But isn’t the gig economy just another way of driving down costs and concentrating wealth in the hands of the platform providers? “Lots of people are right now trying to pin workers being screwed by employers on to the sharing economy,” she says. “But if we look at the current income inequality that has been going on for 40 years, that fact of workers being screwed by employers has nothing to do with the shared economy.”

Fuck Yeah

Rifkin believes that the shocks that have been felt in the news and publishing and entertainment industries will soon become universal. He points to the millions of people in Europe and now in China producing their own electricity from solar and wind power at zero marginal cost and then selling some back to the grid. He suggests that a comparable revolution is about to happen in transport “with driverless, 3D-printed, fuel-cell powered, shared cars”.

Why the fuck are we still listening to Jeremy Rifkin? He was en vogue back when Newsweek was calling Larry Page and Sergei Brin "The Whiny Generation."

There are a few facts that somehow never get mentioned in these "ZOMG THE ECONOMY IS DYING" articles:

1) Gig economies largely flourish where adult children can live with their 'boomer parents. Yet somehow these overlaps are never studied together.

2) Gig economies become popular where full-time employment becomes precarious or unavailable. The fact that you have to friend the head of HR on Facebook to get a call center job these days does not help sell the call center job, particularly when you're told that your position is at-will and any disputes will be subject to binding arbitration. The shittier full-time employment gets, the fewer people will put up with it.

3) Millennials are already more frugal and worse consumers than any generation since the Great Depression. Something all these 'boomer economists are missing is that the "hipster" model is effectively opting out of the economy and celebrating frugality. So when they panic about how much less money there is, no shit. Know who's fucked by that? You and your pension, grandpa. Roll in it.

I guess I've been a willing member of the "gig economy" since 2007. Never really thought of it that way. Thing is, most of my friends are also members of the gig economy and a lot of them have like horses and shit. Out here in Hollywood, where the "gig economy" has dominated since the 30s, we've got unions and contracts and hourly wages that would blow the top of your head off. So if you want to follow that model out into the land of Uber and Lyft, what you'll find is that labor organizes and becomes sustainable.

But if you teach at Wharton that's apparently too radical to consider. Fuck you, Jeremy.