> But what's getting them to the threshold in the first place is a damaged economy, and harmful public policy that has forced millions of people to look to odd jobs for sustenance.
Would be nice to qualify that statement a bit more. Articles like this seem to think that we've hit some minor blip in the history of Western economies, ignoring the vast amounts of evidence to the contrary. Unlike previous industrial revolutions, technology-driven solutions are now rapidly replacing human-capital across every industry, leaving little to no options for those being displaced. This trend doesn't show any sign of slowing.
Ideally, the sharing economy can evolve into the larger economy as a whole, shifting the nature of how compensation and payment take place between people, and shift the idea of what is a "job". Combined with technological advances, and a society can emerge where we don't require every single member to spend the majority of their time producing economic output in order to generate a sustainable amount of resources. That may sound naively optimistic, but no more so than the quaintly nostalgic dream this article professes, along the lines of "why can't things be like they were back in the good old days?!"
Would be nice to qualify that statement a bit more. Articles like this seem to think that we've hit some minor blip in the history of Western economies, ignoring the vast amounts of evidence to the contrary. Unlike previous industrial revolutions, technology-driven solutions are now rapidly replacing human-capital across every industry, leaving little to no options for those being displaced. This trend doesn't show any sign of slowing.
Ideally, the sharing economy can evolve into the larger economy as a whole, shifting the nature of how compensation and payment take place between people, and shift the idea of what is a "job". Combined with technological advances, and a society can emerge where we don't require every single member to spend the majority of their time producing economic output in order to generate a sustainable amount of resources. That may sound naively optimistic, but no more so than the quaintly nostalgic dream this article professes, along the lines of "why can't things be like they were back in the good old days?!"