{"id":2453,"date":"2017-04-24T01:58:07","date_gmt":"2017-04-24T09:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/?p=2453"},"modified":"2017-04-24T08:07:05","modified_gmt":"2017-04-24T16:07:05","slug":"destroying-the-ubermensch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/?p=2453","title":{"rendered":"Destroying the Ubermensch"},"content":{"rendered":"

So it turns out Apple could have destroyed Uber<\/a> in a heartbeat two years ago. Because Uber was implementing tracking methods that Apple doesn\u2019t permit, and conniving to hide them from Apple. And Tim Cook let them off the hook. BARN CHEATIN PAWWWWWWWWWLLLLLL. But it should hammer home the point that Uber might well be the worst company in all of Silly Con Valley, barring neither Facebook nor Theranos.<\/p>\n

Really, though, Uber should be destroyed for so many reasons. Privacy violations, underhanded business practice, turning \u201cget forgiveness instead of permission\u201d into a business strategy. But mostly, Uber should be destroyed for its role in proliferating the so-called \u201cgig economy,\u201d where you work for a company without actually having the status of an employee. \u201cYou can work as much or as little as you want\u201d is basically a reversion to piece-work of the type more associated with the era of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.<\/p>\n

Because make no mistake, this is a reversion to Gilded Age economics. In fact, the gig economy is basically about facilitating \u201cdistributed servantry.\u201d People who would balk at employing a butler and a chauffeur and a cook and a footman have no problem using Uber and Taskrabbit and Fiverr and Doordash and Instacart and Amazon Prime (yeah, I went there) to have things done for them. It\u2019s like the My Weekly Reader vision of sixty years ago where we\u2019d all have robots doing our menial labor – but instead of robots, it\u2019s people, at $5 a pop or $10 an hour or whatever the market will bear. And if you\u2019re not willing to work for that little, somebody else probably is. It\u2019s why the powers that be aren\u2019t bothered about structural unemployment, because structural unemployment means continual downward pressure on wages.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re past the point at which we need to start thinking about the changing nature of work. If a freakin\u2019 magical-realist podcast<\/a> can get this, anyone<\/em> should be able to: automation and technology means productivity. Better health means longer lives. More people living longer with more automation means fewer jobs. And Ed at Gin & Tacos nails it:<\/a> when blue collar manufacturing gets replaced with 30-hour part time retail, and Amazon and self-checkout stands at Safeway have nuked retail, what\u2019s left to take? Silicon Valley wants everyone to code, but how many coders do you need? And how many can you make out of people who spent the last twenty years turning a wrench or pushing financial records? In a world where we value human beings first by wealth and then by work, what happens to people who don\u2019t have either one?<\/p>\n

And for all their talk about job creation, Uber\u2019s long-term plans don\u2019t involve human drivers. They\u2019re counting on self-driving vehicles, to the point they\u2019re willing to steal from Waymo to do it. Steal from Google, lie to Apple, ignore regulators, break laws. Uber is leading the way in allowing the Eloi to abstract away the Morlocks and call it \u201cdisruption\u201d and they\u2019re playing dirty as hell to do it. They need to be made to pay the price, but the Feds won\u2019t do it. Somebody has to, and Apple could have been the heavy – yes, they\u2019re going to accuse you of being a bully and dictating the marketplace and etc etc schwa schwa schwa whatever. You can\u2019t win either way if you\u2019re Apple, so as long as you\u2019re going to catch hell anyway, why not do the right thing?<\/p>\n

But that may be expecting too much of an Auburn booster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So it turns out Apple could have destroyed Uber in a heartbeat two years ago. Because Uber was implementing tracking methods that Apple doesn\u2019t permit, and conniving to hide them from Apple. And Tim Cook let them off the hook. BARN CHEATIN PAWWWWWWWWWLLLLLL. But it should hammer home the point that Uber might well be … <\/p>\n

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