Rallying the troops

Steven Hill, in the Huffington Post, pens a fine example of left-liberal outrage at a new form of capitalist trickery:

"A new and alarming mash-up of Silicon Valley technology and Wall Street greed is thrusting upon us the latest economic fad: the so-called "sharing economy." Companies like Uber, Airbnb, Instacart, Upwork and TaskRabbit allegedly are "liberating workers" to become "independent" and the "CEOs of their own businesses." In reality, these workers also are contractors, with little choice but to hire themselves out for ever-smaller jobs ("gigs" and "micro-gigs") and wages, with no safety net while the companies profit.

This is rhetoric calculated to rouse those who already agree. It’s certainly not going to convince anyone outside the tribe. I ask myself, what good is that kind of writing?

It is good if there’s a clear fight. If you need to draw the battle lines, then you want everyone on your side to get excited about a focused problem. You don’t win if everyone is saying, “Well, but on the other hand …”, especially if your opponents have the simple certainty provided by Ayn Rand-type ideology. So heated words fill the bill.

But this is not a clear fight: it’s complex. I have ridden with Uber four or five times, and each time the driver has been someone who has benefited from the flexibility of the work in order to pursue other interests: a middle-school principal who wanted some extra cash for his wedding; an Afghani who had interpreted for the U.S. military, been given expedited citizenship, and hoped to start a restaurant; an old Eastern European craftsman who had formerly owned a small business, had retired, but wanted to bring in some extra money and keep himself busy. They all said they were pleased with the work – and none of them would have been able to meet their needs in the familiar model of full-time, long-term employment.

Similarly, I know several young people who started out in standard work – lawyers, predominantly, with prestigious, stable jobs that would have led reliably to a career of “good work” – but who abandoned the safe ship outside the harbor and have swum to the gig economy in one way or another: writing apps, starting web services, freelancing. The pay is low, the uncertainty high, but they would not go back.

I’m not arguing the opposite side. “Standard” work is still what most people want and need, and there are certainly many venal practices in the new business models. I’m just saying that turning this into a polarized issue, suggesting that the whole sharing economy thing is merely a trick of the enemy, not only oversimplifies but actually shuts off important avenues of progress. It would be foolish and harmful to simply shut down the sharing economy. It doesn’t add to credibility to act as if that’s what you want.

There is a place for “Well, on the other hand …” when issues and interests are complex. To be fair, Hill does propose, at the very end of his piece, a solution that could be a practical remedy to some of the downsides. My feeling, however, is that it would have a much greater chance of actually working if Hill sought less single-mindedly to rally his own side. One thing we’ve learned from Obamacare is that if you win a pitched battle, you get locked in afterwards; you can’t experiment, deal with the complexities, and learn.

It’s exciting to rally your side and to participate in a mass oppositional movement. It’s just not very constructive for complicated issues.