The Gig Economy Is White People Discovering Servants

The Uber of X already exists. It’s called servants

indi.ca
4 min readJun 12, 2019

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At some point in the last century Americans, having gotten rid of slavery, accidentally lifted their incomes so much that they found themselves isolated in suburban houses, surrounded by machinery, cleaning their own toilets. They had rising incomes but everyone’s incomes were rising which means that there was no one to do stuff for you, and you couldn’t just buy people anymore.

This century the vaunted American middle class has bottomed out and the place has started to look more like the ‘developing’ world, with a definite underclass. However, lacking generations of feudal tradition and clinging to the myth of being a classless society, Americans couldn’t just bring servants into their homes. So venture capitalists did it for them.

Uber and Postmates and DoorDash and all of these ‘gig’ economy companies simply created a giant pool of servants that you could call on demand. That’s all they really do. The gig economy is just a giant collection of servants.

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indi.ca

Indrajit (Indi) Samarajiva is a Sri Lankan writer. Follow me at www.indi.ca, or just email me at indi@indi.ca.