Soon a new slavery: now with vitamins and minerals

Once upon a time, everyone was responsible for his work and no one had any questions. People worked at the enterprises: in offices and at factories. There were, however, exceptions - people of art, aristocrats, businessmen - but they were few.

Laws, ordinances, and statistics were all built upon this assumption; but the farther, the more that people engaged in diverged from what was meant by this anachronistic rubric from the 50s. I have experience explaining to the representatives of the border service that my “job” is to conclude contracts in country A for a client in country B, as well as writing books and selling applications. I do not advise to repeat.

And this discrepancy will only increase. The so-called “sharing economy”, mediated by such websites and applications as Lyft , TaskRabbit , Thumbtack , Postmates , Mechanical Turk, etc. / one-time events. Which by no means fit into the old economic scheme. Even professions that require high qualifications are gradually losing their share under the onslaught of software sharing economy; Take, for example, the winner of TechCrunch Disrupt - YourMechanic .
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I wrote “so-called”, because it is time to admit it: “sharing economy” is nothing more than an element of not very conscientious PR. It is built mainly on the fact that people with excess free income hire those who do not have it, but to move through the watershed that separates one from another is not so easy. Here the name “ service economy ” is more appropriate. (Not to be confused with the “economy of patronage,” Kickstarter, Indiegogo, which deserves a separate article.)

Not surprisingly, relatively successful techies like me made it possible to create applications and services that somewhat improved their own lives instead of solving the real, really complex problems faced by poor people . All the more surprising is the fact that these applications accurately reflect what is happening on a large scale in the business world.

Did you know that “the rate of hiring temporary labor was five times higher than the rate of aggregate hiring in the previous year”, and “The number of temporary jobs increased by more than 50 percent since the end of the recession”? Whereas in the UK, the median income for people of liberal professions is £ 5.58, which is less than half of £ 11.21, of what employees earn.

As the Harvard Business Review writes about this:

This phenomenon of “fast-moving labor” is not exclusively American, in the UK the number of conditionally employed also reaches record levels. Something deeply structural in nature occurs. Even healthy growth will not eliminate it.

We already fully imagine how the software will destroy production (robots and 3D printing) and freight and passenger transportation (self-driving cars). The nature of this new economy gives us an idea of ​​how software will destroy most of the services sector, turning many of the existing full-time jobs into a scattered set of unrelated temporary sources of income.

In many of its aspects, this is certainly a favorable phenomenon. I may not have a high opinion of the policy pursued by Uber’s top management , but I’m even worse about the insane licensing system of carriers-taxis, which, for no particular reason, have become firmly established throughout America. (Those who agree with the arguments of taxi companies claiming that their transportation is safer, probably also like the arguments of the US Transportation Security Administration, which offers security theater ¹ as a solution to the security problem itself). I will only be glad when this idiotic regulatory barrier no longer exists.

Moreover, when new temporary workers no longer need Manpower-type companies to go to their employer, and they can immediately choose what they need from a few offers from competing third parties, this will also be a great blessing for all concerned. It’s rather interesting to read the top management comment Manpower published in a recent post in the Wall Street Journal that characterizes this trend as “pretty niche ... I don’t think it has a great future.” I suspect that this comment will look very close in some 10 years.

However, this tendency makes me anxious. The slow transition of a huge economic sphere from permanent jobs to a continuously changing maelstrom of short-term contracts with a minimum of privileges claimed by an increasing number of people due to less difficulty at the entrance, in a sector where the majority of jobs are so badly paid ... your, it seems that all this will reduce inequality and increase social mobility? In some specialized areas requiring high qualification - it is possible. But in general? I doubt it.

All this can greatly reduce prices ... however, do not build hope, looking at Wal-Mart, because those who are the basis of the productive force of the economy of service do not often act as consumers. (As prices fall, their own incomes fall, leaving the cheaper services still out of reach, creating a vicious circle as a result.) Those who will benefit in this situation are a surprise, a surprise — techies, professionals, bankers, constantly shrinking middle class . Well, you understand. People like us with you. And, of course, companies engaged in hiring armies of temporary workers.

I would not like all this to sound like reflections of pessimism-filled Luddit; in fact, I believe that this is ultimately better than the established order of things for most people. But it seems to me that - as in the case of many changes in the economy brought by new technologies, which I have already written many times - the vast majority of benefits will fall to a small and at the same time decreasing part of the population.

How negative will the effect of this inequality be? If the technical and economic tide will eventually lift all the vessels, then who cares that the yachts will rise above the fishing boats, and luxury yachts straight into the stratosphere? I think the answer, by and large, depends on whether the fishing boats have any prospects to turn at least into some sort of yacht:

I heard at the conference: "Americans are ready to put up with inequality, if you do not undermine their faith in vertical mobility." It's hard not to agree.
Andy Goodman (Andy Goodman @GoodmanCenter) September 27, 2013

I regret to say that social mobility in the United States is actually much lower than in other rich countries ... and at the moment I have no reason to believe that the combination of future technologies and the current economic architecture will be able to change something in this sense. On the contrary, I still have the unpleasant feeling that the opposite is true, both in America and in the rest of the world.

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¹ eng security theather is a practice of implementing countermeasures aimed at creating a sense of security, while completely ignoring the essence of the problem and its solution.