The desperate hustle as a way of life
This is a really interesting perspective thanks for sharing. I don't think anyone intended to create this shadow economy. The founders of AirBnB, TaskRabbit, Lyft, and the like did not create those services with the intention that people hustle full-time. More that it was a stopover to get some cash in an economy where you might need it and a place where cost of living is high. But I very much agree that this piece demonstrates perverse incentives. As someone else posted on here, it's not right if people hustle to the extent of crashing with their friend's parent's cousins every day just so they can list their places on AirBnB.<p>The other point though, is that I don't think we'll have decades of hustle anyways, because the point of many of these services is to catalyze a culture of sharing that we've lost. Once we gain it back, then Lyft, Uber, and the like (as one example) can shift from drivers that drive around looking for rides (which is hardly sharing so much as a homegrown taxi), into truly picking up people when convenient for their usual routes. Of course, this depends on these organizations not being swayed by perverse incentives themselves.<p>We'll see!