{"id":143314,"date":"2015-02-03T17:33:38","date_gmt":"2015-02-03T17:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=143314"},"modified":"2015-02-03T22:31:29","modified_gmt":"2015-02-03T22:31:29","slug":"share-scraps-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/share-scraps-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Share-the-Scraps Economy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>How would you like to live in an economy where robots do everything that can be predictably programmed in advance, and almost all profits go to the robots\u2019 owners?<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, human beings do the work that\u2019s <i>un<\/i>predictable \u2014 odd jobs, on-call projects, fetching and fixing, driving and delivering, tiny tasks needed at any and all hours \u2014 and patch together barely enough to live on.<\/p>\n<p>Brace yourself. This is the economy we\u2019re now barreling toward.<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019re <a href=\"https:\/\/get.uber.com\/cl\/?city_name=san-francisco&amp;utm_source=AdWords_Brand&amp;utm_campaign=search%7Cc%7Cdrivers%7Csan-francisco%7Ccountry-1%7Ccity-1%7Ckeyword_Uber%7Cmatchtype_e%7Cad_69616707880%7Ccampaign_brand%7Cgroup_uber%3eexact%7Cnetwork_g&amp;utm_medium=kenid_ce47600c-ca8d-4f0f-b00c-08e02d402eae&amp;gclid=CKyr5vTiw8MCFRBgfgodXYkAMw\">Uber<\/a> drivers, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instacart.com\/\">Instacart<\/a> shoppers, and<a href=\"https:\/\/www.airbnb.com\/?af=1922719&amp;c=A_TC%3Dm84nccm9s3%26G_MT%3De%26G_CR%3D22111491256%26G_N%3Dg%26G_K%3Dairbnb%26G_P%3D&amp;gclid=CJ-vgajjw8MCFQZafgod24cACA\"> Airbnb<\/a> hosts. They include <a href=\"https:\/\/www.taskrabbit.com\/careers\">Taskrabbit<\/a> jobbers, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.upcounsel.com\/home\/careers\">Upcounsel<\/a>\u2019s on-demand attorneys, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.healthtap.com\/prime-trial?AG=HealthTap&amp;CN=%5BUI%5D_-_%5BBrand%5D_-_%5BUS%5D_-_%28Exact%29&amp;gclid=CPvpldnjw8MCFZSPfgodFzsA8A&amp;pubcode=GA&amp;referrer=ppc&amp;type=Search&amp;v=5\">Healthtap<\/a>\u2019s on-line doctors.<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019re<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mturk.com\/mturk\/welcome\"> Mechanical Turks<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The euphemism is the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/news\/leaders\/21573104-internet-everything-hire-rise-sharing-economy\">\u201cshare\u201d economy<\/a>. A more accurate term would be the \u201cshare-the-scraps\u201d economy.<\/p>\n<p>New software technologies are allowing almost any job to be divided up into discrete tasks that can be parceled out to workers when they\u2019re needed, with pay determined by demand for that particular job at that particular moment.<\/p>\n<p>Customers and workers are matched online. Workers are rated on quality and reliability.<\/p>\n<p>The big money goes to the corporations that own the software. The scraps go to the on-demand workers.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/robertreich.org\/post\/109894095095\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How would you like to live in an economy where robots do everything that can be predictably programmed in advance, and almost all profits go to the robots\u2019 owners? Meanwhile, human beings do the work that\u2019s unpredictable \u2014 odd jobs, on-call projects, fetching and fixing, driving and delivering, tiny tasks needed at any and all [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-143314","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire","7":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143314\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}