This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/Is-the-gig-economy-a-sustainable-model-for-future-employment/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1“

No. The so-called “gig economy” is just a scam for large corporations to get away with paying people on a minimal scale for tasks without any commitment or standard employee protections, benefits, or pay equity.

It’s a way of paying as little as possible for disposable and interchangeable cogs who are desperate for any scraps they can get.

Even worse are the parasitic behaviours of gig exploiters like Uber, who leverage the vehicles supplied by drivers to create enough revenue to finance self-driving vehicles that will eventually eliminate all the gig workers. It’s like enriching someone who will throw you out onto the streets as a thank-you for the loyalty they expect from you.

It’s just a way of further exploiting people into poverty to leave them with nothing at the end of it all.

Forty years ago, an independent professional could earn a lucrative income from a thriving ecosystem populated by an entrepreneurial class of mom-and-pop shops that were everywhere. There was no need to deal with any large corporation to earn a comfortable living where one could easily afford a mortgage and meet all the expectations of the middle class.

Now, it’s impossible to sustain oneself without tapping into the corporate realm to earn an income. Meanwhile, their practices have grown increasingly insular while adapting to the rapidly changing technological landscape through utter ignorance and making inept judgments about candidates whose skill sets are so beyond their experience that they can’t hope to comprehend what they’re hiring for.

This is why we’ve had jokes about unicorn candidates with three years of experience with six-month-old technologies.

Surviving a gig economy is just a shortcut to long-term poverty.