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Comment by kefka | Hacker News Reader

Ah, you mean "Using capitalism as a cudgel to undo the social advances from the 1930's". I shed no tear if Uber and the likes of companies that use 1099 to destroy employee rights.

For those that believe that Uber and the like are good for the US and the economy, I have a question for you:

1. What happens if we have 10% unemployment? We already have; this answer is simple.

2. We turn the screws of automation and computerization: what happens to our country/society if we have 50% unemployment?

3. What happens, when we find out that everybody's job can be hyper-specialized and broken down so robots can do them... which leads to >95% unemployment?

4. Capitalism leads to reduction of costs and risks by all means necessary. This would imply that human labor would be too expensive once more technological advances are made. So, how does capitalism work if there are few workers?

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One of the very, very few proven formulas for rapidly generating concentrated wealth is: centralize (privatize) the profits, distribute (socialize) the risks and costs.

Once you start looking for this meta-pattern, you'll see it a lot. A chemical company concentrates the profits from synthesizing a useful compound, but diffuses the risks and costs of pollution and disease into the commons. A social network distributes the effort and cost of building up a massive, informative graph, and then centralizes the profits from exploiting that information. A contract-work marketplace pushes the risks onto individual drivers, and centralizes the profits from matchmaking.

My personal view is that this will always happen to some extent, and is intrinsically linked with the system of inequality that drives the turbine of ambition in our society. Therefore, it will never be done away with, and arguably shouldn't be.

But, especially when there is no consent to the socialized externalities (e.g. pollution) or very lopsided or coerced consent (e.g. "Grapes of Wrath"-level treatment of workers), decency requires, and eventually the pitchforks-and-torches will demand, some balancing of things by the Leviathan.

In the context of this article, a big portion of the risks and costs are supported by national health care (Obamacare). If these gig workers had to acquire health care via the old means (i.e. benefits from a corporation, or hoping an insurance co will accept you), they would not have the luxury to work as contractors.

I disagree. Gig workers still need to pay for their own health care, before and after Obamacare.

ACA/Obamacare is not national health care - it's national health insurance, and despite it being better than before (i.e., no pre-existing condition rescissions), the plans offered by carriers even with subsidies are still too pricey for many.

3. What happens, when we find out that everybody's job can be hyper-specialized and broken down so robots can do them... which leads to >95% unemployment?

In such a society, 95% of the people will get to do whatever they want, rather than working for a living. I don't see the problem.

Too often, the assumption that near-100% employment is desirable goes unchallenged. We're people, not ants.

But in our current schema of society, it would indicate that 95% of the people would be on some sort of subsistence form of government aid.

In that case, they will do what they want, as long as it doesn't include costs. That seems like a very dead society, with people depressed about no work and no money.

They would probably operate largely outside the modern, formal economy. Grow their own food, do odd jobs for pay, solicit spare change, etc. Kind of like homeless people do now.

I feel like I would be far more productive doing a variety of helpful things for society if I didn't have to worry about making money.

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