Robert Reich: The ‘Sharing Economy’? More Like the ‘Share the Crumbs’ Economy

[eridani]

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/17598/robert_reich_the_sharing_economy_more_like_the_share_the_crumbs_economy

How would you like to live in an economy where robots do everything that can be predictably programmed in advance, and almost all profits go to the robots’ owners?

Meanwhile, human beings do the work that’s unpredictable—odd jobs, on-call projects, fetching and fixing, driving and delivering, tiny tasks needed at any and all hours—and patch together barely enough to live on.

Brace yourself. This is the economy we’re now barreling toward.

They’re Uber drivers, Instacart shoppers, and Airbnb hosts. They include Taskrabbit jobbers, Upcounsel’s on-demand attorneys, and Healthtap’s on-line doctors.

They’re Mechanical Turks.

The euphemism is the “share” economy. A more accurate term would be the “share-the-scraps” economy.

New software technologies are allowing almost any job to be divided up into discrete tasks that can be parceled out to workers when they’re needed, with pay determined by demand for that particular job at that particular moment.

Customers and workers are matched online. Workers are rated on quality and reliability.

The big money goes to the corporations that own the software. The scraps go to the on-demand workers.

Consider Amazon’s “Mechanical Turk.” Amazon calls it “a marketplace for work that requires human intelligence.”

In reality, it’s an Internet job board offering minimal pay for mindlessly-boring bite-sized chores. Computers can’t do them because they require some minimal judgment, so human beings do them for peanuts—say, writing a product description, for $3; or choosing the best of several photographs, for 30 cents; or deciphering handwriting, for 50 cents.

[Warpy]

1. I disagree

It's more like the "force the 99% to fight over the few crumbs that have gotten away from us" economy.

However, I can tell Reich has been watching "The Super Rich and Us" too. It has been an enlightening series so far and if it doesn't make you furious, you're dead.

[golfguru]

2. Only remaining solution is...

Confiscate wealth from the 1% and distribute it to the underpaid masses. It may not make everybody upper-middle class but at least there will be no ultra rich people thumbing their noses at the masses.