Something in print that can bug you
Here’s some light reading — or not — for the week. Time tries to scare the pants off of us with a report that pandemics are on the rise around the world. There’s basically nothing we can do to protect ourselves, we are told, and our government is woefully unprepared.
There’s a new killer bird flu spreading in China, for example, and “it’s only a matter of time before it hops a plane out of China and onto foreign soil, where it could spread through the air like wildfire,” Time reports.
If this sounds like fear-mon- gering, or that there might be a pointed political message here, note that the magazine helpfully concludes that it wouldn’t hurt if President Trump finally appointed someone to head up the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In a separate column, Bill Gates, of course, has all the answers on “How to Keep America Safe.” For one thing, the gazillionaire tells us to stop bellyaching about the federal government spending our tax money abroad on health and development programs, arguing that it’s ultimately keeping us safe and lowering our bills. The number of people who died from the most recent Ebola outbreak, 11,000 victims would have been much greater if not for US dollars spent fighting the flesh-eating disease, according to the world’s richest person.
The sharing economy is getting it all wrong, Nathan Heller writes in the New Yorker’s cover story in its innovation issue. Heller interviewed dozens of ordinary “giggers,” people who work for TaskRabbit, Airbnb, Uber and so on, concluding that their employ- ment model is simply not “sustainable.”
The Airbnbs of the world claim they are “democratizing capitalism,” but Heller makes the case that they are benefiting consumers while clobbering workers offering traditional services. The housekeepers, bellhops and cooks who work in hotels, and mostly earn union wages, are the ones getting marginalized, he notes.
The magazine also manages an incredible feat: It makes a hash out of a story about a blind man who excels at mountain climbing.