>>These platforms may unlock new potentials within our cities and lives. They’ve definitely generated huge fortunes for a very small number of people. But mostl

>>These platforms may unlock new potentials within our cities and lives. They’ve definitely generated huge fortunes for a very small number of people. But mostly, they’ve served to make our lives marginally more convenient than they were before. Like so many other parts of the world tech has built, the societal trade-off, when fully calculated, seems as likely to fall in the red as in the black. People who work in the "servant" (aka service) industry using platforms like Uber are happy to have the opportunity. Giving people more work options is good, not bad. This idea that letting suppliers and consumers compete in a free market leads to a "race to the bottom" is an old trope that has been around since at least the time of Marx (Marx himself claimed that free market exchange would lead to the impoverishment of workers as a result of mechanization). The reality, as confirmed by economists and demonstrated by statistical evidence, has always been exactly the opposite: real wages have steadily increased over the last two centuries, meaning people are forced to work fewer hours to meet their basic needs, and have more time to do what they genuinely want. Even in a perfectly free market, overcoming the challenges of organizing a complex economy to raise the standard of living is a daunting task, strewn with the carcasses of dead startups, and years of sacrifice in funding and building out businesses to test new models, and in maintaining and administering established businessses to provide people with the goods/services that let them live their lives. We don't need to add to these difficulties with paternalistic restrictions on private property and free exchange rights motivated by bad ideas like the author's.