If there’s a false argument to be made in support of corporate
interests, Professor Tyler Cowen of George Mason University is sure to make it.
Cowen specializes in spinning dispassionate sounding short articles that sell
economic nonsense in the better mainstream media, such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Foreign Affairs.
A year ago, Professor Cowen was embarrassing himself with a
series of articles that purported to disprove the findings of Thomas Piketty in
his Capital in the 21st Century. Cowen’s
argument tended to follow the pattern of staring at the trees so you won’t see
the forest, which in this case means believing that the fact that individual
families gain and lose wealth through generations proves that over time more
wealth does not tend to accumulate into fewer hands. By focusing on the trees—individual
wealthy people, Cowen ignores the forest—the class of the wealthy—who have
accumulated more and more of the wealth of the world and the United States over
the past 35 years.
Cowen now uses the same trick of ignoring the group to
perform another feat of corporate justification in a New York Times article titled “In an Uber World, Fortune Favorsthe Freelancer.” Cowen asserts that some workers—those who hustle, i.e.,
“are willing and able to turn their spare time to productive uses,”—will do very
well in the freelance economy created by sharing services such as Uber and
Airbnb.
The good professor creates hypothetical situations to assert
that workers who are more educated will be more likely to take advantage of the
opportunities to freelance as a driver, dog-watcher, private tutor or whatever,
and therefore make a lot of money. He never proves this point, but he does make
a clear implication that some individuals will thrive in the sharing economy.
Of course, Cowen never defines what thriving means—will
these successful freelancers make $150,000 a year, or will they just do a
little better than average for the driving, delivery, baby-sitting and other
semi-skilled, low-wage labor that constitutes a large part of the sharing
economy. Surely Cowen isn’t talking about freelance attorneys or accountants,
who tend to make less than their peers with real jobs.
The hidden premise behind Cowen’s argument—one that
right-wing economists and social thinkers never tire of making—is that those
who thrive will deserve to do so, while those who don’t will deserve their
fate. This argument is an important
foundation stone of our free market system, because it justifies the obscene
wealth that a few possess—they earned it and they deserve it, just as much as
that young go-getter who is delivering your package to the airport for $5.00 an
hour.
Now maybe some of the trees in the forest of the shared
economy will grow to the clouds, but what about the rest of the forest, which
in this case comprises most people trying to scrape a living together on
freelance and part-time jobs. Cowen
neglects to tell us what’s going to happen to the group of workers who don’t
thrive in an entrepreneurial environment. They will make less money and will
always be in competition with fellow workers for every little job. Their work world, always brutal, becomes more
so in an apps-driven world.
That the Times
accepted Cowen’s article should disappoint anyone who believes in high
journalistic standards. In making his case, Cowen cites two studies, one
sponsored by Uber and partially written by an Uber executive and the other paid
for by Airbnb. When I was a journalist, we tried not to depend on research paid
by parties who had a vested interest in the research results. For a scholar to
accept such non peer reviewed research is surprising, unless Cowen is feeding
at the same corporate trough as those who took Uber and Airbnb’s money. For the
New York Times not to ask Cowen to
remove the research from his article is equally as disconcerting. Don’t the
editors remember all the bogus research that the tobacco industry generated for
decades?
As with all labor and wage challenges, Cowen finds the
answer to the dilemma of some workers not thriving is to give them greater education
and training. He avers that the educated
shared economy worker will provide better service and get higher ratings, and
thereby get more jobs and make more money. As usual, Cowen never considers the
conundrum of what happens when every worker is better educated. Interestingly
enough, Cowen manages to get a tiny plug into the article for for-profit
education when he proposes that in the future going through an Uber training
program might serve as a legitimate educational credential on par with “those
of some lower-tier colleges and universities.”
Cowen hides the brutal fact that the sharing economy hurts
workers in several ways. It either replaces the stable income and benefits of
full-time work with a precarious freelance existence or it floods labor markets
with people who may or may not be qualified, thus driving down rates. It
creates dangerous situations, such as the apartment that’s really a
sub-standard hotel or the unsafe driver. It takes profit out of the hands of
those who do the actual work. It makes it much harder for workers to organize
into unions.
But none of that matters to Cowen, who prefers to force a
smile and focus on those who will succeed in the sharing economy. If he looked
at the whole forest, he would see that the wage-suppressing nature of the
sharing economy creates a major economic challenge for the country, as more and
more workers fall into permanent economic insecurity.
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