This doesn't make sense. What you're saying is that the world is a shitty place, for a while it was less shitty and now it's going to shit again.
We've never been more technologically sophisticated. It's never been cheaper to stay alive. It's never been easier to produce cheap, valuable goods to ensure that people can have a good life.
It's not about job security, it's about making sure that everyone can afford a bare minimum of dignity and living standard. If you read between the lines, the author of this story calls for sensible regulation to ensure that this continues to be the case, and that regular people aren't exploited for economic gain. While this might be a controversial topic in some circles, I don't think your average middle-class family would object.
It is obvious that the continued technological developments, including automation, will cause an amount of pain and strife. This is why we should meet these problems head-on. Increased automation should mean more wealth and a better life for everyone. The status quo, at least in the US, has meant a poorer median and vastly increased wealth differences between the top and the median. The latter of these points is not in itself a problem, but the first is. That's where the problem lies.
If the means are there to make life nice for everyone, I am all for it. However, I am not convinced it is actually the case. If we had some good years, it might also just have been luck: for example using up oil, which is like a lottery win for society (free energy, but limited), or exploiting people in other countries (cheap washing machines and clothes).
Do you think there is actually no risk in our modern world? Otherwise, why should some people (company owners) be forced to shoulder the risk for other people?
If there ever was a period where life was easy for everyone, how long did it actually last? WW2 ended 1945. I think it must have been between then and now. In between there was the Vietnam war, cold war, various economic crises, and so on. Maybe that classic "be a factory worker with lots of benefits and pay for your family and home" only ever lasted a couple of years? I guess it is mostly known from movies from the 50ies?
I am not actually as hardcore as it sounds. I think people should look out for each other, and society should strive to make everybody have a good life. I'm just not convinced that employee entitlement is the correct way to go about it.
Note that job security is also something society pays a price for (it's factored into the prices of products - if a company has to stick to brewing horses and musn't switch to car manufacturing, because they employ a lot of horse breeders, society pays by having to do with less efficiency). As a freelancer, I don't understand why I should pay for somebody else's job security?
As a freelancer, you're not paying for someone else's job security, you are actually _benefitting_ from it. Job security (and employment benefits in general) are huge mitigating factors against the stress of the modern worker's life, it's what allows them to function at a good level which sustains the company that's hiring you as a freelancer to begin with.
Staying at the top of Maslow's pyramid of needs is much more fundamental for a productive, healthy society to exist than the purported efficiency you think you would achieve by taking people's job security away.
That we're talking of a 'desperate hustle' to survive is indeed very bad news of our society in this context. If all people can think of is of ways of scraping by to survive, and do that 24/7, they don't have time to create, innovate, research and do actual good, meaningful things. And yet, that's where we're inevitably headed.
In the modern era, workers have been facing a steadily increasing amount of stress and pressure due to the ever-accelerating pace of change in our society. With every passing decade, more and more we've found that we have to be on the edge, or else who knows if our job will be automated away or outsourced to another country to never come back.
This is _why_ the 'desperate hustle' has come about. Today, workers know they can't cut it, they can't keep up, they just take it all in bravely -the pay cuts, the longer work hours, the loss of security and benefits, all hardships which had supposedly been left behind. We have come full circle, and it's not a good place to be.
So you think life would be better if there was less change? For example if we hadn't changed from horses to cars? I think people change their ways of living because the new ways are more efficient or convenient. Why would they change to a worse state.
I think you are wrong when you claim that I don't pay for other people's job security. That job security is costing companies money (for example because they can't fire people they don't need anymore), and that cost is factored into their products.
I didn't mean freelancers specifically pay for that, society in general does. But employees get the job security in return - freelancers don't get anything in return. You make the argument about stability of companies - OK, maybe that is a factor, but I would like to see some research that shows it is significant.
We've never been more technologically sophisticated. It's never been cheaper to stay alive. It's never been easier to produce cheap, valuable goods to ensure that people can have a good life.
It's not about job security, it's about making sure that everyone can afford a bare minimum of dignity and living standard. If you read between the lines, the author of this story calls for sensible regulation to ensure that this continues to be the case, and that regular people aren't exploited for economic gain. While this might be a controversial topic in some circles, I don't think your average middle-class family would object.
It is obvious that the continued technological developments, including automation, will cause an amount of pain and strife. This is why we should meet these problems head-on. Increased automation should mean more wealth and a better life for everyone. The status quo, at least in the US, has meant a poorer median and vastly increased wealth differences between the top and the median. The latter of these points is not in itself a problem, but the first is. That's where the problem lies.