Despair and deception. Companies have figured out how to shift costs onto their employees, then claim that those employees are "independent contractors." Uber is a global taxi company that pays millions of employees starvation wages. It sells itself as an SV "technology" company that pays a few thousand employees a few hundred thousand dollars a year to convince people to wear out their cars for less than minimum wage.
Trying to blame it at Uber or inventing some kind of evil conspiracies are all futile attempts to omit a simple depressing fact: people working at these low-wage jobs don't have opportunities to do anything that would be more valued by society.
And that same society made Travis Kalanick the 115th richest person in the world. There are two sides to this equation, and shrugging your shoulders and saying "supply and demand" is taking a side.
Now, the logical question is to ask, why is anyone willing to provide this $10 bill for such a low price to begin with? Or, to switch from the analogy back to the subject matter, why are people singing up for the gig economy jobs? The author puts the blame on the unicorns - but they did not create the environment in which a gig worker is willing to accept such a job.