Re:Uber and Lyft Are Adding Jobs, Not Just Stealing Them
by caconym_ on Friday June 03, 2016 @05:42PM
(#11833480)
> As soon as self driving cars go mainstream, all those jobs will be gone.
This is the key. I can't imagine that "gig economy" services like Uber see this new job market they've created as anything but a temporary inconvenience to be done away with as soon as autonomous systems can do the job instead.
Like you say, if we haven't started to at least get comfortable with the idea of a basic income by the time autonomous systems start replacing human jobs wholesale, things are going to get scary.
If Uber didn't do it, someone else would.
Go into business for themselves? These centralized platforms even set the price on behalf of their "entrepreneurs". They can squeeze providers anytime, as Amazon squeezed publishers, as Apple Facebook and Twitter pushed around app developers etc.
Don't be fooled. This is the dynamic. Centralized platforms squeeze producers and make them compete globally. Jobs shmobs. As soon as self driving cars go mainstream, all those jobs will be gone.
Providers will alwas be squeezed. We as a society should stop expecting everyone to produce in order to not be homeless. There is no economic law that says demand for human labor will always be high. We need to tax the machines to fund unconditional basic income.