It's absolutely a desperation career. Those always exist somewhere in any economy, and arguably there should be options available for desperate people, but the sheer volume of them is getting sad. It's like the US has a very poor, developing country double-exposed over an insanely wealthy and advanced one, both occupying the same territory. I'm not a historian but it strikes me as very strange and somewhat new to the world.
Yes, but the "norm through out history" of course contains a lot of variations.
If you look at the UK or US during the Industrial Revolution (or China today) you will see poor people doing hard jobs and its all part of a huge economic build-up that makes everyone richer -- even if some people at the top could skim off fortunes.
But if you look at even broader history, such as Medieval Europe, or China and India for most of their history, you will still see industrious poor people. But there's little build-up -- just skimming by the people at the top.
I think modern India is somewhere in between those two modes. And sometimes I fear that western democracies are converging on the same in-between place, but from the other side.
Indeed it is. What's new is that companies have never been this successful to sell what is basically modern day labour as cool and hip and "good for you!".
I guess it only a matter of time until we see a resurgence of night lodgers as this revolutionary new alternative way of housing.
People don't use it because it's cool and hip, they use it because it's efficient and provides a valuable service.
Overhead for managing repetitive and time intensive labor work is high, so when a program can do it, that overhead drops, efficiency increases, and it becomes profitable.
Oops, my bad, I interpreted the people buying the uber rides and lyft rides as doing it because it's cool and hip, but I see you meant selling to the drivers, not the riders.
>I'm not a historian but it strikes me as very strange and somewhat new to the world.
It’s similar to the collapse of the Soviet Union, with the opioid crisis taking the place of people drinking themselves to death.
You also see the same high-levels of corruption, especially in tech, where former Obama officials are given high-level jobs at the big firms or gig unicorns. Hell, even Obama himself just got a Netflix deal.
People are starting to see a lot of parallels between the US today and the Soviet Union when it fell. I recommend the book Nothing is True and Everything is Possible to get a good feel for that heady, depressing-yet-exciting fall of Rome zeitgeist.
