On Twitter this morning I received a link to a Guardian piece titled “In the digital economy, we’ll soon all be working for free – and I refuse” by Suzanne Moore. What caught my attention was not so much the piece itself, which has many arguments that I have been making on Continuations for some time about technology being the driving force behind income inequality and the disappearance of work. Instead I was intrigued by the “I refuse” part. There is, unfortunately, not much elaboration on this other than a link to a Facebook post (irony?) exhorting creatives to “stop working for free.”
This is of course wishful thinking. Most people do not have the ability to stop working because they are in need of an income. We are facing a problem of dramatic oversupply of labor that we will ultimately only be able to address with redistribution of wealth most likely in the form of some kind of guaranteed base income and/or negative income tax rates at low income levels. That is not an individual choice but rather something we have to do as a society.
The topic has been on my mind because when I just went to Germany, Der Spiegel had a big feature on the impact of the further legalization of prostitution in Germany. Instead of the intended improvement in the safety of prostitutes the primary result has been a dramatic increase in supply (partially through human trafficking) and an attendant erosion in prices (and safety). Why is this important? Because the combination of technology and a huge imbalance in the labor market acts to drive down incomes very broadly.
For instance, much as I am a fan of the idea of letting people share rides in their cars (because moving only 1 person with a vehicle designed for 4 is incredibly inefficient for the environment) we have to also be cognizant that this has the potential to destroy driving a taxi as a job that someone can earn a living with. That is not to say let’s ban ridesharing. Just like I personally don’t believe in banning prostitution. But naive deregulation of labor markets at a time of huge income inequality can have dramatic negative consequences and we cannot be naive here.
So let me repeat my earlier contention. If we want the benefits of the Internet (which I for one very much do), we need to work on the social systems that will make that new society sustainable. I will write a lot more about what I believe those are.
