What he's saying is that the basic transaction that Uber or Lyrt facilitate is not novel, that people have been using single family residences as informal transient hotels and have been engaging in street corner unlicensed taxi type transportation for decades.
Except when they do it, it's often a criminal offense. The drivers are ticketed or even arrested, the people who rent out rooms on a nightly basis are evicted or charged with municipal violations.
They are primarily poorer and blacker. Then well financed tech companies come along and do the exact same thing -- literally -- and instead of being seen as a civic nuisance at worst or a sign of a severely crippled local economy at best, it's called "sharing" and "fun" and hailed as the next big thing.
>Today there are people all over Baltimore subleasing places they don’t own, peddling without a license, hacking. This is a criminal offense. The law does not recognize the right of the people to earn enough to eat.
>All these entrepreneurs, most of them running little scams to get by, all of them held in contempt by the law and by most of society. Lyft and Uber and Air BnB face legal sanction too—but it’s just a civil matter.
The author clearly conflates the two issues of (A) not working for an employer or company, and (B) transactions that are illegal.
I already said how these may be linked in some cases. But it is unreasonable to imply that any work that is not done for an employer (preferable while working full time) must be some kind of scam.
EDIT: I'm not sure I like the new HN where I can't say something that is manifestly true (as proven by my quotes) without getting massively downvoted.