It's quite interesting that there are countless massive, free job sites and job listing platforms, and yet somehow Upwork is plundering contract workers by taking a cut of the action. They seem like a regressive antique. It'd be equivalent to Monster.com or Dice.com taking a sizable part of my salary if I find a job through them - few would consider such a thing to be reasonable or fair.

I think a more open platform needs to exist to counter Upwork's abusive, greed-oriented approach. It should be job and task listing supported (businesses placing wanted ads for all types of traditional jobs and contract work). Zero fees should be taken out of the pockets of the workers. There are plenty of well-demonstrated examples for how to build successful reputation communities that would enable a superior, anti-Upwork approach.

Whoever does this successfully will easily overtake the Upwork platform, for exactly the same reason Stackoverflow rapidly overtook Experts Exchange. It's kind of strange that Stackoverflow / Stack Exchange hasn't already extended their platform in a way that would put an end to the value proposition of Upwork; it seems like an obvious target for them.