Forget Techno-Optimism: We Can’t Innovate Our Way Out of Inequality

[HughBeaumont]

1. Have I NOT been saying this all along?

To be sure, Ross raises some vague concerns about how, for example, the runaway growth of the sharing economy drains workers of job security, healthcare benefits, pensions and the like. He avers that “as the sharing economy grows … the safety net needs to grow with it,” but, much like his politically savvy boss, he offers nothing in the way of policy specifics besides the inarguable yet unactionable truism that if the sharing economy “generates enormous amounts of wealth for the platform owners, then the platform owners can and should help pay for added costs to society.”

Does no one get that not only do the wealthy NOT want to employ us (but strangely enough, want us to keep buying their products . . . . search me how THAT works . . . ) but also do not want to have anything to do with paying for a safety net or Guaranteed Minimum Income? In fact, swaths of them are really, really, REALLY campaigning hard for "build the moat, close the drawbridge" domestic policy of austerity and "rugged individualism".

Because cutting off all resources and income will TRULY motivate the poor to get themselves out of the awful life they'll experience! RIGHT?? ISN'T THAT HOW IT WORKS?? Again, logically explain to me how someone with no money would be able to purchase a degree or resources they'll need for "innovation", much less pay their bills in the meantime. But it's worked before . . . with someone . . . we might or might not have heard of . . . so naturally, it has to work for everyone.

Right?