Servants of some sort have been a staple of the historic middle class for a long time. The thing we often overlook is that the consumer technologies of the 1950&#x27;s and forward meant that we could use machines (like washers and dryers) instead of people, and as a result our perception of middle class changed: if you had a car, a washer and dryer, a refrigerator, and a phone, you were middle class.<p>As someone said on HN a while ago, a lot of these gig economy apps of publicly sourced private service seem to be there just to make the 1% feel like the .01%