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Perhaps this is not revolution, but a return: For much of human history, workers have been paid poorly, if at all. Labour was always cheap. This changed in the

Perhaps this is not revolution, but a return: For much of human history, workers have been paid poorly, if at all. Labour was always cheap. This changed in the late 19th C and early 20th C. Perhaps 20th C costly labour was nothing but a blip, an oddity, and we are now returning to the mean? The article contains the line economic gains will flow to those who own the platform rather than to those who do the work which makes me think of Agatha Christie's comment about her youthful perspective I never thought I would be so poor as to not have live-in staff, or so rich as to have a car and driver.

crpatino 11y ago
> For much of human history, workers have been paid poorly, if at all. I think you are extrapolating the experience of the 19th century industrialization into the distant past. There have always been poor people, but I think "labour" is a relatively recent concept. i.e. Medieval serfs had a place fixed in society. It was a lousy place, but a place still. It had more to do with lord-vassal relationship than in had to do with the calculus of labor's value added.
- PeterWhittaker 11y ago
  Well, a more detailed comment from me would have expanded upon themes of reward, social mobility (which requires resources or connections or both), etc., etc. But as a quick comment, it serves. For example, consider serfs as examples of hardly paid at all: They made enough to survive, but even if they had surplus and managed to sell it for a luxury item or two, they stayed stuck in their fiefdoms, by and large, unless they had skills or talents both in demand and recognized, e.g., qualities for the priesthood, for becoming a mason, etc., or unless they fled and/or joined the military. I guess they key follow-on to both the original article and to Christie's comment is one disposable wealth and choice: For much of human history, most of us have had neither. For part of the 20th C, many of us have had both. Perhaps that is the return to the mean (that I honestly hope we are not experiencing - otherwise, my daughter's world will be far crappier than mine, regardless of the efforts of either of us, unless one of us should win the platform creation-and-ownership lottery).

crpatino 11y ago

> For much of human history, workers have been paid poorly, if at all. I think you are extrapolating the experience of the 19th century industrialization into the distant past. There have always been poor people, but I think "labour" is a relatively recent concept. i.e. Medieval serfs had a place fixed in society. It was a lousy place, but a place still. It had more to do with lord-vassal relationship than in had to do with the calculus of labor's value added.

PeterWhittaker 11y ago
Well, a more detailed comment from me would have expanded upon themes of reward, social mobility (which requires resources or connections or both), etc., etc. But as a quick comment, it serves. For example, consider serfs as examples of hardly paid at all: They made enough to survive, but even if they had surplus and managed to sell it for a luxury item or two, they stayed stuck in their fiefdoms, by and large, unless they had skills or talents both in demand and recognized, e.g., qualities for the priesthood, for becoming a mason, etc., or unless they fled and/or joined the military. I guess they key follow-on to both the original article and to Christie's comment is one disposable wealth and choice: For much of human history, most of us have had neither. For part of the 20th C, many of us have had both. Perhaps that is the return to the mean (that I honestly hope we are not experiencing - otherwise, my daughter's world will be far crappier than mine, regardless of the efforts of either of us, unless one of us should win the platform creation-and-ownership lottery).