be able to access them.

Rule of the Robots: How Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Everything
by Martin Ford
Published 13 Sep 2021

Middle class jobs are at risk of being deskilled, so that a low-wage worker with little training, but who is augmented by technology, can step into a role that once would have commanded a higher wage. People are increasingly working under the control of algorithms that monitor or pace their work, in effect treating them like virtual robots. Many of the new opportunities being created are in the “gig” economy, where workers typically have unpredictable hours and incomes. All of this points to increasing inequality and potentially dehumanizing conditions for a growing fraction of our workforce. Aside from the impact on jobs and the economy, there are a variety of other dangers that will accompany the continuing rise of artificial intelligence.

…

In recent decades, American job creation has been weighted increasingly toward low-wage jobs in the service sector. These jobs, in areas like retail sales, food preparation and serving, security and cleaning or janitorial jobs in offices and hotels, provide minimal incomes and few if any benefits, and are often less than full-time with unreliable hours. The rise of the gig economy, in which workers receive payments based on a task-completion basis with virtually no guarantee of a predictable income and little or no access to the legal safeguards provided to other workers, has further exacerbated the trend. A November 2019 report from the Brookings Institution found that a full forty-four percent of the U.S. workforce is engaged in low-wage jobs providing income averaging about $18,000 per year.11 This change in the nature of the jobs available to American workers was made especially evident when a group of researchers developed a new economic metric in 2019.

…

Aside from the direct automation of jobs and tasks, a second important force is the de-skilling of jobs. In other words, the adoption of new technology allows a role that once required significant skill and experience to instead be filled by a lower-wage worker with little training, or by an interchangeable independent contractor working in the gig economy. A classic example of this is the experience of the famous “black cab” taxi drivers in London. Obtaining a license to drive such a taxi traditionally requires full memorization of virtually all the streets in the city, a laborious process known as acquiring “The Knowledge.” The memorization required is so extensive that an analysis by the University College London neuroscientist Eleanor Maguire found that the hippocampus—the area of the brain associated with long-term memory—is, on average, larger in black cab drivers as compared to workers in other occupations.23 This requirement for prospective drivers to acquire The Knowledge has historically provided a forbidding entry barrier into the profession and thereby ensured cab drivers a solid middle class wage.

The Corona Crash: How the Pandemic Will Change Capitalism
by Grace Blakeley
Published 14 Oct 2020

Under pressure from the trade union movement, Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced a furlough scheme covering 80 per cent of employees’ wages, up to £2,500 per month, to encourage employers to keep staff on as the crisis worsened. In a tacit admission that the current welfare system barely provides claimants with enough to survive, Sunak injected it with an extra £7 billion, equivalent to an extra £20 per week for the unemployed. But many of the UK’s 5 million self-employed workers – including precarious workers in the gig economy – struggled to access a separate income-support scheme, while statutory sick pay remained at around £95 per week – one of the lowest rates of all advanced economies and not nearly enough for many people to pay their rent, let alone their bills, and basic living costs. In the US, meanwhile, Congress authorised a $1,200 one-time payment to every US adult: hardly enough to sustain 20 million unemployed American workers without health insurance and with uneven access to an opaque and ungenerous welfare system.5 There are differences between the crisis we are currently facing and the one that followed the financial meltdown of 2008.

…

The growing number of workers without stable employment face a continued substantial loss of work as businesses struggle to manage coronavirus-related restrictions, people reduce their consumption and public spaces have to shut down again periodically. Even if they manage to escape the virus, those without a stable income – self-employed people, those on zero-hours contracts and in the gig economy, plus freelancers, small business owners and those paid on commission – are in a tight spot. For many states in the global South, meanwhile, the pandemic represents an existential threat. While these states were initially insulated from the spread of the virus, the caseload in peripheral areas of the global economy like sub-Saharan Africa is increasing.

Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI
by Madhumita Murgia
Published 20 Mar 2024

Two weeks later, he received a second warning. Three strikes, and he would be terminated. These decisions were communicated entirely through automated messages. He wasn’t told who he could turn to, to appeal or clarify. He had no idea what he might have done wrong. He knew that Uber, like many others in the gig economy space, used artificial intelligence software – from fraud-detection algorithms to facial recognition and other behavioural profiling methods – to allocate jobs and verify, rate, and censure its drivers. But Alexandru was unaware which aspects of his work were defined or facilitated by algorithms, and what actions or data could be construed as deceptive.

…

Algorithms are the main ‘tool in their box for worker control,’ Farrar said to me. He was fresh from Iftimie’s case in Amsterdam’s High Court which had forced Uber and Ola to disclose some of the data used by their algorithms to dock wages and fire workers. Farrar has been at the forefront of a series of legal challenges around the rights of gig-economy workers in the UK and Europe. In February 2021, six years after his original dispute in his car, his lobbying finally paid off: in a landmark ruling, the UK’s Supreme Court said that Uber drivers should be treated as employees with rights to minimum wage, sick pay and pensions, as opposed to self-employed individuals, as Uber has claimed they are all over the world.22 It has meant that for the first time, workers are able to avail of labour rights that apply to every other industry, including sick leave and holidays, rather than feeling disenfranchised or powerless.

…

Drivers Say It’s Ruined Their Lives’, Pulitzer Center, December 1, 2020, https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/uber-made-big-promises-kenya-drivers-say-its-ruined-their-lives. 8 Karen Hao and Nadine Freischlad, ‘The Gig Workers Fighting Back against the Algorithms’, MIT Technology Review, April 21, 2022, https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/21/1050381/the-gig-workers-fighting-back-against-the-algorithms/. 9 Ibid. 10 Cosmin Popan, ‘Embodied Precariat and Digital Control in the “Gig Economy”: The Mobile Labor of Food Delivery Workers’, Journal of Urban Technology, December 16, 2021, 1–20, https://doi.org/10.1080/10630732.2021.2001714. 11 Zizheng Yu, Emiliano Treré, and Tiziano Bonini, ‘The Emergence of Algorithmic Solidarity: Unveiling Mutual Aid Practices and Resistance among Chinese Delivery Workers’, Media International Australia 183, no. 1 (May 24, 2022): 107–23, https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X221074793. 12 Popan. 13 Edward Jr Ongweso, ‘Organized DoorDash Drivers’ #DeclineNow Strategy Is Driving Up Their Pay’, Vice News, February 21, 2021, https://www.vice.com/en/article/3anwdy/organized-doordash-drivers-declinenow-strategy-is-driving-up-their-pay. 14 Gianluca Iazzolino, ‘“Going Karura”: Colliding Subjectivities and Labour Struggle in Nairobi’s Gig Economy’, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 55, no. 5 (August 19, 2023): 1114–30, https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X211031916. 15 Veena Dubal, ‘On Algorithmic Wage Discrimination’, SSRN Electronic Journal forthcoming (2023), https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4331080. 16 Eloise Barry, ‘Uber Drivers Say a “Racist” Algorithm Is Putting Them Out of Work’, Time, October 12, 2021, https://time.com/6104844/uber-facial-recognition-racist/. 17 Daniel Alan Bey, ‘Will “Common Prosperity” Reach China’s Takeout Drivers?’

The American Dream Is Not Dead: (But Populism Could Kill It)
by Michael R. Strain
Published 25 Feb 2020

What they insist upon is that the fruits of this transformation should be distributed equitably, and that the bargaining power of Americans negatively affected by it should be enhanced. Here, for example, is what Warren, who takes the brunt of some of Strain’s attacks, said when she offered a plan to protect the rights of workers in the gig economy in 2016: “Massive technological change is a gift—a byproduct of human ingenuity that creates extraordinary opportunities to improve the lives of billions. But history shows that to harness those opportunities to create and sustain a strong middle class, policy also matters. To fully realize the potential of this new economy, laws must be adapted to make sure that the basic bargain for workers remains intact, and that workers have the chance to share in the growth they help produce.”52 These are not the words of a utopian, a nostalgist, or a Luddite.

…

Median labor earnings for sons is approximately $62,000 and for fathers is approximately $56,000. 51.OECD, “A Broken Social Elevator? How to Promote Social Mobility,” Published June 15, 2018. 52.Elizabeth Warren, United States Senator for Massachusetts, “Senator Warren Lays Out Steps to Protect Workers in the ‘Gig Economy,’” speech given May 19, 2016. 53.Jay Schambaugh and Ryan Nunn, “Why Wages Aren’t Growing in America,” Brookings Institution, November 14, 2017. 54.Lawrence Mishel, Elise Gould, and Josh Bivens, “Wage Stagnation in Nine Charts,” Economic Policy Institute, January 6, 2015. 55.David H. Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon H.

Marx at the Arcade: Consoles, Controllers, and Class Struggle
by Jamie Woodcock
Published 17 Jun 2019

Didžgalvytė points out as an important exception one videogame that has had a much bigger impact than others. The Uber Game was released through the website of Financial Times, which is not known for its left-wing views. The browser-based game starts by asking the player, “Can you make it in the gig economy?” Then the player is allowed to explore what it is like to work for Uber, making choices along the way. The game ends with the total earnings the player has managed to make, but then Uber’s cut of the fares, along with all the expenses—the lease on the car, gas, insurance, any repairs, and so on—are taken off.

…

When the player sees how much they have actually made, they see “they’ve often been earning only half of the minimum wage.” As Didžgalvytė explains, “The game’s point is obvious and its effect is striking, not least because it’s in a place to be played by the Financial Times readership—a group of people that generally praise the gig economy, and its lack of bothersome unionisation.”26 Again, here, the rules of the game provide a reflection of society’s unequal rules. The mechanics work to highlight the lack of agency that Uber drivers have to make a living wage. Although I have now spoiled the outcome for any reader who has not yet played, the realization that comes at the end for the first-time player is one of genuine surprise that cannot be foreseen at the start of the game.

…

K., 91–92 US Army, 54–55 US Department of Defense, 20 US Marine Corps, 54, 116 USS Enterprise, 23 Ustwo Games, 40 Utopia, 31 V Valve, 39, 52–53, 70 Victorian Britain, 63 Video Computer System, 24 Video Games Tax Relief, 42 Vietnam War, 21 Virtual Battlespace 2, 54 Void, The, 105 W Walker, John, 143 Walker, Martin, 122–23 Warcraft, 160 Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, 28 WarGames, 19 Warner Communications, 23, 26 WashTech, 91 Westwood Studios, 28 Wii, 30 Wii U, 32 Williams, Ian, 96, 108, 160 Williams, Raymond, 107 Windows, 28, 61 Wolfenstein 3D, 115 Woods, Don, 23 Workerism, 69 World at War, 117 World of Tanks, 32 World of Warcraft, 2, 31, 101, 149, 154 World’s Fair, 18 Wright, Will, 127 Wu, Brianna, 154 X Xbox, 30 Xbox 360, 30 Xbox One, 31, 48, 50, 86 Xbox One X, 31 Y Yee, Leland, 41 YouTube, 39 Yu, Tian, 141 Z Zimmerman, Eric, 15 Dr Jamie Woodcock is a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford. He is the author of Working The Phones, a study of a call center in the UK inspired by the workers’ inquiry. His research focuses on labor, work, the gig economy, platforms, resistance, organizing, and videogames. Jamie is on the editorial board of Notes from Below and Historical Materialism. Haymarket Books is a radical, independent, nonprofit book publisher based in Chicago. Our mission is to publish books that contribute to struggles for social and economic justice.

Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
by Douglas Rushkoff
Published 7 Sep 2022

But it is a poor substitute for wrestling with the real moral quandaries associated with unbridled technological development in the name of corporate capitalism. Digital platforms have turned an already exploitative and extractive marketplace (think Walmart) into an even more dehumanizing successor (think Amazon). Most of us became aware of these downsides in the form of automated jobs, the gig economy, and the demise of local retail along with local journalism. But the more devastating impacts of pedal-to-the-metal digital capitalism fall on the environment, the global poor, and the civilizational future their oppression portends. The manufacture of our computers and smartphones still depends on networks of slave labor.

…

As companies lobby to protect their monopolies, small businesses lose the ability to compete. This leads to more bankruptcies and unemployment. Workers have no social safety net because the companies that have rendered them jobless show no profits and pay no taxes. As a last resort, workers turn to gig economy jobs at Doordash, Uber, or Amazon Mechanical Turk, becoming dependent on the platforms that disempowered them in the first place. The resulting valuations of the larger tech companies—if not their earnings—rival that of many nations. For their part, the people who become billionaires or even centibillionaires off all their stock may start out with good intentions but eventually succumb to The Mindset.

…

There’s no wiggle room for the ambiguity and mixed signals inherent in human connection. Everyone is suspect, and no one has a valid excuse. In such an environment, the elite’s assertions of godlike omniscience only trigger fear and paranoia—particularly when we’ve already been primed for suspicion and resentment by the way social media, surveillance, the gig economy and The Mindset’s many other manifestations in our culture have impacted our lives and those of our loved ones. The much-feared angry mob is real. We see them act out in alt-right conspiracy groups online, Promise Keeper rallies in the streets, threats of violence by anti-vaxxers against local school boards, and resistance to any globally coordinated mitigation of climate change.

Not Working: Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone?
by David G. Blanchflower
Published 12 Apr 2021

For example, the increase in self-employment in the UK has been associated with greater labor market flexibility, but the increasing share of the self-employed in the UK workforce has been on a steady upward trend during the first two decades of this century. This trend was not affected by the recession. Therefore, unless there was a marked change in the nature, rather than the volume, of self-employment around the time of the recession, it is difficult to link the sudden drop in wage settlements to the evolution of self-employment. The gig economy is a phenomenon that has been developing for a couple of decades at least. In addition, union representation in the private sector in advanced countries has been declining steadily for decades. The main reason that real wages haven’t risen is presumably that labor productivity has also been flat.

…

In terms of GDP, Bucknor and Barber calculate that the population of former prisoners and people with felony convictions led to a loss of $78–87 billion in GDP in 2014. Holy smokes! This is a major difference compared to other advanced countries, which have been more willing to wipe the slate clean after usually shorter prison spells. The Gig Economy and Zero-Hours Contracts Also of interest is the very different trend in the UK and the United States in their self-employment rates.25 The OECD defines self-employment as the employment of employers, workers who work for themselves, members of producers’ cooperatives, and unpaid family workers.

…

L., 44 Chubb, 188 Citigroup, 188, 281 Clark, Tom, 323–24, 329–30 Clarke, Stephen, 276 Clinton, Hillary, 15, 259, 280, 289, 292, 324; cerebrality of, 269; miscalculations by, 265; Obama over- and underper-formed by, 267–68; support for, 24, 239, 260 coal mining, 23, 94, 173, 214, 270, 279, 288–91 Coase, Ronald, 169 Coca-Cola, 319 Cochrane, John, 169 Cohen, Don, 329, 334 Cohen, Michael, 293, 334–35 Cohen, Sheldon, 220 Colbert, Stephen, 175 Colgan, Jeff D., 115 Collins, Michael, 22 Commerzbank, 281 Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC), 319 Community Advisory Council (CAC), 76 commuting, 88, 90, 91, 340 Conference Board, 194–95, 210 confidence indices, 8, 194–95, 200, 202, 210 conspicuous consumption, 335 construction industry, 93, 203, 209–10, 214, 236, 245, 340, 360–61n5 consumer confidence, 8, 194–95, 200, 202, 210 consumer price index (CPI), 70, 71 Conte, Giuseppe, 282 continuing education, 73 Cooper, Ryan, 171–72 Corbyn, Jeremy, 284, 344 Corry, Bernard, 181 cosmetic surgery, 184 Costa, Rui, 62 Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), 26, 27, 45, 101, 102, 105 Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML), 202–3 Cox, Daniel, 261 Crawford, Claire, 64–65 creationism, 324–25 credit cards, 74, 75 Credit Suisse, 188 crime, 44–45, 240, 257–58 Croatia, 116, 134, 136, 321–22 Crooks, Josie, 274 Cross, James, 274 Cross, Rod, 22 Cunliffe, Jon, 67, 206 Current Employment Statistics (CES), 51 Current Population Survey, 17, 51, 118 Cyprus, 134, 136, 251 Czech Republic, 78, 133, 141, 189, 251 da Costa, Pedro Nicolaci, 8–9, 68, 75 Daly, Mary, 232–33 Darling, Alistair, 158–60 Datta, Nikhil, 104 Davies, Megan, 209 Davis, Bob, 292 Deaton, Angus, 214, 219, 227, 229–31, 233–34, 328 debt, 74, 108, 342 deflation, 204, 315, 339 De Grauwe, Paul, 176 Delaney, Liam, 43 Delta Air Lines, 17 demand curve, 2 Denmark, 78, 81, 92, 233; business and consumer confidence in, 196; immigration to, 249; inequality in, 106; underemployment in, 136 depression, psychological, 7, 32, 36, 43, 126, 146, 218, 220–24 Desai, Sumeet, 161 Detmeister, Alan K., 305 Deutsche Bank, 187, 188, 281 Diener, Ed, 220 di Maio, Luigi, 281, 282 disability, 21, 41, 95, 217, 341 discouraged workers, 19–20, 278, 367n23 Douglas, Jason, 261 Draghi, Mario, 184 drug and alcohol use, 7, 24, 27, 235; “deaths of despair” from, 229–30, 236; in United Kingdom, 218, 221–23, 229, 231; in United States, 36, 214, 216–18, 220, 221, 224, 225, 227, 229, 230–31, 236 Duchniak, Aneta, 291 Dudley, William, 310 Duesenberry, James, 115 Duflo, Esther, 177–78 Dunatchik, Allison, 331 Dunlop, John, 8, 182 Dunn, Philippa, 367n24 Dustmann, Christian, 252 Dutch East Indies, 81 dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE), 178 earned income tax credits, 347 East Coast Railway, 280 EasyJet, 188 Eatwell, Roger, 285–86 Eberstadt, Nicholas, 25, 26–27, 102 The Economic Consequences of the Peace (Keynes), 328–29 Economic Indicator Handbook (Yamarone), 185 Economic Policy Institute (EPI), 16 Economic Sentiment Index (ESI), 8, 195–96 economics of walking about (EWA), 8, 97, 180–89, 196, 199, 211, 252, 317 Edelman, Richard, 331 Edelman Trust Barometer, 330 Eichengreen, Barry, 174 El-Arian, Mohammed, 170 Elizabeth II, queen of England, 164 El Salvador, 244 Emershaw, Justin, 289 Employment Cost Index, 51 employment rate, 18–19, 20, 25, 97, 98–99 Employment Situation Report, 4, 289 energy prices, 206 enterprise zones, 340 environmental regulations, 324 Equal Opportunity Project, 108 Estonia, 78, 134, 136, 251 Euro currency, 281 Eurobarometer Surveys, 225, 226, 247, 253, 321, 331, 332 European Banking Authority, 188 European Central Bank (ECB), 4, 83, 120, 160–61, 207, 339 European Commission, 8, 29, 194–96, 283 European Court of Justice, 344 European Labor Force Surveys (EULFS), 118, 133, 134 European Medicines Agency, 188 European Social Survey (ESS), 107, 225–26, 247–48, 329 European Union (EU), 18, 194–95, 283; job insecurity in, 29–31 Eurostat, 130 Even, William E., 126 Ewing, Walter A., 258 exchange rates, 302–3, 342, 344–45 ex-offenders, 102–3 Expectations Index, 210 Falk, Armin, 45 Falkland Islands, 327 Fallon, Michael, 160, 327 Falloon, Matt, 161 family structure, 72 Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), 67, 68–70, 97, 205, 310, 312 Federal Reserve Board, 7, 11, 48, 52, 160, 166–67; interest rates raised by, 83, 299, 313, 322, 337–38, 339 Feldman, Daniel C., 127 Feldstein, Lewis M., 329, 334 Feldstein, Martin S., 123 Fetzer, Thiemo, 36 Fildes, Nic, 209 financial sector, 84, 201, 203 Finland, 78, 106, 136, 196, 218, 233, 343 Fitzpatrick, Suzanne, 33 Five Star Movement, 7, 9, 280–81, 282 Flanders, Stephanie, 320–21 flexible work schedules, 54, 56, 100, 104. See also gig economy; part-time work; self-employment Florida, 3, 86–87, 97, 102, 201, 243 Floros, Nicos, 22 flu pandemic (1918), 212–13, 344 food insecurity, 33, 36 food stamps, 129 Foote, Christopher L., 102 Ford, Robert, 258–59, 277 Ford Motor Company, 201, 319 Forte, Giuseppe, 342 Four Seasons Health Care, 210 Fox Quesada, Vicente, 242 Fox News, 324 France, 39, 74, 154, 330, 347; business and consumer confidence in, 196, 333–34; civil unrest in, 271; drug and alcohol abuse in, 231; governments mistrusted in, 331; Great Recession in, 78, 81, 85, 93; immigration to, 244, 246, 248, 249, 283; inequality in, 105–6, 111; inequality viewed in, 107, 116; job insecurity in, 28; physical and mental health in, 219–20, 223, 229, 230; obesity in, 224; populism in, 7, 259, 264, 265, 278–79; productivity in, 63, 65; quality of life perceptions in, 76–77, 215; terror attacks in, 247; underemployment in, 49, 136, 138, 278; unemployment in, 40, 41, 93, 278; unionization in, 114; U.S. leadership condemned in, 321; wage growth in, 58, 207; young people’s living arrangements in, 277 Franses, Philip Hans, 185 Freeman, Richard, 86 free trade, 24, 246 Friedman, Milton, 303–4 fringe benefits, 209 Front National, 7, 279 Frost, Robert, 213 Fry, Richard, 37 Frydl, Kathleen, 24 full employment, 6–7, 25, 94, 140, 145, 297–316; inaccurate forecasts of, 7, 11, 68, 69, 75, 313; wage growth linked to, 49 Full Employment in a Free Society (Beveridge), 25, 348 The Full Monty (film), 10 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 3, 165 Gallup, George, 1 Garcia, Macarena C., 235 Garriga, Carlos, 74, 111–12 Gates, Bill, 337 Gates, Melinda, 337 Geisel, Theodore, 336–37 Geithner, Timothy, 153 Gelman, Andrew, 234 General Motors, 201, 290, 319 Georgia (Asia), 244 Georgia (U.S), 288 Germany, 39, 74, 154, 215, 330; business and consumer confidence in, 76, 196, 278; drug and alcohol abuse in, 231; Great Recession in, 57, 78, 82, 85, 123; immigration to, 238, 239, 244, 246–50; inequality in, 106, 111; inequality viewed in, 116; inflation in, 301; job insecurity in, 28; physical and mental health in, 218–19, 220, 223, 226, 230; obesity in, 224; productivity in, 63, 65; real earnings in, 61; underemployment in, 130–31, 132, 136, 138; unemployment in, 40, 41, 88, 141, 144, 216, 298–99, 306, 338; unionization in, 114; U.S. leadership condemned in, 321; wage growth in, 48, 57–58, 207 Gibraltar, 326–27 Gieve, John, 159 gig economy, 83, 103–5.

The Ones We've Been Waiting For: How a New Generation of Leaders Will Transform America
by Charlotte Alter
Published 18 Feb 2020

It changed the kinds of jobs they got (often precarious, part-time ones), what kinds of benefits they got (usually none), and what kind of schedule they kept (erratic and flexible). And unlike boomers and Gen Xers, who had the benefit of at least a few decades of twentieth-century-style employment, millennials may spend almost their entire careers in the gig economy. Their careers will be defined by a lack of definition. They are less likely to have the protection of unions (union membership has halved since 1983), less likely to have a set nine-to-five schedule (40 percent of young workers get their schedules just a few days in advance), and less likely to stay at one company for long enough to build a track record of good work.

…

They tended to prefer experiences over possessions. And a generation steeped in social networks became increasingly comfortable renting things instead of owning them: millennials rented rides (with Uber and Lyft), rented clothes (through Rent The Runway), and rented labor (through TaskRabbit). They also began to look to the gig economy for side hustles to supplement their meager incomes. By 2018, more than 40 percent of eighteen- to thirty-four-year-olds worked as freelancers. For almost half of the largest generation of workers, the traditional work structure that had defined twentieth-century professional life just wasn’t available anymore.

…

“In fact, we’ve seen it get worse because of the corrupting role of money in politics. “We saw the gambling with Wall Street lead to one of the greatest economic periods of instability since the Great Depression, and the recovery has not been meaningful for us,” she continued. “Spoiler alert: the gig economy is about not giving people full-time jobs. And when you don’t have full-time jobs, you don’t have the insurance in the same way that people had. So it should be no secret why millennials want to decouple your insurance status from your employment status.” For her, democratic socialism was about ensuring Medicare for All, mandating a living wage, and creating a Green New Deal with a jobs guarantee to put people to work.

Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts, and the Death of Freedom
by Grace Blakeley
Published 11 Mar 2024

Firms prefer not to get stuck in “mutually destructive price warfare” with their competitors.101 Rather than trying to exercise power over consumers by price gouging, they try to use their power over workers—a power that workers have generally struggled to resist—to push down wages.102 Firms can reduce their wage bill by reducing take-home pay, or they can attempt to curtail other benefits and entitlements such as pension contributions, sick pay, and parental leave. This latter form of wage suppression is particularly common in the so-called gig economy, where many big-tech companies have pioneered a model of bogus self-employment in which workers are denied benefits and are often also required to pay for the tools needed to undertake their jobs. This kind of power—which economists refer to as “monopsony power”—has, by one estimate, reduced labor’s share of national income in the US by 22 percent.103 Another way to cut costs is for firms to use their market power to gouge their suppliers.

…

Moving to a four-day workweek with no loss of pay is an important first step toward democratizing work, which would also increase employment and allow people more time to participate in collective activities of the kind outlined in the previous section.43 Other critical policy changes in this area include closing the gap between regulation of the gig economy and formal employment, and introducing a living wage. We must also ensure that workers have the right to refuse work. No worker should be forced to take a poorly paid, dangerous job simply because they have to survive. Some argue this is a case for a universal basic income (UBI), but most UBIs are proposed at a level that would not allow workers to survive without work.44 And handing out cash does little to democratize the economy and could instead reinforce neoliberal individualism and consumerism.

…

The UK think tank We Own It has outlined some proposals to show how this might be achieved in practice: creating a collective organization to represent citizens on the boards of publicly owned corporations, allowing them to vote on corporate governance procedures; formalizing trade union and civil society representation in publicly owned corporations, both on boards and throughout the organization; and establishing participatory budgeting and e-democracy processes to set budgets and develop new ideas for production and services provision.47 Collective ownership comes in many forms, from worker cooperatives, to producer cooperatives, to mutuals.48 Like public ownership, collective ownership is not always genuinely democratic—there are plenty of cooperative enterprises within which workers lack voice and power, and some cooperatives (for example, consumer cooperatives) continue to rely on exploitative labor practices. But building the cooperative economy can have positive effects when combined with other measures. One particularly exciting new model comes from the gig economy, where workers are organizing to build alternatives to the extractive, monopolistic platforms that currently dominate the sector.49 Cooperatively owned apps, such as the Driver’s Co-Operative and cleaning business Up & Go, give workers an ownership stake and allow them to participate in decision-making.

New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World--And How to Make It Work for You
by Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms
Published 2 Apr 2018

The contingent workforce is growing rapidly, thanks in part to the rise of “gig economy” platforms. In a world of fraying loyalties, tour-of-duty professionals, downsizing, wannabe founders, and hybrid musician/coder/furniture designers, up to 40 percent of the U.S. workforce can now be counted as contingent. Some of this shift can be explained by the cultural dynamics we have laid out in this chapter, but much of it is also driven by hard economic realities: there are fewer well-paid, secure, full-time jobs up for grabs. The challenges of managing contingent and gig economy workers may be a glimpse into the future of management generally.

…

But algorithmic management alone will only go so far. Creating a human connection among workers on a vast scale will also be critical. What a network like Buurtzorg is getting right is structuring for peer accountability and learning, which lightens the management burden and adds a powerful sense of shared endeavor. Gig economy platforms are shaping expectations about work and working conditions, and mostly for the worse. In 2017, one such platform, Fiverr, which offers up freelance jobs and tasks that pay as little as $5, released an ad featuring a hip but exhausted-looking millennial and this wisdom: “You eat a coffee for lunch.

…

“You eat a coffee for lunch”: Ellen Scott, “People Are Not Pleased with Fiverr’s Deeply Depressing Advert,” Metro, March 10, 2017. “The campaign positions Fiverr”: DCX Growth Accelerator, “Fiverr Debuts First-Ever Brand Campaign,” PR Newswire, January 9, 2017. “I’d guess that plenty”: Jia Tolentino, “The Gig Economy Celebrates Working Yourself to Death,” The New Yorker, March 22, 2017. With more than 24 million members: “Company Overview,” July 2017. www.care.com. “If we want to sustain”: Sheila Marcelo, discussion with authors, September 20, 2016. “Fair Care Pledge”: “Take the Fair Care Pledge Today!

The Road to Conscious Machines
by Michael Wooldridge
Published 2 Nov 2018

Once again, we are already beginning to witness this phenomenon, particularly in the sector of the so-called ‘gig economy’ – another aspect of the changing pattern of work. Half a century ago, it was not uncommon that the company you worked for when you left school was the company you worked for when you retired. Long-term employment relations were the norm – employees who flitted from one job to another in quick succession were regarded with suspicion. But long-term employment relationships have become less and less common, replaced by short-term work, piece-work and casual contracts – the gig economy. And one reason why the gig economy has ballooned over the past 20 years is the rise of mobile computing technology, through which large casual workforces can be coordinated on a global scale.

…

A A* 77 À la recherche du temps perdu (Proust) 205–8 accountability 257 Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) 87–8 adversarial machine learning 190 AF (Artificial Flight) parable 127–9, 243 agent-based AI 136–49 agent-based interfaces 147, 149 ‘Agents That Reduce Work and Information Overload’ (Maes) 147–8 AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) 41 AI – difficulty of 24–8 – ethical 246–62, 284, 285 – future of 7–8 – General 42, 53, 116, 119–20 – Golden Age of 47–88 – history of 5–7 – meaning of 2–4 – narrow 42 – origin of name 51–2 – strong 36–8, 41, 309–14 – symbolic 42–3, 44 – varieties of 36–8 – weak 36–8 AI winter 87–8 AI-complete problems 84 ‘Alchemy and AI’ (Dreyfus) 85 AlexNet 187 algorithmic bias 287–9, 292–3 alienation 274–7 allocative harm 287–8 AlphaFold 214 AlphaGo 196–9 AlphaGo Zero 199 AlphaZero 199–200 Alvey programme 100 Amazon 275–6 Apple Watch 218 Argo AI 232 arithmetic 24–6 Arkin, Ron 284 ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) 87–8 Artificial Flight (AF) parable 127–9, 243 Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) 41 artificial intelligence see AI artificial languages 56 Asilomar principles 254–6 Asimov, Isaac 244–6 Atari 2600 games console 192–6, 327–8 augmented reality 296–7 automated diagnosis 220–1 automated translation 204–8 automation 265, 267–72 autonomous drones 282–4 Autonomous Vehicle Disengagement Reports 231 autonomous vehicles see driverless cars autonomous weapons 281–7 autonomy levels 227–8 Autopilot 228–9 B backprop/backpropagation 182–3 backward chaining 94 Bayes nets 158 Bayes’ Theorem 155–8, 365–7 Bayesian networks 158 behavioural AI 132–7 beliefs 108–10 bias 172 black holes 213–14 Blade Runner 38 Blocks World 57–63, 126–7 blood diseases 94–8 board games 26, 75–6 Boole, George 107 brains 43, 306, 330–1 see also electronic brains branching factors 73 Breakout (video game) 193–5 Brooks, Rodney 125–9, 132, 134, 243 bugs 258 C Campaign to Stop Killer Robots 286 CaptionBot 201–4 Cardiogram 215 cars 27–8, 155, 223–35 certainty factors 97 ceteris paribus preferences 262 chain reactions 242–3 chatbots 36 checkers 75–7 chess 163–4, 199 Chinese room 311–14 choice under uncertainty 152–3 combinatorial explosion 74, 80–1 common values and norms 260 common-sense reasoning 121–3 see also reasoning COMPAS 280 complexity barrier 77–85 comprehension 38–41 computational complexity 77–85 computational effort 129 computers – decision making 23–4 – early developments 20 – as electronic brains 20–4 – intelligence 21–2 – programming 21–2 – reliability 23 – speed of 23 – tasks for 24–8 – unsolved problems 28 ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’ (Turing) 32 confirmation bias 295 conscious machines 327–30 consciousness 305–10, 314–17, 331–4 consensus reality 296–8 consequentialist theories 249 contradictions 122–3 conventional warfare 286 credit assignment problem 173, 196 Criado Perez, Caroline 291–2 crime 277–81 Cruise Automation 232 curse of dimensionality 172 cutlery 261 Cybernetics (Wiener) 29 Cyc 114–21, 208 D DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) 87–8, 225–6 Dartmouth summer school 1955 50–2 decidable problems 78–9 decision problems 15–19 deduction 106 deep learning 168, 184–90, 208 DeepBlue 163–4 DeepFakes 297–8 DeepMind 167–8, 190–200, 220–1, 327–8 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) 87–8, 225–6 dementia 219 DENDRAL 98 Dennett, Daniel 319–25 depth-first search 74–5 design stance 320–1 desktop computers 145 diagnosis 220–1 disengagements 231 diversity 290–3 ‘divide and conquer’ assumption 53–6, 128 Do-Much-More 35–6 dot-com bubble 148–9 Dreyfus, Hubert 85–6, 311 driverless cars 27–8, 155, 223–35 drones 282–4 Dunbar, Robin 317–19 Dunbar’s number 318 E ECAI (European Conference on AI) 209–10 electronic brains 20–4 see also computers ELIZA 32–4, 36, 63 employment 264–77 ENIAC 20 Entscheidungsproblem 15–19 epiphenomenalism 316 error correction procedures 180 ethical AI 246–62, 284, 285 European Conference on AI (ECAI) 209–10 evolutionary development 331–3 evolutionary theory 316 exclusive OR (XOR) 180 expected utility 153 expert systems 89–94, 123 see also Cyc; DENDRAL; MYCIN; R1/XCON eye scans 220–1 F Facebook 237 facial recognition 27 fake AI 298–301 fake news 293–8 fake pictures of people 214 Fantasia 261 feature extraction 171–2 feedback 172–3 Ferranti Mark 1 20 Fifth Generation Computer Systems Project 113–14 first-order logic 107 Ford 232 forward chaining 94 Frey, Carl 268–70 ‘The Future of Employment’ (Frey & Osborne) 268–70 G game theory 161–2 game-playing 26 Gangs Matrix 280 gender stereotypes 292–3 General AI 41, 53, 116, 119–20 General Motors 232 Genghis robot 134–6 gig economy 275 globalization 267 Go 73–4, 196–9 Golden Age of AI 47–88 Google 167, 231, 256–7 Google Glass 296–7 Google Translate 205–8, 292–3 GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) 187–8 gradient descent 183 Grand Challenges 2004/5 225–6 graphical user interfaces (GUI) 144–5 Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) 187–8 GUI (graphical user interfaces) 144–5 H hard problem of consciousness 314–17 hard problems 84, 86–7 Harm Assessment Risk Tool (HART) 277–80 Hawking, Stephen 238 healthcare 215–23 Herschel, John 304–6 Herzberg, Elaine 230 heuristic search 75–7, 164 heuristics 91 higher-order intentional reasoning 323–4, 328 high-level programming languages 144 Hilbert, David 15–16 Hinton, Geoff 185–6, 221 HOMER 141–3, 146 homunculus problem 315 human brain 43, 306, 330–1 human intuition 311 human judgement 222 human rights 277–81 human-level intelligence 28–36, 241–3 ‘humans are special’ argument 310–11 I image classification 186–7 image-captioning 200–4 ImageNet 186–7 Imitation Game 30 In Search of Lost Time (Proust) 205–8 incentives 261 indistinguishability 30–1, 37, 38 Industrial Revolutions 265–7 inference engines 92–4 insurance 219–20 intelligence 21–2, 127–8, 200 – human-level 28–36, 241–3 ‘Intelligence Without Representation’ (Brooks) 129 Intelligent Knowledge-Based Systems 100 intentional reasoning 323–4, 328 intentional stance 321–7 intentional systems 321–2 internal mental phenomena 306–7 Internet chatbots 36 intuition 311 inverse reinforcement learning 262 Invisible Women (Criado Perez) 291–2 J Japan 113–14 judgement 222 K Kasparov, Garry 163 knowledge bases 92–4 knowledge elicitation problem 123 knowledge graph 120–1 Knowledge Navigator 146–7 knowledge representation 91, 104, 129–30, 208 knowledge-based AI 89–123, 208 Kurzweil, Ray 239–40 L Lee Sedol 197–8 leisure 272 Lenat, Doug 114–21 lethal autonomous weapons 281–7 Lighthill Report 87–8 LISP 49, 99 Loebner Prize Competition 34–6 logic 104–7, 121–2 logic programming 111–14 logic-based AI 107–11, 130–2 M Mac computers 144–6 McCarthy, John 49–52, 107–8, 326–7 machine learning (ML) 27, 54–5, 168–74, 209–10, 287–9 machines with mental states 326–7 Macintosh computers 144–6 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) 306 male-orientation 290–3 Manchester Baby computer 20, 24–6, 143–4 Manhattan Project 51 Marx, Karl 274–6 maximizing expected utility 154 Mercedes 231 Mickey Mouse 261 microprocessors 267–8, 271–2 military drones 282–4 mind modelling 42 mind-body problem 314–17 see also consciousness minimax search 76 mining industry 234 Minsky, Marvin 34, 52, 180 ML (machine learning) 27, 54–5, 168–74, 209–10, 287–9 Montezuma’s Revenge (video game) 195–6 Moore’s law 240 Moorfields Eye Hospital 220–1 moral agency 257–8 Moral Machines 251–3 MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) 306 multi-agent systems 160–2 multi-layer perceptrons 177, 180, 182 Musk, Elon 238 MYCIN 94–8, 217 N Nagel, Thomas 307–10 narrow AI 42 Nash, John Forbes Jr 50–1, 161 Nash equilibrium 161–2 natural languages 56 negative feedback 173 neural nets/neural networks 44, 168, 173–90, 369–72 neurons 174 Newell, Alan 52–3 norms 260 NP-complete problems 81–5, 164–5 nuclear energy 242–3 nuclear fusion 305 O ontological engineering 117 Osborne, Michael 268–70 P P vs NP problem 83 paperclips 261 Papert, Seymour 180 Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) 182–4 Pepper 299 perception 54 perceptron models 174–81, 183 Perceptrons (Minsky & Papert) 180–1, 210 personal healthcare management 217–20 perverse instantiation 260–1 Phaedrus 315 physical stance 319–20 Plato 315 police 277–80 Pratt, Vaughan 117–19 preference relations 151 preferences 150–2, 154 privacy 219 problem solving and planning 55–6, 66–77, 128 programming 21–2 programming languages 144 PROLOG 112–14, 363–4 PROMETHEUS 224–5 protein folding 214 Proust, Marcel 205–8 Q qualia 306–7 QuickSort 26 R R1/XCON 98–9 radiology 215, 221 railway networks 259 RAND Corporation 51 rational decision making 150–5 reasoning 55–6, 121–3, 128–30, 137, 315–16, 323–4, 328 regulation of AI 243 reinforcement learning 172–3, 193, 195, 262 representation harm 288 responsibility 257–8 rewards 172–3, 196 robots – as autonomous weapons 284–5 – Baye’s theorem 157 – beliefs 108–10 – fake 299–300 – indistinguishability 38 – intentional stance 326–7 – SHAKEY 63–6 – Sophia 299–300 – Three Laws of Robotics 244–6 – trivial tasks 61 – vacuum cleaning 132–6 Rosenblatt, Frank 174–81 rules 91–2, 104, 359–62 Russia 261 Rutherford, Ernest (1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson) 242 S Sally-Anne tests 328–9, 330 Samuel, Arthur 75–7 SAT solvers 164–5 Saudi Arabia 299–300 scripts 100–2 search 26, 68–77, 164, 199 search trees 70–1 Searle, John 311–14 self-awareness 41, 305 see also consciousness semantic nets 102 sensors 54 SHAKEY the robot 63–6 SHRDLU 56–63 Simon, Herb 52–3, 86 the Singularity 239–43 The Singularity is Near (Kurzweil) 239 Siri 149, 298 Smith, Matt 201–4 smoking 173 social brain 317–19 see also brains social media 293–6 social reasoning 323, 324–5 social welfare 249 software agents 143–9 software bugs 258 Sophia 299–300 sorting 26 spoken word translation 27 STANLEY 226 STRIPS 65 strong AI 36–8, 41, 309–14 subsumption architecture 132–6 subsumption hierarchy 134 sun 304 supervised learning 169 syllogisms 105, 106 symbolic AI 42–3, 44, 181 synapses 174 Szilard, Leo 242 T tablet computers 146 team-building problem 78–81, 83 Terminator narrative of AI 237–9 Tesla 228–9 text recognition 169–71 Theory of Mind (ToM) 330 Three Laws of Robotics 244–6 TIMIT 292 ToM (Theory of Mind) 330 ToMnet 330 TouringMachines 139–41 Towers of Hanoi 67–72 training data 169–72, 288–9, 292 translation 204–8 transparency 258 travelling salesman problem 82–3 Trolley Problem 246–53 Trump, Donald 294 Turing, Alan 14–15, 17–19, 20, 24–6, 77–8 Turing Machines 18–19, 21 Turing test 29–38 U Uber 168, 230 uncertainty 97–8, 155–8 undecidable problems 19, 78 understanding 201–4, 312–14 unemployment 264–77 unintended consequences 263 universal basic income 272–3 Universal Turing Machines 18, 19 Upanishads 315 Urban Challenge 2007 226–7 utilitarianism 249 utilities 151–4 utopians 271 V vacuum cleaning robots 132–6 values and norms 260 video games 192–6, 327–8 virtue ethics 250 Von Neumann and Morgenstern model 150–5 Von Neumann architecture 20 W warfare 285–6 WARPLAN 113 Waymo 231, 232–3 weak AI 36–8 weapons 281–7 wearable technology 217–20 web search 148–9 Weizenbaum, Joseph 32–4 Winograd schemas 39–40 working memory 92 X XOR (exclusive OR) 180 Z Z3 computer 19–20 PELICAN BOOKS Economics: The User’s Guide Ha-Joon Chang Human Evolution Robin Dunbar Revolutionary Russia: 1891–1991 Orlando Figes The Domesticated Brain Bruce Hood Greek and Roman Political Ideas Melissa Lane Classical Literature Richard Jenkyns Who Governs Britain?

Work in the Future The Automation Revolution-Palgrave MacMillan (2019)
by Robert Skidelsky Nan Craig
Published 15 Mar 2020

Work is the protein, interacting with other resources, feeding our seemingly insatiable growth economies that, to our peril, ignore the wellbeing of both the planet and other species. As internet technologies transform our working patterns through self-­ organised platforms, often collectively described as Uberisation and the gig economy, there seems to be a yearning for greater understanding of our past, a need for clues that may lead us in to a sustainable future. One focus of contemporary studies has been the settlements and towns established at a fulcrum of history—the shift from hunter-gathering in to agrarian society capable of creating food surpluses that, in turn, needed finer organisation of work around specialisations such as accounting, planning and management.

…

People in full-time work with permanent contracts still make up the majority of the labour force: the percentage of such workers dropped from 65 per cent to 63 per cent between 2008 and 2010 and has remained constant since. Nonetheless, it is not clear whether or how a statutory shortening of working time would affect gig-­economy workers. As mentioned, union membership in the UK is low, and there is a near total absence of sectoral bargaining: this makes it harder to translate the gains from automation into higher wages and/or more leisure time. Furthermore, the UK is already suffering from a shortage of technical skills: employers are struggling to fill hundreds of thousands of positions.

…

Strong, 99 Artisans, 12, 29, 38, 74, 93, 94 Attitudes to work, 1, 4, 53–62, 73, 75 Aubrey, 184 Austria, 68, 196 Authenticity, 116 Authority, 120, 165 Automation restrictions on, 95 speed of, 21, 137 task automation vs job automation, 92, 93, 110, 141 Autonomous cars, 114, 115, 118 Autor, David, 59, 126 Autor Levy Murnane (ALM) hypothesis, 126–128, 131 B Bailey, Olivia, 180 Bairoch, Paul, 44, 46 Banking (automation of ), 87, 147 Bargaining, 68, 70, 177, 181, 182, 184, 185 Bastani, Aaron, 179n2 Beckert, Sven, 44 Berger, Thor, 95 Bessen, James, 4 Blumenbach, Wenzel, 41 Bosch, Gerhard, 179 Bostrom, Nick, 112, 113 Bourgeois household, 39 Brain and AI, 113 analagous to computer, 100, 103, 104, 115 Brown, William, 185 Bullshit jobs psychological effects, 162 Bureaucracy, 169 C Capitalism, 12, 17, 28, 53, 57, 58, 61, 75, 135, 159 Capper, Phillip, 127, 128 Care work, 3, 48, 75, 117, 178 Carlyle, Thomas, 28 Catholic, 74 Central Europe, 38, 40 Centralisation, 69, 175, 176 Chalmers, David, 103 Chatbots, 91 Chen, Chinchih, 95 Chess (and AI), 112 China, 95, 135 Christian (view of work), 74, 75, 161, 166 Clark, A, 60 Class, 13–15, 17, 30, 39, 43, 46, 47, 118, 159, 160, 162, 165, 172 Classical economics, 54, 55 Climate change, 30, 198 Cloud computing, 139, 140 Coase, Ronald, 70 Coats, David, 184, 185 Collective bargaining, 68, 181, 182, 185 Communism, 13, 57, 58, 61 Competition, 12, 16–18, 39, 91, 94, 112, 115, 119, 139, 140, 152, 199 Index Computational Creativity, 109, 115, 120, 121 Computer aided design (CAD), 34, 35 Computer programming, 100, 116 Computer revolution, 90, 94, 95, 99 Computers, 20, 34, 84, 86, 90, 92–94, 99–107, 110, 111, 115, 116, 120, 131, 134, 146, 147, 151, 197 Consciousness of AI, 110–111 the hard problem, 103 of humans, 105 objective vs. subjective, 102, 103 Consumerism/consumer society, 30, 74, 161, 194 Consumption, 3, 5, 12, 13, 16, 19, 38, 41, 56, 59, 61, 62, 66, 85, 88, 166, 176, 192, 194, 197, 199 Contested concepts, 120 Cooperatives, 40, 61, 69 Craftsmanship, 3, 11, 35, 36, 39, 194 Craig, Nan, 4, 179 Creative work, 3, 48, 74 Creativity, 3, 5, 57, 91, 105–107, 110, 120, 121, 193–195 D D’Arcy, Conor, 177 Data, 2, 84, 92, 107, 129, 130, 137–140, 146, 149, 150, 153, 178, 191, 197, 198 Davies, W.H., 31 De Spiegelaere, Stan, 181, 183 205 Deep Blue, 91, 112, 129, 130 Dekker, Fabian, 180 Deliveroo, 136 Demand effects on automation, 4, 21, 86 elasticity, 86 of work, 4, 13, 15, 16, 76, 158, 164, 180, 199 Democracy, 28 Denmark, 68, 177, 180 Dennett, Daniel, 100, 102, 103 Developing countries, 145 Digital economy, 5, 19, 125–132, 140 Digital revolution, 70 Division of labour, 11, 35, 38, 43, 44, 55 Donkin, Richard, 3 Dosi, Giovanni, 192, 195 Do what you love, 73, 74, 76 Dreyfus, Herbert, 100 E Economics, 1, 4, 5, 7, 10, 12, 14, 15, 18, 29, 30, 53–62 Economic view of work, 53–62 Education, 41, 42, 48, 67–69, 126, 131, 169, 171, 196, 197 Efficiency, 5, 16, 75, 159, 168, 184 Empathy, 106, 107 Employment law, 68 rates, 67, 68, 70 English East India Company, 44 Entrepreneurs, 29, 70, 77, 190, 192, 197, 199 Environment, 25, 31, 56, 70, 87, 91, 109, 111, 113, 120, 178, 198 206 Index Equality of opportunity, 69 of outcome, 69 social, 163 Ethics of AI, 6, 110, 119, 145–153, 197 stagnation of, 151–152 of work, 28 Exit, 69 Experience, 36, 61, 85, 90, 94, 99–105, 116, 119, 189, 190 F Facebook, 136–141, 161 Factory system, 29–30 Families, 3, 26, 29, 37–48, 75, 76, 138, 159, 162, 178, 196 Feminist (arguments about work), 79 Finance, 48, 87, 170, 197 Fire, harnessing/discovery of, 29 Firestone, Shulamith, 159 Firms, 16, 17, 68, 70, 85, 87, 133, 148, 149, 151, 152, 168, 169, 172, 190 Flexicurity, 68 Ford, Henry, 30 Ford, Martin, 2, 59, 106 France, 4, 6, 66–70, 177, 181, 182 Franklin, Benjamin, 28 Freeman, Chris, 192 French Revolution, 43 Frey, Carl Benedikt, 4, 180 Friedman, Milton, 171 Fuzzy matching, 148, 149 G Galbraith, JK, 66 GDP, 19, 178 Gender, 38, 43, 44, 48, 151, 178 Gendered division of labour, 38, 43, 44 Germany, 6, 177, 180–182, 196 Gig economy, 27, 184 Globalisation, 20, 30, 90, 95 Google Google Cloud, 140 Google Home, 140 Google Maps, 35 Google Translate, 106 Google DeepMind, 112, 119 Gorz, A., 59 Graeber, David, 6, 76, 157, 161, 168 Greek ideas of work, 74 Growth, 2, 6, 7, 12, 25, 27, 30, 31, 55, 69, 75, 85, 86, 88, 110, 126, 128, 130, 135, 169, 176, 180, 183, 185, 190, 192, 198, 200 H Happiness, 5, 62, 195 Harrop, Andrew, 180 Hassabis, Demis, 119 Hayden, Anders, 182, 183 Healthcare, 3, 87, 94, 117, 165, 197 Heterodox economics, 54, 56, 62 Hierarchy, 46, 48, 55, 69, 170 High-skilled jobs, 128, 134 Homejoy, 135 Homo economicus, 56, 57 Homo laborans, 3 Homo ludens, 3 Household economy, 4, 38–40, 45, 47 Housewives, 42, 43, 46, 47 Housework, 39, 40, 42, 44, 47 Hunter-gatherers, 11, 26, 27, 30 Index I Idleness, 54 India, 44–47 Industrial Revolution, 2, 4, 14, 29, 37, 75, 93, 94, 175, 177, 190, 191 Inequality, 67–69, 86, 87, 192, 193, 199, 200 Informal economy, 47 Information technology, 86, 161 Infrastructure digital, 140 physical, 103 Innovation, 6, 10, 14, 16, 18, 34, 67, 69, 189–199 process innovation vs. product innovation, 16, 18, 190–191, 195 International Labour Organisation (ILO), 193 Internet of Things, 139, 191 Investment in capital, 114 in skills, 70 J Japan, 117 Jensen, C, 55 Job guarantee, 172 Jobs, Steve, 73 Journalism automation of, 118 clickbait, 118 Juries, algorithmic selection of, 150, 153 K Karstgen, Jack, 196 Kasparov, Garry, 91, 112, 129, 130 207 Katz, Lawrence, 198 Kennedy, John F., 160 Keune, Maarten, 180 Keynes, John Maynard, 6, 9, 11, 27, 60, 61, 160, 161, 176 King, Martin Luther, 171 Knowledge (tacit vs. explicit), 127 Komlosy, Andrea, 4, 75 Kubrick, Stanley, 26 Kurzweil, Raymond, 101, 103, 104 Kuznets, Simon, 190 L Labour, 3, 10, 11, 13–16, 18–21, 29, 34–36, 38, 43–46, 55, 59, 65–70, 73–76, 85–87, 89, 90, 93, 94, 96, 114, 125, 126, 128, 130, 131, 141, 158, 165, 176–180, 183–184, 189, 190, 192–196, 199–200 Labour market polarisation, 67, 70, 126 Labour markets, 67, 68, 70, 87, 90, 96, 125, 126, 128, 130, 131, 141, 178, 183–184, 189, 192, 193, 195, 196, 199–200 Labour-saving effect, 86 Lall, Sanjaya, 193 Language translation, 105, 106 Latent Damage Act 1986, 127 Law automation of, 145, 152, 153 ethics, 145–153 Lawrence, Mathew, 177 Layton, E., 58 Le Bon, Gustave, 101 Lee, Richard, 26 Legal search/legal discovery, 148–150 208 Index Leisure, 3, 10, 11, 19, 27, 48, 55, 56, 59–62, 65, 77, 79, 117, 118, 159, 161, 178, 180, 182, 184, 191, 195 Levy, Frank, 126 List, Friedrich, 193 Love, 55, 74, 76, 99, 103, 106, 112, 118 Low-income jobs, 96 Loyalty, 69 Luddites, 2, 14, 18, 35, 59, 94, 96 Lyft, 136 M Machine learning, 59, 84, 90, 91, 96, 138, 139 Machines, 2, 5, 10, 12–15, 17, 19, 20, 35, 36, 38, 59, 84–87, 90–96, 99–103, 105–107, 109–121, 127–131, 138, 139, 145, 147, 148, 160, 168, 191 Machine vision, 120 Malthusian, 19 Man, Henrik de, 79 Management, 27, 30, 41, 69, 70 management theory/ organisational theory (see also Scientific management) Mann, Michael, 46 Manual work, 1 Manufacturing, 86, 87, 90, 94, 95, 176, 184, 198 Markets/market forces, 5, 6, 21, 38, 44–46, 67, 68, 70, 79, 85–88, 90, 96, 120, 125, 126, 128, 130, 131, 140, 141, 150, 152, 159, 164, 165, 171, 178, 183, 189–193, 195, 196, 198–200 Marx, Karl, 17, 18, 27, 56–59, 61, 62, 78 Matrimonial relationships, 37 McCormack, Win, 159 Meaning, 4, 9, 10, 19, 25, 54, 57, 58, 66, 73, 76, 78, 79, 84, 106, 116, 176, 180 Mechanisation, 15, 17, 19, 20, 192 Meckling, W., 55 Méda, Dominique, 183 Medical diagnosis (automation of ), 128, 129 Menger, Pierre-Michel, 4 Mental labour, 3 Meritocracy, 28 Middle-income jobs, 90, 93, 94 Migration, 40, 47 Minimum wage, 67, 69 Mining, 26, 38, 197 Mokyr, J., 59 Monopolies, 6, 136, 138–140 Morals/morality, 48, 77, 159, 160, 162, 164, 166, 167 Moravec’s paradox, 131 Murnane, Richard, 126 N Nagel, Thomas, 100, 102 National Living wage, 184 Needs vs.

Confessions of a Crypto Millionaire: My Unlikely Escape From Corporate America
by Dan Conway
Published 8 Sep 2019

Why does Ravikant think this is more likely to happen now, years after the migration to the gig economy and independent contractors is underway? Blockchains powered by cryptocurrency. He says, “The Internet evolved media from physical to digital, from paid to free, from editorial to social. Next up: from corporate to ownerless.” The gig economy provides some measure of freedom, but it still requires people to play by the corporate rules, like Google’s army of contractors, or hand over a disproportionate cut to its market maker, like Uber and Airbnb. In the gig economy, workers more or less still need to know the right people, laugh at the right jokes, and have the right credentials.

Rewriting the Rules of the European Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity
by Joseph E. Stiglitz
Published 28 Jan 2020

A number of governments have tried to extend coverage to vulnerable workers, including those with multiple employers, those with irregular jobs, and those who are self-employed. In Austria and Spain, part-timers and the self-employed are allowed a more favorable way of calculating benefits for any given level of contributions. In Indonesia and Uruguay, taxi and motorcycle taxi drivers, including those working through gig economy platforms, are covered by social insurance through payments via an online application.8 Formalization, or bringing workers onto the books, would have further benefits, including the improvement of working conditions of those in the informal economy. What these examples illustrate is that public pensions can be provided even to those in the informal economy.

…

■ Wages at the bottom of the income scale in many countries are simply too low. In many countries, it will be important to raise minimum wages and/or to supplement the incomes of low-wage earners. ■ A new problem that Europe has to confront is the emergence of precarious jobs, like those involved in the so-called gig economy. ■ In many countries, there has been an erosion of labor standards. Standards have to be raised and programs designed to bring the informal economy onto the books. ■ Europe has suffered from excesses of long-term unemployment and high rates of youth unemployment. Active labor market policies can help move these individuals into jobs, provided enough jobs are available

…

The paradox is that, in some respects, we seem to be reversing a long-term trend associated with development, which is the move from informal jobs to formal jobs with better protections. In some cases, firms like Uber have tried to take advantage of legalistic arguments by claiming that their workers are independent contractors—even as the company controls many details of what they do. In some countries, courts have ruled against these obvious ruses. Box 9.1: The Gig Economy in Europe, Its Problems, and Possible Solutions Uber, Airbnb, and TaskRabbit are examples of internet-based companies that connect clients with service providers (mini-cab drivers, owners of accommodation, and domestic work, respectively) through easy-to-use mobile apps. They often operate in a legal vacuum.

Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World
by Branko Milanovic
Published 23 Sep 2019

Cooking has now become outsourced, and families often do not eat meals together. Cleaning, repairs, gardening, and child-rearing have become more commercialized than before or perhaps than ever. Writing homework essays, which used to be “outsourced” to parents, can now be outsourced to commercial companies. The growth of the gig economy commercializes our free time and things that we own but have not used for commercial purposes before. Uber was created precisely on the idea of making better use of free time. Limousine drivers used to have extra time between jobs; instead of wasting that time, they began to drive people around to make money.

…

The transformation of ourselves into objects of management and maximization was very well captured by the law professor Daniel Markovits in his address to the 2015 graduating class of Yale Law School: “Your own talents, training and skills—your self-same persons—today constitute your greatest assets, the overwhelmingly dominant source of your wealth and status.… [You have had] to act as asset-managers whose portfolio contains yourselves.”22 The increasing commodification of many activities along with the rise of the gig economy and of a radically flexible labor market are all part of the same evolution; they should be seen as movements toward a more rational, but ultimately more depersonalized, economy where most interactions will be one-off contacts. At some level, as in Montesquieu’s “doux commerce,” complete commercialization should make people act nicer toward each other.

…

See also Rich; Upper class Ellul, Jacques, 208–209 Employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), to deconcentrate capital ownership, 48 The End of History and the Last Man (Fukuyama), 70 Engels, Friedrich, 1, 2, 3, 114, 224 Entrepreneurship, 25 Entry costs, rich and, 33–34 Equilibrium corruption, 121 Escaping Poverty (Vries), 115 Ethical imperialism, 126 Ethical vs. legal, 182 Ethics of ruling class, 66 Europe, performance of socialist vs. capitalist economies in, 84–85 Export pessimism, 149–150 Extractive institutions, 73 Fallacy: of the lump of labor doctrine, 198–199; of lump of raw materials and energy, 200–201; that human needs are limited, 199 Family, decreased usefulness of, 187–190 Fascism, explaining rise of, 70–72 Feldstein, Martin, 33 Ferguson, Niall, 72 Financial assets, rich and rate of return on, 32–33 Financial centers, corruption and global, 169–170 Financial deregulation, 183 Financial settlements, amorality and, 183–184 Finland, universal basic income in, 202 First Congress of the Peoples of the East, 223 Fischer, Fritz, 72 Fisher, Irving, 48 Fixed investment in China, 89–90 France: inherited wealth in, 62; minority support for globalization in, 9; share of capital as percent of national income in, 15 Frank, André Gunder, 148 Fraser, Nancy, 195 Freeman, Richard, 144, 198 Freund, Caroline, 50, 161–163 Fu, Zhe, 102 Fukuyama, Francis, 68, 70, 115, 120 Functional distribution of income, 233 Funding of political parties and campaigns, control of political process by rich and, 57–58 Future, inability to visualize, 197–201 GDP per capita: for China and India, 8, 211, 212; in countries with political capitalism, 97; decline in global inequality and, 213; growth rate in China, Vietnam, and United States, 86; household net wealth and, 27, 30, 31; in socialist vs. capitalist economies in Europe in 1950, 83–84; universal basic income and, 203 Gender, ruling class and, 66 Geopolitical changes, global inequality and, 211–214 Germany: cracking down on tax evasion in, 173; inequality in income from capital and labor in, 26–27, 29; limits of tax-and-transfer redistribution in, 44–45; migration and, 137, 242n47; share of global GDP, 9, 10; subcitizenship in, 136 Gernet, Jacques, 105–106, 115 Ghettoization, of migrants, 146–147 Gig economy, 190, 192, 194 Gilens, Martin, 56 Gini coefficients, 6, 27, 231, 241–242n40 Gini points, 6, 7, 239n22, 240n30 Gintis, Herbert, 209–211 Giving Pledge, 242n44 Global attractiveness of political capitalism, 112–113; Chinese “export” of political capitalism and, 118–128 Global capitalism, future of, 176–218; amorality of hypercommercialized capitalism, 176–187; atomization and commodification, 187–197; fear of technological progress and, 197–205; global inequality and geopolitical changes, 211–214; leading toward people’s capitalism and egalitarian capitalism, 215–218; political capitalism vs. liberal capitalism, 207–211; war and peace, 205–207 Global capitalism, globalization and, 153–155 Global GDP: China’s share of, 9, 10; Germany’s share of, 9, 10; India’s share of, 9, 10; United States’ share of, 9, 10 Global inequality, 6–9; decline in, 257n36; geopolitical changes and, 211–214; history of income inequality, 6–9; measurement of, 231–233 Global Inequality (Milanovic), 102 Globalization: capitalism and, 3; eras of, 150–155; facilitating worldwide corruption, 107; inequality in liberal meritocratic capitalism and, 22; malaise in the West about, 9–10; scenarios for evolution of, 209–211; support for in Asia, 9; tax havens and, 44; welfare state and, 50–55, 155–159; welfare state in era of, 50–55; worldwide corruption and, 159–175.

We Are All Fast-Food Workers Now: The Global Uprising Against Poverty Wages
by Annelise Orleck
Published 27 Feb 2018

In many countries, full-time employees are protected by federal and state labor laws, fought for by labor unions and passed between the 1910s and the 1950s. But few people are classified as full-time employees these days. Suddenly almost everyone is an “independent contractor.” Welcome to the so-called “gig economy.” Twenty dollars an hour, most studies show, is the minimum required to comfortably support a family with two children in the US. Nearly two-thirds of American workers earn less. And though the 2016 election sparked discussion of falling real wages among high school-educated white men, only a quarter of low-wage workers in the US are men.

…

Most don’t earn enough to pay their bills. In 2016, more than 127,000 people slept in New York City homeless shelters. Many were working people and their kids.2 The cheerful pictures painted by Amazon, Uber, and McDonald’s are lies. Precarious workers are not plucky free agents creatively making their way in the “gig economy.” They are victims of what should be considered a vast criminal conspiracy. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that in 2016 alone, US workers were robbed of $50 billion in wages. Meanwhile, wealthy companies around the world were systematically denying precarious workers their rightful earnings—in fast-food restaurants, factories, nursing homes, and farms.3 McDonald’s is infamous for the practice.

…

See also education construction workers, hazards faced by, 22 consumers: consumer boycotts, 41, 216; educating, 158–59, 164; and fast-fashion industry, 129; focusing actions on, 194, 210–11; and ubiquity of low prices, 6; and ready availability of fresh produce, 220 contract labor: call center workers, 100; fast-food workers, 99–100; fostering solidarity among, 66–67; garment workers, 177; and the “gig” economy, 68; grape pickers, 209; and low wages, 67–68; as product of globalization, 68, 167; as strategy for avoiding corporate responsibility, 177; teachers, 66, 79, 91 Contreras, Miguel, 254 Conway, Jill Ker, 130 Cooper Union, New York, 37 Cordillera region, Philippines: heirloom rice project, 231, 233; indigenous farming communities, 227, 232; migration from, 232; traditional agroecology practices, rice rituals, 230–31; as a UNESCO “Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Site,” 231 corn production, Mexico, impact of NAFTA, 15–16 Corona, Bert (“El Viejo”), 94 Coronacion, Joanna Bernice (“Sister Nice”): concept of freedom, 12; on contractualizing fast-food workers, 99; and DUBS, 63; education, 48–49; on globalized social movement activism, 97; on need to dismantle patriarchy, 48; on wage theft, 101 corporations/transnational corporate imperialism: and corporate wealth, 4–5; and industrialized agribusiness, 13–14; and neoliberalism, 5.

More: The 10,000-Year Rise of the World Economy
by Philip Coggan
Published 6 Feb 2020

Across the OECD as a whole, demography started to be a drag on growth after 2010 and will continue to be so until 2040. Workers’ rights The gig economy (see Chapter 17) can be viewed as a way of enhancing the productivity of the entire economy – by bringing unused resources (in this case, labour) into play. Similarly, the growth of flat- and house-sharing services, such as Airbnb, allows property to be used for a greater percentage of the time; it is a more efficient use of resources. But the gig economy has raised questions about the issue of workers’ rights. Over the course of the late 19th century and the 20th century, workers demanded, and were granted, more rights: paid holiday, sick leave, maternity leave, pensions and healthcare.

…

A study by Deloitte, a consultancy, found that the number of British nursing assistants increased by 909% between 1992 and 2014, while the number of teaching assistants had grown by 580%, and care workers by 168%.40 Some of these jobs are not very well paid, however. That links to another worry, that some of the new technology companies are bypassing traditional employment laws to create new and insecure forms of employment. This so-called “gig economy” involves workers having uncertain hours, and no paid holidays, sick pay or pensions rights. Instead, the worker (such as an Uber driver) will be hired at the whim of the customer, or on an irregular basis at a services company (on a zero-hours contract at a warehouse, for example). Some workers may like the freedom that a gig job brings, but surveys suggest that most would prefer full-time employment.41 Still, there are many people who do want to work part-time, and there are many people who are looking for services, whether it is an odd job or a car ride.

…

Over the course of the late 19th century and the 20th century, workers demanded, and were granted, more rights: paid holiday, sick leave, maternity leave, pensions and healthcare. These tended to be associated with full-time employment, rather than part-time or casual work. From the employer’s point of view, they add significantly to the cost of hiring workers. The fear is that the gig economy represents a form of “regulatory arbitrage” in which companies replace full-time employees with casual or contract labour at less cost, and with fewer rights. These lines can be difficult to draw. If a worker performs a service almost exclusively for a single company, and the company imposes sufficient conditions on the way in which the job is performed, then it may be proved that the worker is an employee, not a contractor.43 Furthermore, such an employee may be entirely at the mercy of the platform provider.

Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech
by Brian Merchant
Published 25 Sep 2023

It’s both an inversion and an evolution—workers are made to internalize factory logic on a personal level, accepting jobs by clicking mechanistically and automatically on smartphone apps and following directions to a T, to avoid missing out on chances to work or incurring penalties for slack performance. “The gig economy promises flexibility and more free time, yet workers are increasingly tethered to work because of the on-demand nature of the work,” as the sociologist Alexandra J. Ravenelle, who has interviewed hundreds of Uber drivers, explains. “The work is seemingly flexible, but it doesn’t end. And while the workers are ‘self-employed’ contractors and don’t answer to bosses, they remain under constant observation through a technological panopticon.… In the gig economy everything can be collected and viewed at any point.” When the artisans and workers of the 1800s saw the prison-like factory looming before them, it looked like the architecture of domination.

…

So: the regulations on the books are out of date, should not apply to new technologies, and are stifling innovation; they’re really not that important, and no one plans on violating them anyway; the new tech simply enables more secure and transparent processes, and to constrain it is an affront to the freedom to do business. Sound familiar? These arguments parallel the ones advanced by Uber and other major gig economy companies like Instacart and Doordash throughout the 2010s and 2020s. Uber’s chief innovation is not that its app summons a car to your location with a smartphone and a GPS signal. It is that it used this moderately novel configuration of technology to argue that the old rules did not apply whenever it brought its taxi business to a market that already had a regulated taxi code.

…

“Yes, excessive automation at Tesla” Elon Musk, Twitter post, April 13, 2018, 12:54 p.m., http://twitter.com/elonmusk: “Yes, excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake. To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated.” 17. “fauxtomation” Astra Taylor, “The Automation Charade,” Logic, no. 5 (August 1, 2018), https://logicmag.io/failure/the-automation-charade/. 18. “The gig economy promises flexibility” Alexandrea J. Ravenelle, Hustle and Gig: Struggling and Surviving in the Sharing Economy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019), 15. 19. The economic historian Louis Hyman The story of the rapid corporate assault on workers’ benefits and the transition to part-time work is the focus of Louis Hyman’s book Temp: How American Work, American Business, and the American Dream Became Temporary (New York: Viking, 2018). 20.

Shorter: Work Better, Smarter, and Less Here's How
by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
Published 10 Mar 2020

The development of sophisticated models for predicting labor demand and the growth of online freelance marketplaces have accelerated the expansion of the gig economy in advanced nations and the growing precariousness of work. Working hours from 1870 to 2018 in the US, UK, and Sweden. Working hours fell substantially between 1870 and 1930, and that decrease led Russell and Keynes to believe that they could fall much further by 2000, to as low as one thousand hours per year. Instead, especially since the 1970s, working hours have held relatively steady or fallen only modestly. The percentage of workers employed in temporary work, gig-economy jobs, or zero-hours contracts has grown dramatically in the US, with other advanced economies following.

…

IMPROVING THE FUTURE OF WORK The idea of using innovations in time and technology to improve work couldn’t be more timely or necessary. There’s a widespread unease with the way work has evolved over the last few decades, and what’s going to happen to it. We deal every day with problems like overwork, work-life balance, the gig economy, matching the demands of work and family, and the mismatch between the passion we’re expected to display at work and the loyalty companies feel themselves obliged to return. These connect to bigger problems with globalization and inequality. Globalization has produced increases in the living standards of many.

The Smartphone Society
by Nicole Aschoff

Many of the critiques raised in these chapters stem from the myriad ways our smartphones are used to perpetuate and obscure coercive and unjust relationships. Our pocket computers are used in ways that reconfigure, and often reinforce and renew, existing power inequalities. We see this power inequality most starkly in the relationship between corporations and workers, and between corporations and consumers. In the gig economy our hand machines mediate the employment relationship, encouraging app workers to view their phones as their boss. But our phones are not the boss; companies are. Right now many high-tech companies are flagrantly violating existing independent-contractor laws. We need to radically update our laws regarding employment relationships for the smartphone age to give workers the dignity, pay, and protection they deserve.

…

The defeat in court of Deliveroo drivers in the UK who pursued employee rights and the April 2019 National Labor Relations Board advisory memo designating Uber drivers as independent contractors with no right to unionize show how entrenched the new app-work models have become in just a short time, and how difficult it will be to change expectations about work in the gig economy. But difficult does not mean impossible. As this book went to press, California legislators approved a landmark bill that forces app-based service companies (such as Uber and Lyft) to reclassify their workers as employees rather than independent contractors. Tech companies are sitting atop mountains of cash thanks to mass quantities of unpaid and underpaid work, a technological infrastructure that was developed with taxpayer money, and access to cheap credit for development and expansion, courtesy of low-interest rates engineered by the Federal Reserve.

…

“Abrams, Jenna,” 109 ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), 21, 22, 96, 148–49, 153, 176n28 Acxiom, 72, 77 addiction to social media, 65–69 Admiral, 78, 79 Adolfsson, Martin, 84 AdSense, 52 Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), 80 advertising: data collection and, 76–77, 83–84; on Facebook, 47–48; on Google, 52; political, 149 AdWords, 52 Afghanistan, politics in, 95–96 age discrimination, 149 AI Now, 129, 157 Airbnb, 42, 119, 120, 148 al-Abed, Bana, 90 al-Abed, Fatemah, 90 Aldridge, Rasheen, 91 algorithm(s): for consumer categories, 77; in dystopian future, 129–30, 131; in politics, 109–10; recommender, 67; search, 51–52, 53 algorithmic accountability, 151, 157–59 “algorithmic management,” 32–34 Alibaba, 4, 42 Allard, LaDonna Brave Bull, 104 aloneness, 7 Alphabet, 41, 55, 76, 122, 150 Alpha Go Zero program, 122 alter-globalization activists, 91 Amazon: acquisitions by, 41; and CIA, 81; in Europe, 150; marketplace model of, 150; as monopoly, 53–54; and new capitalism, 118–19; as new titan, 38–41, 44, 45; power of, 54–55; Rekognition software of, 149; tax evasion by, 49; warehouse workers at, 31–32, 33, 34; working conditions at, 46 Amazon Shopping, 30 Amazon Web Services (AWS), 41 American Academy of Pediatrics, 9 American Association of People with Disabilities, 55 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 21, 22, 96, 148–49, 153, 176n28 American Dream, 120–21 American Library Association, 55 amplification, 91 analog networks, in cognitive mapping, 143 Android operating system, 39, 41, 53, 69, 70–71, 72 “angel investor,” 120 Ant Financial, 42 antidiscrimination laws, 149 antitrust laws and practices, 43–44, 52–53, 55, 150 AOL, data collection from, 81 app(s): top ten, 38 “app dashboard,” 69 app jobs, 30–34, 35, 137 Apple: data collection from, 81; in Europe, 150; low-paid workers at, 147; as new titan, 42; refusal of “right to repair” by, 155; supply chain of, 28–29; tax evasion by, 49–50; working conditions at, 46 appropriation, frontiers of, 73–76 appwashing, 34, 35, 146 “Arab Spring,” 97 Ardern, Jacinda, 93 ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), 80 artificial intelligence, 121–22, 123, 130 aspirational story, 120 assembly workers, 28–29 Athena, 42 AT&T, 29, 42, 43, 71 attention, 7 Audible, 41 Australia, justice in, 21 automation, 128, 131 automobiles, analogy between smartphones and, 2–3, 161, 162 autonomy, 117, 124 AWS (Amazon Web Services), 41 bad behavior, 138–39 Baidu, 42 Bannon, Steve, 105 Barlow, John Perry, 124 Bellini, Eevie, 24 Berners-Lee, Tim, 40 Beyoncé, 61, 107 Bezos, Jeff, 38, 44, 49, 54, 118–19 Bharatiya Janata Party (India), 93 big data, 76, 83–84, 145 Binh, Huang Duc, 95 black(s): police violence against, 17–23, 35, 169n6, 169n13 Blackberry, 6 “black-box algorithms,” 151 Black Lives Matter (BLM), 89–90, 100–102, 104, 107, 111 Blades, Joan, 91 blockchains, 124 body cameras worn by police, 22 book publishers, 172n40 boredom, 11 bots, 109 Boyd, Wes, 91 boyfriend, invisible, 24 Boyle, Susan, 63 Brazil, politics in, 97 Brin, Sergei, 38, 41, 54, 119, 148 Brown, Michael, Jr., 22, 89–90, 91, 101–2 Buffett, Warren, 41 Bumble, 23, 91 Bumblehive, 81 Burke, Tarana, 108 Bush, George W., 99 Calico, 41 California Consumer Privacy Act, 150 “CamperForce,” 31–32 Canales, Christian, 21 cancer, 7 candidates, social media use by, 103–5 Capital G, 41 capitalism: chameleonesque quality of, 116–17; crony, 105; and frontiers, 72–79; maps of, 143–44; neoliberal, 69, 102, 112–13, 117–18, 144–45; smartphones as embodiment of, 161–62; spirit of, 115–18; surveillance, 8 capitalist frontiers, government and, 80–81 carbon footprint, 82, 175n77 Carnegie, Andrew, 37, 54, 57 Castile, Philando, 20, 35 CatchLA, 62 caveats, 14–15 celebrities, in digital movements, 91 celebrity culture, 64–65 censorship, 95 Center for American Progress, 55 Center for Responsive Politics, 56 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 81, 95, 96, 138, 175n74 centrism, 112 Chadaga, Smitha, 89 change agent, 12 Chan, Priscilla, 56 Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), 56 Charles, Ashley “Dotty,” 109 Charlottesville, Virginia, 106–7, 111 Chesky, Brian, 120 children, 8, 9, 11–12, 84 China, 4, 42, 94–95 Chronicle, 41 CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), 81, 95, 96, 138, 175n74 Cienfuegos, Joaquin, 20–21 City of the Future, 124 Clinton, Bill, 43, 91, 99 Clinton, Hillary, 50, 107 Clooney, George, 91 “the cloud,” 82 cloud storage facility, 81 coercive relationships, 137–38, 152–54 cognitive maps and mapping, 143–59; algorithmic accountability in, 151; antidiscrimination laws in, 149; coercive and unjust relationships in, 152–54; defined, 143; digital and analog networks in, 143; digital commons in, 156–59; ecological externalities in, 145; economic implications in, 151–52; internet access for poor and rural communities in, 149–50; lacunae in, 145; low-paying jobs in, 146–49, 153–54; monopoly in, 150; political advertising in, 149; power in, 145; and principles of smartphone use, 152–59; privacy in, 150–51; selfish or immoral behavior in, 154–56; sociotechnical layers of, 145 collateral damage, 96 collective action, 155–56 Comcast, 29, 71 comic books, 11 commodification of private sphere, 144 Communications and Decency Act, 51 communities, on-line, 64 community broadband initiative, 149–50 Community Legal Services, 171–72n32 Compass Transportation, 147 Computer and Communications Industry Association, 55 “connected presence,” 6 connection, 44, 63–64, 143, 162 connectivity, 122 Connolly, Mike, 94 consumer(s): vs. producers, 28–29 consumer categories, 77 consumer scores, 77–78 consumption, 83, 138–39 content algorithms, 51–52 content creation, 74–79 contingent workers, 30 convenience, 29–30, 35 Cooperation Jackson, 155 cop-watch groups, 20–21 “The Counted,” 19, 169n6 “creative monopoly,” 44 creativity, 117 credit scores, 78–79 creepin”, 65 critiques, 7–8 crony capitalism, 105 CrushTime, 24 Cruz, Ted, 92 “Cuban Twitter,” 95 Cucalon, Celia, 48 Cullors, Patrisse, 100–102 cultural capital, 62 “custom breathers,” 69 “customer lifetime value score,” 78 “cyberspace,” 82 CZI (Chan Zuckerberg Initiative), 56 Dakota Access Pipeline Protests, 103–4, 110 dashboard apps, 132 data brokers, 72, 77 data centers, energy use by, 82 data collection, 70–72, 83–84, 137, 150–51, 156–59 data mining, 76–79 data ownership, 135–36 “data smog,” 72 Data & Society, 151, 179n20 data vendors, 76 datification, 156–57, 161 dating apps, 23–27, 35 decentralization, 101–2, 120 decommodification, 156–57 DeepMind, 41, 79, 122, 157 Deliveroo, 32–33, 153 Department of Homeland Security, 149 Desai, Bhairavi, 146 Descartes, René, 67 Diallo, Amadou, 19 Diapers.com, 41 dick pics, 25 Dick’s Sporting Goods, 91 digital-analog political model, 104, 110–12, 145, 162 digital commons, 139–41, 156–59 digital divide, 28–29, 35 “digital exclusion,” 29 digital frontier, limits of, 82 digital justice, 17–23, 152, 157, 169n6, 169n13 digital networks, 143 digital platforms, 44 “digital redlining,” 29 “digital well-being,” 69 disconnection, 132–33 discrimination in housing, 47–48 divides, 17–36; built-in, 28–34, 35; related to justice, 17–23, 169n6, 169n13; related to sexuality, 23–27, 35 division of labor, 74–75 Dobbs, Tammy, 129 documentation, 62 domestic violence, 25 DoorDash, 33–34, 146–47 dopamine driven feedback loops, 67 double standard, 25–27, 35 drone warfare, 95 “dual economy,” 12–13 dumbness, 7, 9 “dumb phone,” 1, 8, 132, 167n15 dystopian future, 125–26, 128–30, 131 eBay, 147, 148 Echo Look device, 84 ecological externalities, 145 ecological limit of digital frontier, 82–83, 175n77 economic crisis (2008), 98–100, 117–18 economic divide, 13–14 economic implications, in cognitive mapping, 151–52 economic nationalism, 105 “ecosystems,” 40 Eddystone, 78 education, 13 Edwards, Jordan, 18 Egypt, 92, 97 elderly Americans, 63–64, 84 Electronic Frontier Foundation, 55, 124 Elliot, Umaara, 90 Ellison, Keith, 45 emails: vs. phone calls, 6; scanning of, 70–71 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 133 employment relationships, 137 encryption, 81, 175n74 energy consumption, 151–52, 154–55; by physical elements of digital life, 82, 175n77 entrepreneurship, 120–21 environmental justice, 154–55 Epsilon, 72 Equal Credit Opportunity Act, 78 Estrada, Joseph, 90–91 Europe, American tech titans in, 150 European Union (EU), 49, 52–53, 150–51 experience economy, 62, 83 exploitation of labor, 75 externalization of work and workers, 31 Facebook: acquisitions by, 41; addiction to, 66–67, 69; and antidiscrimination laws, 149; credit ratings by, 79; data collection by, 71–72, 76, 81, 84; demographics of, 84; discrimination in advertising by, 47–48; employees organizing at, 148; in Europe, 150; Free Basics by, 41–42, 50; low-paid workers at, 147; managing impressions on, 63; as monopoly, 53–54, 172n46; and new capitalism, 124, 136; as news source, 50–51; as new titan, 38–39, 40, 41–42, 44–45; power and influence of, 56; tax evasion by, 49; time spent on, 60 Facebook Live, 84 Facebook Pixel, 72 “Facebook Revolution,” 97 facial recognition software, 129, 149 Fair Housing Act, 48 fake news, 50–51, 56 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 149 feedback loop, 66–67 “Feminist Five,” 108 feminist movement, 107–8 Ferguson, Missouri, 89–90, 101–2 Fields, James Alex, Jr., 106 filter bubbles, 53, 109–10 financial crisis (2008), 98–100, 117–18 fintech companies, 78–79 flexibility, 117 FlexiSpy, 25 FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests, 149 food delivery apps, 32–33 food pictures, 62 forced arbitration, 148 Ford, Henry, 37, 124 Fordlandia, 124 Ford Motor Company, 37, 38, 44 Fowler, Susan, 126–27 FoxConn, 28 framing of analysis of cell phones, 12–14 Free Basics, 41–42, 50 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, 149 “free market” competition, 98 free speech, 138 Friedman, Patri, 124 frontier of social media, 59–86; addiction to, and fears about, 65–69; and big data, 82–86; characteristics of, 59–65; and government, 80–81; and privacy, 69–72; and profit, 72–79 Fuller, Margaret, 133 Galston, Bill, 45 gamification, 23–24, 146 Garza, Alicia, 100–102 Gassama, Mamoudou, 115 Gates, Bill, 56, 130 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), 150–51, 156 Geofeedia, 96 geopolitics, 95–96, 144 Germany, 3 Ghostbot, 24 gig economy, 137 Gilded Age, 1–2, 11, 54 global divides, 28–29 globalization, 98 Global Positioning System (GPS), 5 Gmail, 38, 71 Goodman, Amy, 104 Google: addiction to, 69; advertising on, 76; companies owned by, 41; data collection by, 70–71, 76, 81, 150; employees organizing at, 147–48; in Europe, 150; immoral projects at, 154; and intelligence agencies, 81; lobbying by, 55; low-paid workers at, 147; molding of public opinion by, 55; as monopoly, 52–54; and new capitalism, 119–20, 123, 136; as new titan, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43–45, 56; for online search, 52; power and influence of, 55–56; research funding by, 55; “summer camp” of, 55; tax evasion by, 49, 50; use by children, 84; working conditions at, 47 Google Calendar, 71 Google Chrome browser, 53 Google Drive, 71 Google Earth, 123 Google Fiber, 41 Google Images, 131 Google News, 50 Google Play, 72 Google Search, 38, 41, 53 Google Shopping Case, 52–53 Google Translate, 10 government: and capitalist frontiers, 80–81; and Silicon Valley, 124; surveillance by, 137–38, 144, 148–49 government tracking, 94–95 GPS (Global Positioning System), 5 Grant, Oscar, III, 18 Gray, Freddie, 22, 96 Great Pessimism, 118, 119 Great Recession, 118 Greece, 97 greenhouse emissions, 82 Green New Deal, 103, 151–52, 154, 179n22 Greenpeace, 157 Grindr, 23 gun violence, 90, 91, 110, 111 GV, 41 habitus, 62 Happn, 23, 24 Harari, Yuval Noah, 129–30, 132 Hearst, William Randolph, 50 Herndon, Chris, 56 Heyer, Heather, 106 Hirschman, Albert, 133 household expenses, 13 housing, discrimination in, 47–48 human, fear of becoming less, 67–68 iBeacon, 78 IBM, 149 ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), 21, 148 ICT (information and communication technologies) sector, energy used by, 82 ideals, 120 “identity resolution services,” 77 ILSR (Institute for Local Self-Reliance), 149–50, 153 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), 21, 148 immoral behavior, 138–39, 154–56 impressions, management of, 62–63 income discrepancy, 12–13 independent contractors, 33–34, 137, 153 India, 4, 42, 60, 93 individualism, 117, 118 information and communication technologies (ICT) sector, energy used by, 82 injustice, 17–23, 169n6, 169n13 In-Q-Tel, 96 insta-bae principles, 61–62 Instacart, 30, 146 Instagram: addiction to, 69; content on, 60, 61, 62; creepin’ on, 65; data collection from, 72; demographics of, 61; microcelebrities on, 60; as new titan, 38, 41; time spent on, 60; value of, 74 Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), 149–50, 153 insurance companies, data mining by, 79 intelligence agencies, and capitalist frontiers, 81 internet: access for poor and rural communities to, 149–50; access to high-speed, 5, 29; creation of, 80; early days of, 40; government shutdown of, 94; smartphone connection to, 10 Internet Association, 45 Internet Broken Brain, 66 Internet.org, 41 Internet Research Agency, 109 internet service providers, and privacy, 71–72 inventions, new, 11 investors, 120–21 invisible boyfriend, 24 iPhone, 6, 42 Iron Eyes, Tokata, 104 Jacob’s letter, 127 Jacobs, Ric, 127 Jaffe, Sarah, 91 James, LeBron, 92 Jenner, Kris, 59 Jigsaw, 41 Jobs, Steve, 2, 6, 42 Joint Special Operations Command, 95 Jones, Alex, 111 Jones, Keaton, 109 justice, 17–23, 152, 157, 169n6, 169n13 Kalanick, Travis, 126, 127 Kardashian, Kim, 59 Kardashian, Kylie, 59 Kasky, Cameron, 90 Kattan, Huda, 60 Kellaway, Lucy, 1 Kennedy, John F., 88 Kerry, John, 56 Keynes, John Maynard, 117 Khosla, Sadhavi, 93 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 97 King, Rodney, 19 Klein, Naomi, 104 Knight First Amendment Institute, 93, 175n14 Knoll, Jessica, 108 Kreditech, 78–79 Kristol, Bill, 45 Kurzweil, Ray, 123 Lanier, Jaron, 67, 70, 135 Lantern, 95 law enforcement, surveillance by, 96–97, 137–38, 176n28 “leaners,” 29 Lean In (Sandberg), 107 Lehman Brothers, 98 Levandowski, Anthony, 123 LGBTQ community, 10, 64 “lifestyle politics,” 133 “like” button, 66 Lind, William, 105 “listening tour,” 56 Liu Hu, 94 live chats, 5 livestreaming of police violence, 20–21 lobbying, 55, 56 location data, 71 logistics workers, 31 Loon, 41 Loop Transportation, 147 Losse, Katherine, 124 love, 23–27, 35 low-income households, access to high-speed internet by, 29 low-paying jobs, 146–49, 153–54 Luxy, 23 Lyft 30, 31, 33, 146, 153 Lynd, Helen, 2, 3 Lynd, Robert, 2, 3 Lynn, Barry, 56 machine learning, 76, 121–22, 174n52 “machine zone,” 8 Macron, Emmanuel, 93 mainstream media, bypassing of, 91 Ma, Jack, 42 Makani, 41 mamasphere, 64 March for Our Lives, 104 March of the Margaridas, 108 Marjorie Stoneman Douglas (MSD) High School, 90 marketification, 161 Markey, Ed, 152, 179n22 marriage, expectations and norms about, 24–25 Marshall, James, 17–19 Marshall, Tanya, 17–19 Martin, Trayvon, 22, 100 Marx, Karl, 67 mass shootings, 90, 91, 110, 111 Match.com, 23, 24 Match Group, 24 Matsuhisa, Nobu, 62 Maven, 147–48 McDonald, Laquan, 18 McInnes, Gavin, 106, 107, 111 McSpadden, Lezley, 101 meaning, sense of, 64–65, 162 Medbase200, 77 men’s work, 75 mental health of children, 8 meritocracy, 121 Messenger: data collection from, 72 Messenger Kids, 84 metadata, 72 #MeToo movement, 108 microcelebrities, 60 microchoices, 69 Microsoft: and City of the Future, 124; data collection from, 81; employees organizing at, 148; in Europe, 150; immoral projects at, 154; as new titan, 42, 43, 55, 56 Middleton, Daniel, 60 “Middletown,” 2–3 Middletown: A Study in Contemporary American Culture (Lynd and Lynd), 2–3 military, 80–81, 95 mind-body divide, 67–68 miners, 28 Minutiae, 84 misogyny, 25 Mobile Devices Branch of CIA, 81, 95 Mobile Justice MI app, 21, 169n13 Modi, Narendra, 93 Mondragon, Elena, 22–23 monetization, 59, 79 money accounts, mobile, 10 monopolies, 43–46, 52–53, 150 Morgan, J.

The Class Ceiling: Why It Pays to Be Privileged
by Sam Friedman and Daniel Laurison
Published 28 Jan 2019

Family fortunes It is well established that careers in the UK cultural and creative industries (often called the CCIs) are marked by intense precarity.10 An extensive body of research has documented how conditions of low or no pay and extreme competition are widespread across the sector.11 Such insecurity is particularly acute in our case study of acting, a long-time forerunner of the ‘gig economy’.12 Experiences of uncertainty, exhaustion and anxiety dominated our interviews with all actors – regardless of age, gender, racial-ethnic group or class origin. This was perhaps best illustrated when we asked, ‘What represents success in the acting profession?’ We expected actors to hold divergent views on this topic, but instead responses were strikingly uniform.

…

The aim was to look at one occupation with a small, statistically insignificant class pay gap, and two with larger gaps, but that differed from each other in other ways (later in this Appendix we explain the process through which we came to our particular case study occupations and organisations). Going inside organisations made sense for understanding most elite occupations, but what about professions where people tended to be self-employed or employed on freelance or short-term contracts? The so-called ‘gig economy’ has grown rapidly in recent years and, as Dave O’Brien from Goldsmiths College explained to us late in 2014, it is particularly important for understanding 241 The Class Ceiling Britain’s cultural industries. Working with Dave, and while we waited to hear about our research grant, we therefore decided to make the acting profession our first case study.

…

While these occupations share important characteristics, they also differ in four important ways. First, employment tends to be structured in very different ways. Accountancy and architecture are old and traditional professions, and jobs tend to be stable and permanent. Acting and television are, in contrast, exemplars of what is now called the ‘gig’ economy. Employment in television, for instance, often relies on negotiating a series of short-term contracts – particularly for those following the ‘creative’ pathway through television production (see Chapter Five for more on the significance of creative pathways in television). Acting is arguably even more precarious, and most actors are self-employed.

Invisible Women
by Caroline Criado Perez
Published 12 Mar 2019

A 2017 report described the predominantly female Vietnamese workforce as ‘victims of modern slavery’.12 Nail salons are the tip of an extremely poorly regulated iceberg when it comes to employers exploiting loopholes in employment law. Zero-hour contracts, short-term contracts, employment through an agency, these have all been enticingly rebranded the ‘gig economy’ by Silicon Valley, as if they are of benefit to workers. But the gig economy is in fact often no more than a way for employers to get around basic employee rights. Casual contracts create a vicious cycle: the rights are weaker to begin with, which makes workers reticent to fight for the ones they do still have. And so those get bent too.

…

As a result, an increase in jobs like agency work that don’t allow for collective bargaining might be detrimental to attempts to close the gender pay gap. But the negative impact of precarious work on women isn’t just about unintended side effects. It’s also about the weaker rights that are intrinsic to the gig economy. In the UK a female employee is only entitled to maternity leave if she is actually an employee. If she’s a ‘worker’, that is, someone on a short-term or zero-hours contract, she isn’t entitled to any leave at all, meaning she would have to quit her job and reapply after she’s given birth. A female worker is also only entitled to statutory maternity pay if she has worked for twenty-six weeks in the last sixty-six and if her average wage is at least £116 per week.

…

Australia gender pay gap gendered poverty Gillard ministries (2010–13) homelessness leisure time maternity. leave medical research military murders paternity. leave political representation precarious work school textbooks sexual assault/harassment taxation time-use surveys unpaid work Australia Institute Austria autism auto-plastics factories Autoblog autoimmune diseases automotive plastics workplaces Ayrton, Hertha Azerbaijan babies’ cries baby bottles Baker, Colin Baku, Azerbaijan Ball, James Bangladesh Bank of England banknotes Barbican, London Barcelona, Catalonia beauticians de Beauvoir, Simone Beer, Anna Beijing, China Belgium Berkman Center for Internet and Society Besant, Annie BI Norwegian Business School bicarbonate of soda Big Data bile acid composition biomarkers biomass fuels biomechanics Birka warrior Birmingham, West Midlands bisphenol A (BPA) ‘bitch’ bladder ‘Blank Space’ (Swift) blind recruitment blood pressure Bloom, Rachel Bloomberg News Bock, Laszlo body fat body sway Bodyform Boesel, Whitney Erin Boler, Tania Bolivia Boosey, Leslie Boserup, Ester Bosnia Boston Consulting Group Botswana Bouattia, Malia Boulanger, Béatrice Bourdieu, Pierre Bovasso, Dawn Boxing Day tsunami (2004) boyd, danah brain ischaemia Brazil breasts cancer feeding and lifting techniques pumps reduction surgery and seat belts and tactile situation awareness system (TSAS) and uniforms Bretherton, Joanne Brexit Bricks, New Orleans brilliance bias Brin, Sergey British Electoral Survey British Journal of Pharmacology British Medical Journal British Medical Research Council British National Corpus (BNC) Broadly Brophy, Jim and Margaret Buick Bulgaria Burgon, Richard Bush, Stephen Buvinic, Mayra BuzzFeed Cabinet caesarean sections Cairns, Alex California, United States Callanan, Martin Callou, Ada Calma, Justine calorie burning Cambridge Analytica Cameron, David Campbell Soup Canada banknotes chemical exposure childcare crime homelessness medical research professor evaluations sexual assault/harassment toilets unpaid work Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) Canadian Institutes of Health cancer canon formation Cape Town, South A.ica carcinogens cardiac resynchronisation therapy devices (CRT-Ds) cardiovascular system care work and agriculture elderly people and employment gross domestic product (GDP) occupational health and paternity leave time-use surveys and transport and zoning Carnegie Mellon University carpenters cars access to crashes driving tests motion sickness navigation systems Castillejo, Clare catcalling Cavalli, Francesco cave paintings CCTV Ceccato, Vania cell studies Center for American Progress Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) Center for Talent Innovation Central Asia Centre of Better Births, Liverpool Women’s Hospital chemicals Chiaro Chicago, Illinois chief executive officers (CEO) child benefit child marriage childbirth childcare and agriculture cost of and employment and gross domestic product (GDP) and paternity leave time-use surveys and zoning children’s television China cholera Chopin, Frédéric Chou, Tracy chromosomes chronic illness/pain Chronic Pain Policy Coalition chulhas Cikara, Mina circadian rhythms Citadel classical music clean stoves cleaning climate change Clinton, Hillary clitoridectomies Clue coal mining coastguards Collett Beverly colon cancer Columbia University competence vs warmth composers Composers’ Guild of Great Britain computer science confirmation bias confounding factors Congo, Democratic Republic of the Connecticut, United States Conservative Party construction work contraception contractions cooking cookstoves Corbusier, Le Cornell University coronary stents Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) corrective rape cosmetology Cosmopolitan Cotton, Dany Coyle, Diane crash test dummies Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Crewe, Emma Crick, Francis Crime Prevention and Community Safety crime crime scene investigators Croatia crochet Crockety, Molly CurrMIT CVs (curriculum vitaes) Czech Republic daddy quotas Daly, Caroline Louisa Data2x Davis-Blake, Alison Davis, Wendy Davison, Peter defibrillators deforestation Delhi, India dementia Democratic Party Democratic Republic of the Congo Democratic United Party dengue fever Denmark dental devices Department for Work and Pensions depression diabetes diarrhoea diet diethylstilbestrol (DES) disabled people disasters Ditum, Sarah diversity-valuing behavior DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) Do Babies Matter (Goulden, Mason, and Wolfinger) Doctor Who domestic violence Donison, Christopher Doss, Cheryl ‘draw a scientist’ driving dry sex Dyas-Elliott, Roger dysmenorrhea E3 Eagle, Angela early childhood education (ECE) Ebola economics Economist, The Edexcel education Edwards, Katherine Einstein, Albert elderly people Eliot, George Elks lodges Elvie emoji employment gender pay gap occupational health parental leave precarious work sexual assault/harassment and unpaid work ‘End of Theory, The’ (Anderson) endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) Endocrine Society endometriosis endovascular occlusion devices England national football English language ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) Enlightenment entrepreneurs epilepsy Equal Times Equality Act (2010) erectile dysfunction Estonian language Ethiopia EuroNCAP European Parliament European Union academia bisphenol A (BPA) chronic illnesses crash test dummies employment gap endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) gender-inflected languages life expectancy medical research parental leave precarious work sexual harassment taxation transport planning Evernote EverydaySexism evolution exercise extension services Facebook facial wrinkle correction fall-detection devices Fallout Family and Medical Leave Act (1993) farming Fawcett Society Fawlty Towers female Viagra feminism Feminist Frequency films Financial crash (2008) Finland Finnbogadóttir, Vigdís Finnish language firefighters first past the post (FPTP) First World War (1914–18) Fiske, Susan Fitbit fitness devices flexible working Folbre, Nancy Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Food and Drug Administration (FDA) football forced marriage Ford Fordham, Maureen fragile states France Franklin, Rosalind Frauen-Werk-Stadt free weights Freeman, Hadley French language Freud, Sigmund From Poverty to Power (Green) funeral rites FX gaming GapJumpers Gates Foundation Gates, Melinda gathering Geffen, David gender gender data gap academia agriculture algorithms American Civil War (1861–5) brilliance bias common sense crime Data2x female body historical image datasets innovation male universality medical research motion sickness occupational health political representation pregnancy self-report bias sexual assault/harassment smartphones speech-recognition technology stoves taxation transport planning unpaid work warmth vs competence Gender Equality Act (1976) Gender Global Practice gender pay gap gender-fair forms gender-inflected languages gendered poverty genderless languages Gendersite General Accounting Office generic masculine genius geometry Georgetown University German language German Society of Epidemiology Germany academia gender pay gap gender-inflected language Landesamt für Flüchtlingsangelegenheiten (LAF) medical research precarious work refugee camps school textbooks unpaid work Gezi Park protests (2013) Ghana gig economy Gild Gillard, Julia GitHub Glencore Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves Global Gender Gap Index Global Media Monitoring Project Golden Globes Google artificial intelligence (AI) childcare Images maternity leave News Nexus petabytes pregnancy parking promotions search engine speech-recognition software Translate Gosling, Ryan Gothenburg, Sweden Gove, Michael Government Accounting Office (GAO) Great Depression (1929–39) Greece Green, Duncan Greenberg, Jon groping gross domestic product (GDP) Grown, Caren Guardian Gujarat earthquake (2001) Gulf War (1990–91) gyms H1N1 virus Hackers (Levy) hand size/strength handbags handprints haptic jackets Harman, Harriet Harris, Kamala Harvard University hate crimes/incidents Hawking, Stephen Haynes, Natalie Hayward, Sarah Hazards Health and Safety at Work Act (1974) Health and Safety Executive (HSE) health-monitoring systems healthcare/medicine Hearst heart attacks disease medication rhythm abnormalities surgery Heat St Heinrich Böll Foundation Helldén, Daniel Henderson, David Henry Higgins effect Henry VIII, King of England Hensel, Fanny hepatitis Hern, Alex high-efficiency cookstoves (HECs) Higher Education Statistics Agency Himmelweit, Sue hip belts history Hodgkin’s disease Holdcrofity, Anita Hollaback ‘Hollywood heart attack’ Homeless Period, The homelessness hopper fare Hopper, Grace hormones House of Commons Household Income Labour Dynamics of Australia Survey housekeeping work Howard, Todd human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) Human Rights Act (1998) Human Rights Watch human–computer interaction Hungary hunter-gatherer societies Huntingdon, Agnes Hurricane Andrew (1992) Hurricane Katrina (2005) Hurricane Maria (2017) hyperbolic geometry hysterectomies hysteria I Am Not Your Negro Iceland identity Idomeni camp, Greece Illinois, United States images immune system Imperial College London Inc Income of Nations, The (Studenski) indecent exposure Independent India Boxing Day tsunami (2004) gendered poverty gross domestic product (GDP) Gujarat earthquake (2001) political representation sexual assault/harassment stoves taxation toilets unpaid work Indian Ocean tsunami (2004) Industrial Revolution (c. 1760–1840) influenza Inmujeres innovation Institute for Fiscal Studies Institute for Women’s Policy Research Institute of Medicine Institute of Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) institutionalised rape Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Inter-agency Working Group on Reproductive Health in Crises Inter-Parliamentary Union’s (IPU) Internal Revenue Service (IRS) International Agency Research on Cancer International Conference on Intelligent Data Engineering and Automated Learning International Council of Nurses International Encyclopaedia of Women Composers International Labour Organization (ILO) International Monetary Fund (IMF) International Peace Institute International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) interrupting intestinal enzymes iPhone Ireland IRIN irritable bowel syndrome Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) isometric exercises Israel Italy Jackson, Henry Japan Jenkins, Simon Jepson, Peter job interviews job vacancies Jones, Anna Jones, Brigid Juárez, Victoria ‘just in time’ scheduling so.ware Kail, Eva Karlskoga, Sweden Karnataka Household Asset Survey Katebe, Uganda Keecoo K1 Kelly, Paul Kenya Khayelitsha, South Africa kidneys kinesiology Knausgaard, Karl Ove Knope, Leslie Koofi, Fawzia Korea Kronos Kuznets, Simon Labour Party Lammy, David Lancet Lancet Planetary Health Landesamt für Flüchtlingsangelegenheiten (LAF) language Latin America Latvia Lau, Tessa Lauer, Matt Lawrence, David Lean In (Sandberg) Lebanon Legro, Richard Leicester, Leicestershire leisure time lesbians Lesotho lethal violence Levy, Steven Lewis, Brandon Leyster, Judith Liberal Democrats Liberia libertarianism life expectancy Life of Pi Lilla, Mark Lim, Angelica Limpsfield Grange, Surrey Lin Qing Linder, Astrid literacy literature Littman, Ellen liver failure Liverpool, Merseyside lobotomies Local Government Act (1972) London, England Fire Brigade general election (2017) precarious work sexual assault/harassment transportation London School of Economics (LSE) London Review of Books Long Friday long-hours culture longevity Los Angeles Times Los Angeles, California Loughborough University Louisiana, United States Loukaitou-Sideris, Anastasia lubricant lung capacity lung diseases Macedonia Mackinnon, Catherine Maconchy, Elizabeth Made by Many Madrid, Spain malaria Malawi male universality Malmö, Sweden Malta mammary carcinogens ‘Man the Hunter’ Manchester University Martínez-Román, Adi Martino, Tami Marvel Comics maternal mortality maternity leave mathematics Mazarra, Glen McCabe, Jesse McCain, John McGill University McKinsey McLean, Charlene Medela medicine/healthcare Medline Memorial University Mendelssohn, Felix Mendes, Eva Mendoza-Denton, Rodolfo menopause menstruation mental health meritocracy Messing, Karen meta gender data gap MeToo movement Metroid mewar angithi (MA) Mexico Miami, Florida mice Microsoft migraines military Milito, Beth Miller, Maria Minassian, Alek Minha Casa, Minha Vida miscarriages Mismeasure of Woman, The (Tavris) misogyny Mitchell, Margaret Mogil, Jeffrey Mongolia Montreal University Morgan, Thomas Hunt morphine motion parallax motion sickness Motorola multiple myeloma Mumbai, India murders Murray, Andrew muscle music My Fair Lady myometrial blood ‘Myth’ (Rukeyser) nail salons Naipaul, Vidiadhar Surajprasad naive realism National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) National Autistic Society National Democratic Institute National Health Service (NHS) National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) National Institute for Health and Case Excellence (NICE) National Institute of Health Revitalization Act (1993) National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Union of Students (NUS) natural gender languages Nature Navarro, Jannette Naya Health Inc Nea Kavala camp, Greece Neitzert, Eva Neolithic era Netflix Netherlands neutrophils New Jersey, United States New Orleans, Louisiana New Statesman New York, United States New York Committee for Occupational Safety & Health (NYCOSH) New York Philharmonic Orchestra New York Times New Yorker New Zealand Newham, London Nigeria Nightingale, Florence Nobel Prize nomunication Norris, Colleen Norway Nottingham, Nottinghamshire nurses Nüsslein-Volhard, Christiane O’Neil, Cathy O’Neill, Rory Obama, Barack Occupational Health and Safety Administration occupational health Oedipus oestradiol oestrogen office temperature Olympic Games Omron On the Generation of Animals (Aristotle) orchestras Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Organisation for the Study of Sex Differences Orissa, India osteopenia osteoporosis ovarian cancer Oxfam Oxford English Dictionaries Oxford University oxytocin pacemakers pain sensitivity pairing Pakistan Pandey, Avanindra paracetamol parental leave Paris, France Parkinson’s disease parks passive tracking apps paternity leave patronage networks pattern recognition Payne-Gaposchkin, Cecilia peace talks pelvic floor pelvic inflammatory disease pelvic stress fractures pensions performance evaluations periods Persian language personal protective equipment (PPE) Peru petabytes Pew Research Center phantom-limb syndrome phenylpropanolamine Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Philippines phobias phthalates Physiological Society pianos Plato plough hypothesis poetry Poland police polio political representation Politifact Pollitzer, Elizabeth Portland, Oregon Portugal post-natal depression post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) poverty Powell, Colin PR2 Prada prams precarious work pregnancy Pregnant Workers Directive (1992) premenstrual syndrome (PMS) primary percutaneous coronary interventions (PPCI) Prinz-Brandenburg, Claudia progesterone projection bias prolapse promotions proportional representation (PR) Prospect Union Prospect Public Monuments and Sculptures Association public sector equality duty (PSED) public transport Puerto Rico purchasing authority ‘quantified self’ community Quebec, Canada QuiVr radiation Rajasthan, India rape RateMyProfessors.com recruitment Red Tape Challenge ‘Redistribution of Sex, The’ Reference Man Reformation refugees Renaissance repetitive strain injury (RSI) Representation of the People Act (1832) Republican Party Resebo, Christian Reykjavik, Iceland Rhode Island, United States Rio de Janeiro, Brazil risk-prediction models road building Road Safety on Five Continents Conference Roberts, David Robertson, Adi robots Rochdale, Manchester Rochon Ford, Anne Rudd, Kevin Rukeyser, Muriel Russian Federation Rwanda Sacks-Jones, Katharine Saenuri Party Safecity SafetyLit Foundation Sánchez de Madariaga, Inés Sandberg, Sheryl Sanders, Bernard Santos, Cristine Schalk, Tom Schenker, Jonathan Schiebinger, Londa School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) school textbooks Schumann, Clara science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) Scientific American scientists Scotland Scythians ‘sea of dudes’ problem Seacole, Mary seat belts Second World War (1939.45) self-report bias September 11 attacks (2001) Serbia Sessions, Jefferson severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) sex Sex Discrimination Act (1975) sex robots sex-disaggregated data agriculture chemical exposure conflict employment fall-detection devices fitness devices gendered poverty medical research precarious work smartphones taxation transport urban design virtual reality voice recognition working hours sexual violence/harassment shape-from-shading Sherriff, Paula Shield, The shifting agriculture Sierra Leone sildenafil citrate Silicon Valley Silver, Nate Singh, Jyoti single parents single-member districts (SMD) Siri Skåne County, Sweden skeletons skin Slate Slocum, Sally Slovenia smartphones snow clearing social capital social data Social Democratic Party (SDP) social power socialisation Solna, Sweden Solnit, Rebecca Somalia Sony Ericsson Sounds and Sweet Airs (Beer) South Africa South Korea Soviet Union (1922–91) Spain Spanish language Speak with a Geek speech-recognition technology Sphinx sports Sprout Pharmaceuticals Sri Lanka St Mark’s, Venice St Vincent & the Grenadines stab vests Stack Overflow Stanford University staple crops Star Wars Starbucks Starkey, David statins statues stem cells Stevens, Nettie Stockholm, Sweden Stoffregen, Tom stoves Streisand, Barbra streptococcal toxic shock syndrome stress strokes Strozzi, Barbara Studenski, Paul Sulpicia Supreme Court Sweden Birka warrior car crashes councils crime depression gender pay gap heart attacks murders paternity leave political representation refugee camps snow clearing sports taxation unpaid work youth urban regeneration Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute Swift, Taylor swine flu Swinson, Joanne Kate ‘Jo’ Switzerland Syria Systran tactile situation awareness system (TSAS) Taimina, Daina Taiwan Tate, Angela Tatman, Rachael Tavris, Carol taxation teaching evaluations Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) tear gas tech industry television temperature Temperature Temporary Assistance to Needy Families tennis tenure-track system text corpora thalidomide ThinkProgress Thor three-stone fires time poverty time-use surveys TIMIT corpus Tin, Ida toilets Toksvig, Sandi tools Toronto, Ontario Tottenham, London Toyota Trades Union Congress (TUC) tradition transit captives transportation treadmills trip-chaining troponin Trump, Donald tuberculosis (TB) Tudor period (1485–1603) Tufekci, Zeynep Turkey Twitter Uberpool Uganda Ukraine ulcerative colitis Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher Umeå, Sweden Understanding Girls with ADHD (Littman) unemployment unencumbered people Unicode Consortium Unison United Association of Civil Guards United Kingdom academia austerity autism banknotes breast pumps Brexit (2016–) Fire Brigade caesarean sections children’s centres chronic illness/pain coastguards councils employment gap endometriosis Equality Act (2010) flexible working gender pay gap gendered poverty general elections generic masculine gross domestic product (GDP) heart attacks homelessness Human Rights Act (1998) leisure time maternity leave medical research military murders music nail salons occupational health paternity leave pedestrians pensions personal protective equipment (PPE) police political representation precarious work public sector equality duty (PSED) Representation of the People Act (1832) scientists Sex Discrimination Act (1975) sexual assault/harassment single parents statues stress taxation toilets transportation trip-chaining universities unpaid work Yarl’s Wood Detention Centre United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Commission on the Status of Women Data2x Economic Commission for Africa Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) homicide survey Human Development Report and peace talks Population Fund Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) and stoves and Switzerland and toilets and unpaid childcare Women’s Year World Conference on Women United States academia Affordable Care Act (2010) Agency for International Development (USAID) Alzheimer’s disease banknotes bisphenol A (BPA) breast pumps brilliance bias Bureau of Labor Statistics car crashes chief executive officers (CEO) childbirth, death in Civil War (1861–5) construction work councils crime early childhood education (ECE) employment gap endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) endometriosis farming flexible working gender pay gap gendered poverty generic masculine Great Depression (1929–39) gross domestic product (GDP) healthcare heart attacks Hurricane Andrew (1992) Hurricane Katrina (2005) Hurricane Maria (2017) immigration detention facilities job interviews ‘just in time’ scheduling so.ware leisure time maternity leave medical research meritocracy military mortality rates murders nail salons National Institute of Health Revitalization Act (1993) occupational health personal protective equipment (PPE) political representation precarious work presidential election (2016) school textbooks September 11 attacks (2001) sexual assault/harassment single parents soccer team Supreme Court taxation tech industry toilets transportation Trump administration (2017–) universities unpaid work universal credit (UC) universality universities University and College Union University of California, Berkeley University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) University of Chicago University of Liverpool University of London University of Manchester University of Michigan University of Minnesota University of North Carolina University of Stirling University of Sussex University of Washington University of York unpaid work agriculture and algorithms and gross domestic product (GDP) and occupational health and stoves and transport in workplace and zoning upper body strength upskirting urinals urinary-tract infections urination uro-gynaecological problems uterine failure uterine tybroids Uttar Pradesh, India Uzbekistan vaccines vagina Valium Valkrie value-added tax (VAT) Van Gulik, Gauri Venice, Italy venture capitalists (VCs) Veríssimo, Antônio Augusto Viagra Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom video games Vienna, Austria Vietnam Vikings Villacorta, Pilar violence virtual reality (VR) voice recognition Volvo voting rights Vox voyeurism Wade, Virginia Walker, Phillip walking wallet to purse Walmart warfare warmth vs competence Warsaw Pact Washington Post Washington Times Washington, DC, United States WASHplus WaterAid Watson, James We Will Rebuild weak contractions Weapons of Math Destruction (O’Neil) West Bengal, India whiplash Wiberg-Itzel, Eva Wikipedia Wild, Sarah Williams, Gayna Williams, Serena Williams, Venus Williamson, £eresa Willow Garage Wimbledon Windsor, Ontario Winter, Jessica Wired Wolf of Wall Street, The Wolfers, Justin Wolfinger, Nicholas ‘Woman the Gatherer’ (Slocum) Women and Equalities Committee Women Will Rebuild Women’s Budget Group (WBG) Women’s Design Service Women’s Engineering Society Women’s Refugee Commission Women’s Year Woolf, Virginia workplace safety World Bank World Cancer Research Fund World Cup World Economic Forum (WEF) World Health Organization (WHO) World Meteorological Organisation worm infections Woskow, Debbie Wray, Susan Wyden, Robert XY cells Y chromosome Yale University Yarl’s Wood Detention Centre, Bedford Yatskar, Mark Yemen Yentl syndrome Yezidis Youth Vote, The youthquake Zambia zero-hour contracts Zika zipper quotas zombie stats zoning Zou, James Photo by Rachel Louise Brown CAROLINE CRIADO PEREZ is a writer, broadcaster, and feminist activist and was named Liberty Human Rights Campaigner of the Year and OBE by the Queen.

The Nowhere Office: Reinventing Work and the Workplace of the Future
by Julia Hobsbawm
Published 11 Apr 2022

See Tim Oldman, Why Workplace: A Leader’s Guide to Rebuilding the Post-Pandemic Workplace, Leesman, October 2021, https://www.leesmanindex.com/media/Leesman-Why-Workplace-Guide-DPS-final.pdf?eid=CiL0qOwTVIfQWziIWqM6INZlBg6D8JOL%2BNZOb88wOzoxGQ%2FPSsFldoOrC8FwbwFelpHsyMm48GqbPS8Yy%2B8wam7Y7uMPTQOt18Hgv52B0ygfnYK4 3. ‘Number of Freelancers in the United States from 2017 to 2028 (in Millions)’, September 2017, Statista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/921593/gig-economy-number-of-freelancers-us/; PwC US Remote Work Survey, 12 January 2021, https://www.pwc.com/us/en/library/covid-19/us-remote-work-survey.html 4. ‘Number of Smartphones Sold to End Users Worldwide from 2007 to 2021 (in Million Units)’, Statista, February 2021, https://www.statista.com/statistics/263437/global-smartphone-sales-to-end-users-since-2007/ 5. 2021 Work Trend Index: Annual Report, The Next Great Disruption is Hybrid Work – Are We Ready?

…

James Warrington, ‘Transport for London Secures £1.08bn Emergency Funding Deal’, CITY AM, 1 June 2021, https://www.cityam.com/transport-for-london-secures-1-08bn-emergency-funding-deal/; Glenday, John, ‘TfL Left to Mind a Widening Ad Revenue Gap as Income Slumps £100m’, The Drum, 6 July 2021, https://www.thedrum.com/news/2021/07/06/tfl-left-mind-widening-ad-revenue-gap-income-slumps-100m 36. ‘Number of Freelancers in the United States from 2017 to 2028 (in Millions)’, Statista, September 2017, https://www.statista.com/statistics/921593/gig-economy-number-of-freelancers-us/ 37. Karen Gilchrist, ‘The 10 Countries with the Fastest-Growing Earnings for Freelancers’, CNBC, 6 August 2019, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/07/the-10-countries-with-the-fastest-growing-earnings-for-freelancers.html 38. Hannah Watkins, ‘The Problem Isn’t the Office – It’s the Commute’, Hubble, 17 August 2021, https://hubblehq.com/blog/impact-of-commute-time-on-work-preferences 39.

Amazon: How the World’s Most Relentless Retailer Will Continue to Revolutionize Commerce
by Natalie Berg and Miya Knights
Published 28 Jan 2019

This is why it also quickly followed up on its initial launch of Prime Now with the introduction of Amazon Flex, a platform for independent contractors to provide delivery services, towards the end of 2015. The platform capitalizes on the expanding gig economy popularized by Uber and other express delivery rivals to first meet the demand for Prime Now, but it now manages regular Amazon deliveries too.4 In the same way as Uber matches drivers with what it calls ‘riders’ and Instacart matches customers with ‘shoppers’, the Amazon Flex Android-based app directs ‘Flexers’ to delivery locations within a radius local to them. Flex is interesting for two main reasons: the first is that its entry into the ‘gig economy’ by employing independent contractors over its last mile hasn’t exactly proved the most customer-centric solution to last-mile express delivery Amazon might have hoped for.

…

Some plaintiffs who were sub-contracted by Amazon.com via Amazon Logistics and local courier firms, claimed Amazon should pay them as full-time employees because they worked out of its warehouses and were highly supervised by Amazon, who also provided their customer service training.6 Perhaps staff working for its Whole Foods acquisition could carry out deliveries after work to lessen the litigious risk from gig economy-based models, just like Walmart said it was testing in 2017. In yet another attempt to cut e-commerce fulfilment costs, Walmart can exploit not only its extensive store estate to promote click & collect, but also began looking to its large store staff base to carry out home deliveries. The retailer was offering to pay staff extra to use an app that could direct them to deliver up to 10 customer orders per commute.

Economic Dignity
by Gene Sperling
Published 14 Sep 2020

If, for example, the need to support family or to pursue economic potential leads millions to experience harmful abuse or harassment at work, or compromises their capacity to care for their children or other loved ones, why should that not be seen as a major economic issue—whether or not it shows up in a traditional economic metric? Economic dignity will never be moneyball. Painful as it is to consider, it took a political and media focus on the “gig economy” to train national economic attention on the number of people who are considered independent contractors and lack true economic security or worker protections. It was never a first-tier economic issue before the obsession with Uber drivers. Call it the invisibility of the “pre-gig workers.” It should not have required the experience of wealthier Americans using the services of Uber drivers for the national economic dialogue to focus on the fact that millions and millions of workers—such as taxi drivers, domestic workers, and contract construction workers—have long faced the same economic insecurity and lack of protections.

…

Yes, this should include the families in small, rural towns and manufacturing communities and the harder hit sections of Appalachia and the millions of mostly men whose jobs as truck drivers could be put at risk by automation and driverless cars.33 But such discussions of dignity gaps must always include the diverse segments of our country that face denials of economic dignity. Certainly, this should include the millions struggling in lower-wage service jobs, such as pre-gig-economy workers—often minority women who care for households and the elderly—and poor children whose chances to pursue potential are deeply diminished by the accident of birth. Focusing on the dignity gaps of certain groups also misses the universal power of appeals to economic dignity: to help draw on unifying values and desire to care for family, pursue purpose and potential, and participate economically with respect.

…

Another idea that should be in the mix is to expand on the innovative Shared Security System first proposed by Nick Hanauer and David Rolf.11 Their proposal would create Shared Security Accounts “encompassing all of the employment benefits traditionally provided by a full-time salaried job,” collected “via automatic payroll deductions, regardless of the employment relationship, and, like Social Security, these benefits would be fully prorated, portable, and universal.”12 We should consider how to take their proposal to an even more sweeping level. Imagine, for example, a future system where a fraction of any dollar paid for any work—including that done by full-time workers, contractors, household employees, care workers, and gig economy workers—was added to individualized federal government accounts that would support a larger economic dignity net. With a singular and stable federal account, many problems of portability would vanish. These accounts could serve as a form of universal withholding and employer or customer contribution to ensure Social Security and Medicare benefits, unemployment assistance, paid leave, a new universal pension, and any other benefits for which there has not been a public provision de-linked from work.

Seriously Curious: The Facts and Figures That Turn Our World Upside Down
by Tom Standage
Published 27 Nov 2018

Because market forces are softened in such a contract, an alternative form of governance is required, which is the firm. Coase argued that the degree to which the firm stands in for the market will vary with changing circumstances. Eighty years on, the boundary between the two might appear to be dissolving altogether. The share of self-employed contractors in the labour force has risen. The “gig economy”, exemplified by Uber drivers, is mushrooming. Yet firms are not withering away, nor are they likely to. Prior to Uber, taxi-drivers in most cities were already self-employed. Spot-like job contracts are becoming more common, but their flexibility comes at a cost. Workers have little incentive to invest in firm-specific skills, so productivity suffers.

…

For more explainers and charts from The Economist, visit economist.com Index A Africa child marriage 84 democracy 40 gay and lesbian rights 73, 74 Guinea 32 mobile phones 175–6 see also individual countries agriculture 121–2 Aguiar, Mark 169 air pollution 143–4 air travel and drones 187–8 flight delays 38–9 Akitu (festival) 233 alcohol beer consumption 105–6 consumption in Britain 48, 101–2 craft breweries 97–8 drink-driving 179–80 wine glasses 101–2 Alexa (voice assistant) 225 Algeria food subsidies 31 gay and lesbian rights 73 All I Want for Christmas Is You (Carey) 243 alphabet 217–18 Alternative for Germany (AfD) 223, 224 Alzheimer’s disease 140 Amazon (company) 225 America see United States and 227–8 Angola 73, 74 animals blood transfusions 139–40 dog meat 91–2 gene drives 153–4 size and velocity 163–4 and water pollution 149–50 wolves 161–2 Arctic 147–8 Argentina gay and lesbian rights 73 lemons 95–6 lithium 17–18 Ariel, Barak 191 Arizona 85 arms trade 19–20 Asia belt and road initiative 117–18 high-net-worth individuals 53 wheat consumption 109–10 see also individual countries Assange, Julian 81–3 asteroids 185–6 augmented reality (AR) 181–2 August 239–40 Australia avocados 89 forests 145 inheritance tax 119 lithium 17, 18 shark attacks 201–2 autonomous vehicles (AVs) 177–8 Autor, David 79 avocados 89–90 B Babylonians 233 Baltimore 99 Bangladesh 156 bank notes 133–4 Bateman, Tim 48 beer consumption 105–6 craft breweries 97–8 Beijing air pollution 143–4 dogs 92 belt and road initiative 117–18 betting 209–10 Bier, Ethan 153 Bils, Mark 169 birds and aircraft 187 guinea fowl 32–3 birth rates Europe 81–3 United States 79–80 black money 133–4 Black Power 34, 35 Blade Runner 208 blood transfusions 139–40 board games 199–200 body cameras 191–2 Boko Haram 5, 15–16 Bolivia 17–18 Bollettieri, Nick 197 bookmakers 209–10 Borra, Cristina 75 Bosnia 221–2 brain computers 167–8 Brazil beer consumption 105, 106 Christmas music 243, 244 end-of-life care 141–2 gay and lesbian rights 73 murder rate 45, 46 shark attacks 202 breweries 97–8 Brexit, and car colours 49–50 brides bride price 5 diamonds 13–14 Britain alcohol consumption 101–2 car colours 49–50 Christmas music 244 cigarette sales 23–4 craft breweries 98 crime 47–8 Easter 238 gay population 70–72 housing material 8 inheritance tax 119 Irish immigration 235 life expectancy 125 manufacturing jobs 131 national identity 223–4 new-year resolutions 234 police body cameras 191 sexual harassment 67, 68, 69 sperm donation 61 see also Scotland Brookings Institution 21 Browning, Martin 75 bubonic plague 157–8 Bush, George W. 119 C cables, undersea 193–4 California and Argentine lemons 95, 96 avocados 90 cameras 191–2 Canada diamonds 13 drones 188 lithium 17 national identity 223–4 capitalism, and birth rates 81–2 Carey, Mariah 243 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 21 cars colours 49–50 self-driving 177–8 Caruana, Fabiano 206 Charles, Kerwin 169 cheetahs 163, 164 chess 205–6 Chetty, Raj 113 Chicago 100 children birth rates 79–80, 81–3 child marriage 84–5 in China 56–7 crime 47–8 and gender pay gap 115–16, 135–6 obesity 93–4 Chile gay and lesbian rights 73 lithium 17–18 China air pollution 143–5 arms sales 19–20 avocados 89 beer consumption 105 belt and road initiative 117–18 childhood obesity 93 construction 7 dog meat 91–2 dragon children 56–7 flight delays 38–9 foreign waste 159–60 lithium 17 rice consumption 109–10 Choi, Roy 99 Christian, Cornelius 26 Christianity Easter 237–8 new year 233–4 Christmas 246–7 music 243–5 cigarettes affordability 151–2 black market 23–4 cities, murder rates 44–6 Citizen Kane 207 citrus wars 95–6 civil wars 5 Clarke, Arthur C. 183 Coase, Ronald 127, 128 cocaine 44 cochlear implants 167 Cohen, Jake 203 Colen, Liesbeth 106 colleges, US 113–14 Colombia 45 colours, cars 49–50 commodities 123–4 companies 127–8 computers augmented reality 181–2 brain computers 167–8 emojis 215–16 and languages 225–6 spam e-mail 189–90 Connecticut 85 Connors, Jimmy 197 contracts 127–8 Costa Rica 89 couples career and family perception gap 77–8 housework 75–6 see also marriage cows 149–50 craft breweries 97–8 crime and avocados 89–90 and dog meat 91–2 murder rates 44–6 young Britons 47–8 CRISPR-Cas9 153 Croatia 222 Croato-Serbian 221–2 D Daily-Diamond, Christopher 9–10 Davis, Mark 216 De Beers 13–14 death 141–2 death taxes 119–20 democracy 40–41 Deng Xiaoping 117 Denmark career and family perception gap 78 gender pay gap 135–6 sex reassignment 65 Denver 99 Devon 72 diamonds 13–14, 124 digitally remastering 207–8 Discovery Channel 163–4 diseases 157–8 dog meat 91–2 Dorn, David 79 Dr Strangelove 207 dragon children 56–7 drink see alcohol drink-driving 179–80 driverless cars 177–8 drones and aircraft 187–8 and sharks 201 drugs cocaine trafficking 44 young Britons 48 D’Souza, Kiran 187 E e-mail 189–90 earnings, gender pay gap 115–16, 135–6 Easter 237–8 economy and birth rates 79–80, 81–2 and car colours 49–50 and witch-hunting 25–6 education and American rich 113–14 dragon children 56–7 Egal, Muhammad Haji Ibrahim 40–41 Egypt gay and lesbian rights 73 marriage 5 new-year resolutions 233 El Paso 100 El Salvador 44, 45 emojis 215–16 employment gender pay gap 115–16, 135–6 and gender perception gap 77–8 job tenure 129–30 in manufacturing 131–2 video games and unemployment 169–70 English language letter names 217–18 Papua New Guinea 219 environment air pollution 143–4 Arctic sea ice 147–8 and food packaging 103–4 waste 159–60 water pollution 149–50 Equatorial Guinea 32 Eritrea 40 Ethiopia 40 Europe craft breweries 97–8 summer holidays 239–40 see also individual countries Everson, Michael 216 exorcism 36–7 F Facebook augmented reality 182 undersea cables 193 FANUC 171, 172 Federer, Roger 197 feminism, and birth rates 81–2 fertility rates see birth rates festivals Christmas 246–7 Christmas music 243–5 new-year 233–4 Feuillet, Catherine 108 films 207–8 firms 127–8 5G 173–4 flight delays 38–9 Florida and Argentine lemons 95 child marriage 85 Foley, William 220 food avocados and crime 89–90 dog meat 91–2 lemons 95–6 wheat consumption 109–10 wheat genome 107–8 food packaging 103–4 food trucks 99–100 football clubs 211–12 football transfers 203–4 forests 145–6, 162 Fountains of Paradise, The (Clarke) 183 fracking 79–80 France career and family perception gap 78 Christmas music 244 exorcism 36–7 gender-inclusive language 229–30 job tenure 130 sex reassignment 66 sexual harassment 68–9 witch-hunting 26, 27 wolves 161–2 G gambling 209–10 games, and unemployment 169–70 Gandhi, Mahatma 155 gang members 34–5 Gantz, Valentino 153 gas 124 gay population 70–72 gay rights, attitudes to 73–4 gender sex reassignment 65–6 see also men; women gender equality and birth rates 81–2 in language 229–30 gender pay gap 115–16, 135–6 gene drives 153–4 Genghis Khan 42 genome, wheat 107–8 ger districts 42–3 Germany beer consumption 105 job tenure 130 national identity 223–4 sexual harassment 68, 69 vocational training 132 witch-hunting 26, 27 Ghana 73 gig economy 128, 130 glasses, wine glasses 101–2 Goddard, Ceri 72 Google 193 Graduate, The 207 Greece forests 145 national identity 223–4 sex reassignment 65 smoking ban 152 Gregg, Christine 9–10 grunting 197–8 Guatemala 45 Guinea 32 guinea fowl 32–3 guinea pig 32 Guinea-Bissau 32 Guo Peng 91–2 Guyana 32 H Haiti 5 Hale, Sarah Josepha 242 Hanson, Gordon 79 Hawaii ’Oumuamua 185 porn consumption 63–4 health child obesity 93–4 life expectancy 125–6 plague 157–8 and sanitation 155 high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) 53 Hiri Motu 219 holidays Easter 237–8 St Patrick’s Day 235–6 summer holidays 239–40 Thanksgiving 241–2 HoloLens 181–2 homicide 44–6 homosexuality attitudes to 73–4 UK 70–72 Honduras 44, 45 Hong Kong 56 housework 75–6, 77–8 Hudson, Valerie 5 Hungary 223–4 Hurst, Erik 169 I ice 147–8 Ikolo, Prince Anthony 199 India bank notes 133–4 inheritance tax 119 languages 219 rice consumption 109 sand mafia 7 sanitation problems 155–6 Indonesia polygamy and civil war 5 rice consumption 109–10 inheritance taxes 119–20 interest rates 51–2 interpunct 229–30 Ireland aitch 218 forests 145 St Patrick’s Day 235–6 same-sex marriage 73 sex reassignment 65 Italy birth rate 82 end of life care 141–2 forests 145 job tenure 130 life expectancy 126 J Jacob, Nitya 156 Jamaica 45 Japan 141–2 Jighere, Wellington 199 job tenure 129–30 jobs see employment Johnson, Bryan 168 junk mail 189 K Kazakhstan 6 Kearney, Melissa 79–80 Kennedy, John F. 12 Kenya democracy 40 mobile-money systems 176 Kiribati 7 Kleven, Henrik 135–6 knots 9–10 Kohler, Timothy 121 Kyrgyzstan 6 L laces 9–10 Lagos 199 Landais, Camille 135–6 languages and computers 225–6 gender-inclusive 229–30 letter names 217–18 and national identity 223–4 Papua New Guinea 219–20 Serbo-Croatian 221–2 Unicode 215 World Bank writing style 227–8 Latimer, Hugh 246 Leeson, Peter 26 leisure board games in Nigeria 199–200 chess 205–6 gambling 209–10 video games and unemployment 169–70 see also festivals; holidays lemons 95–6 letter names 217–18 Libya 31 life expectancy 125–6 Lincoln, Abraham 242 lithium 17–18 London 71, 72 longevity 125–6 Lozère 161–2 Lucas, George 208 M McEnroe, John 197 McGregor, Andrew 204 machine learning 225–6 Macri, Mauricio 95, 96 Macron, Emmanuel 143 Madagascar 158 Madison, James 242 MagicLeap 182 Maine 216 Malaysia 56 Maldives 7 Mali 31 Malta 65 Manchester United 211–12 manufacturing jobs 131–2 robots 171–2 summer holidays 239 Maori 34–5 marriage child marriage 84–5 polygamy 5–6 same-sex relationships 73–4 see also couples Marteau, Theresa 101–2 Marx, Karl 123 Maryland 85 Massachusetts child marriage 85 Christmas 246 Matfess, Hilary 5, 15 meat dog meat 91–2 packaging 103–4 mega-rich 53 men career and family 77–8 housework 75–6 job tenure 129–30 life expectancy 125 polygamy 5–6 sexual harassment by 67–9 video games and unemployment 169 Mexico avocados 89, 90 gay and lesbian rights 73 murder rate 44, 45 microbreweries 97–8 Microsoft HoloLens 181–2 undersea cables 193 migration, and birth rates 81–3 mining diamonds 13–14 sand 7–8 mobile phones Africa 175–6 5G 173–4 Mocan, Naci 56–7 Mongolia 42–3 Mongrel Mob 34 Monopoly (board game) 199, 200 Monty Python and the Holy Grail 25 Moore, Clement Clarke 247 Moretti, Franco 228 Morocco 7 Moscato, Philippe 36 movies 207–8 Mozambique 73 murder rates 44–6 music, Christmas 243–5 Musk, Elon 168 Myanmar 118 N Nadal, Rafael 197 national identity 223–4 natural gas 124 Netherlands gender 66 national identity 223–4 neurostimulators 167 New Jersey 85 New Mexico 157–8 New York (state), child marriage 85 New York City drink-driving 179–80 food trucks 99–100 New Zealand avocados 89 gang members 34–5 gene drives 154 water pollution 149–50 new-year resolutions 233–4 Neymar 203, 204 Nigeria board games 199–200 Boko Haram 5, 15–16 population 54–5 Nissenbaum, Stephen 247 Northern Ireland 218 Norway Christmas music 243 inheritance tax 119 life expectancy 125, 126 sex reassignment 65 Nucci, Alessandra 36 O obesity 93–4 oceans see seas Odimegwu, Festus 54 O’Reilly, Oliver 9–10 Ortiz de Retez, Yñigo 32 Oster, Emily 25–6 ostriches 163, 164 ’Oumuamua 185–6 P packaging 103–4 Pakistan 5 Palombi, Francis 161 Papua New Guinea languages 219–20 name 32 Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) 203 Passover 237 pasta 31 pay, gender pay gap 115–16, 135–6 Peck, Jessica Lynn 179–80 Pennsylvania 85 Peru 90 Pestre, Dominique 228 Pew Research Centre 22 Phelps, Michael 163–4 Philippe, Édouard 230 phishing 189 Phoenix, Arizona 177 Pilgrims 241 plague 157–8 Plastic China 159 police, body cameras 191–2 pollution air pollution 143–4 water pollution 149–50 polygamy 5–6 pornography and Britain’s gay population 70–72 and Hawaii missile alert 63–4 Portugal 145 Puerto Rico 45 punctuation marks 229–30 Q Qatar 19 R ransomware 190 Ravenscroft, George 101 Real Madrid 211 religious observance and birth rates 81–2 and Christmas music 244 remastering 207–8 Reynolds, Andrew 70 Rhodes, Cecil 13 rice 109–10 rich high-net-worth individuals 53 US 113–14 ride-hailing apps and drink-driving 179–80 see also Uber RIWI 73–4 robotaxis 177–8 robots 171–2 Rogers, Dan 240 Romania birth rate 81 life expectancy 125 Romans 233 Romer, Paul 227–8 Ross, Hana 23 Royal United Services Institute 21 Russ, Jacob 26 Russia arms sales 20 beer consumption 105, 106 fertility rate 81 Rwanda 40 S Sahara 31 St Louis 205–6 St Patrick’s Day 235–6 salt, in seas 11–12 same-sex relationships 73–4 San Antonio 100 sand 7–8 sanitation 155–6 Saudi Arabia 19 Scotland, witch-hunting 25–6, 27 Scott, Keith Lamont 191 Scrabble (board game) 199 seas Arctic sea ice 147–8 salty 11–12 undersea cables 193–4 secularism, and birth rates 81–2 Seles, Monica 197 self-driving cars 177–8 Serbia 222 Serbo-Croatian 221–2 Sevilla, Almudena 75 sex reassignment 65–6 sexual harassment 67–9, 230 Sharapova, Maria 197 sharks deterring attacks 201–2 racing humans 163–4 shipping 148 shoelaces 9–10 Silk Road 117–18 Singapore dragon children 56 land reclamation 7, 8 rice consumption 110 single people, housework 75–6 Sinquefeld, Rex 205 smart glasses 181–2 Smith, Adam 127 smoking black market for cigarettes 23–4 efforts to curb 151–2 smuggling 31 Sogaard, Jakob 135–6 Somalia 40 Somaliland 40–41 South Africa childhood obesity 93 diamonds 13 gay and lesbian rights 73 murder rate 45, 46 South Korea arms sales 20 rice consumption 110 South Sudan failed state 40 polygamy 5 space elevators 183–4 spaghetti 31 Spain forests 145 gay and lesbian rights 73 job tenure 130 spam e-mail 189–90 sperm banks 61–2 sport football clubs 211–12 football transfers 203–4 grunting in tennis 197–8 Sri Lanka 118 Star Wars 208 sterilisation 65–6 Strasbourg 26 submarine cables 193–4 Sudan 40 suicide-bombers 15–16 summer holidays 239–40 Sutton Trust 22 Sweden Christmas music 243, 244 gay and lesbian rights 73 homophobia 70 inheritance tax 119 overpayment of taxes 51–2 sex reassignment 65 sexual harassment 67–8 Swinnen, Johan 106 Switzerland sex reassignment 65 witch-hunting 26, 27 T Taiwan dog meat 91 dragon children 56 Tamil Tigers 15 Tanzania 40 taxes death taxes 119–20 Sweden 51–2 taxis robotaxis 177–8 see also ride-hailing apps tennis players, grunting 197–8 terrorism 15–16 Texas 85 Thailand 110 Thanksgiving 241–2 think-tanks 21–2 Tianjin 143–4 toilets 155–6 Tok Pisin 219, 220 transgender people 65–6 Trump, Donald 223 Argentine lemons 95, 96 estate tax 119 and gender pay gap 115 and manufacturing jobs 131, 132 Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin 183 Turkey 151 turkeys 33 Turkmenistan 6 U Uber 128 and drink-driving 179–80 Uganda 40 Ulaanbaatar 42–3 Uljarevic, Daliborka 221 undersea cables 193–4 unemployment 169–70 Unicode 215–16 United Arab Emirates and Somaliland 41 weapons purchases 19 United Kingdom see Britain United States and Argentine lemons 95–6 arms sales 19 beer consumption 105 chess 205–6 child marriage 84–5 Christmas 246–7 Christmas music 243, 244 drink-driving 179–80 drones 187–8 end of life care 141–2 estate tax 119 fertility rates 79–80 food trucks 99–100 forests 145 gay and lesbian rights 73 getting rich 113–14 Hawaiian porn consumption 63–4 job tenure 129–30 letter names 218 lithium 17 manufacturing jobs 131–2 murder rate 45, 46 national identity 223–4 new-year resolutions 234 plague 157–8 police body cameras 191–2 polygamy 6 robotaxis 177 robots 171–2 St Patrick’s Day 235–6 sexual harassment 67, 68 sperm banks 61–2 Thanksgiving 241–2 video games and unemployment 169–70 wealth inequality 121 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) see drones V video games 169–70 Vietnam weapons purchases 19 wheat consumption 110 Virginia 85 virtual reality (VR) 181, 182 Visit from St Nicholas, A (Moore) 247 W Wang Yi 117 Warner, Jason 15 wars 5 Washington, George 242 Washington DC, food trucks 99 waste 159–60 water pollution 149–50 wealth getting rich in America 113–14 high-net-worth individuals 53 inequality 120, 121–2 weather, and Christmas music 243–5 Weinstein, Harvey 67, 69 Weryk, Rob 185 wheat consumption 109–10 genome 107–8 Wilson, Riley 79–80 wine glasses 101–2 Winslow, Edward 241 wireless technology 173–4 witch-hunting 25–7 wolves 161–2 women birth rates 79–80, 81–3 bride price 5 career and family 77–8 child marriage 84–5 housework 75–6 job tenure 129–30 life expectancy 125 pay gap 115–16 sexual harassment of 67–9 suicide-bombers 15–16 World Bank 227–8 World Health Organisation (WHO) and smoking 151–2 transsexualism 65 X Xi Jinping 117–18 Y young people crime 47–8 job tenure 129–30 video games and unemployment 169–70 Yu, Han 56–7 Yulin 91 yurts 42–3 Z Zubelli, Rita 239

Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation
by Kevin Roose
Published 9 Mar 2021

Freelancers for Full-time Machines also allow companies to substitute part-time, temporary, and contingent workers for full-time employees, by breaking jobs down into standardized tasks that can be performed by relative amateurs and allowing small numbers of managers to supervise large, flexible workforces. The typical examples of this phenomenon are gig economy companies like Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb, all of which have made it possible for people with cars and spare bedrooms to compete with professional drivers and hoteliers. But a better example may be what’s happened in my industry. Several decades ago, human journalists were employed at newspapers, magazines, and TV stations, and given the job of separating fact from fiction, deciding which stories were appropriate for an audience, and ranking the day’s news in order of importance.

…

And it’s worth reminding ourselves that, historically, technological shocks have been followed by social progress, even if it’s taken a while. The worker unrest of the Industrial Revolution led to labor reforms and the first institutionalized protections for workers. Worries about automation in the middle of the twentieth century strengthened the middle class by expanding the power of labor unions. The rise of the “gig economy” in the first decade of the twenty-first century has already created a groundswell of organizing energy to protect contract workers from exploitation. Look, I don’t judge people for wanting to unplug their devices and flee to the hills. And I’m certainly not opposed to adopting a balanced lifestyle that puts technology in its proper place.

Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism: And Other Arguments for Economic Independence
by Kristen R. Ghodsee
Published 20 Nov 2018

Attempts to strengthen the 1963 Equal Pay Act have failed to win Republican support in Congress, most recently in April 2017 with the Paycheck Fairness Act, which did not receive a single Republican vote. Critics will also claim that expanded public sector employment hurts growth and cripples the private sector, but private sector job expansion has not been able to reverse wage stagnation, the rise of the gig economy, or the incredible growth in inequality between the rich and the poor, as revealed by Thomas Piketty. Economists and legislators will have to debate the details, but given that as of 2017, just eight men own the same amount of wealth as the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity, redistribution is going to come in one form or another.

…

Like climate change and environmental degradation, the skyrocketing incidence of depression and anxiety are the negative externalities of a system that reduces human worth to its exchange value.23 Whether we like it or not, capitalism commodifies almost every aspect of our private lives, as sexual economics theory predicts. Personal relationships take time and energy that few of us have to spare as we scramble to make ends meet in the precarious gig economy. We are often exhausted and drained, unwilling to invest the emotional resources necessary to maintain loving relationships without compensation. I’m always stunned by the prevalence of young, college-educated women and men looking for “sugar daddies” and “sugar mommies” on websites like Seekingarrangement.com, or signing up with escort agencies to help pay for groceries.

Wild Ride: Inside Uber's Quest for World Domination
by Adam Lashinsky
Published 31 Mar 2017

Just as Microsoft defined the personal computer revolution, Apple wrote the next chapter of digital entertainment, and Facebook created the twenty-first century’s most powerful publishing platform, Uber perfectly exemplifies all the attributes of the information-technology industry’s next wave. A mobile-first company, if there had been no iPhone there would have been no Uber. Uber expanded globally almost from its beginning, far earlier than would have been possible in an era when packaged software and clunky computers were the norm. It is a leader of the so-called gig economy, cleverly marrying its technology with other people’s assets (their cars) as well as their labor, paying them independent-contractor fees but not costlier employee benefits. Such “platform” companies became all the rage as Uber rose to prominence. Airbnb didn’t need to own homes to make a profit renting them.

…

“I by no stretch hated those jobs, but I wasn’t super passionate about them,” he tells me over lunch in Manhattan Beach, a tony community near Los Angeles International Airport and not far from Campbell’s current home in Long Beach. “I just wasn’t excited to go to work on Monday.” What was getting Campbell excited was what he calls his “side hustle,” a trendy expression associated with the so-called gig economy that once would have been called moonlighting. He was intrigued by personal finance, suddenly having some considerable disposable income, and so in 2012 he started a blog targeted at people like himself. It’s called Your Personal Finance Pro, with the tagline “Financial Advice for Young Professionals.”

Practical Anarchism: A Guide for Daily Life
by Scott. Branson
Published 14 Jun 2022

When I do teach college students, I acknowledge that they are taking on massive debt to achieve access to a world of jobs that just doesn’t exist. Almost everyone I know works in service, mostly in restaurants and bars. Those who don’t have to hustle in some way to make enough to pay rent. At fancy colleges and business summits they call this hustle “entrepreneurship.” It is the flashy side of the “gig economy,” where people take on contractual work with no consistency under the guise of “freedom” from the 9–5 job. We need to be wary of the language that repackages precarity—the inability to find dependable work (and also access to services for subsistence)—as a kind of freedom, like being your own boss.

…

Anarchy, Time, and the World • Let go of progress narratives and one-time revolution • Everything must end • Anarchism is practice Love Comes in Spurts Our lives under capitalism are driven by clock time, hours of productivity, myths of work–life balance, and labor vs. leisure. As we get more integrated into online networks and labor can be remote or virtualized, the on and off of the clock seems to fade away. The so-called freedom of the gig economy to determine when you work becomes, due to low pay, an endless availability for labor. Similarly, “revolutionary time” can be another force of domination, as our commitment to revolution is measured by how fully we stake the totality of our lives for the cause. The problem is, this revolutionary time is always “to come,” and too often enshrines a masculinist vision of the important work to be done, thereby neglecting the daily moments of care where we actually sketch out our freedom with each other, in relationships.

Chokepoint Capitalism
by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow
Published 26 Sep 2022

Press explained to the hosts of the techno-critical podcast This Machine Kills—is not just to defeat the union drive, but to salt the earth, traumatizing all the workers involved so that they never join another union drive, ever again.10 Of course, to have a union drive, you must first be entitled to unionize. In the US, worker misclassification—the risible fiction that “gig economy” workers, whose every movement is scripted in fine detail by their employers, are actually “independent contractors”—is the go-to tactic for denying workers the right to form a union in the first place. In California, the fight to enshrine worker misclassification in law hit a peak in 2020, when gig economy companies spent an unprecedented $200 million to pass Proposition 22—outspending nearly all the races for actual seats in the state legislature combined.11 Predictably, California businesses started firing their “essential” workers within weeks of its passage, replacing them with scabs whose boss was an app.12 As we go to press, Uber and Lyft are leading a charge to spend $100 million to put a Prop 22–style measure on the ballot in Massachusetts for the 2022 mid-term elections (one spot of good news: a drafting error in California’s Prop 22 led to a court’s invalidating the measure, though the state Supreme Court was yet to rule on the appeal as we went to press).

…

See radio broadcast industry Brook, Becky, 227 Buckmaster, Jim, 39 Buffet, Warren, 6 Burgess, Jean, 124 Burgess, Richard, 54, 82, 90, 171 Caldas, Charles, 72 California tech industry, 165, 249 Canada, 189, 236 capital, 246–47 capitalism, 4–5, 13 Carstensen, Peter, 10, 23, 148 Carter, Jimmy, 102 Chance the Rapper, 62 Chapel Hill, NC, 239–41 Checkm8, 120 Chen, Steve, 124 Chicago school of economics, 3–4, 5, 92–93, 146–47, 213 chickenization, 96 Childish Gambino, 73 China, 122–23 chokepoint capitalism, 9–10 cinema, 242 Citizens United case, 152 class action lawsuits, 248 Clear Channel, 90, 94 Coker, Mark, 22 Cold Case (TV series), 105 Coldrick, Annabella, 225 Cole, Henderson, 243–44 collective action: antitrust barriers to, 171–72; arbitration, 166–67; atomization of labor and, 31; collective ownership, 229–30; creator visibility and power, 169–70; importance of, 246–47, 256; job guarantees, 251–56; organizing, 178–79; private coordination and, 171–72; Writers Guild of America (WGA), 173–77 college tuition, 249 Comcast, 5 command economy, 13 Compaq, 201 comparison, 170 competition, 3–6, 13, 173 competitive compatibility (comcom), 202–4, 206–11 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), 200, 209 computer universality, 197–99 conduct remedies, 148 Conger, 183 consent decrees, 100 consumer debt, 249 consumer harm standard, 117, 146, 173, 250 consumer rights movement, 145–46 consumer welfare, 4, 147 Content ID, 129–35 contextual ads, 231–32 contract labor, 173 cookies, 44 copyright: about, 63–65, 246; anticircumvention laws and infringement, 209; freedom of contract, 184; industrial aggregation of, 57–58, 60–61, 181–82; orphan works, 189, 192–94; registration, 192; reversion proposals, 189–95; reversion rights, 183–89; Statute of Anne (1710), 182–83; term extension, 257; termination law, 186–88; US Copyright Act (1976), 183–84; use-it-or-lose-it rights, 194–95; works for hire, 185–86; and YouTube, 125–29 corporate mergers, 5 corporate personhood, 258 cost moats, 6 COVI D-19, 97, 101, 254 Craigslist, 39–42 Creative Artists Agency, 104, 107, 176 Creative Commons licensing, 151 creative workers: about, 3, 5, 14–19; interoperability and, 203; pay and wages, 16–17 Cross, Colleen, 156 culture, 14 Culture Crash (Timberg), 110–11 culture markets, 3, 13, 14–15 Cumulus Media, 94 data moats, 6 Dayen, David, 94 The Death of the Artist (Deresiewicz), 10 Deezer, 68, 73, 163 The Deficit Myth (Kelten), 255 Dell, 201 Deresiewicz, William, 10 device manufacturers, 43 diapers.com, 37 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), 25, 26, 28, 38, 128, 134, 199–200, 208–9 digital rights management (DRM), 25–28, 33–34, 37–38, 202 Dinielli, David C., 50 Discovery Network, 215 Disney, 2, 161–62, 172, 212–13 Doctorow, Cory, 34, 116, 227 domain spoofing, 49 DoorDash, 166–67 DOS, 201 DRM (digital rights management), 25–28, 33–34, 37–38, 119, 120, 121 Drummond, David, 127 Dryhurst, Mat, 67, 220, 238 eBay, 40 ebooks market, 24–33, 37–38, 238 ecology movement, 251 economic rents, 118–21 The Economics of Imperfect Competition (Robinson), 10 Ek, Daniel, 84 Electronic Frontier Foundation, 202, 209 Epic Games, 115–18, 119–20 Epidemic Sound, 81–82 European Union: App Drivers and Couriers Union, 171; competition regulation, 233–34; Copyright Directive (2019), 195; dispute resolution, 166–67; General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), 136–39, 144, 171, 231; payment data disclosure, 162, 164; press publishers’ right, 233–34; pro-creator policies, 257; remuneration legislation, 214 The Everything Store (Stone), 21 Excel, 201 Facebook, 2, 18, 45–51 Fairchild Semiconductor, 165–66 Fair Labor Standards Act, 150 fair use/dealing, 130, 189 film scoring, 215 Forbes, 47 Fortnite Battle Royale, 115–18 Foster, Alan Dean, 161–62, 212–13, 215 France, 233 freedom of contract, 184 free market, 118–21 Freire, Paulo, 237 Friedman, Milton, 152, 153, 252 Frisch, Kevin, 48 Game Workers Unite (GWU), 239 gaming industry, 115–18, 239 Gates, Rebecca, 3 Gateway, 201 Gaye, Marvin, 63–64 Gazelle Project, 21 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), 136–39, 144, 231 geography, and labor market, 15–16 Germany, 214 Getty Images, 229 Gibbs, Melvin, 3 Giblin, Rebecca, 186, 187, 193, 194 gig economy companies, 249 Gilded Age, 178–79 Gioia, Ted, 64 Glatt, Zoë, 133 Glazier, Mitch, 186 Goldenfein, Jake, 235 Goodman, David, 106, 175, 176 Google: about, 2, 7, 10, 15, 18; in Australia, 235; Content ID system, 129–35; and Epic Games, 116, 117; and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), 136–39; news and advertising, 42–45; News Showcase, 234; streaming share, 83; third-party cookies, 232; YouTube acquisition, 125–29, 134 Google Classroom, 210 Green, Joshua, 124 Green, Matthew, 209 Hachette, 23, 28 Haggard, Merle, 166 Harcourt, Amanda, 70, 83 hate, and profits, 95 health insurance, 249, 256 Herndon, Holly, 66–67 Hind, Dan, 244 hip-hop, 61 horizontal integration, 45, 46, 57, 69–70, 97 Howard, George, 82 HP, 199 Huang, Andrew, 209 Hundt, Reed, 90 Hurley, Chad, 124, 128 Hwang, Tim, 46, 50 IBM, 149, 201 ICM Partners, 104 iHeartMedia, 18, 56, 90, 91, 94 Imeem, 133 independent cinema, 242 indyreads, 241–42 information, 14 Intel, 166 International Confederation of Authors and Composers Society, 67 interoperability: adversarial, 201–3; competitive compatibility (comcom), 202–4, 206–11; computer universality, 197–99; digital lock-in, 196–97; DMCA and, 199; as essential, 120; interoperator’s defense, 210; mandated, 204–6; physical lock-in, 196; video streaming, 198; virtual machines, 198; voluntary, 200–201 iWork, 202 Japan Fair Trade Commission, 258 Jay-Z, 2, 160 Jennings, Tom, 201 Jensen, Rich, 237 job guarantees, 251–56 Johannessen, Chip, 105 Johnson, Dennis, 21–22 Johnson, Paul, 78 Kanopy, 242 Kanter, Jonathan, 147 Karim, Jawed, 124 Karp, Irwin, 184 Kates, Mark, 62 Keating, Zoë, 66, 68 Kelten, Stephanie, 255 Khan, Lina, 6, 147 Kindle ebook store, 26–34, 37–38 Kindle Unlimited, 159–60 Kirkwood, John, 173 Klein, Naomi, 152, 254 Knowledge Ecology International, 153 Kobalt, 73 Kowal, Mary Robinette, 212–13 Kun, Josh, 59 labor, 5–6, 253–54 labor, job guarantees, 251–56 labor market and geography, 15–16 LaPolt, Dina, 61 lending right, public, 242–44 Leonard, Christopher, 96 leveraged buyouts, 91–93 libraries, 35–36, 241–44 Linda, Solomon, 188 “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” (song), 188 literary agents, 23 litigation costs, 166–67 live music industry: grind and difficulties of, 97–98; Live Nation consolidation of, 98–103; scalping, 98, 100 Live Nation: about, 2, 18, 56; antitrust remedies, 148; domination of industry, 97–103 Livingstone, Bruce, 229 local public ownership models, 239–42 location data, 50 Lofgren, Zoe, 209 Lotus 1-2-3, 201 Love, Courtney, 53 Love, James, 153 Lovett, Lyle, 53 Lyft, 249 Lynn, Barry, 22 Lynskey, Orla, 15 Macmillan, 30 Maker Studios, 133 Malamud, Carl, 130 mandated interoperability, 204–6 Manne Seminars, 103 market power, 13–14 Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works for Persons Who Are Blind, Visually Impaired or Otherwise Print Disabled, 153 Marshall, Josh, 43 Marx, Paris, 239 May, Susan, 154, 156, 158–59 Medicare for All, 256 Meese, James, 232, 235 Melville House Publishing, 21–22 Merlin, 71–72, 77 # Me Too, 47 Microchip Technology, 166 Microsoft, 201 middlemen, 46 Mills, Martin, 59 Minogue, Kylie, 3 moats, corporate, 6–7, 136 monopolies, 3–6, 9–10, 11–12, 118–19, 146, 256–59; maintenance of monopoly, 58 Monopolized!

The Equality Machine: Harnessing Digital Technology for a Brighter, More Inclusive Future
by Orly Lobel
Published 17 Oct 2022

More than that, Fiverr reports that women receive 9 percent more project requests through the platform than men, making women the higher overall earners. The average earnings for women are 19 percent higher than the average earnings for men. Perhaps more than in traditional, non-digital work settings, digital platforms allow customers to evaluate sellers and service providers based on their portfolios, reviews, and quality of work. The gig economy has been the subject of much debate and has been a focus of my research in the past decade. There is no doubt that AI-driven automation will lead to certain job losses, further deepening income inequality. I have argued in my research that it is time to consider how tax, social welfare, universal basic income, and other fiscal transfer policies might have advantages in protecting the interests of many and tackling financial insecurity and income and wealth inequality, compared to traditional labor market wage and work conditions protections.33 Moreover, we need to understand the net effects of job displacement and job gains that inevitably happen as a result of technological innovation.

…

In an article published in Science, the researchers show that using AI to help place refugees will increase their employment rates by 40 percent in the United States and by 75 percent in Switzerland, the two countries they initially studied. This suggests that governments can use machine learning—at very little cost—to optimize and support not only vulnerable immigrant populations but the labor market more broadly. For gig economy workers, the self-employed, immigrants, and indeed anyone dreaming of bettering their financial situation, financial credit is key. Credit enables individual humans, multibillion-dollar entities, and capitalist governments alike to build the present with the help of the future. The traditional and ongoing practice of categorizing people as “creditworthy” and “not creditworthy” is inevitably one of selection.

…

Jeppesen and Lakhani, “Marginality and Problem-Solving Effectiveness,” 1020. 33. Orly Lobel, “The Debate About How to Classify Workers Is Missing the Bigger Picture,” Harvard Business Review, July 24, 2019, https://hbr.org/2019/07/the-debate-over-how-to-classify-gig-workers-is-missing-the-bigger-picture; Orly Lobel, “The Gig Economy and the Future of Employment and Labor Law,” University of San Francisco Law Review 51, no. 1 (2017): 51; Orly Lobel, “We Are All Gig Workers Now: Online Platforms, Freelancers and the Battles over Employment Status and Rights During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” San Diego Law Review 57, no. 4 (November–December 2020): 919. 34.

Billion Dollar Burger: Inside Big Tech's Race for the Future of Food
by Chase Purdy
Published 15 Jun 2020

Learning how to navigate that world is a full-time job for policy journalists, lawyers, and lobbyists, who are tasked with untangling the politics of competing interests, the high emotions, and the steady pressure that Silicon Valley has increasingly pushed onto Washington. Lawmakers are increasingly challenged to reimagine a world that breaks from the conventions of the past, molded in the likeness of new technological possibilities. That has been the case with artificial intelligence, privacy concerns, the labor and business implications of the gig economy, and certainly the proposition of lab-grown, cell-cultured meat. Beneath the surface, the policy challenges around cell-cultured meat are many. But on its face, the two biggest questions seem simple: “Is this stuff real? And is it safe?” These are two issues that, for a while, were grappled with mostly in private, as nervous ranchers and farmers watched with cocked eyebrows as more headlines and stories detailed the efforts of the companies pushing to make cultured meat a reality.

…

See venture capital Fung, Nan, 104–5 Future Food-Tech Summit, 173 Future Meat Technologies, xv, 30, 40, 114, 118–20 “gap junction,” 41 Gates, Bill, xiii–xiv, 110, 149 gay identity of author, 207–8 Genack, Menachem, 190–91 General Mills, 80, 147 genetics, 3, 33–34, 127–28 Gesner, Abraham Pineo, 211 Gibson, William, 17, 18 gig economy, 153 Glassdoor, 100 GlassWall Syndicate, 147–48 Global Food Security Index, 115–16 globalization, 194–95 global warming. See climate change Goldman Sachs, 148–49 Good Food Institute, 140, 146, 155, 160–61, 170 Gottlieb, Scott, 173 government regulations. See food regulations Grant, Ulysses S., 231–32 GRA Quantum, 108 greenhouse gases, 5–7, 210 “growth factors,” 36–37 growth medium, 33–40, 46–47, 116–17, 201 halal, 191, 204 Hampton Creek, 9.

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
by Oliver Burkeman
Published 9 Aug 2021

Surveys reliably show that we feel more pressed for time than ever before; yet in 2013, research by a team of Dutch academics raised the amusing possibility that such surveys may understate the scale of the busyness epidemic—because many people feel too busy to participate in surveys. Recently, as the gig economy has grown, busyness has been rebranded as “hustle”—relentless work not as a burden to be endured but as an exhilarating lifestyle choice, worth boasting about on social media. In reality, though, it’s the same old problem, pushed to an extreme: the pressure to fit ever-increasing quantities of activity into a stubbornly nonincreasing quantity of daily time.

…

It’s harder than ever to find time for a leisurely family dinner, a spontaneous visit to friends, or any collective project—nurturing a community garden, playing in an amateur rock band—that takes place in a setting other than the workplace. For the least privileged, the dominance of this kind of freedom translates into no freedom at all: it means unpredictable gig-economy jobs and “on-demand scheduling,” in which the big-box retailer you work for might call you into work at any moment, its labor needs calculated algorithmically from hour to hour based on sales volume—making it all but impossible to plan childcare or essential visits to the doctor, let alone a night out with friends.

Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone
by Sarah Jaffe
Published 26 Jan 2021

Trump’s trip to the Carrier plant, where he posed for a photo op with young Black women workers, reminds us that those women make up plenty of even what’s left of the industrial workforce. The working class has never been all male or all white or all industrial, but, as historian Gabriel Winant noted, it is these days defined by “feminization, racial diversification, and increasing precarity: care work, immigrant work, low-wage work, and the gig economy.” Working-class life is shaped as well by the world outside the workplace, where housing is harder to come by and education and health care more costly, where policing is harsher and care responsibilities double on top of the demands of the paid workplace, where immigration agents hound workers out of the country.

…

It’s no wonder that the apps designed by all these man-children have been, collectively, dubbed “the Internet of ‘Stuff Your Mom Won’t Do for You Anymore.’” Need laundry done, dinner delivered, your house cleaned? There’s an app for that, and the app’s founders have no doubt been breathlessly hailed as technical geniuses, even though their real innovation is finding new ways to skirt labor laws. The result has been the gig economy—a patchwork of short-term non-jobs performed by nonemployees who are barely getting by. 33 Whether they be app-distributed gigs or jobs in Amazon’s warehouses, or even programming jobs themselves, the tech industry’s solution for the continuing need for humans to do deeply un-fun work has been “gamification.”

…

After talking with a variety of different unions, the games workers became a branch of the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB). A relatively new union begun in 2012, IWGB represents mainly low-paid immigrant workers in fields that had been long nonunion: cleaning workers, security guards, and gig economy workers like Deliveroo bike couriers and Uber drivers. It was both a strange and a perfect fit, explained Game Workers Unite’s Marijam Didžgalvytė. The games workers in many ways, obviously, are better off than many of the workers who are already part of IWGB, but they bring a militancy that can be infectious, and the union holds social events to bring members together in a solidarity that reaches beyond the picket lines.

Tenants: The People on the Frontline of Britain's Housing Emergency
by Vicky Spratt
Published 18 May 2022

They, not social homes, are the housing of last resort for those on the lowest incomes. And they are often unlawful because no tenancy agreements have been signed. Their unwritten contracts are to housing what zero-hours contracts are to the gig economy – which is fitting because they are often home to those with the least stable employment. And, like the gig economy, they present a trap: those who live in them pay rent but exist on the margins and, when things go wrong, find themselves without a safety net. They speak to the increasing work and life precarity that is becoming an accepted feature of British society.

…

In London, when Sadiq Khan became mayor in 2016, he scrapped affordable rent and introduced the London affordable rent, which is less than half of market rent. Key Workers For a long time this has meant vital public sector workers such as nurses, ambulance drivers, police officers, teachers and those involved in food production. However, as the coronavirus pandemic showed, we ought to broaden our definition to include supermarket workers and gig-economy delivery services. Land Value Tax Put simply, this is a tax on the value of the land itself and not the structures built on it. That value may be dictated, for instance, by its location or any granted planning permission to build on the site. Leasehold This is a controversial system of property ownership which has its roots in Britain’s feudal system.

The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution Is Transforming Currencies and Finance
by Eswar S. Prasad
Published 27 Sep 2021

But savings can also be put to productive use if the funds are utilized for constructing houses, which provide residential services, or education, which builds knowledge in an economy. Managing Volatility and Risk Another important function of a financial system is managing volatility and risk. The two are related but distinct concepts. Salaried workers earn steady monthly incomes. On the other hand, the incomes of farmers and gig-economy workers vary from month to month. Such income volatility is tricky when expenses are more stable. Expenses for food, rent, utilities, and other basics have to be paid every month. By saving when income is high and using those savings when income is low, a household can smooth its consumption patterns.

…

Innovations in financial technology are already beginning to revolutionize this industry. A new breed of Insurtech companies seek to use technologies such as artificial intelligence to make insurance products simpler and more accessible. They have created new products that are better suited to other changes in modern economies, such as the rise of the gig economy. On-Demand Insurance Traditional insurance companies are typically reluctant to extend auto insurance to drivers who use their cars to transport passengers for rideshare services such as Lyft and Uber or to provide homeowners with insurance policies that cover short-term rentals of properties through homeshare services such as Airbnb.

…

In fact, even if all transactions were handled by private or official digital payment systems, the shadow economy would not disappear. Identity fraud, fictitious invoices and receipts, and forms of tax evasion that do not involve the use of cash will persevere. And other developments could already be affecting tax revenues in ways that do not involve tax evasion. The shift from formal contractual employment to the gig economy has meant that many economic activities escape certain elements of the tax net. An Uber driver in the United States pays taxes on her income. But, since she is not an employee of the company, in many states Uber does not have to make the social security or unemployment insurance fund contributions that it would be required to for its regular employees.

Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital
by Kimberly Clausing
Published 4 Mar 2019

For example, in Germany, excellent labor market outcomes are often attributed to the fact that labor stakeholders are more involved in business decision-making.6 Finally, there are several useful ways to modernize labor laws for today’s economy that warrant consideration. As one example, labor laws likely need updating to account for the fact that many workers work independently in the “gig economy” (for example, for online intermediaries like Lyft or Uber).7 Flying the Friendly Skies? Recently, American Airlines announced a plan for pay raises for their pilots and flight attendants, in part due to competitive pressures associated with higher wages at Delta and United. In response, stock market analysts wrote disapproving commentary about how shareholders would be harmed by this undue generosity toward labor, and American Airlines’ stock price fell 5 percent in one day.

…

See Economic inequality Information, 289–292 Infrastructure, 175–176, 235–237 Institutions, 64, 189–190, 237–238 International borrowing and lending, 118–121 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 105, 298 International trade: disruption from, 73–81; effects on economic growth, 63–67; effects on income inequality, 73–81; effects on international relations, 101–106; effects on jobs, 57–63, 73–81; effects on poverty, 65–67; effects on the one percent, 74–75; efficiency of, 53–57; gains from variety, 93; gains to consumers, 92–95; political support, 106–111; public opinion, 79, 109; trends, 30–32 Interstate highway system, 237 Irwin, Douglas, 315n2 Japan, demographic burdens, 185–188 Jeep, 146 Katz, Lawrence, 88 Kleinbard, Edward, 319n27 Kraay, Aart, 63 Krugman, Paul, 63 Labor force participation, 58–59 Labor rights, 162; and gig economy, 282 Labor share of income, 20–22 Labor unions, 42–43 Lewis, Ethan, 196 Luck, 37–39 Macroeconomic policy, 175, 237–238 Macron, Emmanuel, 298 Mariel boatlift, 193–195 Market power: effect on labor share of income, 42, 150; and efficiency, 152; and inequality, 152; trends, 39–42, 90–91, 147–149 McKinsey Global Institute, 147 Medicare, 241–242 Mercantilism, 70 Microsoft, 153 Minimum tax on foreign income, 172, 262 Mining, 154 Monopoly.

Transport for Humans: Are We Nearly There Yet?
by Pete Dyson and Rory Sutherland
Published 15 Jan 2021

At the turn of the millennium, the addition of dot-matrix displays on the London Underground achieved some of the biggest changes in customer satisfaction per pound spent, but in engineering terms nothing changed: speed, frequency and punctuality were the same before and after. In spite of this, investment remains hard to justify because models do not (yet) account for differences in waiting time experiences.19 Wind forward a decade and Uber’s biggest innovation was not harnessing (and exploiting) the gig economy, it was the dependability offered by a live map that transformed anxious waits for taxis into James Bond-style coordinated pickups.20 The next evolution might be addressing multimodal journeys, where making an interchange or connection is stressful: we need to know how far away we are, whether we are delayed and when the next leg of the journey sets off.

…

Skype started in 2003 and Ocado in 2010, and while the benefits of both were clear from the outset, they saw modest usage until an exogenous shock – the Covid-19 pandemic – acted as a trigger for an explosion in home working and online shopping. Meanwhile, it took Uber many years – as well as questionable business practices and $14 billion in cumulative losses – from its founding in 2009 to gain widespread adoption, with dozens of gig-economy and ride-share services also finding that people’s aptitude and appetite for smartphone-­connected travel fell short of their founders’ original enthusiasm. All three of these companies’ innovations rely on scale: the more people who use them, the better, cheaper and more dependable their services get.

The Great Wave: The Era of Radical Disruption and the Rise of the Outsider
by Michiko Kakutani
Published 20 Feb 2024

And how was it that big business and wealthy investors quickly bounced back, while the middle and working classes lost their homes and jobs and afterward struggled to make up lost ground? Young people were finishing college with massive student loan debts and the prospect of only part-time jobs in the new gig economy, while workers in manufacturing found themselves replaced by robots or saw their jobs shipped overseas. In a 2018 essay in the Journal of Democracy, the scholar William A. Galston tried to situate the lingering aftermath of the 2008 crash in historical perspective: “A recent study of politics in the wake of financial crises over the past 140 years finds a consistent pattern: Majority parties shrink; far-right parties gain ground; polarization and fragmentation intensify; uncertainty rises; and governing becomes more difficult.”

…

But the lingering aftermath of the 2008 crash and the COVID pandemic would begin to change this dynamic. Even when unemployment numbers (and CEO salaries) bounced back after the Great Recession, wages for ordinary workers failed to keep pace with inflation, and prospects of upward mobility sputtered out. The threats of outsourcing and automation loomed on the horizon, and in the new gig economy, job security evaporated, alongside pensions and health care. Meanwhile, the costs of housing and college were soaring out of reach. In 2018, nearly half a million workers took part in work stoppages—the highest number in some three decades. Driving this development was a wave of teacher strikes, which spread from West Virginia to Oklahoma and Kentucky, to Arizona, Colorado, and North Carolina.

Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It's Doing to Us
by Will Storr
Published 14 Jun 2017

I’d come in search of the neoliberal self and it seemed I’d found their teaming capital. But what goes in Silicon Valley, of course, is increasingly going everywhere else. This vision, of individuals ‘free’ to get along and get ahead by zooming unfettered from job to job, is what’s often known as the ‘gig economy’. It appears, too, in the guise of the ‘zero hours contract’ worker. They’re arrangements in which the responsibility of the employer is minimized, and that of the individual maximized. It made me think of the man at the counter at Esalen who’d refused to take my bag; we don’t take that responsibility.

…

As we’ve learned, it’s not a coincidence that this model of ideal self also happens to be the one best equipped to get along and get ahead in the age of perfectionism – this era of heightened individualism, of financial crisis, of rising inequality, of personal debt, of small state, of deregulation, of austerity, of gig economy, of zero-hours contracts, of perfection-demanding gender ideals, of declining wages, of unrealistic body-image goals, of social media with its perfectionist presentation and its tribal outrage and demands for public punishment. These are the kinds of people who’ll be more likely to win at the game that has been made of our world, the kinds who’ll find a place in the boardroom or found billion-dollar hedge funds or start-ups – and then become powerful consumers, feeding back into the machine.

…

Keith ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Carlyle, Abbot Aelred ref1, ref2 Carnegie, Dale ref1 How to Win Friends and Influence People ref1 Carter, Drummond ref1 celebrity culture ref1, ref2, ref3 chimpanzees ref1, ref2 China biographies in ref1 Confucian self ref1 and group harmony ref1 suicides in ref1 Christian Science movement ref1 Christianity ref1, ref2 Ancient Greek influence ref1, ref2 and belief in God ref1 dourly introspective ref1 future-orientated ref1 orthodox not orthoprax ref1 and perfection ref1 and reason ref1 ritual and mimicry ref1 and the unconscious ref1 and the university system ref1 Cialdini, Dr Robert, The Psychology of Influence and Persuasion ref1 CJ becomes anorexic ref1 childhood and family life ref1 description and life ambition ref1 devotion to The Hunger Games ref1, ref2, ref3 drops out of drama college ref1 need for validation ref1 personality ref1, ref2 relationship with boys ref1 takes selfies as validation of self ref1, ref2 Claybury psychiatric hospital ref1 Clinton, Bill ref1, ref2 Clinton, Hilary ref1 Coan, James ref1 Cole, Steve ref1 the Collective ref1 computers see digital technology Confucianism ref1 and Aristotelianism ref1 and suicide ref1 Confucius ref1 Connop, Phoebe ref1 Cook, Tim ref1 Cooley, Charles Horton ref1 Cornish, Jackie ref1 corporate self ref1 Corporation Man and Woman, idea of ref1 Coulson, William ref1, ref2 Council of Economic Advisers ref1 Cowen, Graeme ref1, ref2 Cramer, Katherine ref1 cultural self and Ancient Greece ref1 and Asian self ref1, ref2 childhood and adolescence ref1 and Confucianism ref1 and the environment ref1 Freudian beliefs ref1 and ideal body ref1, ref2 and storytelling ref1 and youth ref1 Curtis, Adam ref1 Cynics, in Ancient Greece ref1 Deep Space Industries ref1, ref2 Demo: New Tech Solving Big Problems conference (San Jose, 2014) ref1 Deukmejian, George ‘The Duke’ ref1, ref2, ref3 digital technology and age of perfectionism ref1 development of ref1, ref2 dot.com crash ref1 humanist-neoliberal ideology ref1, ref2, ref3 and the ideal self ref1 online community ref1 personal computers ref1, ref2 as portal to information ref1 and the selfie drone ref1 vision of the future ref1 Web 2.0 ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 DNA ref1 Doyle, Jacqueline ref1 Dunbar, Robin ref1 Eagleman, David ref1 East Asians ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 eating disorders ref1, ref2 Eddy, Mary Baker ref1, ref2 Eells, Gregory ref1 effectance motive ref1 Ehrenreich, Barbara ref1 El Rancho Inn, Millbrae ref1, ref2, ref3 empathy ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 encounter groups danger of ref1 Doug Engelbart’s ref1 online ref1 participation in ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Fritz Perls’ ref1 Carl Rogers as pioneer of ref1 Will Schutz’s ref1 Engelbart, Doug ref1 interest in EST ref1 introduces encounter groups ref1 joins Global Business Network ref1 presents personal computer concept ref1, ref2 vision of information age ref1, ref2 ‘Augmenting Human Intellect’ ref1 environment and development of the brain ref1, ref2 Easterners’ vs Westerners’ awareness of ref1 effect of changes to ref1 importance of ref1 and individual experience ref1 and social perfectionism ref1, ref2, ref3 Epley, Nicholas ref1, ref2 Erhard, Werner ref1 Erhard Seminars Training (EST) workshops ref1 Esalen Institute ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10 Big Yurt ref1 criticisms of ref1 final assignment ref1 hosts conference on Spiritual and Therapeutic Tyranny ref1, ref2, ref3 influence at Stanford ref1, ref2 The Max ref1, ref2 Pandora’s Box ref1 Fritz Perls’ Gestalt encounter groups ref1 role-play tasks ref1 Will Schutz’s encounter groups ref1 stated mission ref1 suicides connected to ref1 unaffiliated ‘Little Esalens’ ref1 and wired technology ref1 EST see Erhard Seminars Training (EST) workshops Euclid, Cleveland ref1 Euripides, The Suppliants ref1 extraverts ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Faber, Daniel ref1, ref2 Facebook ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Fall Joint Computer Conference (San Francisco, 1968) ref1, ref2 financial crises ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Flett, Gordon ref1, ref2 Fonda, Jane ref1, ref2 Fortune magazine ref1, ref2 ‘The Founder’ concept ref1, ref2 Fox, Jesse ref1 free speech ref1 free will ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Freud, Sigmund ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Totem and Taboo ref1 Frith, Chris ref1 Gagarin, Nick ref1 gamified self ref1, ref2, ref3 Garcia, Rigo ref1 Gazzaniga, Michael ref1, ref2 GBN see Global Business Network Generation X ref1, ref2 George, Carol ref1 gig economy ref1, ref2 Global Business Network (GBN) ref1, ref2 globalization ref1, ref2, ref3 Gold, Judith ref1 Goldman, Marion ref1 Gome, Gilad ref1, ref2, ref3 Gordon, Robert ref1 gossip ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Great Compression (c. 1945–c. 1975) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10, ref11, ref12 Great Depression ref1 Greenspan, Alan appointed Chairman of the Federal Reserve ref1 considers himself a libertarian ref1 effect of decisions on financial crisis ref1 influenced by Rand ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 relationship with Clinton ref1 rise to power ref1 Hacker Hostels, San Francisco ref1, ref2 Haidt, Jonathan ref1, ref2, ref3 Hampton, Debbie ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Hayek, Friedrich ref1, ref2, ref3 Heinz, Adrienne ref1, ref2, ref3 Heinz, Austen considered sexist and misogynistic ref1 description of ref1 DNA vision ref1 personality ref1 suicide of ref1 Henrich, Joseph ref1, ref2, ref3 heroes ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 Hewitt, John ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Hierarchy of Needs (Maslow) ref1 Himba people ref1 Hogan, Robert ref1 Hollesley Bay Young Offenders Institution, Suffolk ref1 Hood, Bruce ref1, ref2, ref3 The Self Illusion ref1 Horowitz, Mitch ref1, ref2 Human Potential Movement ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Humanistic Psychology ref1, ref2 The Hunger Games ref1, ref2, ref3 hunter-gatherers ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Hutchinson, Audrey ref1, ref2 Huxley, Aldous ref1 ideal self ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10 see also perfect self Immaculate Heart Community, California ref1 Inc.com ref1, ref2 individualism and the 2016 political shocks ref1 in America ref1 Ancient Greek notion of ref1, ref2, ref3 and blame ref1 Christian view ref1, ref2 competitive ref1, ref2 cooperation and teamwork ref1, ref2 and culture ref1 development of ref1, ref2 East Asian concept of ref1 East–West clash ref1 and freedom ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 getting along and getting ahead ref1, ref2 and the Great Compression ref1 hard form of ref1 as heightened ref1 hyper-individual model ref1 libertarian-neoliberal ref1 and passion ref1 and personality traits ref1, ref2 and Ayn Rand ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 rise of ref1, ref2 and self-esteem ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 and social pain ref1 and the state ref1 Stewart Brand’s concept of ref1 and wired technology ref1 internet ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 and Doug Engelbart ref1 and Web 2.0 ref1, ref2, ref3 introverts ref1, ref2, ref3 Jaeger, Werner ref1, ref2, ref3 James, William ref1 Japan, suicide in ref1 Jeremy (mechanical engineer) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Jobs, Steve ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Kalanick, Travis ref1 kalokagathia ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Kelly, Jodi ref1 Kidlington Detention Centre, Oxfordshire ref1 Kim, Uichol ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Konrath, Sara ref1 Lakewood Church, Houston ref1 leadership ref1, ref2 Leary, Mark ref1 Levey, Cate ref1, ref2 libertarianism ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Lincoln Elementary School, Long Beach ref1 Little, Brian ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Loewenstein, George ref1 ‘The Long Boom: A History of the Future’ (Schwartz et al.) ref1, ref2 The Looking-Glass Self (Bruce) ref1, ref2 Lord, Frances ref1 Luit (chimpanzee) ref1 Lyons, Dan ref1 McAdams, Dan ref1 McKee, Robert ref1 McManus, Chris ref1 Marin, Peter ref1 market rhetoric ref1 Markoff, John ref1 Martin, Father ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Marwick, Alice ref1, ref2, ref3 Maslow, Abraham ref1, ref2 Matteo Ricci College, Seattle ref1 Mayfield, Janet ref1 Mecca, Andrew ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Menlo Park ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Michie, Colin ref1 millennials ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Mind Cure ref1, ref2, ref3 Mitropoulos, Con ref1, ref2 monastic life ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Monitoring the Future Project ref1 Mont Pelerin Society ref1 Morales, Helen ref1 Mumford, Lewis, The Myth of the Machine ref1 Murphy, Michael ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Musk, Elon ref1, ref2, ref3 narcissism ref1 at Esalen ref1, ref2 and over-praise ref1, ref2 research into ref1 rise in ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 and self-esteem ref1, ref2, ref3 and Trump ref1 and Vasco ref1 in younger people ref1, ref2 The Narcissism Epidemic (Twenge and Campbell) ref1 narcissistic perfectionism ref1 Narcissistic Personality Disorder ref1 Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) ref1, ref2 National Academy of Sciences Proceedings (2015) ref1 National Council for Self Esteem ref1 nature vs nurture in development ref1, ref2 neoliberalism becomes mainstream ref1 and being self-sufficient and successful ref1 and ‘bespoke hero’ ref1 corporate view ref1 and creation of new form of human ref1 and the digital future ref1 disdain for regulation and government oversight ref1 emergence ref1 and financial inequalities ref1, ref2 and gay rights/gay marriage ref1 and global financial crisis (2008) ref1 as global phenomenon ref1 governments run like businesses ref1 Hayek’s vision of ref1, ref2 individualism, status and self-esteem ref1 negative effects ref1 and new style of government ref1 and power of multinationals ref1 rebellion against ref1 and structural inequalities ref1 and working conditions ref1 Netflix: code for employees ref1 Nettle, Daniel ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Personality ref1 neurotics and neuroticism ref1, ref2 neurotic perfectionism ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 as personality trait ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Nietzsche Society, UCL ref1 Nisbett, Richard ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 NPI see Narcissism Personality Index; Narcissistic Personality Inventory O’Connor, Rory ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Oedipus complex ref1, ref2 O’Reilly, Tim ref1 ostracism ref1 Ozawa-de Silva, Chikako ref1 Pakrul, Stephanie (aka StephTheGeek) ref1 ‘Paris Hilton effect’ ref1 Peale, Dr Norman Vincent, The Power of Positive Thinking ref1 perfect self as an illusion ref1 Heinz Austen as example of ref1 and being anything we want to be ref1, ref2 Christian ref1 CJ as example of ref1 cultural conception of ref1 and culture ref1 and digital self ref1 and gamified individualist economy ref1 and ideal self ref1 judging others and ourselves ref1 narcissistic ref1 and neoliberalism ref1 neurotic ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 perfectionist presentation ref1 and personal responsibility ref1 pressures of ref1 and the self ref1, ref2 selfishness or selflessness ref1, ref2 social ref1 and suicide ref1 see also ideal self Perls, Fritz ref1, ref2 as a ‘dirty old man’ ref1, ref2, ref3 feud with Schutz ref1 fractious relationship with Esalen ref1 Gestalt encounter groups ref1, ref2, ref3 near obsessional attacks and insults ref1 reaction to suicides ref1 Tom Wolfe’s comments on ref1 tough upbringing ref1 visits Freud ref1, ref2 personal computers see digital technology personality and acting out of character ref1 assumptions concerning ref1 basic traits ref1, ref2, ref3 and being or doing whatever we want ref1 and the brain ref1, ref2, ref3 different people in different contexts ref1 individualism and self-esteem ref1 and parental influence ref1 predictable shifts in ref1 prison metaphor ref1 and realising you’re not the person you wanted to be ref1 social responses ref1 tests and research ref1 as virtually unchanging ref1 physical self Ancient Greek ideals ref1, ref2 and body consciousness ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 cultural influences ref1 and diet ref1 linked to moral worth ref1 Pluscarden Abbey ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 polyamory ref1, ref2 Price, Marcia ref1 Price, Richard ref1, ref2, ref3 Pridmore, John ref1 childhood trauma ref1 effect of culture on ref1, ref2, ref3 sent to prison ref1 undergoes religious conversion ref1, ref2, ref3 violent behaviour ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 weeps when watching TV ref1, ref2 psychoanalysis ref1 Qi Wang ref1 Quimby, Phineas ref1, ref2 Rainbow Mansion, Silicon Valley ref1, ref2 Rand, Ayn ref1, ref2, ref3 beliefs and influence ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 changes her name/identity ref1 early life ref1 reaction to Nathaniel Branden’s infidelity ref1, ref2 sets up the Collective ref1 Atlas Shrugged ref1, ref2, ref3 The Fountainhead ref1 The Virtue of Selfishness ref1 reputation ref1, ref2 in Ancient Greece ref1 ‘getting along and getting ahead’ (Hogan) ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 and guilt ref1 ‘honour culture’ ref1 and tribal brains ref1 Rogers, Art ref1, ref2 Rogers, Carl ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Roh Moo-hyun ref1 Rosenbaum, Alyssa see Rand, Ayn Rosetto, Louis ref1 Ross, Ben ref1, ref2 Rudnytsky, Peter ref1 Rule of St Benedict, The ref1, ref2 San Francisco ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9 Sapolsky, Robert ref1, ref2 Sartre, Jean-Paul ref1, ref2 Satir, Virginia ref1 Schuman, Michael ref1 Schutz, Will ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Joy ref1 Schwartz, Peter ref1 Scott, Sophie ref1, ref2 Seager, Martin ref1 self cultivation of ref1 East Asian, and reality ref1, ref2 and engagement in personal projects ref1 and local best-practice ref1 and need for a mission ref1 as open and free ref1 perfectible ref1, ref2 as a story ref1 see also authentic self Self-Determination Think Tank ref1 self-esteem Baumeister’s research into ref1 belief in ref1 and changes in values ref1 in education ref1, ref2, ref3 high ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 and lack of tolerance and empathy ref1 legislation embodying ref1 legitimization of ref1 and life-affirming message ref1 lingering effects of movement ref1 low ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8, ref9, ref10 media questioning of ref1 myths and lies concerning ref1, ref2, ref3 and narcissism ref1, ref2, ref3 negative effects ref1 negative report on ref1 and overpraise ref1 and perfectionism ref1 popularity of ref1 raising ref1 research into ref1 and selfie generation ref1 Self-Esteem Task Force project ref1 social importance of ref1 Vasco’s ideology of ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7 Western emphasis on ref1 self-harm ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6, ref7, ref8 self-interest ref1, ref2, ref3 self-just-about-everything ref1, ref2 self-loathing ref1 self-love movement ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 selfie generation ref1 awareness of structural inequalities ref1 CJ as example of ref1, ref2 effect of social media on ref1 maintaining continual state of perfection ref1 and narcissism ref1 need for social feedback ref1 and parenting practices ref1 selfishness/selflessness ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Shannahoff-Khalsa, David ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Shannin (entrepreneur) ref1 Shaw, Paula ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Silani, Dr Giorgia ref1 Silicon Valley, California ref1, ref2 attitude to conspicuous wealth ref1 as capital of the neoliberal self ref1 cold-blooded rationalism in ref1 demonstration of personal computing in ref1 hyper-individualist model of corporate self in ref1, ref2 involvement in transformation of economy ref1 lack of compassion in ref1 links with Esalen ref1 living in fear in ref1 as military-industrial complex ref1 model of ideal self in ref1 Simon, Meredith ref1, ref2, ref3 Singularity ref1 Smelser, Neil ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 Smiles, Samuel ref1 Self Help ref1 Snyder, Mark ref1 Social Importance of Self-Esteem, The (Smelser et al.) ref1, ref2 social media ref1, ref2 social pain ref1, ref2 South Korea, suicide in ref1 Sparks, Randy ref1 Oh Yes, I’m A Wonderful Person and other Musical Adventures for those of us in search of Greater Self-Esteem ref1 Spiritual and Therapeutic Tyranny: The Willingness to Submit (conference, 1973) ref1, ref2, ref3 Squire, Michael ref1 Stanford Research Institute, Menlo Park ref1, ref2 Augmentation Research Center (ARC) ref1, ref2 Stanford University ref1, ref2, ref3 Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences Unit ref1 Stark, Rodney ref1 start-ups ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5, ref6 Startup Castle, Silicon Valley ref1 stimulus-action hunger ref1 storytelling Brexit/Trump narrative ref1 development of personal narratives ref1 East–West differences/similarities ref1 and feelings of control ref1 as form of tribal propaganda ref1 happiness and sense of purpose ref1 and the inner voice ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 self and culture ref1 and self-esteem ref1 and self-loathing ref1 selfishness or selflessness ref1, ref2, ref3 split-brain participants ref1 success and failure ref1 as universal ref1 suicide ref1 attempts at ref1, ref2, ref3 Confucian cultures ref1 connected to Esalen ref1, ref2 as failed hero stories ref1 gender and culture ref1, ref2 increase due to financial crisis (2008) ref1 in Japan ref1 and loss of hero status ref1 as a mystery ref1 patterns in ref1 and perfectionism ref1, ref2, ref3 rates of ref1 research into ref1 in South Korea ref1 Sunshine (attendee at Esalen) ref1 Sweet Peach ref1 synthetic biology ref1, ref2 Talhelm, Thomas ref1 Tanzania ref1, ref2 teamwork/cooperation ref1 Thiel, Peter ref1 Zero to One ref1 Tice, Dianne ref1 Tomkins, Detective Sergeant Katherine ref1 Tomlinson, Rachel ref1 Toward a State of Esteem (1990) ref1 tribal self Brexit/Trump narrative ref1 hierarchy, territory, status ref1 and ideal/perfect self ref1 monks as ref1 prejudice and bias ref1 and punishing of transgressors ref1 reputation and gossip ref1, ref2 selflessness or selflessness ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 and storytelling/left-brain interpretation ref1 Trudeau, Garry ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 Trump, Donald as anti-establishment ref1 appeal to voters ref1, ref2 declares he will put ‘America first’ ref1 false stories concerning ref1 narcissistic tendencies ref1 and social media ref1 as straightforward no-nonsense businessman ref1 Trzesniewski, Kali ref1 Turner, Fred ref1, ref2 Twenge, Jean ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 20Mission (Hacker Hostel, San Francisco) ref1 Twitter ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4 University of Glasgow Suicide Behaviour Research Laboratory ref1, ref2, ref3 Vanessa (employee at Rainbow Mansion) ref1, ref2 Vasconcellos, John ‘Vasco’ ref1, ref2 death of ref1 description and beliefs ref1 early life and education ref1 as ‘furious’ ref1, ref2, ref3 as homosexual ref1 ideology of self-esteem ref1, ref2, ref3, ref4, ref5 nutty notions of ref1, ref2 ridiculed by the media ref1 and Smelser’s conclusions on the task force ref1 suffers massive heart attack ref1, ref2 Task Force project ref1 Vittitow, Dick ref1 Waal, Frans de ref1 Wallace, Donald ‘Smokey’ ref1 Warren, Laura ref1 Whole Earth Catalog ref1 Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link ref1, ref2, ref3 Wigglesworth, Smith ref1, ref2 Williams, Kip ref1, ref2 Wilson, Timothy D. ref1 Wolfe, Tom ref1 Wolin, Sheldon ref1 Wood, Natalie ref1, ref2 Wrangham, Richard ref1 Xerox ref1, ref2, ref3 zero-hours contracts ref1, ref2, ref3 Also by Will Storr FICTION The Hunger and the Howling of Killian Lone NON-FICTION Will Storr versus The Supernatural The Heretics: Adventures with the Enemies of Science (published in the US as The Unpersuadables) First published 2017 by Picador This electronic edition published 2017 by Picador an imprint of Pan Macmillan 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Associated companies throughout the world www.panmacmillan.com ISBN 978-1-4472-8367-6 Copyright © Will Storr 2017 Cover Design: Neil Lang, Picador Art Department The right of Will Storr to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber
by Mike Isaac
Published 2 Sep 2019

The press gave significantly less ink to the latent misogyny bubbling up inside of tech companies, and the libertarian view that enabled tech figureheads to unwittingly enable these same biases. The divide between tech’s most talented, and the class who waited tables and served them coffee only grew starker by the day. Fast-rising rents pushed wage earners out of San Francisco, while landlords flipped those former apartments to new, wealthier tenants. The “gig economy” unleashed by companies like Uber, Instacart, TaskRabbit, and DoorDash spurred an entirely new class of workers—the blue-collar techno-laborer. With the rise of Facebook, Google, Instagram, and Snapchat, venture capitalists looked everywhere to fund the next Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, or Evan Spiegel—the newest brilliant mind who sought, in the words of Steve Jobs, to “make a dent in the universe.”

…

Despite all the driver growth, Uber soon found it was losing upwards of $9,000 per vehicle on each Xchange leasing deal, far above the initial estimated losses of $500 per car. Never mind that the company was giving people subprime loans that they couldn’t pay back while ruining their credit—all for a gig-economy job that returned less and less each year as the company garnished drivers’ wages. Still, despite the waste and ill effects caused by imbalanced incentives, Kalanick never ceased rewarding growth. Growth was what made the difference between an average employee and a high performer who delivered results.

…

Chapter 12: GROWTH 112 $1 million apiece: Felix Salmon, “Why Taxi Medallions Cost $1 Million,” Reuters, October 21, 2011, http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/10/21/why-taxi-medallions-cost-1-million/. 112 one fire-sale auction: Winnie Hu, “Taxi Medallions, Once a Safe Investment, Now Drag Owners Into Debt,” New York Times, September 10, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/10/nyregion/new-york-taxi-medallions-uber.html. 113 pulled the trigger: Ginia Bellafante, “A Driver’s Suicide Reveals the Dark Side of the Gig Economy,” New York Times, February 6, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/06/nyregion/livery-driver-taxi-uber.html. 113 “I am not a Slave and I refuse to be one.”: Doug Schifter, Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/people/Doug-Schifter/100009072541151. 113 more than a dozen: Nikita Stewart and Luis Ferré-Sadurní, “Another Taxi Driver in Debt Takes His Life.

The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success
by Ross Douthat
Published 25 Feb 2020

Nor do Americans change jobs as often as they once did. For all the boosterish talk about retraining and self-employment, all the fears of an increasingly precarious employment system, Americans are less likely to switch employers than they were a generation ago, and the supposed rise of an Internet-enabled “gig economy” is something of a myth. (Between 2005 and 2018, a Bureau of Labor Statistics study found, the increase in solo work driven by companies such as Uber was exceeded by declines in other kinds of freelancing.) Nor do they invest in the future in the most literal of ways: the US birthrate was long an outlier among Western countries—considerably higher than both Europe’s and Japan’s—but since the Great Recession, it has descended rapidly, converging with the wealthy world’s general below-replacement norm.

…

“dangerous” categorization of, 141–42 see also pink police state Civil Rights Act (1964), 77 Civil War, US, likelihood of second, 133–34 class war, 173 climate change, 35, 202, 219, 221 catastrophic, 192, 195–97, 200 as consequence of dynamism, 179–80 disproportionate effects in global south of, 174–75, 202 mass migration and, 196–97 sustainable decadence and, 173–75 Clinton, Bill, 71, 77 Closing of the American Mind, The (Bloom), 97 Coates, Ta-Nehisi, 97 Cold War, 181 colleges and universities: civil liberties and, 141–43 conflicting missions of, 142 cultural repetition in, 97–98 sex bureaucracy in, 142–43 Communism, fall of, 103, 112, 114, 162–63 Communist Manifesto, The (Marx and Engels), 219 Communist Party, Chinese, 139 communitarianism, religious, 216 communities, virtuous, 215–17 Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan (Kronman), 224 Congo, Civil War in, 199 Congress, US: abdication of policy making by, 75–76, 194 polarization of, 194 conservatives, conservatism, 206 apocalyptic thinking among, 98 birthrate and, 53 in congressional abdication of policy making, 75–76 cultural repetition and, 97–98 decadence of, 203 nostalgia of, 100 sclerosis as viewed by, 72–76 see also right Constitution, US, as not designed to cope with ideological polarization, 78 convergence, of Western and non-Western decadence, 165–69, 173 Coppola, Francis Ford, 95 Corbyn, Jeremy, 114 corporations, dearth of investment and innovation by, 26 Cortés, Hernán, 189, 190 cosmopolitanism, 206, 217, 218 counterculture, 2 Counter-Reformation, 222, 230 Cowen, Tyler, 12, 28, 33–34, 35, 45, 46 Crash of 1929, 194 credentialism, 35 crime rates, decrease in, 150 Crouchback, Guy (char.), 183 Crowley, Aleister, 231 Cuarón, Alfonso, 65–66 Culture of Narcissism, The (Lasch), 96 culture, repetition in, see repetition culture wars, 97–98 cummings, e. e., vii Days of Rage protests, 129 deBoer, Freddie, 145–46, 149 debt, national, 70 ratio of GDP to, 192, 193 debt, overhang of, 34 decadence, 10 aesthetic definition of, 6–7 author’s definition of, 8–10, 239 Barzun on, 8, 12, 69, 91, 96, 100, 113, 135, 172, 184 birthrate and, see birthrates, decline in convergence of, in West and non-Western world, 165–69, 173 economic, see stagnation, economic as ending in dystopia, 184–85 end of, see decadence, deaths of EU as case study in, 82–86 hope for renewal as possible under, 179 institutions and, 69 Islamic world and, 159 moral definition of, 7 and need for a Messiah, 237–39 opposition to, political and social risks of, 178–80, 182–83 policy limits imposed by, 87 political sclerosis as, see sclerosis, political possible inevitability of, 234–36, 240 repetition as, see repetition seductiveness of, 217 use of term, 6–7 decadence, deaths of, 115, 187–240 catastrophe as, see catastrophe divine intervention scenario for, 239–40 neo-medieval scenario for, 200–203 renaissance scenario for, see renaissance space travel scenario for, 236, 239–40 decadence, sustainable, 115, 117–85, 240 arguments in favor of, 177–85 authoritarian systems in, 137–54; see also pink police state benefits of, 180–82 climate change and, 173–75 comfortable numbness in, 119–36 as contradiction in terms, 179 dystopian elements of, 184–85 management of, 181–83 meritocracy in, 169–73 politics and, 129–36 pornography and, 119–22 prescription drugs and, 126–28 virtual entertainments and, 122–26, 128–29 Deep Throat (film), 119 Defense Department, US, UFO videos released by, 233–34 deficit, investment constrained by, 34 deficit spending, 192–93 DeLong, Brad, 192 Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25), 219 democratic norms, 68–69, 78, 163 Democrats, Democratic Party: 1960s–70s reform in, 77 Senate controlled by, 67 demographic change, weight of, 34, 56–58 religious renewal and, 222–23 stagnation and, 57 see also aging populations Deneen, Patrick, 215–17 Deng Xiaoping, 140 depression, among teenagers, 123 deregulation, 24 despair, declining birthrate and, 61–62 developed world: aging populations of, 34, 56–58, 60, 66 limits to growth in, 32–36 shrinking family size in, 59–60 developing world, emergence of decadence in, 165–69, 173 Didion, Joan, 110, 131 Discovery (space shuttle), 37 disease, spread of, 190–91 Disneyland, 37 dissent, marginalization of, 151–52 divine intervention, as scenario for end of decadence, 239–40 divorce rate, 51, 55 Dobson, James, 119, 120 “Dope Show, The” (music video), 140–41 dot-com bubble, 24 Douthat family, 59–60 Dreamland (Quinones), 127 drone warfare, 150 drugs, prescription: antidepressant, 126 increased use of, 126 opioid epidemic and, 126–27 social upheaval repressed by, 126–27 Dune (Herbert), 229 Dunham, Lena, 95 Durant, Will, 189, 202 Dworkin, Andrea, 120 Dylan, Bob, 110 dynamism, 25, 46, 58, 110 dangers of, 179–80 immigration and, 62, 64 nostalgia for, 206 Dyson, Freeman, 6 dystopias, 3, 47–50, 65–66, 94, 95, 122, 128, 144, 155–56, 179 economic catastrophe, 191–95, 200 economic stagnation, see stagnation, economic economy, declining birthrate and, 56–58 economy, US, deceleration of, 24 education: constraints on, 34–35 productivity and, 34–35 Ehrenreich, Barbara, 224 Ehrlich, Paul, 43 Eisenhower-era America, 2 elections, US: of 2008, 67 of 2016, 162, 182 Emanuel, Rahm, 67 Encyclopædia Britannica, 107 End of History and the Last Man, The (Fukuyama), 112–13 energy revolution, 210 Engels, Friedrich, 219 Enlightenment Now (Pinker), 165 entertainment, politics as, 153–54 entrepreneurship, declining rate of, 25–26 environment: constraints imposed by, 35 see also climate change Erdog˘an, Recep Tayyip, 163 Eurafrica, 198–200, 206–10, 218, 228–29 Christianity revitalized by, 207–8 euro, 82 destructive consequences of, 83–85 Europe, 197 aging population of, 198 economic stagnation in, 25 far right in, 85, 155, 162 left’s scenario for renaissance of, 219 mass migration to, 197–99, 200 nationalism in, 85, 172–73, 218 pink police state in, 143–44 populist resurgence in, 85 US economy vs., 166 US governmental system vs., 82, 83 European Union, 172–73, 217, 219 birthrate in, 50 centralization of authority in, 83, 84–85 financial crisis in, 84, 192 Muslim refugees in, 160 possible collapse of, 194 public distrust of government in, 83 sclerosis in, 82–86 unrealistic assumptions of, 82–83 Euro Tragedy: A Drama in Nine Acts (Mody), 84 evangelical Protestantism, 53, 101, 119, 222 Everlasting Man, The (Chesterton), 238–39 exhaustion, cultural and intellectual, decadence as, 9 expansionism, 3–4 environmental and social cost of, 5–6 exploration: abandonment of, 5–6 ideology of, 3–4, 231–32 Fake News, 153 families, shrinking of, 58–62 far left, 172, 194 far right, 134, 193, 194, 227 in Europe, 85, 155, 162 fascism, 112, 160, 194 feminism, 47, 51, 53, 54, 90, 97, 108, 120, 121, 156, 227 fiction, literary, declining sales of, 91 Fight Club (film), 113, 185 filibuster, 78 finance industry, see Wall Street financial crisis of 2008, 11, 69, 80, 84, 137, 192 Finland: decline of sexual relations in, 55 declining birthrate in, 52–53 Fire Next Time, The (Baldwin), 97 Flynn effect, 35 Flynt, Larry, 120 food production, climate change and, 195–96 Ford, John, 110 Foreign Policy, 133 Fox News, 77 France, 32 immigrants in, 64 pronatalist policies of, 52 protest movements in, 171, 172 Francis, Pope, 103 Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World (Wilder), 208 free-market policies, 25 free trade, 24, 28, 29 French Revolution, 206 From Dawn to Decadence (Barzun), 8 frontier: closing of, 5, 135 New, 181 space as, 2, 6, 231–32; see also Apollo moon program Turner on importance of, 3–4 Fukuyama, Francis, 12, 83, 112–13, 115, 135, 159 Fyre Festival, 17–18, 21 Game of Thrones (TV show), 95, 96 Garland, Merrick, 78 gay rights, revolution in, 99 gender, wage gap and, 99 genetic engineering, 11, 43, 211, 229, 230 Germany, 192 immigrants in, 64, 85 Germany, Nazi, 225 Germany, Weimar, 129, 131 Gersen, Jacob, 142 Gharbi, Musa al-, 97 Gibson, Mel, 189–90, 202 gig economy, decline of traditional freelancing in, 27 gilets-jaunes, 171 Gingrich, Newt, 77 globalism, 218 global South: climate change and, 174–75, 202 mass migration from, 208 global warming, see climate change God and Man at Yale (Buckley), 97 Goebbels, Joseph, 132 Gordon, Robert, 12, 33, 34, 35, 40–41, 46 government: informal norms of, 78 policy failures of, 71 public distrust of, 75 public expectation of action by, 74–75 uncontrolled sprawl of, 72, 76 Government’s End (Rauch), 72 Graeber, David, 12, 38, 40, 41 Gramsci, Antonio, vii Grantland, 93–94 Great Awakening, 103, 222, 228 Great Britain: Brexit in, see Brexit US technological mastery vs., 165 Great Depression, 30, 109 Great Filter, 234–36, 240 Great Recession, 11, 23, 27, 69, 114, 124, 193, 194 falling birthrate in, 51 Great Society, 77 Great Stagnation, The (Cowen), 33–34, 45 Greece, 84, 85 in 2008 financial crisis, 192 Green New Deal, 221 Green Revolution, 43, 196 growth, limits on, 32–36, 46 Guardian (Australia), 220 Guinea, 206 Habits of the Heart (Bellah et al.), 97 Handmaid’s Tale, The (Atwood), 47–50, 65 Handmaid’s Tale, The (TV show), 95 Hanson, Robin, 234 Harris, Mark, 93–94 Harris, Sam, 224 Hazony, Yoram, 218, 219 health care reform: interest groups and, 73 Obama and, 68, 69–70, 73–74, 76 Heavens and the Earth, The (McDougall), 2 Herbert, Frank, 229 Heterodox Academy, 97 Hinduism, 225 history: end of, 112–15, 135, 163, 177 return of, 129, 183, 195 viewed as morality play, 157 hive mind, 106–7 Holmes, Elizabeth, 18–19, 22 hookup culture, 121 horoscopes, 225 Houellebecq, Michel, 155–57, 159, 160–61, 172, 226, 227 House of Representatives, US, 68 “How the Wealth Was Won” (2019 paper), 26 Hubbard, L.

Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?
by Thomas Frank
Published 15 Mar 2016

“Techno-ecstatic” was the term I used to describe rhetoric like this during the 1990s, and now, two crashes and countless tech scandals later, here it was, its claims of freedom-through-smartphones undimmed and unmodified. This form of idealism had survived everything: mass surveillance, inequality, the gig economy. Nothing could dent it. Roughly speaking, there were two groups present at this distinctly first-world gathering: hard-working women of color and authoritative women of whiteness. Many of the people making presentations came from third-world countries—a midwife from Haiti, a student from Afghanistan, the chocolate maker from Trinidad, a former child bride from India, an environmental activist from Kenya—while the women anchoring this swirling praise-fest were former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the wealthy foundation executive Melinda Gates.

…

See also specific elections and individuals Bill Clinton and blue-collar voters and Congress and containing crash of 2008 and creative class and culture wars and deindustrialization and elections and Hillary Clinton and inequality and mass incarceration and meritocracy and NAFTA and Obama and professionals and rich and Social Security and Wall Street and Reuters revolving door Rhode Island Rise of the Creative Class, The (Florida) Roaring Nineties, The (Stiglitz) Rockefeller, Jay Rolling Stone Romney, Mitt Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Theodore Rothschild, Lynn Forester de Rubin, Robert Russert, Tim Ryan, Paul Salinas, Carlos San Francisco savings and loans crisis Schmidt, Eric Schmidt, Jeff Schulte, David Seattle Secret Service Securities and Exchange Commission Sentencing Commission Shafer, Byron sharing or gig economy Sheehy, Gail Silicon Valley. See also technocracy Sister Souljah 60 Minutes (TV show) Snoop Dogg Snowden, Edward social class Democrats and political parties and social question and two-class system Social Innovation Compact Social Security privatization of Social Security Commissions Solomon, Larry South by Southwest (SXSW) Sperling, Gene Sperling, John Stanford University Stanislaw, Joseph startups State Department State New Economy Index STEM skills Stenholm, Charles Stiglitz, Joseph stimulus of 2009 stimulus spending, Bill Clinton and stock market.

Super Founders: What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups
by Ali Tamaseb
Published 14 Sep 2021

At other times, it’s the reverse: the timing is right when prices are inflated. “Expensive cable subscriptions and record albums in part fueled the rise of streaming companies like Netflix, Spotify, and Hulu,” Flint wrote. “High, inflexible costs for contract labor and stagnant wage growth in parts of the economy gave birth to the gig economy and startups like TaskRabbit, Postmates, and DoorDash. And some macroeconomic forces—like the recession—created the sharing economy. It’s no coincidence that Airbnb and Lyft popped up in the years following the financial crisis.”2 For one more example, look to Plaid, a financial technology company that was last valued at over $5 billion.

…

They proved that consumers were willing to jump in an unlicensed taxi to go from point A to B (Uber’s black cars were licensed). At this point, Uber had raised $11 million from VCs, Zimride/Lyft had raised $6 million, and Sidecar had raised $10 million. When Lyft and Sidecar became popular, Uber realized the larger opportunity afforded by the gig economy, transitioned from the luxury service to the affordable service, and launched UberX. Sidecar faced multiple problems. Sidecar’s drivers could set their own price, and riders could choose the driver, which created too much complexity. Most importantly, they couldn’t raise as much capital as Uber and Lyft did.

Uncomfortably Off: Why the Top 10% of Earners Should Care About Inequality
by Marcos González Hernando and Gerry Mitchell
Published 23 May 2023

HC-One, the UK’s largest care home operator, received an additional £18.9 million in government payments for Covid costs, while its owners, in the year 2020 alone, continued to siphon £47.2 million in tax-free profits to the Cayman Islands.33 All the while, care homes are in a continual crisis, with the sector now losing one third of its staff every year.34 Under-investment, coupled with demographic pressures, mean that an increasing number of people need adult social care and support but fewer are getting it, with many having much less than they need.35 Structural crises Precarious work Precarity has become an increasingly salient issue, especially for young people just joining the labour market. The rise of the gig economy, degree inflation, the casualisation of previously secure occupations such as academia and law, high housing costs and automation threaten the livelihoods and security of many.36 Certainly, these pressures are more strongly felt lower down the income distribution; however, the top 10% is not immune, not 107 Uncomfortably Off because they are feeling the effects of these processes now, but because of the looming sense of fear for the future they elicit.

…

During the pandemic, ‘a typical family in the richest 10% of families experienced an increase in the value of their wealth by £44,000 per adult’.4 If the pandemic had any positive potential, it was to bring to bear the importance of low-paid key workers and instil in us a greater sense of social solidarity. However, and more tangibly, it threatened to exacerbate the increasing inequalities of the past decades. It also risked insulating the top 10% even more than they were before: their only social interaction with those on lower incomes being their status as clients (of the gig economy and delivery services, for instance). Some of the high earners we spoke with think inequality has diminished between the lower and middle classes, citing increased material consumption of cars and TVs as evidence. Nevertheless, they also think it’s growing between the very wealthiest and the rest, though only a few, such as Maria, were explicit about the scale of inequality in the UK and its destabilising effects: “I think what is really key in the last 10 years, maybe 20 years, is [that] the difference between CEO pay and executive-level pay and people on the shop floor is totally ridiculous and unsustainable.

The London Problem: What Britain Gets Wrong About Its Capital City
by Jack Brown
Published 14 Jul 2021

In fact, many of them are the rest of the country. They come to the capital to work in highly skilled jobs, to ‘level up’ themselves and their skills before moving out of London to start families. But Londoners are also elderly, poor, unemployed, and low-paid, working under zero-hours contracts and in the gig economy. London is a huge place, made up of many distinct places, each with individual people in it. One of the things that makes the capital so special is its mixing of communities, where poverty and wealth sit side by side. Its extremes of inequality can be jarring, and more needs to be done for its most deprived communities, but the opposite – a city segregated into rich and poor districts, or a city of the rich alone – would be appalling.

AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order
by Kai-Fu Lee
Published 14 Sep 2018

For employees who are not outright replaced, increasing automation of their workload will continue to cut into their value-add for the company, reducing their bargaining power on wages and potentially leading to layoffs in the long term. We’ll see a larger pool of unemployed workers competing for an even smaller pool of jobs, driving down wages and forcing many into part-time or “gig economy” work that lacks benefits. This—and I cannot stress this enough—does not mean the country will be facing a 40 to 50 percent unemployment rate. Social frictions, regulatory restrictions, and plain old inertia will greatly slow down the actual rate of job losses. Plus, there will also be new jobs created along the way, positions that can offset a portion of these AI-induced losses, something that I explore in coming chapters.

…

See wealth and class inequality See also business AI; human coexistence with AI Edison, Thomas, 13, 86 education employment and, 205 OMO-powered, 121–24 revamping, 228–29 social investment stipend and, 221–22 Einstein, Albert, 103 electrification, compared to AI, 13–15, 25, 50, 86, 149–50, 152, 154, 228 Element AI, 111 engineering bottlenecks, 158 enterprise software, 111–12 Estonia, 137 European Union, 124–25, 229 expertise to data, transition from, 14, 15, 56 expert systems, 7–8 F F5 Future Store, 163 Face++, 90, 117 Facebook Cambridge Analytica and, 107–8, 125 Chinese companies compared to, 28 Chinese researchers at, 90 cloning of, 22–23, 24, 31, 32–33 deep-learning experts and, 11 as dominant AI player, 83, 91 Face++ and, 90 global markets and, 137 iFlyTek compared to, 105 innovation mentality at, 33 monopoly of social networks, 170 resistance to product modifications, 34 split with Messenger, 70 Tencent compared to, 109 top researchers at, 93 U.S. digital world dominance and, 2 Facebook AI Research, 91 facial recognition AI chips and, 96 Apple’s iPhone X and, 117 Chinese investment in, 99 device security and, 117 education, AI-powered, and, 122 Face++ and, 90, 117 mobile payments and, 118 privacy and, 124 public transportation and, 84 fake news detection, 109 Fanfou (Twitter clone), 23, 46 Fermi, Enrico, 85, 103 financial crisis (2008), 46, 100, 165, 205 financial sector, 111, 112–13, 116 Fink, Larry, 215–16 Fo Guang Shan monastery, 187, 218–20 “Folding Beijing” (Hao), 144–45, 172, 230 food delivery, 69, 72, 79 Forbidden City, 29 Ford, 135 Ford, Martin, 165 4th Paradigm, 111 four waves of AI, 104–39 autonomous AI, 105–6, 128–36 business AI, 105–6, 110–17 economic divides and, 145 global markets and, 136–38 internet AI, 105–6, 107–10 perception AI, 105–6, 117–28 France, 20, 169 freemium revenue model, 36 Frey, Carl Benedikt, 158 Friendster, 22 G Gates, Bill, 33 general AI, 10, 13 General Data Protection Regulation, 124–25 general purpose technologies (GPTs), 148–55 gig economy, 164 global AI markets, 136–38 global AI story, 226–32 AI future without AI race, 227–28 global wisdom for AI age, 228–29 hearts and minds, 231–32 writing, 230 global economic inequality, 146, 168–70 globalization, 150 GMI (guaranteed minimum income), 206–7 Go (game), 1–2, 4, 5, 167 going light vs. going heavy, 71–73, 76–77, 209 Google AI chips and, 96 AlphaGo and, 1, 2, 11 Baidu compared to, 37, 38, 109 China at time of founding of, 33 Chinese entrepreneurs compared to, 24–25 Chinese market and, 39 data captured by, 77 as dominant AI player, 83, 91, 93–94 elite expertise at, 138–39 Europe’s fining of, 229 Face++ and, 90 global markets and, 137 grid approach and, 95 iFlyTek compared to, 105 innovation mentality at, 33 internet AI and, 107, 109 mobile payments and, 75 monopoly of search engines, 170 vs. other technology companies, 92–94 resistance to product modifications, 34 self-driving cars and, 131–32, 135 TensorFlow, 95, 228 top researchers at, 93 U.S. digital world dominance and, 2 See also DeepMind Google Brain, 45 Google China, 29–30, 31–32, 37–38, 41, 52, 57 Google Wallet, 75, 76 GPTs (general purpose technologies), 148–55 Grab, 137 great decoupling, 150, 170, 202 grid approach, 94–95 “Gross National Happiness,” 229 ground-up disruptions and job threats, 162–63, 164 Groupon, 23, 24, 45–46, 47–48, 49 Grubhub, 72 guaranteed minimum income (GMI), 206–7 guiding funds, 63, 64, 98–99 Guo Hong, 51–52, 56, 61–62, 63, 64, 68 H Hall of Ancestor Worship, 29–30 Hangzhou, China, 75, 94, 99 Hao Jingfang, 144–46, 168, 172, 230 Harari, Yuval N., 172 hardware innovation, 125–28 Hassabis, Demis, 141 Hawking, Stephen, 141 healthcare, 103, 113–15, 116, 195, 211–13.

Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition That Is Shaping the Next Economy
by Nathan Schneider
Published 10 Sep 2018

Some see a model for organizing freelancers in Hollywood’s guild-like set-worker unions, which establish industrywide standards as their members bounce from production to production. Jay Z’s Tidal streaming platform sold itself to consumers as a kind of guild for musicians; a group of Silicon Valley business writers has organized itself into the Silicon Guild to help amplify each member’s networks; some gig-economy workers have an Indy Workers Guild to distribute portable benefits. In the twentieth century, Charlie Chaplin and his friends formed United Artists to produce their own films, and photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capra formed Magnum, a cooperative syndication guild. Less glamorously, the professional organizations for doctors, lawyers, real estate agents, and hairdressers have clung to the guild model, complete with monopoly powers recognized by governments and peers.

…

But back at the conference, attendees grilled Bergmann, who wore a black leather cap over restless gray hair, on the features of his theory. Ideas he’d formed decades ago as an antidote to the auto assembly lines—like living your passion and choosing your own hours—sounded suspiciously like a pitch for the gig-economy hustle that younger people in the room knew too well. Bergmann’s liberation was their perpetual insecurity. He reveled in the possibilities of 3D printers for localizing production, but groans came from those who were sick of being told that their rescue was only one more contraption away. To Boggs’s big question, gender theorist Kathi Weeks won applause when she replied, “It’s quitting time.”

SEDATED: How Modern Capitalism Created Our Mental Health Crisis
by James. Davies
Published 15 Nov 2021

Firstly, from the 2000s, the average number of hours people worked began to rise considerably, as overtime became almost obligatory in the new twenty-four-hour services economy.2 Secondly, as the service sector demanded more flexible workers, who could move jobs with ease, the average length of time spent in any given job dropped by around a half3 – with the average employee now changing jobs once every six years.4 Since 2015, such required flexibility has also fuelled the rise of the ‘gig economy’, where nearly five million people in the UK now work on temporary or day-by-day contracts, enjoying no secure employment.5 Finally, as the service economy largely operated in urban centres, where property prices had grown most steeply, more of us began seeking cheaper homes in suburban settings, increasing the average time we spend commuting each week to nearly five hours (or closer to seven hours for Londoners).6 In short, these changes mean we now work much longer, commute much further and move jobs much more frequently than we did in the previous four decades.

…

Danish Technological Institute, final report, Copenhagen, Denmark. 2008. Macaulay, C. (2003), Job Mobility and Job Tenure in the UK, London: Office for National Statistics, http://www.statistics.gov.uk/articles/labour-market-trends/jobmobility-nov03.pdf (accessed June 2014). 5 Full Fact (2019), ‘Has the gig economy doubled in size in three years?’ https://fullfact.org/economy/has-gig-economydoubled/ (accessed July 2020). 6 See: National Centre for Social Research (2007), Travel to Work—Personal Travel Factsheet, ‘Commuting times increase substantially, to 54 minutes per day return (or 78 min if you work in London)’, http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/personal/factsheets/traveltowork.pdf (accessed Aug. 2015).

WTF?: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us
by Tim O'Reilly
Published 9 Oct 2017

Each one asks a single question, perhaps even using multiple choice: “What color is the car in this picture?” “What animal is this?” The same HIT is sent to multiple workers; when many workers give the same answer, it is presumably correct. Each HIT may pay as little as a penny, using a distributed “gig economy” labor force that makes driving for Uber look like a good middle-class job. The role of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk in machine learning is a reminder of just how deeply humans and machines are intertwined in the development of next-generation applications. Mary Gray, a researcher at Microsoft who has studied the use of Mechanical Turk, noted to me that you can trace the history of AI research by looking at how the HITs used to build training data sets have changed over time.

…

This gives the worker agency, and uses market mechanisms to get more workers available at periods of peak demand or at times or places where capacity is not normally available. When you are drawing a map of new technologies, it’s essential to use the right starting point. Much analysis of the on-demand or “gig” economy has focused too narrowly on Silicon Valley without including the broader labor economy. Once you start drawing a map of “workers managed by algorithm” and “no guarantee of employment” you come up with a very different sense of the world. Why do we regulate labor? In an interview with Lauren Smiley, Tom Perez, secretary of labor during the Obama administration, highlighted that the most important issue is whether or not workers make a living wage.

…

But even without radically changing the game, businesses can gain enormous tactical advantage by better understanding how to improve the algorithms they use to manage their workers, and by providing workers with better tools to manage their time, connect with customers, and do all of the other things they do to deliver improved service. Algorithmic, market-based solutions to wages in on-demand labor markets provide a potentially interesting alternative to minimum-wage mandates as a way to increase worker incomes. Rather than cracking down on the new online gig economy businesses to make them more like twentieth-century businesses, regulators should be asking traditional low-wage employers to provide greater marketplace liquidity via data sharing. The skills required to work at McDonald’s and Burger King are not that dissimilar; ditto Starbucks and Peet’s, Walmart and Target, or the AT&T and Verizon stores.

The Corruption of Capitalism: Why Rentiers Thrive and Work Does Not Pay
by Guy Standing
Published 13 Jul 2016

Uber discovered that some drivers were signing up with as many as ten smartphones, booking phantom trips during peak times on all of them simultaneously. 12 Cited in ‘Will crowdsourcing put an end to wage-based employment?’, L’Atelier, 29 September 2015. 13 Reported in Financial Times, 20 June 2015. 14 Freelancers Union and Elance-oDesk, Freelancing in America: A National Survey of the New Workforce, 2015. 15 L. Katz and A. Krueger, ‘The Rise of Alternative Work Arrangements and the ‘Gig’ Economy’, draft paper cited in R. Wile, ‘Harvard economist: All net U.S. job growth since 2005 has been in contracting gigs’, Fusion, 29 March 2016. 16 Financial Times, 22 September 2015. 17 In June 2015, the California Labor Commissioner ruled that Uber was an employer because it controlled pricing, tipping, driver ratings and type of car.

…

Burchell, ‘Zero hours employment: A new temporality of capitalism?’, CritCom, 16 September 2015. 30 Standing, 2009, op. cit. 31 R. Susskind and D. Susskind, The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 32 E. Cadman, ‘Employers tap “gig” economy in search of freelancers’, Financial Times, 15 September 2015. 33 H. Ekbia and B. Nardi, ‘Inverse instrumentality: How technologies objectify patients and players’, in P. Leonardi et al., Materiality and Organising (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 157. 34 Cited in H. Ekbia and B. Nardi, ‘Heteromation and its (dis)contents: The invisible division of labour between humans and machines’, First Monday, 19 (6), June 2014. 35 S.

The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition
by Jonathan Tepper
Published 20 Nov 2018

You get paid in cash. You are in temporary employment. You do not have benefits. You have a weak voice or little bargaining power at work. Full-time, reliable work with benefits is becoming a relic of history. This is attributable to many interwoven factors like globalization, offshoring, the rise of the “gig economy,” and others. But understanding the factors does not change the fact that the number of temporary workers in the United States is at an all-time high.19 America has been creating more jobs, but most of these have been temporary. Temporary jobs are a normal part of the economy, but record numbers tell us something else is going on.20 Research conducted by economists Lawrence Katz at Harvard and Alan Krueger at Princeton shows that almost all of the 10 million jobs that were created since 2005 are temporary.21 The overall number of temp workers (including independent contractors, freelancers, and contract company workers) increased from 10.7% to 15.8%.

…

(Supreme Court merger prohibition), 154 Brown Shoe case, 153–154 Buffalo Courier-Express (business loss), 2 Buffalo Evening News (Buffett purchase), 2 Buffett, Warren, 196 billionaires, agreement, 1 investor waste, 201–202 Morgan, comparison, 198 Bunge, market dominance, 133 Burke, Edmund, 239 Burns, Arthur Robert, 145 Busch III, August, 29 Bush, George W., 161 reverse revolvers, 191–192 Businesses dynamism, decline, 46 investment level, reduction, 205 Buyback corporation, 208 Buybacks impact, 206 increase, 207f share buybacks, limitation, 247 C Cable mergers, impact, 43 monopolies/local monopolies, 116–117 Capital access, 66 ownership, worker shares, 246 perspective (Marx), 9 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 213–214 Capitalism problem, US/UK perception, 213 reforming, 239 Capital Returns (Marathon Asset Management), 8 Capone, Al, 22 Captured Economy, The, (Lindsey/Teles), 188 Cardinal Health, price-fixing allegations, 131 Cargill, market dominance, 133 Carlton, Dennis, 163 Carnegie, Andrew, 139, 143 Carpenter II, Dick M., 83 Cartels Chicago School perspective, 23 promotion, central bank rates (impact), 26f study, 25 Cartels: A Challenge to a Free World (Berge), 150 Castellammarese War, 21 CBS Corporation, market dominance, 133 CelebrityNetWorth, Google data theft, 89–90 Central Selling Organization, 24 CEO-to-worker compensation ratio, increase, 221f Chamberlin, Edward, 7 Chambers, Dustin, 179 Chemotherapy regulation, 167 usage, 178 Chicago School, 155–156 China, Big Data/Big Brother (relationship), 112 Chipotle, McDonald's release, 56 Christensen, Clayton, 55 Citigroup, market dominance, 127 Civil government, instituting, 191 Clayton Act of 1914, 7 Clayton Antitrust Act (1914), 144, 160, 209 Clemenceau, George, 233 Clifton, Daniel, 187 Clinton, Bill (reverse revolvers), 191 Clinton, Hillary, 189, 212 Coal Question, The, ( Jevons), 18 Cohn, Gary, 189 Collusion, impact, 32 Community Standards (Facebook), 92 Commuting zones, labor concentration (increase), 73f Companies growth phases, 52f lobbying, returns (comparison), 187f long-term returns, 204 platform companies, 97–98 self-disruption, failure, 55 synergies, 41 technology purchases, 106 Competition absence, 241 encouragement, patents (expiration), 246 Google, impact, 95 patents, impact, 175 promotion, patents/copyrights (impact), 246 reduction, mergers and acquisitions (impact), 12 restoration, Representative/Senator encouragement, 248 Competitors conflict, 31 reduction, mergers (prevention), 242 Composition, fallacy, 18 Computer operating systems, monopolies/local monopolies, 117 Concentrated industries, ranking, 33t Concrete, mergers (impact), 43 Confessions of the Pricing Man (Simon), 29 Conglomerates, purchase, 154 Connor, John, 23 Conrad, Jeremy, 54 Consumers, desires, 115 Consumer welfare, 158–159 Contract workers, hiring (fervor), 75–76 Copyrights, 246 Copyright Term Extension Act, 174 Corbyn, Jeremy (selection), 212 Corporate profits employee compensation, contrast, 223f increase, 65 Corporate trusts, control, 234 Costco workers, needs (understanding), 77 Counterfeits, impact, 102–103 Cox, Archibald, 157 CR4, 33 Creating and Restoring Equal Access to Equivalent Samples Act (CREATES), 176 Creative destruction, process, 45 Credit reporting bureaus, oligopolies, 125 Credit Suisse, Global Wealth Report issuance, 218 study, 10 Crisis of Capitalism, A, (Posner), 156 Curry, Steph, 3 Curse of Bigness, The, (Brandeis), 237 Customer lock-in (reduction), rules (creation), 246 CVS Caremark, market dominance, 130 D Dairy Farmers of America, price fixing, 119 Dalio, Ray, 229 David, Larry, 89 DaVita, Fresenius (merger), 124 Dayen, David, 96 Dean Foods, price fixing, 118–119 De Beers Consolidated Mines (cartel), 24 Decartelization Branch, 151–152 Decartelization/deconcentration policy, 150–151 Decker, Ryan, 47 Decline of Competition, The, (Burns), 145 de Loecker, Jan, 41, 226 Dent, Robert, 52 Diapers.com, Amazon predation, 106 Dickens, Charles, 18 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 103 Digital platforms, scale, 91 Dimon, Jamie, 182 Dirlam, Jeff, 167 Disraeli, Benjamin, 240 Diversity, impact, 58–61 DNA damage, 178 Dodd-Frank Act 2010 Full Employment Act for Lawyers, Accountants, and Consultants, 182 impact, 181 passage, 184 Döttling, Robin, 56 Doubleclick, Google acquisition, 91, 118 “Double Irish” arrangement, 92–93 Dow Chemicals, DuPont (merger), 121 Dreyfus, market dominance, 133 Drugs prices, high level, 174 reformulation, 175 wholesalers, oligopolies, 131–132 Duisberg, Carl, 146–147 Duke, James Buchanan, 142 Duke, Mike, 16 Dunbar's Number, creation, 51 Duopolies, 15, 115–116, 122–125 Durant, Will, 231 Düsseldorf Agreement, 148 “Dutch Sandwich” arrangement, 92–93 E Echo Show (Amazon), 107 Economic dynamism, reduction, 37 Economic freedom, 143–144, 233, 238–239 Economic inequality, increase, 227–228 Economic model, adjustment, 41–42 Economies of scale, increase, 51 Economy advanced economies, markups (increase), 228f firms, role (decrease), 48f problems, Trump perspective, 213 Edison, Thomas, 67, 195 Eeckhout, Jan, 41, 226 Eisenhower, Dwight, 146, 148, 151 Ellenberg, Jordan, 214 Employees compensation, corporate profits (contrast), 223f perks, 75 Employers and Workmen Act, 240 Employment clauses, usage, 69 Ennis, Sean, 226 Entrepreneurship, decline, 46 Equifax, security breach, 81–82 Erhard, Ludwig, 153 Europe rebuilding, 153–154 ordoliberlism, 153 Evans, Benedict, 108 Evans, David, 106 Exchange-traded funds (ETFs), inexpensiveness, 203 Express Scripts, market dominance, 130 F Facebook church, Zuckerberg comparison, 113 Community Standards project, 92 creation, 117 Instant Articles, 102 lobbying efforts/expenses, 95–96 market dominance, 123–124 News Feed, impact, 99–100 news/information source, problems, 112–113 profitability/power, 99 Factory Act, 240 Fair Isaac's Corporations (FICO), credit-scoring formula, 125 Fast-food chains, employment clauses, 69 Federal Arbitration Act, 80, 82 Federal Express, duopoly, 3 Federal government Goldman Sachs, revolving door, 190f Monsanto, revolving door, 193f Federal Register, pages (number, increase), 181f Federal Reserve Act (1913), 209 Federal Trade Commission, 159, 163 creation, 144 Federation of British Industry, Düsseldorf Agreement, 148 Fidelity, market dominance, 135 Financial crisis (2007-2008), 25 Firms entry, reduction, 53f predatory pricing, punishment (laws), 244 role, decrease, 48f First American, market dominance, 135 Five Families, 22 Five Forces (Porter), 14–15 Fleming, Lee, 70–71 Forced arbitration, 79–81 Ford, Henry, 16 Foreign exchange traders, currency price fixing, 24 Foundem, 97 search problems, 87–88 Frankel, Jonathan, 107 Freight railroad, concentration, 119 Freireich, Emil, 176–177, 181 Friedman, Milton, 155, 179, 204, 233, 238 Funeral homes, monopolies/local monopolies, 121–122 Furman, Jason, 39 G Game theory, 26 Gates, Bill, 78 Geithner, Timothy, 190, 211 General Theory, The, (Keynes), 17 Germany German Decartelizing law (1947), 152 nationalist party, impact, 213 reconstruction, 151, 238 surrender, 151 Gerstner, Jr., Louis V., 50 Gibbons, Thomas, 137–138 Gibbons v. Ogden, 138 Gig economy, rise, 74 Gini coefficients, 220f Glasses, duopolies, 124–125 Global meat processing firms, ownership timeline (changes), 134f Global wealth pyramid, 218f Global Wealth Report (Credit Suisse), 218 “Goals of Antitrust Policy, The” (Bork), 157–158 Golden parachutes, usage, 192 Goldman Sachs, 191–192 federal government, revolving door, 189–190, 190f Vampire Squid of Wall Street, 5 Gonzaga, Pedro, 226 Google AdWords, 88 Apple, duopoly, 123 apps, sale (determination), 91–92 competition impact, 95 data theft, 89–90 duopoly, 4 information superhighway dominance, 108 lobbying efforts/expenses, 95–96 market dominance, 123–124 market position abuse, 90 monopoly, 39–40 motto, usage (cessation), 93 news/information source, problems, 112–113 product search, favoritism, 89 profitability/power, 99 protestors, 231 search dominance, 88, 107 technology, secrecy, 108 threat, 108 workers, color-coded caste system, 39–40 Gottesman, Sandy, 2 Grantham, Jeremy, 223 Graper, Mary, 176 Great Depression, 16–17, 78, 144–145, 182 Great Suppression, 84f Greenwald, Bruce, 179 Gros Michel bananas, loss, 59–60 Gross domestic product (GDP), corporate profit percentage, 222–223 Group purchasing organizations (GPOs), oligopolies, 130–131 Grullon, Gustavo, 8, 13, 47, 161, 163, 224 Gupta, Rajat, 14 Gutiérrez, Germán, 56 H Haldane, J.B.S., 49 Hale, Robert Lee, 92 Haltiwanger, John, 50 Hanauer, Nick, 231–232 Hansen, Alvin, 56 Hayek, Friedrich, 153, 171, 234, 238 Health expenditure, life expenditure (contrast), 132f Health insurance, oligopolies, 30–31 HealthTrust, market dominance, 130 Hedge fund managers, training, 15 Hell's Cartel (Jeffreys), 147 Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI), 33, 243 Hierarchy of needs, 76f High-income inequality, 215 High speed Internet, monopolies/local monopolies, 116–117 Hitler, Adolf (accession), 148–149 H.J.

Nervous States: Democracy and the Decline of Reason
by William Davies
Published 26 Feb 2019

Among the thousands of tragic stories that make up America’s opiate epidemic are many young men who first took painkillers to allow them to cope with the physical demands of playing football, a sport they played because they saw it as their only path into college. On a smaller scale, Ireland has suffered a similar problem with the painkiller codeine. As the post-industrial economy develops, it is throwing more people back upon their own physical bodies as their last resort, working as cycle couriers or turning to sex work, in order to get by. The “gig economy,” in which digital platforms create ultraflexible low-wage labor markets, farming out small chunks of work by the hour, treats work as something that lacks any broader social meaning, beyond its market price. Amazon warehouses are managed with scant recognition of the difference between worker and machine, with toilet breaks being timed, and new wearable technology on the way that will steer every small bodily movement in the most efficient path possible.

…

A/B testing, 199 Acorn, 152 ad hominem attacks, 27, 124, 195 addiction, 83, 105, 116–17, 172–3, 186–7, 225 advertising, 14, 139–41, 143, 148, 178, 190, 192, 199, 219, 220 aerial bombing, 19, 125, 135, 138, 143, 180 Affectiva, 188 affective computing, 12, 141, 188 Agent Orange, 205 Alabama, United States, 154 alcoholism, 100, 115, 117 algorithms, 150, 169, 185, 188–9 Alsace, 90 alt-right, 15, 22, 50, 131, 174, 196, 209 alternative facts, 3 Amazon, 150, 173, 175, 185, 186, 187, 192, 199, 201 American Association for the Advancement of Science, 24 American Civil War (1861–5), 105, 142 American Pain Relief Society, 107 anaesthetics, 104, 142 Anderson, Benedict, 87 Anthropocene, 206, 213, 215, 216 antibiotics, 205 antitrust laws, 220 Appalachia, 90, 100 Apple, 156, 185, 187 Arab Spring (2011), 123 Arendt, Hannah, xiv, 19, 23, 26, 53, 219 Aristotle, 35, 95–6 arrogance, 39, 47, 50 artificial intelligence (AI), 12–13, 140–41, 183, 216–17 artificial video footage, 15 Ashby, Ross, 181 asymmetrical war, 146 atheism, 34, 35, 209 attention economy, 21 austerity, 100–101, 225 Australia, 103 Australian, 192 Austria, 14, 60, 128, 153–75 Austria-Hungary (1867–1918), 153–4, 159 authoritarian values, 92–4, 101–2, 108, 114, 118–19, 211–12 autocracy, 16, 20, 202 Babis, Andrej, 26 Bacon, Francis, 34, 35, 95, 97 Bank of England, 32, 33, 55, 64 Banks, Aaron, 26 Bannon, Steve, 21, 22, 60–61 Bayh–Dole Act (1980), 152 Beck Depression Inventory, 107 Berlusconi, Silvio, 202 Bernays, Edward, 14–15, 16, 143 “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (Freud), 110 Bezos, Jeff, 150, 173 Big Data, 185–93, 198–201 Big Government, 65 Big Science, 180 Bilbao, Spain, 84 bills of mortality, 68–71, 75, 79–80, 81, 127 Birmingham, West Midlands, 85 Black Lives Matter, 10, 225 Blackpool, Lancashire, 100 blind peer reviewing, 48, 139, 195 Blitz (1940–41), 119, 143, 180 blue sky research, 133 body politic, 92–119 Bologna, Italy, 96 bookkeeping, 47, 49, 54 Booth, Charles, 74 Boston, Massachusetts, 48 Boyle, Robert, 48–50, 51–2 BP oil spill (2010), 89 brainwashing, 178 Breitbart, 22, 174 Brexit (2016–), xiv, 23 and education, 85 and elites, 33, 50, 61 and inequality, 61, 77 and NHS, 93 and opinion polling, 80–81 as self-harm, 44, 146 and statistics, 61 Unite for Europe march, 23 Vote Leave, 50, 93 British Futures, 65 Brooks, Rosa, 216 bullying, 113 Bureau of Labor, 74 Bush, George Herbert Walker, 77 Bush, George Walker, 77, 136 cadaverous research, 96, 98 call-out culture, 195 Calvinism, 35 Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, 85 University, 84, 151 Cambridge Analytica, 175, 191, 196, 199 Cameron, David, 33, 73, 100 cancer, 105 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 74 capital punishment, 92, 118 car accidents, 112–13 cargo-cult science, 50 Carney, Mark, 33 cartography, 59 Case, Anne, 99–100, 102, 115 Catholicism, 34 Cato Institute, 158 Cavendish, William, 3rd Earl of Devonshire, 34 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 3, 136, 151, 199 Center for Policy Studies, 164 chappe system, 129, 182 Charles II, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 34, 68, 73 Charlottesville attack (2017), 20 Chelsea, London, 100 Chevillet, Mark, 176 Chicago School, 160 China, 13, 15, 103, 145, 207 chloroform, 104 cholera, 130 Chongqing, China, 13 chronic pain, 102, 105, 106, 109 see also pain Churchill, Winston, 138 citizen science, 215, 216 civil rights movements, 21, 194 civilians, 43, 143, 204 von Clausewitz, Carl, 128–35, 141–7, 152 and defeat, 144–6 and emotion, 141–6, 197 and great leaders, 146–7, 156, 180–81 and intelligence, 134–5, 180–81 and Napoleon, 128–30, 133, 146–7 and soldiers, number of, 133–4 war, definition of, 130, 141, 193 climate change, 26, 50, 165, 205–7, 213–16 Climate Mobilization, 213–14 climate-gate (2009), 195 Clinton, Hillary, 27, 63, 77, 99, 197, 214 Clinton, William “Bill,” 77 coal mining, 90 cognitive behavioral therapy, 107 Cold War, 132, 133, 135–6, 137, 180, 182–4, 185, 223 and disruption, 204–5 intelligence agencies, 183 McCarthyism (1947–56), 137 nuclear weapons, 135, 180 scenting, 135–6 Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE), 180, 182, 200 space race, 137 and telepathy, 177–8 colonialism, 59–61, 224 commercial intelligence, 152 conscription, 127 Conservative Party, 80, 154, 160, 163, 166 Constitution of Liberty, The (Hayek), 160 consumer culture, 90, 104, 139 contraceptive pill, 94 Conway, Kellyanne, 3, 5 coordination, 148 Corbyn, Jeremy, 5, 6, 65, 80, 81, 197, 221 corporal punishment, 92 creative class, 84, 151 Cromwell, Oliver, 57, 59, 73 crop failures, 56 Crutzen, Paul, 206 culture war, xvii Cummings, Dominic, 50 currency, 166, 168 cutting, 115 cyber warfare, xii, 42, 43, 123, 126, 200, 212 Czech Republic, 103 Daily Mail, ix Damasio, Antonio, 208 Darwin, Charles, 8, 140, 142, 157, 171, 174, 179 Dash, 187 data, 49, 55, 57–8, 135, 151, 185–93, 198–201 Dawkins, Richard, 207, 209 death, 37, 44–5, 66–7, 91–101 and authoritarian values, 92–4, 101–2, 211, 224 bills of mortality, 68–71, 75, 79–80, 81, 89, 127 and Descartes, 37, 91 and Hobbes, 44–5, 67, 91, 98–9, 110, 151, 184 immortality, 149, 183–4, 224, 226 life expectancy, 62, 68–71, 72, 92, 100–101, 115, 224 suicide, 100, 101, 115 and Thiel, 149, 151 death penalty, 92, 118 Deaton, Angus, 99–100, 102, 115 DeepMind, 218 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), 176, 178 Delingpole, James, 22 demagogues, 11, 145, 146, 207 Democratic Party, 77, 79, 85 Denmark, 34, 151 depression, 103, 107 derivatives, 168, 172 Descartes, René, xiii, 36–9, 57, 147 and body, 36–8, 91, 96–7, 98, 104 and doubt, 36–8, 39, 46, 52 and dualism, 36–8, 39, 86, 94, 131, 139–40, 179, 186, 223 and nature, 37, 38, 86, 203 and pain, 104, 105 Descartes’ Error (Damasio), 208 Devonshire, Earl of, see Cavendish, William digital divide, 184 direct democracy, 202 disempowerment, 20, 22, 106, 113–19 disruption, 18, 20, 146, 147, 151, 171, 175 dog whistle politics, 200 Donors Trust, 165 Dorling, Danny, 100 Downs Survey (1655), 57, 59, 73 doxing, 195 drone warfare, 43, 194 drug abuse, 43, 100, 105, 115–16, 131, 172–3 Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt, 74 Dugan, Regina, 176–7 Dunkirk evacuation (1940), 119 e-democracy, 184 Echo, 187 ecocide, 205 Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth (Mises), 154, 166 economics, 59, 153–75 Economist, 85, 99 education, 85, 90–91 electroencephalography (EEG), 140 Elizabethan era (1558–1603), 51 embodied knowledge, 162 emotion and advertising, 14 artificial intelligence, 12–13, 140–41 and crowd-based politics, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, 21, 23–7 Darwin’s analysis, 8, 140 Descartes on, 94, 131 and experts, 53, 60, 64, 66, 90 fear, 11–12, 16–22, 34, 40–45, 52, 60, 142 Hobbes on, 39, 41 James’ analysis, 140 and markets, 168, 175 moral, 21 and nationalism, 71, 210 pain, 102–19 sentiment analysis, xiii, 12–13, 140, 188 and war, 124–6, 142 empathy, 5, 12, 65, 102, 104, 109, 112, 118, 177, 179, 197 engagement, 7, 219 England Bank of England founded (1694), 55 bills of mortality, 68–71, 75, 79–80, 81, 89, 127 civil servants, 54 Civil War (1642–51), 33–4, 45, 53 Elizabethan era (1558–1603), 51 Great Fire of London (1666), 67 hospitals, 57 Irish War (1649–53), 59 national debt, 55 Parliament, 54, 55 plagues, 67–71, 75, 79–80, 81, 89, 127 Royal Society, 48–52, 56, 68, 86, 208, 218 tax collection, 54 Treasury, 54 see also United Kingdom English Defense League, ix entrepreneurship, 149, 156, 162 environment, 21, 26, 50, 61, 86, 165, 204–7, 213–16 climate change, 26, 50, 165, 205–7, 213–16 flying insects, decline of, 205, 215 Environmental Protection Agency, 23 ether, 104 European Commission, 60 European Space Agency, 175 European Union (EU), xiv, 22, 60 Brexit (2016–), see under Brexit and elites, 60, 145, 202 euro, 60, 78 Greek bailout (2015), 31 immigration, 60 and nationalism, 60, 145, 146 quantitative easing, 31 refugee crisis (2015–), 60, 225 Unite for Europe march (2017), 23 Exeter, Devon, 85 experts and crowd-based politics, 5, 6, 23, 25, 27 Hayek on, 162–4, 170 and representative democracy, 7 and statistics, 62–91 and technocracy, 53–61, 78, 87, 89, 90 trust in, 25–33, 63–4, 66, 74–5, 77–9, 170, 202 violence of, 59–61 Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animal, The (Darwin), 8, 140 Exxon, 165 Facebook, xvi, 15, 201 advertising, 190, 192, 199, 219, 220 data mining, 49, 185, 189, 190, 191, 192, 198, 219 and dog whistle politics, 200 and emotional artificial intelligence, 140 as engagement machine, 219 and fake news, 199 and haptics, 176, 182 and oligarchy, 174 and psychological profiling, 124 and Russia, 199 and sentiment analysis, 188 and telepathy, 176–8, 181, 185, 186 and Thiel, 149, 150 and unity, 197–8 weaponization of, 18 facial recognition, 13, 188–9 failed states, 42 fake news, 8, 15, 199 Farage, Nigel, 65 fascism, 154, 203, 209 fear, 11–12, 16–22, 34, 40–45, 52, 60, 142 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 137 Federal Reserve, 33 feeling, definition of, xii feminism, 66, 194 Fifth Amendment, 44 fight or flight, 111, 114 Financial Times, 15 first past the post, 13 First World War, see World War I Fitbit, 187 fixed currency exchange rates, 166 Florida, Richard, 84 flu, 67, 191 flying insects, 205, 215 France censuses, 66, 73 conscription introduced (1793), 127 Front National, 27, 61, 79, 87, 92 Hobbes in (1640–51), 33–4, 41–2 Le Bon’s crowd psychology, 8–12, 13, 15, 16, 20, 24, 25, 38 life expectancy, 101 Napoleonic Wars (1803–15), see Napoleonic Wars Paris climate accord (2015), 205, 207 Paris Commune (1871), 8 Prussian War (1870–71), 8, 142 Revolution (1789–99), xv, 71, 126–9, 141, 142, 144, 204 statistics agency established (1800), 72 unemployment, 83 Franklin, Benjamin, 66 free markets, 26, 79, 84, 88, 154–75 free speech, 22, 113, 194, 208, 209, 224 free will, 16 Freud, Sigmund, 9, 14, 44, 107, 109–10, 111, 112, 114, 139 Friedman, Milton, 160, 163, 166 Front National, 27, 61, 79, 87, 92, 101–2 full spectrum warfare, 43 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), 140 futurists, 168 Galen, 95–6 Galilei, Galileo, 35 gambling, 116–17 game theory, 132 gaming, 193–4 Gandhi, Mohandas, 224 gate control theory, 106 Gates, Sylvester James “Jim,” 24 Gavotti, Giulio, 143 geek humor, 193 Gehry, Frank, 84 Geller, Uri, 178 geometry, 35, 49, 57, 59, 203 Gerasimov, Valery, 123, 125, 126, 130 Germany, 34, 72, 137, 205, 215 gig economy, 173 global financial crisis (2007–9), 5, 29–32, 53, 218 austerity, 100–101 bailouts, 29–32, 40, 42 and gross domestic product (GDP), 76 as “heart attack,” 57 and Obama administration, 158 and quantitative easing, 31–2, 222 and securitization of loans, 218–19 and statistics, 53, 65 and suicide, 101 and unemployment, 82 globalization, 21, 78, 84, 145, 146 Gonzales, Alberto, 136 Google, xvi, 174, 182, 185, 186, 191, 192 DeepMind, 218 Maps, 182 Transparency Project, 198 Government Accountability Office, 29 Graunt, John, 67–9, 73, 75, 79–80, 81, 85, 89, 127, 167 Great Fire of London (1666), 67 great leaders, 146–8 Great Recession (2007–13), 76, 82, 101 Greece, 5, 31, 101 Greenpeace, 10 Grenfell Tower fire (2017), 10 Grillo, Beppe, 26 gross domestic product (GDP), 62, 65, 71, 75–9, 82, 87, 138 guerrillas, 128, 146, 194, 196 Haldane, Andrew, 32 haptics, 176, 182 Harvey, William, 34, 35, 38, 57, 96, 97 hate speech, 42 von Hayek, Friedrich, 159–73, 219 health, 92–119, 224 hedge funds, 173, 174 hedonism, 70, 224 helicopter money, 222 Heritage Foundation, 164, 214 heroin, 105, 117 heroism and disruption, 18, 146 and genius, 218 and Hobbes, 44, 151 and Napoleonic Wars, 87, 127, 142 and nationalism, 87, 119, 210 and pain, 212 and protection, 202–3 and technocracy, 101 and technology, 127 Heyer, Heather, 20 Hiroshima atomic bombing (1945), 206 Hobbes, Thomas, xiii, xvi, 33–6, 38–45, 67, 147 on arrogance, 39, 47, 50, 125 and body, 96, 98–9 and Boyle, 49, 50, 51 on civil society, 42, 119 and death, 44–5, 67, 69–70, 91, 98–9, 110, 151, 184 on equality, 89 on fear, 40–45, 52, 67, 125 France, exile in (1640–51), 33–4, 41 on geometry, 35, 38, 49, 56, 57 and heroism, 44, 151 on language, 38–9 natural philosophy, 35–6 and nature, 38, 50 and Petty, 56, 57, 58 on promises, 39–42, 45, 148, 217–18 and Royal Society, 49, 50, 51 on senses, 38, 49, 147 and sovereign/state, 40–45, 46, 52, 53, 54, 60, 67, 73, 126, 166, 217, 220 on “state of nature,” 40, 133, 206, 217 war and peace, separation of, 40–45, 54, 60, 73, 125–6, 131, 201, 212 Hobsbawm, Eric, 87, 147 Hochschild, Arlie Russell, 221 holistic remedies, 95, 97 Holland, see under Netherlands homeopathy, 95 Homer, xiv Hungary, 20, 60, 87, 146 hysteria, 139 IBM, 179 identity politics, 208, 209 Iglesias Turrión, Pablo, 5 imagined communities, 87 immigration, 60, 63, 65, 79, 87, 145 immortality, 149, 183–4, 224 in-jokes, 193 individual autonomy, 16 Industrial Revolution, 133, 206 inequality, 59, 61, 62, 76, 77, 83, 85, 88–90 inflation, 62, 76, 78, 82 infographics, 75 information theory, 147 information war, 43, 196 insurance, 59 intellectual property, 150 intelligence, 132–9 intensity, 79–83 International Association for the Study of Pain, 106 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 64, 78 Internet, 184–201, 219 IP addresses, 193 Iraq War (2003–11), 74, 132 Ireland, 57, 73 Irish Republican Army (IRA), 43 “Is This How You Feel?

The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity
by Amy Webb
Published 5 Mar 2019

Early experiments proved successful as hundreds of thousands of people donated their idle processing time to all kinds of worthy projects around the world, supporting projects like the Quake-Catcher Network, which looks for seismic activity, and SETI@home, which searches for extraterrestrial life out in the universe. By 2018, some clever entrepreneurs had figured out how to repurpose those networks for the gig economy v2.0. Rather than driving for Uber or Lyft, freelancers could install “gigware” to earn money for idle time. The latest gigware lets third-party businesses use our devices in exchange for credits or real money we can spend elsewhere. Like the early days of ride-sharing services, a lot of people left the traditional workforce to stake their claim in this new iteration of the gig economy. They quit their jobs and tried to scrape together a living simply by leasing out access to their devices.

Rockonomics: A Backstage Tour of What the Music Industry Can Teach Us About Economics and Life
by Alan B. Krueger
Published 3 Jun 2019

Despite the image of musicians as young school dropouts with wild hairdos, as a group musicians are actually older and better educated than the workforce overall.4 The average working musician was forty-five years old in the latest data available—four years older than the average worker overall. Only 4 percent of musicians left school before completing high school, which is less than half the dropout rate of other workers. Fully half of musicians are four-year college graduates, compared with one-third of the workforce overall. The gig economy started with music. Not surprisingly, musicians are almost five times more likely to report that they are self-employed than non-musicians. In 2016, 44 percent of musicians were self-employed, while just 9 percent of other workers were their own boss. Like other freelancers, self-employed musicians have the freedom to perform their work however they please and to work for a variety of employers.

…

Second, technology has made it easier for parts of music jobs to be outsourced and carried out remotely. And the proliferation of Uber-like online platforms that match musicians with gigs—such as GigTown.com, Gigmor.com, and ShowSlinger.com—is likely to propel freelance musical work in the twenty-first century. Musicians have long been at the vanguard of the gig economy, facing many of the same problems that gig workers face today: obtaining health insurance, saving for the future, paying down debt, planning for taxes, and recordkeeping. In 2013, before Obamacare established health insurance exchanges and provided income-based subsidies for individuals to purchase insurance, 53 percent of musicians lacked health insurance, which was triple the uninsured rate for the population as a whole.8 Self-employed workers as a whole saw a greater rise in health insurance coverage after Obamacare passed than other employees.

Ghost Road: Beyond the Driverless Car
by Anthony M. Townsend
Published 15 Jun 2020

Live Science, April 19, 2010, https://www.livescience.com/11011-marathons-26-2-miles-long.html. 123a thankless, never-ending battle against backhoes: Andrew Blum, Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet (New York: Ecco, 2012), 1–10. 123800,000 square feet of order-fulfillment space: Allen et al., An Analysis of the Same-Day Delivery, 76. 123“Large shipments of goods atomize into hundreds”: Ted Choe et al., “The Future of Freight: How New Technology and New Thinking Can Transform How Goods Are Moved,” Insights, Deloitte, June 28, 2017, https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/focus/future-of-mobility/future-of-freight-simplifying-last-mile-logistics.html. 123Amazon’s newest fulfillment centers: Janelle Jones and Ben Zipperer, “Unfulfilled Promises: Amazon Fulfillment Centers Do Not Generate Broad-Based Employment Growth,” Economic Policy Institute, February 1, 2018, https://www.epi.org/publication/unfulfilled-promises-amazon-warehouses-do-not-generate-broad-based-employment-growth/. 123In big cities now you can find them in a circle: Patrick Kiger, “Driving Hard to Secure Last-Mile Logistics,” Urban Land Institute, February 5, 2018, https://urbanland.uli.org/industry-sectors/industrial/driving%E2%80%85hard-secure-last-mile-logistics/. 124a veteran local driver: Allen et al., An Analysis of the Same-Day Delivery, 141. 124deskilling of local delivery has driven down wages: Anoosh Chakelian, “ ‘Slaveroo’: How Riders Are Standing Up to Uber, Deliveroo and the Gig Economy,” New Statesman America, September 24, 2018, https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2018/09/slaveroo-how-riders-are-standing-uber-deliveroo-and-gig-economy. 125slash the cost of delivery by 90 to 95 percent: “Starship Technologies Inc.,” Robotics Business Review, accessed February 26, 2019, https://www.roboticsbusinessreview.com/listing/starship-technologies/. 125deskside delivery allowed workers to skip: “Starship Technologies Launches Commercial Rollout of Autonomous Delivery,” Starship, April 30, 2018, https://www.starship.xyz/press_releases/2708/. 125replacing a swarm of dirty, noisy, and often dangerous delivery trucks: “The Future of Moving Things,” IDEO, accessed June 11, 2018, https://automobility.ideo.com/moving-things/a-new-familiar-sight. 125raised $940 million in venture funding: Mary Ann Azevedo, “Nuro Raises $940M from SoftBank Vision Fund for Robot Delivery,” Crunchbase, February 11, 2019, https://news.crunchbase.com/news/nuro-raises-940m-from-softbank-vision-fund-for-robot-delivery/. 125Toyota’s mule, the e-Palette: Andrew J.

Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane
by Brett King
Published 5 May 2016

Based on a ±2 per cent confidence interval, this basically is a statistical certainty. 9 “AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs,” Pew Research Center, 6 August 2014. 10 http://cleantechnica.com/2014/04/24/us-energy-capacity-grew-an-astounding-418-from-2010-2014/ 11 http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/report/2014/05/29/90551/rooftop-solar-adoption-in-emerging-residential-markets/ 12 A prosumer is both a producer and consumer. 13 Google Green 14 See GreenTechMedia.com analysis, http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Utility-Scale-Solar-Reaches-Cost-Parity-With-Natural-Gas-Throughout-America. 15 Alissa Walker, “Tesla’s Gigafactory isn’t Big Enough to Make Its Preordered Batteries,” Gizmodo, 8 May 2015. 16 NBAD, University of Cambridge and PwC, “Financing the Future of Energy,” PV Magazine, 2 March 2015. 17 “Enter the entrepreneurs,” Mintel, 19 November 2014. 18 Cornerstone OnDemand Survey, November 2014. 19 “Generation Y and the Gigging Economy,” Elance, January 2014. 20 Check out https://workfrom.co/. 21 For more on work patterns throughout history, go to https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/. 22 “Solving the Mystery of Gen Y Job Hoppers,” Business News Daily, 22 August 2014. 23 Pew Research 2014 24 For more on Jordan Greenhall, go to http://reinventors.net/content/jordan-greenhall/. 25 Statistics taken from http://blog.autismspeaks.org/2010/10/22/got-questions-answers-to-your-questions-from-the-autism-speaks%E2%80%99-science-staff-2/. 26 See www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2013/01/average_age_of_members_of_u_s_congress_are_our_senators_and_representatives.html. 27 “The 113th congress is historically good at not passing bills,” Washington Post, 9 July 2014.

…

You’ve probably never thought of Uber as an acquirer of small business bank accounts, but if you’re an Uber driver and Uber can give you a debit card that enables you to get paid—then why would you go to a bank branch to open an account instead? It also means that as an entrepreneur bank account the next obvious move is to design day-to-day banking into Uber’s app instead of standing alone as a typical bank account or mobile banking app. For the millions of permalancers or gigging economy workers, it’s highly likely that the first time a freelancer opens a bank account will be directly in response to a new gig or job offer—if that employer (like Uber or Airbnb) offers you a bank account as part of the sign-up process, why would you stop signing up for Uber, drive to a branch and sign a piece of paper?

Superminds: The Surprising Power of People and Computers Thinking Together
by Thomas W. Malone
Published 14 May 2018

Since many of these jobs don’t require full-time work for a single customer, many people will do them as independent contractors. In a 1997 Harvard Business Review article, my colleague Rob Laubacher and I coined the term e-lancers—short for “electronically connected freelancers”—to describe these workers.12 Today many people use the term gig economy to describe essentially the same phenomenon. Many of the tasks so far in the gig economy are physical tasks, like driving for Uber, but almost all of them rely on electronic matching of workers to jobs. And I think cheap communication will create many more opportunities for e-lancers to do whatever work they do best from anywhere in the world.

Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success
by Tom Eisenmann
Published 29 Mar 2021

A sole proprietor who walks the family’s dog every day will get to know the dog and family well, but with a packed schedule, he may not be able to handle a special request (“We’re both traveling; can you do another walk before dinner?”). The reverse is true for a service provider like Wag! or Rover that deploys an army of gig economy workers: It can handle special requests, but it doesn’t repeatedly send the same worker to any given home, so building customer knowledge and becoming simpatico with Spot can prove challenging. In its final days, Baroo was addressing this issue by 1) creating teams of care providers who shared responsibility for a single neighborhood, and 2) asking providers to convey tips about families and pets to peers serving the same home.

…

Investment bubbles typically start when entrepreneurs and investors recognize a big, new opportunity, often triggered by technology breakthroughs, like machine learning, gene editing, or voice recognition software (e.g., Jibo). Or, entrepreneurs might see many different ways to leverage novel business models, as with flash sales (e.g., Fab), “gig economy” labor (e.g., Baroo), or “direct-to-consumer” retailing (e.g., Quincy). Or, the rapid proliferation of a new distribution channel—say, mobile phones or Facebook’s application platform (e.g., Triangulate)—might spawn opportunity. Early movers gain momentum and attract clones. VCs who missed the first wave of opportunity paddle hard to catch the next one.

Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence
by Rachel Sherman
Published 21 Aug 2017

Since the Reagan era of the 1980s, these trends, plus neoliberalism, globalization, financialization, technological innovation, and the continued decline of both manufacturing jobs and union strength, have given rise to an economy based primarily on knowledge and services. Employers are less committed to workers than they were in the past, and vice versa. Concomitant with these economic changes, the welfare state has lost power and the social safety net has weakened. Tax policy has increasingly favored the wealthy. Most recently, the “gig” economy, based on short-term or freelance work, has emerged. Although some analysts laud such arrangements for their flexibility, these shifts have generated greater economic and occupational insecurity for many people.8 One of the most significant consequences of these transformations has been a dramatic increase in economic inequality in the United States since the 1970s, giving rise to what some have called “The New Gilded Age.”9 The benefits of economic growth have gone to the richest Americans—the top .01 percent, or the top 1 percent of the 1 percent—as CEO compensation and financial returns have skyrocketed.10 Americans without college degrees have seen their incomes stagnate since the 1970s.

…

Scott, 8, 9 Franklin, Ben, 260n17 frugality (financial prudence), 60, 97–101, 151–52, 170 Gaztambide-Fernández, Rubén, 213 gender: and control of marital finances, 158, 180–81, 183–85, 189; cost of “femininity,” 111–13; division of labor and, 17, 159–63, 180, 190–96; duel-earner couples and gender roles, 190–92; “giving back” as gendered activity, 78, 125–26, 136–40; of inheritors, 160, 180, 183–85, 273n16; male consumption of sexual and embedded capital, 261n28; married couples and traditional roles, 159–63, 180–81, 183–84, 189, 191–92, 194–95; same-sex marriages and gender roles, 88, 189; spending as gendered activity, 99–101, 170; upper-class and subordination of women, 12, 20; and value of work, 24, 61, 88, 157, 159 “gig” economy, 6 giving back: activism and, 140–42, 151, 152; as cultural value, 123–24; familial responsibilities as priority, 133, 139, 145, 149, 151; as gendered, 78, 125–26, 136–40; “giving it all away,” 151, 152–53; identity and, 78, 124–26; inheritors and, 139–40, 152–53; limits to, 135, 143–46, 151–54; moral goodness and, 20, 23, 230–31; as obligation, 23, 76–77, 137–40, 150–51; parental encouragement of, 140, 211–13; as public acknowledgement of privilege, 124–26; and self-deprivation, 153–54; and structural inequality, 25, 122–26, 140–41, 149–54; as visible display of wealth, 124–25, 142–43, 153.

Together
by Vivek H. Murthy, M.D.
Published 5 Mar 2020

When I spoke with Kate Hoepke, the executive director of San Francisco Village, she told me that their programs are specifically aimed at helping members “navigate today’s changing cultural and economic San Francisco” so that they stay engaged and involved not just with one another but also with the city around them. Programs include mentorship exchanges with high school students and gig economy classes. Many are organized and hosted by the members themselves, which taps into the culture of reciprocity that is a core part of the Village ethos. “As a member,” Kate told me, “one may ask and give help. Reciprocity means that you are depending on others to age in place. That sense of collective need is part of what fuels social connection at the San Francisco Village.”

…

Team members who had traditionally been quiet during discussions began speaking up. They appeared less stressed at work. And most of them told me how much more connected they felt to their colleagues and to the mission they served. In many companies, however, individualism dominates despite the fact that most work enterprise requires collective effort. The gig economy has doubled down on that individualistic thrust, as a growing number of people work alone as ride-share drivers, freelance consultants, and on-demand assistants. Meanwhile, the growing trend toward automation further threatens to undermine the human relationships that make work socially as well as economically rewarding.

Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road
by Matthew B. Crawford
Published 8 Jun 2020

On the other side of the Channel, the mass protests of the London taxi drivers both expressed and contributed to the Brexit mood. This was a fight for economic sovereignty by highly trained professionals against the threat posed by foreign ride-hailing firms that rely on map software, U.S. military satellites, and the subsistence drivers of the gig economy. Essentially, Uber created a system of labor arbitrage to sidestep and nullify local control. The protests of the Germans against a proposed speed limit on the autobahn explicitly referenced the Yellow Vests, in a rare expression of French-German solidarity, and gave rise to a slogan adopted not just by the car lobby, but by dissident political parties: “Freie Fahrt für freie Bürger!”

…

Most of these contests have not yet been recognized by you and me, but you can be sure that as you read this, they are being identified by the Blob that seeks to claim every nook and cranny of human experience as raw material to be datafied and turned to its own profit. What this amounts to is a concentration of wealth, a centralization of knowledge, and an atrophy of our native skills to do things for ourselves. However one comes down on a contest such as that between the highly professional taxi savants and the indifferent drivers of the gig economy; between consumer convenience and a living wage; between waiting an extra five minutes to hail a cab versus spending an extra ten minutes in traffic because the streets are flooded with empty Ubers, shouldn’t these questions be decided by us, through democratic contest and market forces? That is not at all what is happening.

Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door -- Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy
by Christopher Mims
Published 13 Sep 2021

Its earliest examples were the textile factories of England, where workers, almost exclusively women who had once spun wool at home, were gathered with those who wove it into cloth. Together they attended to machines that helped the owners of these factories wipe out what had been employment at home—the original gig economy—for what one scholar estimates were two out of three women in England. Later, this kind of factory, and the attendant push toward total vertical integration, reached its apotheosis at Henry Ford’s massive River Rouge Complex, where raw materials such as rubber and iron entered at one end and finished Model Ts came out the other.

…

C., 159 “essential” workers in pandemic, 90 Estonia, manufacture of Starship robotic delivery systems in, 270 Evergreen, 22 Every Which Way but Loose (film), 109 FAA (Federal Aviation Administration), 264 Facebook, 74, 231 factory system: Amazon fulfillment centers resembling, 170; incorporation of supply chain into, 2, 90–92 Fair Labor Standards Act, 279 Fanuc industrial robot arm, 159–60, 193 Fast Company, 237 Fauci, Anthony, 108, 195 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), 264 Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, 124 Federal Trade Commission (FTC), 168 Federal-Aid Highway Act (1956), 128 FedEx, 107, 155, 244, 245, 252, 253–62, 265, 276, 278, 280 FedEx Ground, 256 Field, Sally, 109 fissured workplaces, 278, 280 5S, 228 Fizyr (robotics company), 246 flag state and flags of convenience, 32 Flaubert, Gustave, 274 Flinn, Craig, 49–55, 57, 61, 64 flywheel, 231 Ford, Henry, Ford Motor Company, and Fordism: Amazon warehouses and robotic warehousing, 163–64, 184; Bezosism and, 198, 207, 214–16, 219, 220, 231; scientific management (Taylorism) compared, 91, 99–101; supply chain in, 2, 8, 12 Forditis, 216 Foxconn (Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.), 17–18, 221 freight brokers and trucking companies, 134–39 Freud, Sigmund, 87 Frontline (PBS documentary series), 201 FTC (Federal Trade Commission), 168 fulfillment center, concept of, 169–70 “fulfillment center alley,” 217, 242, 245 Galetti, Beth, 237 Gallard, Robert, 114–18, 120–21, 125–26, 133, 134, 135 gantry cranes, 78–79 Gantt, Henry, and Gantt chart, 98 Gap, 168 Garcetti, Eric, 72 gemba walks, 227, 229 General Electric, 104, 204, 221–23 General Motors (GM), 8, 154, 177, 247 Generation Z, 235, 266 George, Rose, Ninety Percent of Everything, 113 George Mason University (VA), 263–66, 268 Germany: Autobahn, 130–32; Hamburg, port of, 79 gig economy, 91, 102 Gilbreth, Frank and Lillian, 89–90, 98, 102–4, 185; Cheaper by the Dozen (memoir by Gilbreth children, 1948), 89–90; The Psychology of Management (Lillian Gilbreth), 103 Gladwell, Malcolm, 97 GLONASS, 64 GM (General Motors), 8, 154, 177, 247 Goddard, Robert, 143–44 Google, 142, 153, 184, 204, 231 Google Classroom, 7 Google Maps, 50, 120, 123, 126, 283 Google smartphone, 16 Government Accountability Office, 240 GPS, 37, 59, 64, 118, 120, 143, 145–46, 217, 268 Great Depression, 250, 278 grooming, 83 Gross, Bill, 167 Grubhub, 266 Guendelsberger, Emily, On the Clock, 200, 202–3, 205, 208, 219, 220, 234 Guillet, León, 102 Gutelius, Beth, 233–35 Gyeongsangnam-do, South Korea (shipyard), 26 gyrocompass, electronic, 37, 42 Hagerstown, MD, FedEx sortation center in, 253–61 Hamburg, port of, 79 Hamilton, Tyler, 171–76, 179, 186, 205, 206 harbor pilots, 36–37, 47, 49, 50, 54–55, 58–61, 63, 65 Harper’s Weekly, 103 Hemingway, Ernest, 98 High-Ballin’ (film), 109 high-speed sorter, 190 Hitler, Adolf, 128, 130–31, 144, 145 HMPE (high-modulus polyethylene), 60 Hoffa, Jimmy and James P., 277 Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.

Head, Hand, Heart: Why Intelligence Is Over-Rewarded, Manual Workers Matter, and Caregivers Deserve More Respect
by David Goodhart
Published 7 Sep 2020

Their career is built on long-term progress up a professional hierarchy rather than the success of the immediate mission. The new business structure consists of three layers: elite core full-time employees; contingent professionals; and contingent service staff, cleaners, security, and so on, many in the gig economy. The core of the business is the elite talent who are trusted with the “secret sauce”: the secret ingredients behind competitive advantage. The elite are considered exceptionally talented. The only ones clever enough to create new value. Logic suggests that these are the only people the firm needs to directly motivate and retain.

…

The proportion of people in conventional full-time employment at 63 percent has hardly budged at all in the past twenty years in the United Kingdom28 despite a big rise in self-employment, and average job tenure remains around nine years, where it has been for several decades.29 And the numbers in nonstandard, nonpermanent employment have also held steady: only 2.4 percent of the workforce in the United Kingdom in 2018 were on zero-hours contracts, and most of them were content with the arrangement.30 In the United States the so-called gig economy, in which short-term freelance work is accessed through online marketplaces, is only about 1 percent of total employment.31 In 2018 the employment rate was at record highs in Britain and Germany and twenty-two other OECD countries.32 And the Internet has made job “matching” easier and cheaper for both employers and employees.

This Is Not a Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook
by Extinction Rebellion
Published 12 Jun 2019

Asking these sorts of questions, while philosophically entertaining, is a poor substitute for wrestling with the real moral quandaries associated with unbridled technological development in the name of corporate capitalism. Digital platforms have turned an already exploitative and extractive marketplace (think Walmart) into an even more dehumanizing successor (think Amazon). Most of us became aware of these downsides in the form of automated jobs, the gig economy and the demise of local retail. But the more devastating impacts of pedal-to-the-metal digital capitalism fall on the environment and the global poor. The manufacture of some of our computers and smartphones still uses networks of slave labour. These practices are so deeply entrenched that a company called Fairphone, founded from the ground up to make and market ethical phones, learned it was impossible.

The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It
by Yascha Mounk
Published 15 Feb 2018

Quoted in Mayhill Fowler, “Obama: No Surprise That Hard-Pressed Pennsylvanians Turn Bitter,” Huffington Post, November 17, 2008, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mayhill-fowler/obama-no-surprise-that-ha_b_96188.html. 65. For a good overview, see Valerio De Stefano, “The Rise of the ‘Just-in-Time Workforce’: On-Demand Work, Crowdwork, and Labor Protection in the ‘Gig-Economy,’” Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal 37, no. 3 (2016): 471–503. Note that even robust political approaches to the regulation of the gig economy, like a recent speech by Senator Elizabeth Warren that was widely portrayed as hostile to Uber and Lyft, seek to regulate rather than to fight these new industries. Elizabeth Warren, “Strengthening the Basic Bargain for Workers in the Modern Economy,” Remarks, New American Annual Conference, May 19, 2016, https://www.warren.senate.gov/files/documents/2016-5-19_Warren_New_America_Remarks.pdf. 9.

This Land: The Struggle for the Left
by Owen Jones
Published 23 Sep 2020

It has driven home to us all what our society has become: how millions are always just one paypacket away from extreme hardship; how key workers, whose astonishing sacrifice and bravery were acknowledged by applause every Thursday evening, are underpaid and undervalued in real terms, often toiling in underfunded services; how health and social care are badly under-resourced; how many self-employed and gig economy workers live in desperate precariousness; how our welfare state is woefully inadequate. We were told coronavirus is a great social leveller, that it affects rich and poor just the same. This has been proven grimly untrue, with fatality rates among poorer people and minorities significantly higher – terrible statistics that underline profound pre-existing inequalities.

…

As long as wealthy nations fail to provide security and comfort to their citizens, as long as millions are deprived of the promise that growing prosperity will deliver a more comfortable and fulfilling existence for them and their families, as long as rising global temperatures menace human civilization, there will be a demand for unambiguously radical answers. Coronavirus has further exposed the harsh realities of societies – both in Britain and around the globe – in which millions are always one pay cheque away from hardship, in which the self-employed and gig economy workforce are deprived of basic security, in which the welfare state is chronically inadequate, in which private tenants are at the mercy of landlords, in which health and social care services are under-resourced and fragmented. Can we, together, build a new society free from such ills? This was the hope of Corbynism and the many who embraced it.

Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--And How to Think Deeply Again
by Johann Hari
Published 25 Jan 2022

The introduction of the weekend was the biggest challenge to the speeding-up of society that has ever happened. Only a comparable fight will deliver a four-day week. This insight is connected to another big obstacle to achieving this goal. A four-day week can be applied to salaried workers—but increasingly, many people are being forced into the “gig economy,” where they scramble to do several jobs without any contracts or fixed work hours at all. This is happening as a result of a very specific change: in countries like the U.S. and Britain, governments broke up and largely destroyed labor unions. They made it harder and harder for workers to band together and demand things like contracts and fixed work hours.

…

See nutrition food allergies, 200 food dyes, 200, 201 four-day work week, 187–90, 192, 193, 273–74 France, 8–9, 193, 194–95 Frankenstein, 141–42 Freedom app, 102, 103, 268 free play, 238–54 as author’s change strategy, 269–70 culture shifts and, 238–43, 256, 262–63 importance of, 248–49 intrinsic motive development through, 246–48, 252, 260–61 mastery and, 252–53, 256 reclaiming, 249–54, 274 skills learned through, 243–46, 256–62 friendships Facebook comparison, 84, 85 free play for development of, 244 “frustrated biological objects,” 219 G Gallup poll, 80 gasoline, 206, 208–9 Gasset, José Ortega y, 21 Gazzaley, Adam, 43–44 General Motors, 206 Germany, 165, 261 “gig economy,” 192 Gilbert, Dan, 99–100 Giussani, Bruno, 282 Gmail, 112–14, 115, 125–26, 169 goals, 55–57, 59–60 godson, of author, 3–8, 149, 272 Google advertising and, 125–26 control rooms at, 112–13 engagement measured by, 113–14 ethical business model issues and, 113–19 ethics of, 113–17, 118–19, 123 motto, 35 profile tracking by, 125–26 worth of, 118 Google Books, 31–32 Google Maps, 127 Google Nest Hubs, 127 Google searches, 30, 125–26 GPS analogy, 140–41 Graceland, 4, 5–8 Graham, Paul, 123 Gray, Peter, 243–44, 258–59 “the Great Acceleration,” 35 Greenpeace U.K., 274 growth issues, with stimulant use, 230–31 H habits (bad), triggers for, 145–46, 148–49 Haddad, Fernando, 139 Haidt, Jonathan, 244, 246 Hamilton, Alice, 206, 209 Hari, Lydia, 166–68 Harris, Nadine Burke, 134, 172–79, 226 Harris, Tristan on algorithms, 130, 131, 140 apps designed by, 110, 111–12 on climate crisis, 280–81 on cruel optimism, 154–55 “design ethicist” position offered to, 117–19 education, 108–11 at Google, 112–19 on “human downgrading,” 132, 141–42 magic and, 106–7 mentor of, 170 on profile tracking, 127–28 on radicalization, 131, 136–37 on surveillance capitalism ban, 157, 159–64, 169 on tech business models, 125, 127–28 on tech design, 128–29 “time well spent” slogan by, 147 Hart, Carl, 228–29 Harvard University, 82 heart problems, with stimulant use, 230–31 “hearts and likes,” 133 Hewlett-Packard study, 39 Hickel, Jason, 279 Hilbert, Martin, 32 Hinshaw, Stephen, 216, 232 Homer, 21–22 homophobia, culture shifts and, 168–69 Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products (Eyal), 148, 149 horses, 217–18, 219 human downgrading, 132, 141–42 hyperactivity, 67, 217–21.

Automation and the Future of Work
by Aaron Benanav
Published 3 Nov 2020

The consequence is that, unlike firms in other countries, US firms face no particular need to construct alternative working arrangements to take advantage of vulnerable sections of the labor force. Some firms do utilize alternative working arrangements to get around US labor law—witness the small but significant boom in gig-economy jobs, like Uber and Lyft, which offer work through online platforms as a way of disguising their employees as independent contractors.12 But when all is said and done, just 10 percent of US workers were employed in such arrangements in 2017, including as independent contractors, on-call workers, temp agency workers, and fixed-contract workers.13 Set against this American case, the employment landscape in European and wealthy East Asian countries is more complicated.

Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business
by Rana Foroohar
Published 16 May 2016

By fomenting constant, ruthless competition within the firm and rewarding those who took big risks for big payoffs, Welch did more than build the sorts of hidden debt bombs that went off so famously during the subprime crisis. He was also instrumental in ending GE’s tradition of secure lifetime employment and creating what might be called the “gig economy,” in which firms could get rid of anyone, even their top people, at any time. Every employee became, in essence, a temp. This again was a shift in which business had come to mirror finance, where service tenures for employees had always been lower (and paydays bigger, as part of the high-risk, high-reward model that worked for the few but not for the many).

…

Many small and mid-size businesses that are creating the majority of new jobs can’t afford to offer retirement benefits, and most freelancers as well as part-time workers at companies of all sizes usually don’t qualify. Yet those are exactly the groups that are growing in number, as the American workforce becomes a “gig” economy in which more and more people work on contract, and often without benefits. The 401(k) system itself may be flawed, but any vehicle for retirement savings is better than none. PENSIONERS VERSUS WALL STREET The failed experiment that is our 401(k) system is just one part of the retirement crisis; the other is the beleaguered defined-benefit pension system (in which individuals retire with a fixed monthly benefit) that serves millions of workers.

Red Moon
by Kim Stanley Robinson
Published 22 Oct 2018

Lots of people are quoting Mao again, and not just baizuo, white leftists that means, meaning people like you from the West telling us what to do.” “I never did that.” She laughed. “I should hope not, you know so little! But that doesn’t always stop people.” “So they’re organizing?” “Yes. But offline. It’s not a netizen thing. The netizens are mostly urban youth, content to live in their wrists and get by in the gig economy. They’re not working-class, they’re the hollowed-out middle class. Often very nationalistic. They’ve taken the Party line, and they don’t see how much they have in common with the migrants. They’re the precariat, do you know that word? No? Everyone’s precarious now, you should know that word. You’re the precariat.

…

The leadership had probably overreacted to events elsewhere in the world, in particular the ongoing collapse of the Soviet empire. Seeing the trouble in Moscow they had panicked in Beijing, and so a number of idealistic protesters had died. Now he was caught in a crowd of such people. Workers and urban precariat, the three withouts and the two maybe withouts, some exploited by their hukou status, some by the gig economy, some simply unemployed. The so-called billion, converging on Beijing to support the rule of law, but also, Ta Shu thought, just a decent living. The return of the iron rice bowl, or maybe even the whole work unit system, which had given several generations some stability in China’s constantly shifting economy.

People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent
by Joseph E. Stiglitz
Published 22 Apr 2019

Space limitations make it impossible to spell out the whole agenda for restoring workers’ market and political power—besides reversing the laws that have been designed to undermine it. Changes in the economy, the growth of the service sector, the diminution of manufacturing, the development of the gig economy, have all increased these challenges. See Brishen Rogers and Kate Andrias, Rebuilding Worker Voice in Today’s Economy (Roosevelt Institute, 2018); and Kate Andrias, “The New Labor Law,” Yale Law Journal 126, no. 1 (Oct. 2016). 61.For a discussion of the role of unions in wage determination, see Henry S.

…

But this mismatch hasn’t been the key feature in recent years; if it were, wages of skilled workers would be rising much more rapidly than they have been. 12.I say nasty politics, because when the Republicans saw the opportunity to help their own party and those rich corporations and billionaires who supported them, they threw aside all ideological commitments to balanced budgets, commitments that had seemingly prevented them from supporting the fiscal policies that would have allowed us to more quickly emerge from the Great Recession. 13.There was a trade-off: a short-term increase in the demand for labor as a result of the increased investment, and a longer-term decrease as machines replaced workers. The lower interest rates also reduced consumption of those elderly dependent on interest from government bonds. 14.By the same token, changes in the structure of the labor market—the gig economy—may result in jobs that are insecure and without good benefits. 15.In many of these sectors, wages are low because the jobs were traditionally gendered, and there was systematic wage discrimination against women. 16.The defenders of Big Tech’s use of Big Data also argue that it allows them to steer individuals to products that better meet their needs.

Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise to World Domination
by Mark Bergen
Published 5 Sep 2022

While discussing Lilly Singh, a female creator of color whom YouTube’s marketing had promoted, Kjellberg deployed the voice, imitating a conspiracy theorist. “I’m white. Can I make that comment?” he said. “But I do think that’s a problem.” This, Kjellberg explained in a follow-up video, was clearly an edgy joke. The following month he tipped over the edge. He had started a series of videos about Fiverr, an online gig-economy service that hired people to perform tasks for $5. Kjellberg wanted to see how far the service would go. In one video he did his usual internet-commentary routine: he shared his screen with viewers and showed his reaction to its contents in real time. The screen showed a Fiverr account he had hired called the “Funny Guys,” two young men from rural India.

…

MatPat, released a video explaining why Felix Kjellberg’s Fiverr stunt failed as comedy. YouTube, by its nature, blurred the lines between performer and persona. “It’s often hard to see where PewDiePie ends and Felix begins,” Patrick observed. And that particular joke’s supposed target—the abject capitalism of the gig economy—carelessly mixed in shock antisemitism without explanation. Also, the joke punched down: a rich white celebrity made two unsuspecting Indian men its butt. “Risky humor needs to be humor done right,” Patrick concluded. “As much as it sucks, words matter, Felix. Especially when you’re reaching an audience of fifty million.”

Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal
by George Packer
Published 14 Jun 2021

They seduce consumers with low prices and automated convenience, and in return those consumers surrender their privacy and, in some ways, their free will; if price or quality takes a turn for the worse, consumers have nowhere to go. Monopolies degrade communities by destroying Main Street businesses and drawing away wealth from depressed regions to a few thriving megalopolises. In the new gig economy, industry concentration in two or three winning hands forces workers to remain contractors, denying them the barest protections such as health insurance. And yet the whole system depends on our acquiescence. If a ride-share app is quick and easy, if one-click shopping beats driving to the mall, if a too-big-to-fail bank has branches all over the city, it’s hard to see all the negative consequences of monopoly, or want to do much about them.

Team Human
by Douglas Rushkoff
Published 22 Jan 2019

The same phenomenon takes place on the stock market, where ultra-fast trading algorithms spur unprecedented momentum in certain shares, creating massive surpluses of capital in the biggest digital companies and sudden, disastrous collapses of their would-be competitors. Meanwhile, automation and extractive platforms combine to disadvantage anyone who still works for a living, turning what used to be lifelong careers into the temp jobs of a gig economy. These frictionless, self-reinforcing loops create a “winner takes all” landscape that punishes the middle class, the small business, and the sustainable players. The only ones who can survive are artificially inflated companies, who use their ballooning share prices to purchase the also-rans.

The New Map: Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations
by Daniel Yergin
Published 14 Sep 2020

Its new business model was UberX, which adopted Lyft’s model and enrolled nonprofessional drivers who could work as little or as much as they wanted. They would be contractors, not employees. In other words, it’s a BYOC model—Bring Your Own Car. Uber drivers, 60 percent of whom have other jobs, have become prime examples for what became known as the “gig economy.” Both Uber and Lyft also rolled out modern versions of carpooling services that match up a rider with another rider in close proximity headed to nearby destinations. Uber and Lyft rolled forward, opening in city after city. Customers, initially many of them millennials, were quickly won over.

…

See also shareholder activism Doha, Qatar, 278–79 Donbas region, 79 Donilon, Thomas, 59 Dow, 29–30 drone technology, 251–52, 286 Drucker, Peter, 162 Dutch East Indies, 140 Dyukov, Alexander, 76 Eagle Ford Shale, 17, 24, 24, 42, 55 Earth Justice, 51 earthquakes, 28 East Asia, 33 East China Sea, 148 Eastern Europe, 88, 109 Eastern Mediterranean energy reserves, 253–58 East Turkistan Islamic Movement, 180 Eberstadt, Nicholas, 132 Ebola epidemic, 315 “economic miracle” countries, 33, 74–75 Economic Survey (India), 408 Economist, The, 276, 286, 307–8 Edison, Thomas, 329 Egypt and Arab nationalism, 203–5, 214 and Arab Spring protests, 237–38 and Eastern Mediterranean petroleum resources, 254, 256–57 and historical context of Middle East conflicts, 196 and Iranian Revolution, 209 and Islamic fundamentalism, 259–63, 264, 270 and Qatar, 306 and Syrian civil war, 251 Einstein, Albert, 394–95 election interference, 70, 78, 81, 103–4 electric power and infrastructure, xix, 12–13, 184, 186, 234, 345–46, 404 electric vehicles (EVs), xviii, 327–46, 368–71, 415, 427, 428, 430 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania (1998), 264–65 emissions standards, 335–37, 339, 346 Energiewende (“energy turn”), 86–87, 395–96 energy security and independence and Canadian imports to U.S., 47 and China’s development of petroleum resources, 160 and current geopolitical challenges, 427 and Eastern Mediterranean petroleum resources, 254–57 and electric vehicles, 341 and energy transition in the developing world, 408–9 and energy transition in U.S., xv and gas supplies to Europe, 84–89 and Nixon administration, 53 and opposition to Russian gas exports, 109 and politics of U.S. shale production, 55 and Russia-Europe relations, 83 and South China Sea tensions, 171 and varied approaches to climate change, 412–13 “energy superpower” status, xv, 57, 70–71 Energy Transfer Partners, 49, 51 energy transition and breakthrough energy technologies, 403–6 and carbon capture technology, 419 and current global challenges, xiii–xx, 427–29 and developing world, 407–10 emerging consensus on climate issues, 382–87 and “green deal” proposals, 388–91, 391–93 historical perspective on, 377–79 and IPCC, 379–80 and Paris climate agreement, 380–82 and push for renewable energy sources, 394, 400–401 and U.S. position, xv and varied approaches to climate change, 412 Eni, 256 environmental issues and activism and American shale gas reserves, 113 and Fukushima nuclear disaster, 87 and global power politics, xiii and hydraulic fracturing, 28–29 and indoor air pollution in developing countries, 407–8 and opposition to pipeline projects, 46–51 and U.S. transition to LNG exporter, 37 See also carbon emissions; climate change Environmental Defense Fund, 28–29 EOG, 14–17 Erbil, Kurdistan, 232 Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip, 247, 305, 315 ESPO pipeline, 118 Estonia, 69 EU Council, 102 Eurasian Economic Union, 92, 93, 189 Europe and China Belt and Road Initiative, 182, 184 and Eastern Mediterranean petroleum resources, 258 and impact of U.S. shale and LNG, 38, 55, 61–62 and push for renewable energy sources, 398–99 See also European Union (EU); specific countries European Central Bank, 187 European Commission, 388–90 European Union (EU) and energy security issues in Europe, 85–88 and energy transition challenges, 381 and “green deal” proposals, 388–91 and Nord Stream 2 pipeline, 102, 104, 108–9 and Russian annexation of Crimea, 95 and Russian gas supplies to Europe, 85 and Russian geopolitical ambitions, 70, 115 and Russia-Ukraine tensions, 93 and Syrian refugees, 248 Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) and territorial waters, 142–45, 148, 159, 170, 257 extraterritoriality, 108, 139 ExxonMobil, 15, 65, 76, 395 Fabius, Laurent, 381 Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, 214 Faisal I, King of Iraq, 198–200, 202–3 Falcon rockets, 332 Farouk I, King of Egypt, 203 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 103 financial crisis of 2008, 26–27, 333, 429 Financial Stability Board, 385 Financial Times, 113, 273 financing for energy projects and China Belt and Road Initiative, 182–83 and “green recovery” proposals, 428 and push for renewable energy sources, 397, 400–401 and Russian interests in Central Asia, 125–26 and Russian LNG, 112 Fink, Larry, 385 First Opium War, 139 First Sino-Japanese War, 154 5G technology, 175, 354 “flight shaming,” 387, 415 Ford, Bill (and Ford Motor Company), 329, 338, 346, 351, 369–70, 373 Ford, Henry, 372–73 Fort Laramie Treaty, 49 Fracking Debate, The (Raimi), 28 France, 138, 195–96, 201–2, 227, 232, 247, 343 Freeport LNG facility, 24, 35–37, 38 Free Syrian Army (FSA), 244 Fukushima nuclear accident, 63, 87, 401, 430 G7, 129 G8, 129 G20, 129, 280, 319–20, 388, 426 Gadhafi, Muammar, 239 Gadkari, Nitin, 342 Gaidar, Yegor, 73 gasoline and Auto-Tech advances, 368, 370–72 and “clean diesel,” 335 and consumer behaviors, 421 Mexican imports, 41, 43 and oil embargo of 1973, 53–54 and oil price war, 316–17, 323 and pipeline battles in U.S., 47 Gates, Bill, 315, 385–86 Gates, Robert, 237–38 Gaza, 253 Gazprom, 76, 80, 86, 89, 105, 107–8, 109, 125 Geely, 338 General Motors, 171, 329, 333–34, 369 Georges-Picot, François, 194–95, 196–98, 201–2 Georgia (country), 82 Germany and “clean diesel,” 336 economic growth before World War I, 132 and energy security issues in Europe, 86–88 and energy transition challenges, xix and global order after First World War, 200 and Iranian nuclear ambitions, 223, 227 and Khashoggi affair, 305–6 and Nord Stream 2 pipeline, 102, 104–5, 107–8 and push for renewable energy sources, 395–96, 400–401 and Russia’s “pivot to the east,” 117 and Syrian refugees, 248 and the Thucydides Trap, 131, 154 and U.S.–China trade war, 175 Ghawar oil field, 24, 241 gig economy, 361 globalization, 56, 188, 314–15, 423–24 global oil market stresses, 272–278, 279–83, 284–87, 288–90, 426 Global Times, 168 Google, 350–53, 357, 364, 368–69 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 73–74, 76 Gore, Al, 121, 379–80 GPS technology, 348, 353–54 Grand Challenge, 348–52 Grand Mosque attack, 261–63, 296 Great Depression, 4 Great Recession, 27 Greece, 184, 257 Green, Logan, 360 Green, Martin, 395, 397 greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), 47, 383–84, 411–12.

Sabotage: The Financial System's Nasty Business
by Anastasia Nesvetailova and Ronen Palan
Published 28 Jan 2020

It gets worse. In a world where anyone can create money, crime groups have an interest in launching their own money transmission services and popularizing them as legitimate ‘fintech’ alternatives. As more and more jobs and services go off the official economic radar into the underground of the ‘gig’ economy, exchanging their skills for money, the more bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies offer a convenient way around the traditional income reporting demanded of employees and independent contractors.18 The authorities have taken steps to try and regulate the crypto world. The American IRS reacted to the tax implication of bitcoin use by treating it not as mere currency but as a capital asset, subject to rules governing stock and barter transactions when exchanged for dollars.

The Participation Revolution: How to Ride the Waves of Change in a Terrifyingly Turbulent World
by Neil Gibb
Published 15 Feb 2018

What is more, we can start to think, act and build for what is beyond the turbulence. There are many ways the future can go, and how we act today is what will shape it. At one end of the scale is a dystopian vision in which platform businesses will create a new feudal class, with people having to do more and more for less. In which the burgeoning ‘gig economy’ becomes a rush to the bottom, creating a dog-eat-dog world where everyone is fighting for an increasingly small piece of the pie. Where big data means we are snooped on, artificial intelligence second-guesses our every move, where power and wealth is concentrated into the hands of a few, and where governments become more and more authoritarian.

A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America
by Bruce Cannon Gibney
Published 7 Mar 2017

A declining fraction of jobs offer full benefits and a degree of security; many others offer (at most) flexibility instead of health care and employment guarantees. The latter kind of job features prominently in the “gig” economy.* Whatever their other merits, gigs and temp jobs do not offer the stability and benefits of conventional employment, and only some participants really prefer these sorts of jobs. The gig economy and other “alternative work arrangements” accounted for quite a lot of recent job growth, probably at least a third of all jobs created, and per preliminary findings by Harvard’s Lawrence Katz and Princeton’s Alan Krueger, perhaps “all of the net employment growth in the U.S. economy from 2005–2015 appears to have occurred in alternative work arrangements” (emphasis original; in a recent update, the authors revised “all” to a no-less-unsettling “94 percent”).17 And this returns us to Downton Abbey—before World War I, huge numbers of English were employed “in service,” thanks to social inertia, inequality, and technological change.

The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI
by Ray Kurzweil
Published 25 Jun 2024

From 2007 to 2012, the app economy created an estimated half a million jobs in the United States.[129] By 2018, according to Deloitte, this had grown to over 5 million jobs.[130] Another 2020 estimate, including jobs indirectly created by the app economy, put it at 5.9 million US jobs and $1.7 trillion of economic activity.[131] These numbers depend somewhat on how broadly or narrowly one defines the app market, but the key takeaway is that in a little over a decade, mobile apps have exploded from insignificance to a major factor in the wider economy. And so, even as technological change is rendering many jobs obsolete, those very same forces are opening up numerous new opportunities that fall outside the traditional model of “jobs.” Although it is not without its limitations, the so-called gig economy often allows people more flexibility, autonomy, and leisure time than their previous options. Maximizing the quality of these opportunities is one strategy for how to help workers as automation trends accelerate and disrupt traditional workplaces. So Where Are We Headed? On the face of it, the labor situation sounds alarming.

…

See humanism furniture, 3D-printed, 184–85 fusion power, 153 G Gagné, Jean-François, 13 GANs (generative adversarial networks), 99 Gateway 486DX2/66, 166, 304 Gato, 50 Gazzaniga, Michael, 89 GDP (gross domestic product), 114–15, 142–43, 211–12 social safety net spending, 223, 224, 225 US per capita, 142 Gemini, 2, 9, 54 gender identity, 109 gene editing, 241 gene expression, 241–42, 262 generalizability, 252 General Problem Solver (GPS), 15–16 general relativity theory, 39 Generation Z, 146 genes, 33, 135, 241–42 DNA nanotechnology, 261–62 mutations, 33, 135, 191–92, 242, 261, 278 genetic (evolutionary) algorithms, 20, 23, 25, 33 genetically modified organisms (GMOs), 202, 284 genetic biology, 242 genetic engineering, 271–72, 273 genetics, nano-technology, and robotics (GNR), 284 genies, 278 genome sequencing, 2, 135, 189, 261 geology, 38, 39 geothermal, 154, 173 Germany crime, 149 social safety net, 223 war death rates, 152 gig economy, 218–19 Global AI Talent Report, 13 globalization, 143–44 Global Rapid Response Team (GRRT), 272 glucose, 69 Gmail Smart Reply, 45 GMOs (genetically modified organisms), 202, 284 Go, 2, 9, 41–42, 196, 369n, 399n God, 38, 39, 78, 267 Good, I.

What's Yours Is Mine: Against the Sharing Economy
by Tom Slee
Published 18 Nov 2015

“Economy” suggests market transactions—the self-interested exchange of money for goods or services. There has been a lot of debate about whether “sharing economy” is the right name to use to describe this new wave of businesses, and a raft of other names have been tried out—collaborative consumption, the mesh economy, peer-to-peer platforms, the gig economy, concierge services, or, increasingly, the “on-demand economy.” There is no doubt that the word “sharing” has been stretched beyond reasonable limits as the “sharing economy” has grown and changed, but we still need a name when we talk about the phenomenon. While it may not last more than another year or so, “sharing economy” is the name used right now in 2015.

The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory
by Andrew J. Bacevich
Published 7 Jan 2020

In those instances where what Trump said correlates with what his administration did, the results fell well short of apocalyptic. True, after Trump became president, domestic manufacturing experienced a slight uptick. Yet globalization remained an implacable reality. Except for those with STEM degrees, good jobs were still hard to come by. Young hipsters might find the “gig economy” cool, but were likely to find it less so when reaching their sixties and wondering if they will ever be able to afford retirement. While Trump and a Republican Congress did make good on their promise of tax “reform,” its chief beneficiaries were the rich, further confirmation, if it were needed, that the American economy favors the few at the expense of the many.

Silicon City: San Francisco in the Long Shadow of the Valley
by Cary McClelland
Published 8 Oct 2018

To them, we have seen this movie here before, and we will see it again. The deeper the change cuts, the more it destroys the weapons available to combat it. City Hall has to search for new sources of funding as old wells dry up. At home, breadwinners look for new jobs, adapt to new ways of working, as technology and the gig economy make most careers less stable. Competition in the tech industry keeps leaders, even middle managers, preoccupied with their own struggle and either unable or unwilling to stoop and dig through the problems at their feet. Many of our fundamental assumptions about what makes a city work, what knits a community together, are being challenged—even the ability for neighbors, friends, and family to provide for one another in times of need.

This Is Not Normal: The Collapse of Liberal Britain
by William Davies
Published 28 Sep 2020

Osborne liked to claim (against all the evidence coming from the bond markets) that if Britain kept borrowing, lenders would lose trust in the moral rectitude of the government and interest rates would rise. Gratification must be resisted. Pain works. Only pain forces people to adapt and innovate. In practice that may mean all sorts of things: migrating, reskilling, sacrificing weekends or family time, selling property, the ‘gig economy’ and so on. The productiveness of pain is a central conservative belief, whose expression might be economic, but whose logic is deeply moralistic. There seems little doubt that for many of Thatcher’s followers the free market experiment hasn’t gone far enough. As long as there is an NHS, a welfare state and a public sector that is more European than American in scale, we will never truly discover what the British people are made of, because they will never be forced to find out.

The Reluctant Carer: Dispatches From the Edge of Life
by The Reluctant Carer
Published 22 Jun 2022

Consistency may have long since fled the scene, and Mum shuffles away in a world of her own, but I can’t build a case for change with so much contradictory testimony. Or at least a case that I can live with and act on. And there must be action, since now the world is calling. I’m offered a couple of weeks’ work in London. Temporary teaching. White-collar, gig-economy stuff; take it or leave it. The pay isn’t much and would be wiped out by the cost of commuting, so I would need to stay up there. But this isn’t about money, this is about me without them and them without me, a chance to see if that can be sustained. By any of us. A photographer friend of mine decamps from London to Africa for the winter to save money and follow the sun, so his flat is available.

Working Identity, Updated Edition, With a New Preface: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career
by Herminia Ibarra
Published 17 Oct 2023

See, for example, Jon Younger, “The Global Survey on Freelancing: Overall Results,” University of Toronto survey, 2021, https://utsc.utoronto.ca/globalfreelancing/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Global-Survey-on-Freelancing-final-report-9.20.pdf. 9. Gianpiero Petriglieri, Susan J. Ashford, and Amy Wrzesniewski, “Agony and Ecstasy in the Gig Economy: Cultivating Holding Environments for Precarious and Personalized Work Identities,” Administrative Science Quarterly 64, no. 1 (2019): 124–170. 10. Yale psychologist Daniel J. Levinson discusses the important role of “transitional figures” in The Seasons of a Man’s Life (New York: Knopf, 1985). 11.

Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations
by Thomas L. Friedman
Published 22 Nov 2016

It is a fast way to get high quality. There are Udacity freelance graders who make several thousand dollars a month grading computing projects—like how to build a map from Google’s GPS—sent in from students around the world. “We had one project grader who made twenty-eight thousand dollars one month,” said Thrun. “The gig economy is moving up. It’s not just about TaskRabbit errands anymore.” And Udacity is not just providing intelligent assistance for companies such as AT&T. Its platform is creating intelligent assistance for “the start-up of you”—whoever and wherever you are. In the fall of 2015, I found myself in a small conference room at Udacity’s Palo Alto headquarters interviewing—via Skype—Ghada Sleiman, a thirty-year-old Lebanese woman, who was taking Udacity’s online course to advance her skills in Web-page design.

…

Olin Foundation Gaffney, Owen Gallup Galor, Oded Galston, Bill Galván, Arturo Gambia Garber, Jake Garten, Jeffrey Gates, Bill Gates Foundation gays, gay rights; violence against Gaznay, Karwan GDP (gross domestic product); Internet penetration and Gebbia, Joe gender equality gene drives gene editing, as weapon General Electric (GE); Additive Manufacturing Lab of; engineering-design contests of; Niskayuna research center of General Mills generative design genetic engineering genetics, human manipulation of Genome.gov GeopoliticalFutures.com geopolitics: climate change and; Cold War in, see Cold War; foreign aid in; innovation in; interdependence in; post–Cold War; post–World War I; post–World War II; U.S. hegemony in geopolitics, post–post–Cold War era in: accelerated pace of; ADD (amplify, deter, degrade) policy in; breakers in, see breakers, super-empowered; climate change and; great-power competition in; innovation in; interdependence in; low-wage jobs in; weak states in, see weak states Georgia Tech gerrymandering Get Smart (TV series) Ghana Ghonim, Wael ghost apps GI Bill gig economy Gil, Dario Gilhousen, Klein GitHub Global Change and the Earth System (Steffen, et al.) global flows; bandwidth and; destructive aspects of; developing world and; digitalization of; education and; human relationships and; infrastructure and; innovation and; Internet of Things and; the Market and; as percentage of world GDP; population growth and; power of; push vs. pull in; social technologies and; supernova and; weak states and; see also connectivity, advances in Globality.com globalization: acceleration of; Moore’s law and; traditional definition of; see also Market, the global warming, see climate change Go God: cyberspace and; Jewish postbiblical view of Goldberg, Jay Golden Globes Golden Rule Goldwasser, Lesley golf, author and Golf Digest Goodwin, Tom Google; MapReduce of; proprietary systems of; search engine of; self-driving cars of Google Apps Google File System (GFS) Google Maps Google News Google Photos Gorbachev, Mikhail Gorbis, Marina Gordon, John Steele Gordon, Robert Gorman, Michael Governing the World (Mazower) Government Accountability Office GPS Grantham, Jeremy Great Acceleration; see also age of accelerations Great Barrier Reef Great Britain; EU exit of Great Depression “Great Green Wall” Great Recession of 2008 Greece “Green Corps” Greenland, ice sheets of Grinstein, Gidi Gross, Susan GSM (Global System for Mobile) Guardian Guatemala gun reform Hadoop Hagel, John, III Hagstrom, Jane Pratt Haick, Hossam Haidt, Jonathan Haigazian University Hang, MayKao Y.

The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest
by Edward Chancellor
Published 15 Aug 2022

But this fortune, like Holmes’s invention, was fake. Theranos bled investors of more than $1 billion before going bankrupt – a unicorn-sized loss.36 Other unicorns engaged in ‘narrative construction’. Uber didn’t see itself for what it was – an online cab-hailing business – but as an integral part of the new ‘gig economy’, whose software platform could be leveraged to enter myriad other business lines. Uber planned flying taxis and self-driving cars, which, by removing pesky driver costs, would put it on a path to eventual profitability. Founded in 2010, over the following years Uber raised $20 billion from investors.

…

Scott, 203 Florence, 21–3 ‘Fordism’, 89 Fordyce, Alexander, 63 foreign exchanges, xxv; currencies pegged to the dollar, 251, 252, 253; dollar as global reserve currency, xxiii, 118, 239, 251–2, 253, 261, 262–3, 267; French currency during Mississippi bubble, 56–7; growth of reserves, 252, 253, 254–5, 256; international bills of exchange, 24; Louvre Accord (1987), 105–6; printing of money to acquire reserves, 137, 252; Shanghai Accord (2016), 241, 241*; undervalued Chinese yuan, 267–8, 270, 271 Forest Service, US, 154–5 France: 1848 Revolution, xix; allocation of capital in Bretton Woods era, 291; French Louisiana, 50, 52; Law and depreciated government debt, 48, 50, 51–2, 59, 65, 69; Law and paper money, xxii, 47, 52, 55–8; Law as Finance Minister, 46, 57; Law establishes General Bank (1716), 49–50; Law’s Mississippi Company, 46, 50–61, 65, 68, 172–3, 178, 202–3, 273, 286, 298, 308; Les Trente Glorieuses, 302; and long-term bonds, 225; Palais Mazarin, Paris, 54, 54*; rentier term, 7; Revolutionary/Napoleonic Wars, 41–2, 69–70; Royal Bank, 50, 52, 53, 57, 58; war with England (1690s), 38 Francis, Pope, 201, 213 Franklin, Benjamin, Advice to a Young Tradesman (1748), xviii, 22, 28, 190 fraud, 64, 80, 149 free market economics, 95–6, 295–6 Freud, Lucien, 208 Frick, Henry, 157–8 Fridson, Martin, 146 Friedman, Milton, 98, 99, 101, 131 Fugger, Jakob, 202 Fullarton, John, 67–8, 71, 75 Gage, Lyman, 83, 311 Galai, Dan, 228–9 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 287 Galiani, Ferdinando, 218–19, 220, 221, 222, 233 GameStop (retailer), 307 Garber, Peter, 60 Gehringer, Agnieszka, 134–5 Geithner, Tim, 76 General Electric, 156, 157, 159, 170–71 General Motors, 90, 166–7 General Strike (UK, 1926), 86 Genoa, 22, 23, 35, 47–8, 49 George, Henry, 243, 246, 260* Gergy, Jacques Vincent, Count of, 60 Germany, 7, 159, 225, 291, 299; economy in 1920s, 82, 91, 92, 93; and Eurozone crisis, 144–5; negative interest rates in, 192–3, 245; Wirtschaftswunder, 302 Gesell, Silvio, 242–3, 246, 294 ‘gig economy’, 149 Gladstone, William, 40, 72, 76* Glahn, Richard von, 265* Glass–Steagall Act, 232 Global Asset Management, 228, 228* globalization: feedback loop with interest rates, 260–61, 311; first wave of (from 1860s), 260, 311; global aspect of inflation, 122; and great bubbles of history, 263; political backlash against in West, 261; recent phase (from 1980), 260–61, 311 Goetzmann, William, 8†, 14, 60, 247 Gold Exchange Standard, 11, 85, 85*, 86, 87, 90*, 261 Gold Standard, 43, 82, 84–5, 85*, 86, 98, 99, 133, 251 Goldman Sachs, 175, 255, 258 Goodhart, Charles, 105, 121, 127, 246 Gopinath, Gita, 144 Gordon, Robert, 128 Goschen, George, 77, 78–9 Goschen conversion (1888), 65*, 79 Graham, Benjamin, 90–91 Grant, Albert, 73 Grant, James, 82, 118, 141, 148, 191, 194, 230–31, 297; on Fed’s dual mandate, 155; on negative-yielding bonds, 226; on radical monetary gimmicks, 242; on regulation, 232; The Forgotten Depression, 100 Grantham, Jeremy, 183 Great Depression, 98–101, 98*, 105, 108, 125–6, 129, 142–3, 299 see also Wall Street Crash (October 1929) Great Fire of London (1666), 33 the ‘Great Moderation’, 112 Great Recession, 146, 152–3, 181–2, 206–17, 221–4; and secular stagnation argument, 124–5, 126–8, 131; slow recovery in developed world, 124–5, 126–9, 131–2, 150–53, 298–9, 304; and support for democracy, 299 see also financial crisis (2008) Greece, 144–5, 147, 148*, 253, 262, 293; ancient/classical, 6, 9, 10–11, 11*, 13, 13, 17–18, 18†, 20, 200, 200*, 219 Green, Sir Philip, 197 Greensill, Lex, 228* Greenspan, Alan, 110, 132, 226; Fed’s focus on near-term inflation, 110–14; interest rates under, 110–15, 117, 134–5, 134*, 162, 186, 190–91, 204, 226–7, 238, 252–3, 267 Gresham’s Law, 145–6, 224 Griffin, Ken, 209 Gross, Bill, 217, 221, 235, 236, 246 Grotius, Hugo, 40 Guinness (Irish brewer), 79 Gundlach, Jeffrey, 246 Gupta, Sanjeev, 228* H2O (investment company), 228 Hadley, Arthur, 140, 157 Haldane, Andrew, 168, 232, 233, 311 Hamilton, Earl J., 48, 58, 58* Hammurabi’s Code, 9 Hanauer, Nick, 217 Hankey, Thomson, Principles of Banking, 75–6 Hansen, Alvin, 124–5, 126, 127, 128, 129 Harding, William, 84 Harman, Jeremiah, 66 Harriman, Edward H., 157, 158 Hartnett, Michael, 200 Hawtrey, Ralph, 87 Hayek, Friedrich: and concept of time, 32, 95; critique of monetary policy in 1920s, 92, 96, 96*, 101, 105, 108, 114, 133; and deflation/inflation, 100, 101, 105, 113, 133–4, 302; and inequality, 296, 299; interpretation of 1929 Crash, 101, 105; on money, 294, 295, 297*, 312; and ‘natural rate’ of interest, 32, 96, 96*, 133, 269; rejects price stabilization policy, 92, 96, 96*, 108, 133; view of intellectuals, 297, 302–3; view of interest, 297–8, 301; The Denationalisation of Money (1990), 297*; Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle (1929), 96; ‘The Pretence of Knowledge’ (Nobel prize lecture), 302–3; The Road to Serfdom (1944), 295–6, 298, 302 Haywood, Tim, 228* Hazlitt, Henry, Economics in One Lesson (1946), xx hedge funds, 166, 169–70, 183, 207, 209, 229, 304 Heinz, H.

The Unbanking of America: How the New Middle Class Survives
by Lisa Servon
Published 10 Jan 2017

I never plan on getting married. I never want to buy another house. I’m buying my next car with cash. So yeah, my parents had the American Dream. Good for them. Never going to be for me, and I don’t want it anymore.” This generation dreams more modest dreams: paying off debt, obtaining financial stability, rising above the “gig economy” to find a job they enjoy and has some meaning for them. Their financial fears make it difficult—or painful—to look too far into the future. As Marisa, who was about to graduate with a master’s degree in urban policy, put it, “I think at this point, looking forward to the next few years, it’s less about being successful than can I even get out of this hole and get on an even foundation, to then maybe have some type of substantial savings?

Shadow Work: The Unpaid, Unseen Jobs That Fill Your Day
by Craig Lambert
Published 30 Apr 2015

Shadow Work: The Unpaid, Unseen Jobs That Fill Your Day Craig Lambert Counterpoint (2015) * * * PRAISE FOR SHADOW WORK “Where have all the sales clerks/bank tellers/travel agents gone? Long time passing, along with the secretaries, waitstaff, ticket agents, and so many more. Those jobs still exist, but now you, the so-called customer, are doing them—without pay, of course, and on your own time. As Craig Lambert shows in this mordant, mischievous book, our no-service gig economy gives new meaning to the phrase ‘free market.’” —HENDRIK HERTZBERG, STAFF WRITER, THE NEW YORKER “Increasingly, time is our scarcest resource. Craig Lambert’s important book will change how you think about your days. Shadow work is a new and vitally important concept for understanding the new economy.

Work Optional: Retire Early the Non-Penny-Pinching Way
by Tanja Hester
Published 12 Feb 2019

Make a point of maintaining at least one marketable skill that you could put to use if need be, even if it’s in a very part-time capacity, and keep an eye on general trends affecting the industry that your skills fit into. The hope is that you’ll never need to put this backup plan into action, but if you do, you’ll feel so much better knowing where to begin rather than flailing because you feel lost about how to jump back into the job market or gig economy. Two final backup sources of capital that aren’t ideal to tap but you should still keep in mind are funds in Roth accounts and expected Social Security payments. Remember that contributions to your Roth account may be withdrawn penalty-free at any time, and that Roth conversion contributions may be withdrawn without penalty after the five-year waiting period has elapsed.

How Boards Work: And How They Can Work Better in a Chaotic World
by Dambisa Moyo
Published 3 May 2021

In the report 21 More Jobs of the Future: A Guide to Getting—and Staying—Employed Through 2029, Cognizant suggested a range of new roles—from cyberattack agent to virtual identity defender and machine risk officer—that could become common in the workplace of the future. This is unfolding alongside a number of other employment trends that corporate boards should be attuned to, including the development of the information gig economy, the trend of working beyond traditional retirement age, and changes in workplace behavior and dress. Securing top talent is becoming tougher in part because of greater competition for fewer high-quality candidates and rising barriers to immigration. But, perhaps more crucially, it is also becoming harder at precisely the moment when the knowledge economy is taking off.

Death Glitch: How Techno-Solutionism Fails Us in This Life and Beyond
by Tamara Kneese
Published 14 Aug 2023

New startup companies hope to revive the declining life insurance industry by appealing to younger generations, calculating premiums based on Apple Watch tracking or other habitual metrics.22 What’s more, standard legal wills do not account for the digital possessions people accumulate over a lifetime, so transferring these items is tricky. The generation typically referred to as millennials in the United States has been the subject of books about the failures of the American dream, how student debt, skyrocketing housing costs, the Great Recession, and the rise of the gig economy have all conspired to withhold home ownership and middle-class comforts from a generation.23 Of course, there are many groups for whom the American dream was already foreclosed, as documented by marginalized communities swindled by the promise of home ownership or higher education through subprime mortgages, redlining, unfair lending practices, and corrupt institutions.24 But even if they do not own many tangible assets, many people have digital possessions they care deeply about.

Two and Twenty: How the Masters of Private Equity Always Win
by Sachin Khajuria
Published 13 Jun 2022

What this means in practice is that being a master of private equity means being drawn to complexity. Even embracing this simple trait is itself contrarian. Nowadays, most people want an app to simplify life, to make easier decisions, to “hack” their lives to save time to boost their productivity and for fun personal pursuits. We actively shun complexity. We like simplicity. We like the gig economy, to share and to spread the effort and cost involved in many of the things that we do. Perhaps we have lost investigative skills, and the notion of what is too much effort has shifted backward. Maybe we love quick fixes; some of us expect instant gratification. Private equity folks run hard against this grain—because solving complex problems often yields better investment results.

Migrant City: A New History of London
by Panikos Panayi
Published 4 Feb 2020

Others fell on hard times and had to undertake work which did not initially attract them, as examples from the Victorian period illustrate. The nineteenth century also provides an illustration of the role of sojourners in the form of the countless foreign sailors who became part of London life. In the twenty-first century migrants have become increasingly important because of deregulation and the emergence of the ‘gig economy’, with some of those working in sectors such as cleaning lacking legal status. Black slaves, the Victorian underclass, foreign sailors and the twenty-first-century deregulated migrants all have in common the fact that they remain outside mainstream London employment without regular pay, while also playing a central part in driving the metropolitan economy.

…

Also like their Jewish predecessors, in a situation which also applies to other ethnic groups in London, including Greek Cypriots, Indians and Pakistanis, homeworkers also worked for their countrymen who started up small businesses and could save on labour (by paying a cheaper rate, usually by piece) and factory costs by sending work out to the homeworkers. At the same time employers and employees often avoided paying income tax and VAT partly by making homeworkers self-employed, in anticipation of the practice which multinationals would utilize in the ‘gig economy’ of the twenty-first century. In this situation clothing production could continue despite the international competition from imported goods which decimated much of London’s manufacturing industry.127 Bangladeshi men also worked in this trade so that by the 1970s they provided the largest percentage of males in the clothing industry and also accounted for 20 per cent of jobs in Tower Hamlets where Bangladeshis were concentrated.128 While women have unquestionably faced exploitation in the London rag trade, they often chose to work at home rather than in a factory environment for a variety of reasons: these included, for Bangladeshis, the Islamic need to separate men from women; the lack of command of the English language; and, perhaps most importantly, working at home allowed women to earn a living as well as carrying out their domestic responsibilities of child rearing, cooking and cleaning.129 While a significant percentage of Bangladeshi women chose to work at home in the rag trade, this offers just one example of South Asian manufacturing employment in London.

The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream
by Tyler Cowen
Published 27 Feb 2017

If people are less likely to change jobs, they are also, for obvious reasons, less likely to move. And if we look at job reallocation rates—a rough measure of turnover in the labor market—they have fallen more than a quarter since 1990.12 Among the most written-about job phenomena these days is that of the flexible gig economy, as reflected in individuals who work as Uber drivers, for example. That is indeed a significant change in transportation for many of us, but it is not the major trend in the labor market as a whole. Nor has globalization turned all jobs into temporary or transient posts. The data show that job transitions are down and individuals are more likely to spend a long time with a single employer than ever before.

The Internet Is Not the Answer
by Andrew Keen
Published 5 Jan 2015

Harris, “The Airbnb Economy in New York: Lucrative but Often Unlawful,” New York Times, November 4, 2013. 16 Alexia Tsotsis, “TaskRabbit Gets $13M from Founders Fund and Others to ‘Revolutionize the World’s Labor Force,’” TechCrunch, July 23, 2012. 17 Brad Stone, “My Life as a TaskRabbit,” Bloomberg Businessweek, September 13, 2012. 18 Sarah Jaffe, “Silicon Valley’s Gig Economy Is Not the Future of Work—It’s Driving Down Wages,” Guardian, July 23, 2014. 19 Guy Standing, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (Bloomsbury Academic, 2001). 20 Natasha Singer, “In the Sharing Economy, Workers Find Both Freedom and Uncertainty,” New York Times, August 16, 2014. 21 George Packer, “Change the World,” New Yorker, May 27, 2013, newyorker.com/reporting/2013/05/27/130527fa_fact_packer.

Covid-19: The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened and How to Stop the Next One
by Debora MacKenzie
Published 13 Jul 2020

Meanwhile, individuals should not have to choose between spreading a pandemic and feeding their families. Even before this pandemic, a research found that paid sick leave, so employees do not engage in “presenteeism”—going to work sick—ultimately saves companies money. In the Covid-19 pandemic, it saved lives. Guaranteeing that right for working people even in the gig economy is possible, says the UN’s International Labour Organization, and would increase resilience to infectious disease in places where it is not already an unquestioned labor standard. Of course, all these ideas—pandemic stockpiles, global surveillance, flu vaccine, sick leave—cost money. But put it in context.

Nine Crises: Fifty Years of Covering the British Economy From Devaluation to Brexit
by William Keegan
Published 24 Jan 2019

The fashionable Keynesian weapon for fighting inflation in the 1960s had been incomes policies – that is, government attempts to control wage inflation either by appealing to the trade unions for ‘voluntary restraint’ in wage bargaining or, from time to time, by statutory controls. This must seem odd to a younger readership, in an age of the gig economy, where so many people feel lucky to have a job at all, and the thought of an annual round of wage bargaining sounds quaint, but in those days most employees belonged to trade unions, who bargained regularly – usually annually – on their behalf. The unions were a power in the land and gradually sowed the seeds for a reaction, as they overplayed their hand, becoming too powerful.

A Pelican Introduction: Basic Income
by Guy Standing
Published 3 May 2017

If he subsequently married her, and she continued to do precisely the same activities, national income and growth went down, employment fell and unemployment rose. This is absurd (and sexist). The absurdity continues today. A parent who looks after their own child is doing just as much ‘work’ as someone who is paid to look after the child of another (and is probably more ‘productive’ as well). And the growing ‘gig’ economy offers many more examples of activities that are treated differently depending on whether they are paid. For instance, dog-owners can use an app, BorrowMyDoggy, to hire someone to walk their dog or to ‘dog-sit’. For statistical purposes, a recreational pursuit, dog walking, becomes ‘work’, walking someone else’s dog.

The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality
by Bhaskar Sunkara
Published 1 Feb 2019

This is perfectly rational in conditions of reduced profitability or high uncertainty. 6. Vivek Chibber, “Why Do Socialists Talk So Much About Workers?” The ABCs of Socialism, edited by Bhaskar Sunkara (London: Verso, 2016). 7. Kim Moody, “The State of American Labor,” Jacobin, June 20, 2016, jacobinmag.com/2016/06/precariat-labor-us-workers-uber-walmart-gig-economy. 8. See Eric Blanc’s writing in Jacobin, including: “The Lessons of West Virginia,” March 9, 2018; “Red Oklahoma,” April 13, 2018; “Arizona Versus the Privatizers,” April 30, 2018; “Betting on the Working Class,” May 29, 2018. 9. Eric Blanc and Jane McAlevy, “A Strategy to Win,” Jacobin, April 18, 2018, jacobinmag.com/2018/04/teachers-strikes-rank-and-file-union-socialists. 10.

Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World
by Meredith Broussard
Published 19 Apr 2018

We now have computational social science, computational biology, computational chemistry, or digital humanities; visual artists use languages like Processing to create multimedia art; 3-D printing allows sculptors to push further into physical possibilities with art. It’s thrilling to consider the progress that has been made. However, as life has become more computational, people haven’t changed. Just because we have open government data doesn’t mean we don’t have corruption. The tech-facilitated gig economy has exactly the same problems as labor markets have had since the beginning of the industrial age. Traditionally, journalists have investigated these types of social problems to create positive social change. In the computational world, the practice of investigative journalism has had to go high tech.

Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley
by Corey Pein
Published 23 Apr 2018

Obama, smitten with his Silicon Valley donors, gave us “Startup America.” And Donald Trump, history’s luckiest winner, reigned over a nation of “losers.” Under the latest iteration of the American Dream, if you aren’t a billionaire yet, you haven’t tried hard enough. * * * There was no place more appropriate to begin my conquest of the new gig economy than in the proverbial basement—from there, after all, I had nowhere to go but up. The contemporary equivalent of an entry-level job in the corporate mailroom was a work-from-home service called Mechanical Turk, operated by Amazon, the $136 billion online retailer controlled by Jeff Bezos. The idea with Mechanical Turk was to create a digitized assembly line featuring thousands of discrete “Human Intelligence Tasks,” designed to be completed within seconds and commensurately paying pennies.

Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World
by Fareed Zakaria
Published 5 Oct 2020

That’s one vison of our automated, digital future—one in which the center more or less holds. Patterns of life are readjusted but not destroyed. You see early examples of this possible world in the Finnish prime minister’s call for a four-day workweek consisting of six-hour days. You see it in the flexible jobs that characterize the gig economy, such as driving for Uber or DoorDash, where workers can choose their own hours. You see it in the ever-greater number of hours people spend in the office futzing around on social media. And you see it in the rise of what the anthropologist David Graeber colorfully calls “bullshit jobs.” He describes several types, including “box tickers,” who generate lots of paperwork to suggest that things are happening when things aren’t, and “taskmasters,” who manage people who don’t need management.

Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves From the American Dream
by Alissa Quart
Published 14 Mar 2023

B., 185–86 Dubal, Veena, 144 Duckworth, Angela, 95 Duggan, Lisa, 46–50, 241n Durkheim, Émile, 235n Dutchevici, Silvia, 196–98 Dyer, Geoff, 24 Economic Hardship Reporting Project, vii, 220 Ehrenreich, Barbara, 57, 98 elderly, xi, 10, 123, 129, 137, 168–69, 229 Eliasoph, Nina, 209, 259n Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 13–24, 26, 261n The Emerson Effect (Newfield), 19–20 employment instability, xi, 126, 132, 144, 181 See also unemployment enslavement, 19, 33, 83–84, 124, 185–86, 239n entrepreneurship, 8, 14–15, 46, 58, 61, 138, 242n essential workers, 95, 106, 120, 125, 138–39, 147–48, 167 every-man-for-himself ideology, 189 exploitation, 31, 62–63, 93–95, 141–42, 159, 181–82 failure, 4, 73, 96, 107, 128, 180, 197–98, 238n Born Losers: A History of Failure in America, 238n fairness, 65–67, 134–37, 139–40, 149, 158 United for a Fair Economy, 57 faith, in the American dream, x, 62, 69, 81, 128, 261n in the collective, 9–12, 22, 95, 159, 171, 215, 225 farmers, 8, 25, 31, 59, 71–78, 84, 186–88, 236n, 258n National Young Farmers Coalition, 223, 261n suicides, 245n See also Wilder, Laura Ingalls Faulkner, William, 54 fear, 74, 79–80, 99, 146, 157, 197, 215, 221 Federal Reserve, 47 feminism, 61–64, 124, 127–28, 131, 230, 253n Hood Feminism (Kendall), 188 The Fictional Republic: Horatio Alger and American Political Discourse (Nackenoff), 240n Fight for $15, 134 financial anxiety, ix, 125–26, 153–54, 207, 218, 224 financial instability, vii, xi, 7, 22, 140–43, 195–96 Folbre, Nancy, 134 Forbes, 6, 57–58, 138, 148, 243n, 247n Forbes, David, 97 Forman, Erik, 182 Fortune 500, 156 The Fountainhead (Rand), 45, 49, 241n Fraad, Harriet, 196 Franklin, Benjamin, 28, 43 Fraser, Caroline, 33, 240n Fraser, Nancy, 15, 124, 237n Frederick Douglass: Self-Made Man (Sandefur), 83–84 Freedom of Information Act, 47 Freeman, Solomon, 41 Friedman, Marilyn, 230, 261n frontier, 30, 36, 240n Fuller, Margaret, 17 Gardner, Ralph, 41, 240n Gelles, David, 87, 247n Gelman, Audrey, 61–64 gender inequity, 4, 11, 22, 69, 123, 126, 145, 172, 252n George, Carol V. R., 75 Gerson, Kathleen, 132 Ghate, Onkar, 48 Ghilarducci, Teresa, 133 G.I. Bill, 44 gig economy, 10, 22, 138–43, 145–50, 179, 253n Gig Workers Collective, 141 Giridharadas, Anand, 155, 254n Girl, Wash Your Face (Hollis), 61–63 girlbosses, ix, 61–64, 128, 243n The Girlboss Workbook, 62 See also Lean In (Sandberg), 46, 61, 127–28, 245 Girls Who Code, 131 Giroux, Henry, 215 Giving Tuesdays, 56 glamour, 54, 141–42, 162, 210 Glantz, Kalman, 198, 259n GlaxoSmithKline, 88 Go Fund Me, 8, 103–15, 250–51n Gonsalves, Gregg, 59, 243n Google, 88, 92, 166, 168–69 Gordon, Linda, 15, 124, 237n Gornick, Vivian, 187, 261n Gould, Stephen Jay, 173 government assistance, viii, 177, 224 administrative burden of, 108–11, 114, 209, 224 government role, 8, 33–35, 83, 180, 231, 240n, 253n American Rescue Plan, 219–20 in bootstrap ideology, viii, 19, 28, 47–48, 59–60, 73–78 and charity organizations (as Band-Aid), 105–7, 125 local government, 210–15 and Marshall Plan for Moms, 131–33 in nonprofits, 184, 206–15 in Stimulus Bill, 132–35 in tax reform policy, 158–60 and volunteerism (as Band-Aid), 207–10 Graeber, David, 174, 257n Great Depression, 8, 44, 75 Great Jobs report (2019), 88 Great Men theory, 16, 22–23, 188 greed, 91, 158, 241n Greenspan, Alan, 47 “grit,” 95–96, 144, 193, 198, 202, 219, 249n See also“pluck” Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (Duckworth), 95 Hanauer, Nick, 160–61, 255n Harvard Business Review, 87, 94, 123, 180, 249n, 252n Hawley, Josh, 7 Heller, Anne Conover, 48, 241n Herd, Pamela, 108–9 Hollis, Rachel, 61–64 Holmes, Elizabeth, 243n homelessness, vii, 43, 105, 109, 214, 224, 241n, 251n COVID-19 and, 205–7 homeownership, 153–56, 247n homesteading, 27–29, 36–37 Homestead Act, 8, 32–35, 239n Hood Feminism (Kendall), 188 Hoover, Herbert, 27–28, 238n Horatio Alger, Or the American Hero Era (Gardner), 240n Horatio Alger and the Closeting of the Self-Made Man (Martel), 42 housing, 8, 28, 105, 109, 169, 212–13, 224 Federal Housing Administration, 75 “How Much (More) Should CEOs Make?

Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller
by Alec Nevala-Lee
Published 1 Aug 2022

After CHARAS outgrew its dome, it turned an abandoned school in New York into an arts and community center. Two decades later, the administration of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani auctioned it off, and the activists were evicted by police. The site remains vacant to this day. These externalities become more obvious at times of crisis. The rise of the sharing, or gig, economy allowed companies to operate using minimal infrastructure and a workforce of contractors, which was close to Fuller’s ideal, but it also diminished protections for employees, and a lack of meaningful regulation ensured that its price was extracted from the most vulnerable. Millennials ephemeralized against their will, with rent replacing ownership and housing costs contributing to a fall in mobility.

…

See also individual domes attempt to patent, 254–255 Bauersfeld and, 244 discovery of, 10 hacking and, 11 number of, 14 origins of, 222–226 patent for, 271 geodesic lines, 176–177 Geodesic Math and How to Use It (Kenner), 581n391 geodesic cotton mill, 256 Geodesics Inc., 272–273, 275, 278 Geometrics Inc., 278, 318, 355 George Washington, USS, 68–69 Geoscope, 308, 315, 320, 328, 364, 391, 472 Gershwin, George, 121 Giacometti, Alberto, 362 gig economy, 473 Gigundo Dome, 438 Gila River Indian Reservation, 257 Gillette, King C., 511n122 Gillette Corporation, 511n122 Gillis, Bob, 408, 411 Gillmor, Reginald E., 172, 236 Gilmour, Léonie, 119 Giuliani, Rudolph, 473 Gladstone, Gerald, 354 Gleaves, Albert, 67, 69–70, 72 Glenn L. Martin aircraft company, 171 Glimpses of the U.S.A., 301 global dwelling service, 425 global energy network, 434 Global Energy Network Institute, 605n468 Godspell (Schwartz), 386 Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects, 375 Goldberg, Bertrand, 227 Goldberger, Paul, 448 Goldgar, Mike, 213, 220, 221 Goldowski, Natasha, 229, 238, 242 Goldsmith, Myron, 244 Gonzalez, Angelo, Jr, 373 Gordon, David Cole, 405 Gore, Al, 469 Gorky, Arshile, 170 Graf Zeppelin, 145 Graham, Billy, 443 Graham, Martha, 119, 121, 180, 412–413 Graham, Paul, 12 Graham, William, 209, 215 Graham Foundation, 367 Grand Central Palace exhibition hall, 84, 136, 148–149, 403 Grand Central Station, 80 Graver Tank, 293–294 Great Depression, 120, 139 Great Gatsby, The (Fitzgerald), 85 “Great Lawsuit, The” (M.

Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity
by Douglas Rushkoff
Published 1 Mar 2016

It’s not even stressed-out employees against the companies they work for or the unemployed against Wall Street so much as everyone—humanity itself—against a program that promotes growth above all else. We are caught in a growth trap. This is the problem with no name or face, the frustration so many feel. It is the logic driving the jobless recovery, the low-wage gig economy, the ruthlessness of Uber, and the privacy invasions of Facebook. It is the mechanism that undermines both businesses and investors, forcing them to compete against players with digitally inflated poker chips. It’s the pressure rendering CEOs powerless to prioritize the sustainability of their enterprises over the interests of impatient shareholders.

The Age of Stagnation: Why Perpetual Growth Is Unattainable and the Global Economy Is in Peril
by Satyajit Das
Published 9 Feb 2016

When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for the Jews, I remained silent; I wasn't a Jew. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.” 7 Technology and innovation are touted as sources of future employment. The sharing economy (also known as the peer economy, collaborative economy, and gig economy) is based on the ubiquitous Internet, improved broadband connectivity, smartphones, and apps. Individuals with spare time, houses, rooms, cars, and the like can use them as sources of work and income. The economy that benefits everyone focuses on transport (Uber, Lyft, Sidecar, GetTaxi, Hailo), short-term accommodation (Airbnb, HomeAway), small tasks (TaskRabbit, Fiverr), grocery-shopping services (Instacart), home-cooked meals (Feastly), on-demand delivery services (Postmates, Favor), pet transport (DogVacay, Rover), car rental (RelayRides, Getaround), boat rental (Boatbound), and tool rental (Zilok).

The Lost Decade: 2010–2020, and What Lies Ahead for Britain
by Polly Toynbee and David Walker
Published 3 Mar 2020

In what the Resolution Foundation called ‘the Wild West’, conditions were pitiless: staff were not paid for travel time and given no work despite turning up. Theresa May, in her brief ‘red Tory’ phase, asked Tony Blair’s former adviser Matthew Taylor to investigate. He found that most workers were still directly employed on permanent contracts. In the gig economy there were possibly 900,000 agency workers, with only about three out of every hundred workers on zero-hours contracts. Taylor’s recommendations for (mild) re-regulation of the labour markets sits on the shelf. Bank Crash and After The welfare of one group of workers, bankers, never ceased to be an official priority.

Nothing but Net: 10 Timeless Stock-Picking Lessons From One of Wall Street’s Top Tech Analysts
by Mark Mahaney
Published 9 Nov 2021

But cloud computing did become a widely reported-upon trend in the years after AWS was launched, and all an investor had to do was realize that this could be a material opportunity and that it was being led by a company initially famous for selling books online and conclude that Amazon was an innovative company. The cost of doing due diligence on Netflix’s streaming innovation? $7.99. Some of the most interesting product innovation going on today is consumer-driven—think of gig economy companies like Airbnb, DoorDash, Lyft, and Uber that barely existed 10 years ago. You’re a consumer. You can try out the services, and if you find one you really love, it could be the making of a great stock idea. Finally, when you see one company’s innovations aggressively copied by others (Snap’s features copied by Facebook), chances are that first company is a legitimate innovator.

Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes: Essays
by Phoebe Robinson
Published 14 Oct 2021

Littering has been proven to have disastrous effects, as researchers estimate that more than 40 percent of the world’s litter is simply burned in open air, which releases toxic emissions, yet every day in New York City, I see people toss paper, plastic, and cardboard on the ground as though they’re about to have a romantic evening with Oscar the Grouch and the garbage is the equivalent of a rose petal trail that will lead to a heart-shaped hot tub. Many folks refuse to respect the humanity of the LGBTQIA+ community and to agree that they should have the same rights as cis, straight people. We overlook the harmful effects of the “gig” economy and instead promote the narrative that people having to work around the clock in order to make it demonstrates an “excellent work ethic.” We allow abusers and sexual predators to go unpunished if what they provide culturally—music, art, athletic achievement, technological advancements—is deemed worthy.

Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life
by Rory Sutherland
Published 6 May 2019

At first glance this seems logical – the more people save, the better – but it doesn’t create a sense that people are missing out if they fail to reach their allowance. It may seem crazy to say that, ‘If you want people to save more, allow them to save less’, but this is the sort of counterintuitive solution that often appears in psychological alchemy.* Make pension contributions flexible. In the modern-day gig economy, where wages may not be constant, it would not be difficult for contributors to be sent a text every month asking if they wished to a) maintain their normal payment, b) increase it, or c) take a break from payments. Slightly decrease with age the size of the tax rebate offered, in order to give a clear incentive for people to start saving sooner.

Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI
by John Brockman
Published 19 Feb 2019

.”* While jobs that produce essentials like food, shelter, and goods have been largely automated away, we have seen an enormous expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health administration (as opposed to actual teaching, research, and the practice of medicine), “human resources,” and public relations, not to mention new industries like financial services and telemarketing and ancillary industries in the so-called gig economy that serve those who are too busy doing all that additional work. How will societies cope with technology’s increasingly rapid destruction of entire professions and throwing large numbers of people out of work? Some argue that this concern is based on a false premise, because new jobs spring up that didn’t exist before, but as Graeber points out, these new jobs won’t necessarily be rewarding or fulfilling.

Sunbelt Blues: The Failure of American Housing
by Andrew Ross
Published 25 Oct 2021

And for many “starter” households who had expected to enter the housing marketplace over the next decade, the pandemic recession may have deprived them of the income to do so.7 Despite low mortgage rates, they are likely to join the Generation Rent millennials blocked from homeownership by crushing student debt burdens and the precarious character of the gig economy. Just as long-term job security has disappeared for most American workers, the opportunity to stabilize a family life through homeownership will become a thing of the past for large sectors of the population. The pandemic exposed many long-standing deficiencies in the quality of American life.

Modern Monopolies: What It Takes to Dominate the 21st Century Economy
by Alex Moazed and Nicholas L. Johnson
Published 30 May 2016

For example, if the leading services marketplaces lose their worker classification lawsuits, the less favorable unit economics of using W-2 workers may drive many of these marketplaces out of business in the United States. Even dominant platform companies, such as Airbnb and Uber, could lose value very quickly if they don’t win their legal fights. Finally, a quick word on the challenges of workers in the 1099 economy or the gig economy, as it’s variously been called. The broader implications of this new model of flexible work are largely beyond the scope of this book. Many good books have and will be written on this topic alone. Further, these specific challenges around worker classification are primarily relevant only to one platform type—services marketplaces—which are only a part of the broader growth of platform businesses that we’ve described in this book.

The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics
by David Goodhart
Published 7 Jan 2017

And it has the most ‘hollowed out’ economy of any region—between 2008 and 2016 the number of people in professional and managerial jobs rose 19 per cent and the number in low-skill positions rose a similar 17 per cent. The number of middling jobs rose just 6.5 per cent. Thanks to high housing costs in London, low value-added activities that can move do move, and a disproportionate number of Londoners seem to work in the ‘gig economy’ via platforms like Uber. Many of these factors have been exacerbated in the past twenty years by exceptionally high levels of immigration, both at the top and bottom of the labour market. At the top end a global ‘war for talent’ ideology takes for granted that London’s top institutions must be able to attract whomever in the world they want.

Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy
by Andrew Yang
Published 15 Nov 2021

I proposed a “race for 1,000,000 jobs” that would fund companies and organizations that were investing in upskilling and apprenticeships as well as a massive expansion of vocational and technical education. I envisioned a “Future Corps” to help young people start their careers in green jobs, infrastructure, elder and adult care, forest care, helping veterans, government, and public service. We need to modernize our labor statistics to include the gig economy, caregiving, and underemployment. Benefits should be portable and accompany workers from job to job, and workers should have any move for work subsidized. We should encourage some companies to pilot a four-day workweek. I had a lot of ideas. One of the interviewers asked me, “You’ve got a high public profile.

Reset: How to Restart Your Life and Get F.U. Money: The Unconventional Early Retirement Plan for Midlife Careerists Who Want to Be Happy
by David Sawyer
Published 17 Aug 2018

As Jacob Lund Fisker writes in Early Retirement Extreme: “Many people, particularly young people, are starting to realize that the pursuit of happiness isn’t found through the pursuit of accumulating things. They don’t drop out, they opt out and forge their own path, starting up Internet companies, traveling the world, and retiring early from the rat race so they can spend their lives living rather than just buying stuff. Which do you prefer[42]?” It’s flexible working, the gig economy, going freelance, contracting, becoming an entrepreneur: the portfolio lifestyle. Whatever you want to call it, it’s over here, right now. Another way of living always exists. You – only you – just have to find and design it. And finally... What is it you want? What were you deposited on this earth to do?

Mine!: How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control Our Lives
by Michael A. Heller and James Salzman
Published 2 Mar 2021

And more often than not, people don’t want either the drill or the hole. They want the curtains hung and the IKEA dresser assembled. TaskRabbit figured out it could provide that useful combination, sending you both the drill and the person who would finish the project. There’s no shortage of names for these new markets—“collaborative consumption,” the “gig economy,” the “peer economy.” There has been no end of breathless predictions for where it will lead: “A startling number of young people, it turns out, have begun to question one of the central tenets of American culture: ownership.” And at least in theory, it’s a promising development. We don’t need full ownership to satisfy our wants and needs.

Hype: How Scammers, Grifters, and Con Artists Are Taking Over the Internet―and Why We're Following
by Gabrielle Bluestone
Published 5 Apr 2021

Yes, the #spon life can be lucrative, but I think there’s something more to it. When you’re an influencer, personal and public successes are one and the same. Every like is a dollar, and every dollar is an ecstatic tithing. It was perhaps the inevitable outcome of the same landscape and thought process that led to the explosion of the gig economy, the notion that people would eventually begin selling themselves as a brand. Cavazos likened the effect as “almost like a Willy Loman thing.” “I think they view themselves as the product,” Cavazos said. “And so instead of saying, ‘Oh, well look, I’m Roberto, I’m selling Toyotas,’ instead they’re saying, ‘I’m selling me, I’m selling me, and my judgments, and then people will buy my judgment and buy this Toyota Camry or buy Dr.

The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty
by Benjamin H. Bratton
Published 19 Feb 2016

Hansen, Emergence and Embodiment: New Essays on Second-Order Systems Theory (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009). 77.  Peter Watts, Beyond the Rift (San Francisco: Tachyon Publications, 2013), 9. 78.  James Bridle, “Do You Know This Person?” Render Search, http://render-search.com/. 79.  Sarah Jaffe, “Silicon Valley's Gig Economy Is Not the Future of Work—It's Driving Down Wages,” Guardian, July 23, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/23/gig-economy-silicon-valley-taskrabbit-workers. 80.  When I was a youngster, my dislike for the Canadian rock band Rush was confirmed by the song “Red Barchetta,” about a guy who drives around in his muscle car in defiance of climate and pollution laws.

Rage Inside the Machine: The Prejudice of Algorithms, and How to Stop the Internet Making Bigots of Us All
by Robert Elliott Smith
Published 26 Jun 2019

By 2011 there were a reported 500,000 Turkers located in 190 different countries and as The Atlantic reported in 2018 most of these workers are isolated and living in areas where traditional employment has dried up.6 Employed as contractors, Turkers have no labour protections and aren’t subject to minimum wage laws. Turkers are the poorly paid backstop for algorithmic imperfections, in much the same way workers in the early industrial era were paid poorly to service machines. Throughout the new ‘gig’ economy, there are people working with limited protections, responding to algorithmic management. The drivers of services like Deliveroo and Uber have their work assigned by algorithms and do the part of their task that the algorithms simply cannot do: speedy delivery to the door, in navigation situations (on bike and on foot) that are unlikely to be effectively addressed by autonomous vehicles anytime soon (although that, too, is wildly promised).

The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets
by Thomas Philippon
Published 29 Oct 2019

I think the argument is misleading, and the case for broad, positive synergies is weaker than most people realize. Synergies exist in the new economy, but they also exist in the old economy. Leaders of the new economy, just like leaders of the old economy before them, tend to overestimate the positive externalities from their activities. Rana Foroohar, writing in the Financial Times about the gig economy (August 2018), mentions that several years ago, Travis Kalanick, the founder and former chief executive of the ride-sharing company Uber, told a group of business executives that we were heading toward a world in which “traffic wouldn’t exist” within five years. Well, if recent experience in New York City is any guide, that is not happening.

A World Without Work: Technology, Automation, and How We Should Respond
by Daniel Susskind
Published 14 Jan 2020

Robert Reich, a public-policy professor and former secretary of labor for Bill Clinton, once estimated that by 2020 up to 40 percent of Americans would have “uncertain” work like this, the sort of work that makes up the “gig,” “share,” “irregular,” or “precarious” economy, and by 2025, most workers will. This is likely to turn out to be an overestimate, though; in 2017, only 10 percent worked in so-called alternative work arrangements, a slight decline from 2005. Robert Reich, “The Sharing Economy Will Be Our Undoing,” Salon, 25 August 2015; Ben Casselman, “Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All,” New York Times, 7 June 2018. 39.  Andy Haldane, “Labour’s Share,” speech at the Trades Union Congress, London, 12 November 2015; Richard Partington, “More Regular Work Wanted by Almost Half Those on Zero-Hours,” Guardian, 3 October 2018. 40.  Quoted in Friedman, “Born to Be Free.” 41.  

Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions That Shape Social Media
by Tarleton Gillespie
Published 25 Jun 2018

The concerns around political discourse and manipulation on social media platforms feel like the crest of a larger wave that has been breaking for a few years now, a broader reconsideration, on so many fronts, of social media platforms and their power in society: concerns about privacy and surveillance, topped by the Snowden revelations of the links between Silicon Valley companies and the National Security Administration (NSA); vulnerability to hackers, criminal or political, made plain by high-profile attacks on retailers, credit agencies, and political parties; their impact on the economics of journalism, particularly Facebook’s oversized footprint, which changes as often as Facebook’s priorities do; concerns about the racial and gender biases baked into their algorithms; research conducted on users without their consent; their growing influence over policy, in places like Washington, D.C., Brussels, and Davos; the inequities in their workplaces, and the precarious labor dynamics they foster as part of the “gig economy”; their impact on San Francisco, on manufacturing zones around the world, and on the environment. Perhaps we are now experiencing the long hangover after the ebullient high of web 2.0, the birth of social media, and the rise of a global, commercial, advertising-supported Internet culture—the bursting of a cultural bubble, if not a financial one.8 It’s possible that we’ve simply asked too much, or expected too much, from social media.

Reset
by Ronald J. Deibert
Published 14 Aug 2020

According to Mark Scott, the chief technology correspondent at Politico, “By becoming monopolies in each of their digital arenas, these firms have done things that, say, a litany of mini-Googles could not have done: provide a one-stop-shop for people in dire need of information, communication and other basic online services.”456 Designating them as public utilities could allow regulators to mandate that platforms adopt green manufacturing and environmentally sustainable products and services; enforce audits of their software and algorithms according to public interest standards; treat workers more equitably, including allowing them to form unions; and eliminate the gross inequalities in compensation among owners, managers, and labour that are a hallmark of the gig economy. The downside is that doing so could effectively “lock in” the existing big tech giants as quasi-permanent features of the communications ecosystem, slow down the development of new features, and potentially stifle competition (something to be left for further debate among economists and public policy experts).

Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture
by Kyle Chayka
Published 15 Jan 2024

Failing to game the algorithm may cause an immediate drop in income for hosts, which they, as any worker, rely on remaining consistent. (The inconsistency of algorithmic promotion forces us to engage with it and stress about it even more, like repeatedly pulling a slot machine lever to hit the jackpot.) Gig-economy platforms like Airbnb have long promised flexible work and alternative ways of making or supplementing a living, but they also created a new form of labor in the need to stay up to date on changes in algorithmic priorities. Where hosts worry about Airbnb’s search algorithm, artists similarly fret about Instagram’s and musicians about Spotify’s.

Radicals Chasing Utopia: Inside the Rogue Movements Trying to Change the World
by Jamie Bartlett
Published 12 Jun 2017

Digital information can be shared at practically zero cost, an infinite number of times; it is very difficult to censor; and it does not easily recognise national borders. Thanks to modern communications, it’s easier than ever for businesses and people to relocate anywhere, which is making it harder for governments to collect taxes. App technology like Uber and Deliveroo has led to a sudden and unexpected surge in a gig economy, which is estimated to cost the UK government £3.5 billion a year by 2020–1. There are already millions of people using bitcoin and blockchain technologies, and their number will continue to grow. The Net is also creating new affiliations and loyalties that aren’t always national in nature: a growing number of people see themselves as ‘global citizens’, like Susanne.30 The nation state evolved during a time of industrialisation, centralised ‘command and control’ bureaucracies and the growth of national loyalty.

The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives
by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler
Published 28 Jan 2020

Today, a child in Tanzania has access to AI-enabled education tech, as well as the sum total of the world’s available information via Google or Baidu. That same child, connected to the bandwidth explosion heading her way, will soon be able to spin up thousands of processor cores belonging to any number of cloud-based services, and tap into everything from the billions of hours of free entertainment on YouTube to our ever-thriving gig economy. Conveniently, the poorest nations on Earth are also the sunniest and with that sun—and the ever-increasing spread of solar—comes the opportunity for abundant energy. With energy comes the power to provide clean water and with clean water comes massive increases in health and wellness, which together with increased education and lower birth rates, can help stem the tide of overpopulation.

Heaven Is a Place on Earth: Searching for an American Utopia
by Adrian Shirk
Published 15 Mar 2022

And so three days a week I lived at the henceforth Adjunct Flophouse, a beautiful boarding-style apartment with a bathroom in the hallway, a communal living experiment in Prospect Heights where Anna, a variety of other adjuncts who lived outside the city, and I embarked on a semi-communal living experiment born of not wanting to burn out in the gig economy and the neoliberal university system. The very first night we got the keys, we bought altar candles at the bodega since we had not yet paid the electricity, and we laid them out along the dark red scratchy pub carpet still lining the hallways. We slept on fold-out mats. The light that came through the windows in the morning was beautiful.

Siege: Trump Under Fire
by Michael Wolff
Published 3 Jun 2019

Alexandra Preate, his dogged PR adviser, was more than dubious about the benefits of participating in this event, and she was intently trying to talk him out of appearing before a live Manhattan audience. Yet Bannon would not be deterred. “I’m going to say you’re a bunch of fucking suckers. You put your heart and soul into the gig economy, and you’ve got nothing. A bunch of serfs—no ownership, no benefits, no equity, your savings account at zero.” But then he added: “The problem with the speech is that this is New York, and all these people are either rich or sure they will be rich. They want to be the owners. Preate is praying I’ll be rained out.”

21 Lessons for the 21st Century
by Yuval Noah Harari
Published 29 Aug 2018

Keller, ‘A Study of the Extent and Potential Causes of Alternative Employment Arrangements’, ILR Review 66:4 (2013), 874–901; Gretchen M. Spreitzer, Lindsey Cameron and Lyndon Garrett, ‘Alternative Work Arrangements: Two Images of the New World of Work’, Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior 4 (2017), 473–99; Sarah A. Donovan, David H. Bradley and Jon O. Shimabukuru, ‘What Does the Gig Economy Mean for Workers?’, Congressional Research Service, Washington DC, 2016; ‘More Workers Are in Alternative Employment Arrangements’, Pew Research Center, 28 September 2016. 17 David Ferrucci et al.,‘Watson: Beyond Jeopardy!’, Artificial Intelligence 199–200 (2013), 93–105. 18 ‘Google’s AlphaZero Destroys Stockfish in 100-Game Match’, Chess.com, 6 December 2017; David Silver et al., ‘Mastering Chess and Shogi by Self-Play with a General Reinforcement Learning Algorithm’, arXiv (2017), https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.01815.pdf; see also Sarah Knapton, ‘Entire Human Chess Knowledge Learned and Surpassed by DeepMind’s AlphaZero in Four Hours’, Telegraph, 6 December 2017. 19 Cowen, Average is Over, op. cit.; Tyler Cowen, ‘What are humans still good for?

Transaction Man: The Rise of the Deal and the Decline of the American Dream
by Nicholas Lemann
Published 9 Sep 2019

.; misleading information on factories Fairchild Semiconductor Fair Deal Fair Housing Act Fama, Eugene; efficient market hypothesis of; journal edited by fascism Fed, see Federal Reserve Board Federal Communications Commission Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation federal government; corporations regulated by; deficit of; deposits guaranteed by; finance deregulated by; liberal suspicion of; markets regulated by; in 2008 financial crisis; see also Congress; specific administrations and agencies Federal Housing Administration “Federalist Number 10” (Madison) Federal National Mortgage Association Federal Power Commission Federal Reserve Board; Bear Stearns and; under Bernanke; under Greenspan passim; New York branch of; time prior to; under Volcker Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation Federal Trade Commission Feminine Mystique (Friedan) feminism Fidelity Investments Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission financial economics: critiques of; paradigm shift in; Wall Street’s marriage to financial institutions: closings of; competition for talent between; growth of; limitations on; in Silicon Valley; see banking; investment banking; savings and loans financial panic of 1907 Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 financial systems: computerization of, see under computers; deregulation of, see deregulation; failures in see also 2008 financial crisis; fragility of; globalization of, see globalization; new techniques of; reregulation of; see also capitalism; investment banking; Jensen, Michael First Boston Fisher, Irving Fisher, Richard (Dick); as head of Morgan Stanley Fitzgerald, Jack fixed-income investments FOO (conference) Ford Ford, Henry foreclosures Fort, Jeff Fortune Fortune 500 foundation endowments 401(k) plans France, conglomerates from Frankfurter, Felix Franklin, Aretha free-market purism; defection from; liberal conversion to; pluralism and; see also Greenspan, Alan free trade Friedan, Betty Friedman, Milton Fujitsu Future of Industrial Man, The (Drucker) futures market Galbraith, John Kenneth; on corporations Galton, Francis gangs Gates, Bill Geithner, Timothy General Accounting Office (GAO) General Electric General Motors; acquisitions of; bankruptcy of; Berle and; credit company of; dealerships for; debt of; decentralized management of; Drucker embedded at; as immune to markets; Japanese competition with; management of; Morgan Stanley and; Organization Man at; other industries tied to; research lab at; safety and; size of; workers’ rights at; during WWII General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, The (Keynes) Germany G. H. Walker and Company Gibson Greetings gig economy Gilbert, Seymour Parker, III Glass-Steagall Act; dismantling of Glengarry Glen Ross globalization; deregulation and; of mergers; at Morgan Stanley; parochialism despite; prosperity and; technology and; of trade GMAC Goldman Sachs; former employees of in government Google; employees of government, see federal government Governmental Process, The (Truman) Graham, Benjamin Gramlich, Edward Gramm, Phil Gramm, Wendy Granovetter, Mark Gray, Edwin Great Depression; anti-bank sentiment during; as ended by government Greater Southwest Development Corporation Great Migration Great Transformation, The (Polanyi) greed Greenhill, Robert (Bob) Greening of America, The (Reich) Greenspan, Alan; Clinton and; Glass-Steagall revision and; housing and Greylock groups, see interest groups Gulf and Western Gun Gospel (Hoffman) Hamilton, Alexander Hapgood, Hutchins Harlan, John Marshall Harper’s Magazine Hart, Dennis Harvard: Berle at; Business School of; faculty of; students at hatred, as national culture Hayden, Tom Hayek, Friedrich health insurance: via employers; federal hedge funds Heidegger, Martin Heisenberg, Werner Henry Street Settlement Hewlett, William Hewlett-Packard Hill, James J.

The Great Firewall of China
by James Griffiths;
Published 15 Jan 2018

Those publishers they do not increasingly own – hampering the media’s vital role as a watchdog over big business – they can make or break with the tweak of an algorithm. The vast riches of Silicon Valley have corrupted politics, leaving elected officials genuflecting in the direction of tech billions in the hopes of replacing jobs disrupted out of existence with data centres, company headquarters, and the gig economy. Social media companies have refused to recognise their role as publishers and gatekeepers, allowing propaganda and malicious disinformation to propagate wildly on their platforms, spreading lies and hatred, radicalising millions and potentially even affecting elections. That we are reaching a breaking point is obvious.

The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything
by Matthew Ball
Published 18 Jul 2022

A right to take it elsewhere? Does a user who bought land or goods inside of Roblox hold that right? Should they? The Metaverse will further redefine the nature of work and labor markets. Right now, the majority of offshored jobs are menial and audio-only, such as technical support and bill collection. The gig economy, meanwhile, often takes place in person, but is not altogether dissimilar: ridesharing, housecleaning, dog walking. This will change as virtual worlds, volumetric displays, live-motion capture, and haptic sensors improve. A blackjack dealer need not live anywhere near Las Vegas, or even in the United States, to work at a casino’s virtual twin.

Everyday Utopia: What 2,000 Years of Wild Experiments Can Teach Us About the Good Life
by Kristen R. Ghodsee
Published 16 May 2023

In some ways we already see steps being taken in this direction by start-ups in the so-called sharing economy; businesses like Zipcar, Citi Bike, HomeExchange, and Rent the Runway are finding ways to monetize either our desire to have less stuff or, more cynically, our inability to afford all of the stuff we want on our shrinking incomes in the precarious gig economy. But to the extent that young people avail themselves of these new services, they are accustoming themselves to the idea that property can be shared in common even if, for now at least, that sharing must be mediated by a for-profit company. The sharing economy may normalize communal property in otherwise competitive societies obsessed with material accumulation.

Dawn of the New Everything: Encounters With Reality and Virtual Reality
by Jaron Lanier
Published 21 Nov 2017

(And by the way, after decades of self-certain, snide arguments against copyright and for making art and entertainment “free,” into an all-volunteer zone, look what happened when companies like Netflix and HBO were able to get people to pay for subscriptions for good TV. Suddenly we’re in a renaissance that has been dubbed Peak TV.) Your friends, lovers, purchases, and insecure gig economy gigs are brought to you by acts of misdirection that echo Netflix’s moot algorithm. A bounty of options seems to be out there on the ’Net somewhere, too many to evaluate on your own. Life is short, so you suspend disbelief and trust in the algorithms. A fool is born. From a sweet but sad mathematician, nursing a won ton soup: “Jaron, you talk about VR as if it’s the opposite of AI.

Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions
by Johann Hari
Published 1 Jan 2018

First, this sense of precariousness started with people in the lowest-paying jobs. But ever since, it has been rising further and further up the chain. By now, many middle-class people are working from task to task, without any contract or security. We give it a fancy name: we call it being “self-employed,” or the “gig economy”—as if we’re all Kanye playing Madison Square Garden. For most of us, a stable sense of the future is dissolving, and we are told to see it as a form of liberation. It would be grotesque to compare what has happened to workers in the West to what has happened to the Native peoples of the Americas, who have survived a genocide and more than a century of persecution.

Competition Overdose: How Free Market Mythology Transformed Us From Citizen Kings to Market Servants
by Maurice E. Stucke and Ariel Ezrachi
Published 14 May 2020

In 2018, far more Americans were fearful of computers replacing them in the workforce68 (30.7 percent) than in earlier years (25.3 percent in 2017 and 16.6 percent in 2016). Our fear of unemployment is justified when our safety net has too many holes: 52.9 percent of Americans in 2018 were afraid or very afraid of high medical bills.69 And our employment options are limited. The “gig” economy, like driving for Uber while renting out a bedroom on Airbnb, will not provide medical benefits and secure us financially in retirement. Avoiding corporate America is harder, as there are far fewer new businesses in the United States being created70 (as a share of the US economy) since the late 1970s.

Shutdown: How COVID Shook the World's Economy
by Adam Tooze
Published 15 Nov 2021

When the shutdown was at its most intense in May 2020, about one-third of employees in Austria, France, and the Netherlands and one-fifth in Germany, Spain, and Ireland were on short-time working schemes.50 These schemes provided a large public subsidy to employers, especially those who might otherwise have retained workers at their own expense. It was a price worth paying. In Europe they were the principal means through which the social crisis was contained. The short-time working systems were originally conceived for classic industrial work. In the course of 2020, they were expanded to include the self-employed, workers in the “gig economy,” and even stigmatized groups such as sex workers.51 The programs were innovative and solidaristic, but no more than other forms of welfare provisions did they erase social inequality. Contract workers hired by agencies found themselves in limbo, housed in cramped quarters, without either jobs or welfare support.

The Future Is Asian
by Parag Khanna
Published 5 Feb 2019

Americans’ binge consumption has meant not only endless shopping for largely unnecessary merchandise but also binge eating at all-you-can-eat restaurants that are fueling the nation’s obesity crisis. Even a shift from bingeing to an “experience economy” will benefit hard-working Asians, who push themselves overtime in the gig economy, have lower rates of drug addiction, and can thrive in hot entrepreneurial areas such as selling coding courses or Chinese lessons. Even if the number of Asian real estate investors, birth mothers, and college students coming into the United States and Canada plateaus, the demographic Asianization of North America will continue to a considerable degree.

Failures of State: The Inside Story of Britain's Battle With Coronavirus
by Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott
Published 18 Mar 2021

Anthony Costello, Professor of Global Health at University College London and a former WHO director, tweeted what many experts were thinking. ‘We are simply not doing enough now. We shd [sic] ban mass gatherings, close parliaments, alert all health workers about protective equipment and hygiene, close schools/colleges, promote home working wherever possible, and protect workers in the gig economy. Every day of delay will kill.’ It would still be almost two weeks before lockdown would happen. Johnson was actually doing something that afternoon. He was sitting by the fireplace in the Downing Street study with the government’s deputy chief medical officer Dr Jenny Harries, and a camera crew.

Ways of Being: Beyond Human Intelligence
by James Bridle
Published 6 Apr 2022

When we see the damage wrought to our societies and our democracies by the opacity and centralization of new technologies – the spread of demagoguery, fundamentalism and hatred, and the rise of inequality – it is precisely that opacity and centralization we must attend to and redress, through education and decentralization. When we see the human oppression inherent in our technological systems – the slave labourers in the coltan mines, the traumatized content moderators of social media platforms, the underpaid and sickening workers in Amazon warehouses and the gig economy – it is to the conditions of labour and our own patterns of consumption that we must turn. And when we see the damage wrought on our environment by extraction and abstraction – the rare earths and minerals that make up our devices and the invisible gases produced by data processing – we must fundamentally change the way we design, create, build and operate our world.

The Finance Curse: How Global Finance Is Making Us All Poorer
by Nicholas Shaxson
Published 10 Oct 2018

The UK Office for Budget Responsibility estimated that the (mostly National Insurance) losses from the tax cuts would be £3.5 billion a year by 2021/2. Corporate tax revenue losses are harder to quantify because people often keep their earnings inside the corporation and defer their taxes, which often enables them to escape paying it at all. See ‘Tax System struggles to cope with the gig economy’, Financial Times, 24 November 2016. On the cannibalisation of income tax by corporate tax cuts, see Andrew Baker and Richard Murphy, ‘Re-framing tax spillover’, SPERI (Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute), 14 March 2017. The Institute for Fiscal Studies briefing note, ‘The Changing composition of UK tax revenues’ (April 2016), says income taxes and National Insurance add up to 45 per cent of total tax revenues, while corporation tax contributes 7 per cent. 15.

Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks
by Scott J. Shapiro

He manipulated metacode not merely to build a computer to solve particular problems—he showed how to build a programmable computer capable of solving any solvable problem. Without Turing’s metacode, as we will see, our digital world would not have developed. There would be no computers capable of running code we feed, or download, to it. Metacode makes possible the internet, websites, email, social media, iPhones, laptops, Pixar movies, the gig economy, precison guided missiles, spaceships, e-books, video games, Bitcoin, Zoom meetings, PowerPoint presentations, spreadsheets, word processing, smart toasters, even my sad but beloved Apple II with a cassette recorder for storage. The very principles that make our digital world possible, however, also make hacking possible.

Architects of Intelligence
by Martin Ford
Published 16 Nov 2018

There’s a lot about the dignity of work and I actually favor a conditional basic income in which unemployed individuals can be paid to study. This would increase the odds that someone that’s unemployed will gain the skills they need to re-enter the workforce and contribute back to the tax base that is paying for the conditional basic income. I think in today’s world, there are a lot of jobs in the gig economy, where you can earn enough of a wage to get by, but there isn’t much room for lifting up yourself or your family. I am very concerned about an unconditional basic income causing a greater proportion of the human population to become trapped doing this low-wage, low-skilled work. A conditional basic income that encourages people to keep learning and keep studying will make many individuals and families better off because we’re helping people get the training they need to then do higher-value and better-paying jobs.

The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America
by Margaret O'Mara
Published 8 Jul 2019

Secondary works that helped inform this part of the story include Daniel Crevier, AI (1993); John Markoff, Machines of Loving Grace (2015); and Thomas Rid, Rise of the Machines (2016). The impact of automation and robotics on work is a deservedly hot topic. For an optimistic take, see Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age (2016); for a more sobering one, see Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots (2015). Properly placing gig-economy phenomena in the context of a longer history of corporate restructuring and contingent work (in Silicon Valley and elsewhere) is Louis Hyman, Temp (2018). On the venture capital industry in the Valley and elsewhere, useful sources are John W. Wilson, The New Venturers (1985); Udayan Gupta, Done Deals (2000); and William H.