I orginally posted this as a comment to the post, www.dailykos.com/…, mostly commenting on other people’s comments rather than the original article. That, and the fact it got too long for a comment, so I decided to write a diary (something I rarely do). I will be interested in what folks think. My original comment starts below...
Let me start by saying I hate Uber, consider them thieves, and use Lyft instead of taxis. However, I think Liberals (including me) need to be thoughtful when with considering about these facilitated services in general vs. the older industries they are threatening.
I’ll just say generally, my opinion is when we look backwards we are going to fail — both in policy and especially and badly in politics. If we tell people, sorry, no more Uber/Lynx, only taxis, it’s bad policy and it’s going to get us destroyed in elections. Same for any of these other examples of industries getting taken over by services that exploit workers but deliver far better for consumers. A lot of that improvement over older services may be employee exploitation, but there are also obviously legitimate ways they have improved.
So how do Liberals start to look forward with solutions that are both good policy and good politics? Before I start, let me say that I fully agree with our goals of making sure that businesses are run fairly and legally, that competition is fair and robust, and that employees get a fair share of the profits. Today’s situation is disgusting, as employees have less and less leverage and are pushed farther down the economic ladder every year. We Liberals are rightly outraged!
But what are our answers. To me, we need to start by recognizing that industries and jobs getting taken over technology is going to continue and even get faster, and the world is not turning back for a very simple reason — they advance our world without question. That means we need to be targeting policies that make these changes fair and manageable for our workers and our middle class, and for folks displaced from their industries. Here’s some ideas (and I’m sure there are many more):
1) Many have mentioned having fair laws and regulations that prevent these industries from escaping responsibility for pay, safety, etc. These are obviously needed.
2) We need to address the fact that technology is starting to reduce the need for people to do jobs in ways that are not reversing. That means we need a more robust safety net and higher minimum way (which we always fight for), but what about starting to target policies that more directly address the reduced need for people working such as shorter full-time work weeks (also a good argument for stronger paid family leave).
3) Labor unions are more important than ever, but I’d also say their mission needs to modernize. I’m not really an expert on labor unions, but they have to have missions and messages that fit the ever changing world.
4) What about proposing a government agency responsible for overseeing rapidly changing industries? Taxi drivers are actually a great example. We knew a few years ago that taxi driving was going to become an endangered job pretty quickly. There is no free market solution waiting to hire these displaced drivers to do something else. And what about the taxi companies and all the cars they own? I think it would be an awesome idea if a government agency was responsible for designing strategies that would come up with rules of the road for the new companies and also about how to deal with the workers who need to find new employment opportunities. For example, how about finding policies that encourage shrinking industries to keep their existing employees who will be hardest pressed to find new employment (think older workers who are not likely to be able to get trained for new industries and professions).
5. I’ll end with my last idea which is that looking at ways to improve high schoole and college education in specific ways to help teach folks skills related to how to change professions and other skills that will allow them to be flexible in an ever changing economy. While I’ve never seen stats on this, I’ve got to believe there have even been a lot of tax accountants over the last 15 who have had to switch industries. Were they as well prepared for this as they should have been in their college and CPA exam-taking days.
My ideas are by no means perfect, but if we’re ever going to have positive election results and positive policies we get to enact, we have to find ways that look forward and respect the inevitable progress due to technologies.