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HThis is one of the great paradoxes of our time. The world is dominated by some of the most profitable companies in the history of capitalism. In the United States (country of origin of these giants) and the United Kingdom (vbadal enthusiastic state), some parts of the economy are booming and employment is at record levels. And yet, in the midst of this astonishing prosperity, inequalities are at levels never seen since the period before the First World War. In the United States, the share of total income in the top 1% of the population has now returned to its 1920s level. And in the UK, more than 4 million people are trapped in deep poverty.
Given that this catastrophic increase in inequality appears to be correlated with the rise of the technology sector, it is tempting to see a causal link between the two. Tempting, but too simplistic. Although digital technology has been a central factor in what has happened, it is only part of the story. More often, it was a facilitator other forces rather than a main engine.
The greatest force that is reshaping our world has been globalization. "In the United States, a very good substitute for a worker is a worker in China or Costa Rica," says Stanford economist Paul Oyer. But you can not outsource complex production lines without broadband connections between the West and these remote factories. Oyer quotes Apple as a canonical example of how to do it well. "The company designs its products here, so people who work in the engineering sector have more and more value and earn more and more money, but people who once could have be manufactured computers here, it is now the case in China. "
Globalization has exported jobs from the western economies and given them to workers in poorer countries, which is why inequality has decreased worldwide even as it has grown in Western countries. . But in our suddenly deindustrialized regions, neoliberal governments have done little to help workers and communities left behind. It's the same thing with automation destroying jobs. "We always forget," says Oyer, "to go back and take care of those who lose their jobs." Since the companies deploying the machines were driven by the imperative of maximizing shareholder value, did not feel responsible for the guarantees. the damage they caused to communities and lives. And, again, governments have not managed to pick up the pieces.
One of the reasons why employment has remained surprisingly dynamic in highly unequal societies is the transformation of the concept of work. People without education or training are only eligible for low-paid, precarious and abusive jobs.
Or, they participate in what is now called the market economy, defined as a labor market characterized by the prevalence of short-term contracts or independent work, as opposed to permanent jobs. Uber Think, Lyft, Deliveroo, DoorDash, outfits that have created technology platforms that connect service workers with customers, while claiming that freelancers are independent contractors rather than employees entitled to leave paid, vacation and other rights. that the workers were waiting. People end up working for an algorithm rather than for a human being.
All this new economy would have been impossible without the ubiquitous Internet connections, smartphones, applications and GPS, in other words, without digital technology. And in the process, it transforms what Marx called the proletariat into what we now call a "precariat".
And then there are the tech giants themselves, huge companies that employ very few people directly in relation to their incomes. In December 2018, for example, Facebook only employed 35,587 people. Volkswagen, on the other hand, employs nearly 656,000 people worldwide. Direct employees of technology companies come from very asymmetrical democratic groups: men, overwhelmingly white or Asian, highly educated, richly paid and based in a small number of technology centers.
These are the people doing the interesting work in the industry. But Google and Facebook, in particular, have a large number of "indirect" employees, those who work for subcontractors, often, but not always, in poor countries, who ensure the "moderation" of content. line needed for our social media feeds to stay away Horrible things that are continually downloaded by trolls, fanatics and sadists. It is a poorly paid, traumatic, destructive and psychologically damaging job. This is a necessary corollary of the success of these technological platforms.
The goal of all this is not that digital technology has created the unacceptable levels of inequality that disfigure many liberal democracies, but that it plays a central role in building forces – globalization, neoliberal economics, corporations sociopaths, global tax evasion, automation, etc. the political disturbances, the power of the platform – that shaped the world we live in now. It's a catalyst, not an engine. And, in the whole story, this is just beginning.
What I read
Who's watching you?
Siena Anstis, Ronald J Deibert and John Scott-Railton commented in the Lawfare blog what the killing of Jamal Khashoggi tells us about the civilian spyware market.
Back to the sources
John Lanchester wrote a brilliant and enlightening essay in the London Review of Books on the idea of a universal basic income.
Not what to laugh
Computers can not tell if you are really happy when you smile. There is a nice reminder in MIT. Technology Review of the sociopathy of machines.
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