Has
convenience turned you into a monster?
John Paul Brammer
Sunday 22 May 2016
12.00 BST
Like
me, you might be a liberal who loves Uber and Airbnb. But the darker
side of the new economy isn’t something we can simply ignore
As I write this, I’m
about to travel to beautiful, sunny Puerto Rico for a brief vacation.
If all goes according to plan, there will be keys waiting for me in a
mailbox outside an apartment in San Juan, which will hopefully look
like the pictures I saw on the Airbnb website.
To get to the
airport, I’m probably going to take an Uber, partly because I just
moved to New York and still feel like a fool trying to wave down a
cab, but mostly because calling an Uber is really, truly,
ridiculously easy to do.
Welcome to the new
economy, where convenience is king. It’s no wonder these kinds of
services are popular – they give us just what we need, when we need
them. They make fast lives possible. But is convenience turning us
into monsters?
Trading ethics for
comfort is par for the course in America
A high minimum wage,
guaranteed medical leave for workers, and paid overtime are all
issues young progressives have taken vocal positions on. But in an
environment shaped by on-demand apps, workers are considered
independent contractors or free agents, and job protections are
eliminated. It’s a system that heavily favors the corporation over
the laborer.
Strangely enough,
however, progressives aren’t just giving their tacit approval to
the sharing economy by spending their money with companies like Uber.
They’re straight up coming out against protecting the workers
involved. A survey from Pew found that Americans who use ride-hailing
and home-sharing services are against regulating them. The people who
use these services tend to be younger, and they tend to identify as
Democrats.
The conclusion is
obvious: we young progressives are hypocrites. We want corporations
put in check, except when those corporations provide us a convenient
service. We are against the exploitation of workers in theory, but in
reality, we couldn’t care less about Uber drivers or about what
they have to say about the weather during an awkward 15-minute drive.
Yes, that distant
humming you hear is the anti-millennial thinkpiece machine revving
up. To be clear, I do think some calling out is in order: we need to
wake progressives up to the fact that workers are being taken
advantage of.
But it’s also more
nuanced than that.
I am reminded of
another story in the news right now: people calling out Beyoncé, a
noted feminist, for supposedly employing “sweatshop” labor in Sri
Lanka for her new sportswear line. Critics say she is exploiting poor
workers while many have come to her defense, arguing that she is
providing Sri Lankan women with much-needed jobs.
But Beyoncé is not
responsible for the system in which these ethically ambiguous
situations arise. Nor are progressives or millennials responsible for
the economic structures that allowed Uber to become such a
juggernaut.
The reality is that
to exist in a capitalist system is to engage with exploitation. I am
writing this article on a MacBook, an Apple product. Apple has been
accused of failing to protect workers, though it claims it does more
than any other company to ensure fair conditions. Right now, I am
wearing clothes that, in all likelihood, were made with exploited
labor. Exploited laborers likely picked the food I eat.
If being a
progressive required ideological purism, I would have to abscond to a
yurt in nature, grow my own crops, make my own clothes, and never
list that yurt on Airbnb as a romantic getaway in the woods.
So, yes, convenience
has turned many of us into monsters. We are choosing our desire for
ease over justice for Uber drivers. But every progressive could
delete their app tomorrow, and it wouldn’t radically shift the
tectonic plates that thrust Uber to prominence in the first place.
Trading ethics for
comfort is par for the course in America. We can aspire to become
conscious participants in the system. We can understand where our
money is going before we give it out, and be aware of how our actions
collude with economic oppression and exploitation. But I can’t help
feeling that more is required. What could stop the march of
convenience? It’s a question my generation may one day have to
answer. But by then, will the luckier ones among us have become too
comfortable to care?
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