> On Feb 13, 2016, at 10:40 PM, JOANNA A. <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> I totally don't get how uber/airbnb gets rid of the middleman. They are the middleman.
I’d like to see fuller discussion on this point also. I can see where transaction costs are reduced by direct contact between buyer and seller, but the contact still has to be mediated to some degree by these new upstarts. Ghosh described these services as cutting out the middleman, and it seems to be generally accepted among economists, but I’ve yet to see this assumption developed in any detail.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> Here’s a link to an essay by the Indian economist Jayati Ghosh nicely illustrating the contradictory nature of tech change: The problem is not that inevitable advances in technology destroy jobs, but that the productivity gains realized and the surplus labour displaced are not redirected to satisfying social needs and improving the condition of the working class.
>
> “Technological change is generating such pessimism about job creation” she writes, because “the processes of capitalist market workings are more likely to throw up mass unemployment and greater inequality if left to function unchecked.”
>
> Unfortunately, her Keynesian pleas for more public spending and job creation programs to check these processes are also more likely to go unheeded in capitalist economies.
>
> Her most interesting comments concern the effect of Uber, Airbnb and other tech-driven services which cut out the middlemen and more directly link providers and buyers - “the technological change that many celebrate…because this has immediate effects on prices”. For Ghosh, this is an example of “disruptive” tech change which facilitates a reorganization of the labour process and a lowering of working class standards without any offsetting productivity gains:
>
> “It is ironic that such re-organisation of work is being treated as a major technological advance, when in effect what it is doing is reviving the putting-out arrangements that were typical of early capitalism…some of the ‘new economy jobs’ are just the old piece rate work, in new guises and extending to old and new services.”
>
> http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/02/technology-and-the-future-of-work.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29
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