Are ‘sharing’ apps creating a generation of newly oppressed?
One sunny day last summer I noticed my teenage daughter and her friends, while relaxing poolside in our suburban backyard, placing food delivery orders via their smartphones.
I assumed they were just calling in a to-go order and that one of them would go pick it up. I was surprised to see, however, less than an hour later a rather unkempt vehicle pull into my driveway and a smiling, but harried, young African American woman walk up with a DoorDash hot bag to deliver the food to the much-younger-than-her kids in my backyard.
I felt uncomfortable with the whole scene and thought about it on and off for months afterward — trying to understand what specifically about the event made me uneasy. I had to give it that length of time because I knew if I said (or posted) anything immediately, it would probably get misconstrued by my friends, neighbors and family as elitist or even racist.
Rest assured, my issue was not about my perception of a beat-up old Honda driven by a black woman showing up in my admittedly privileged gated community — in fact, quite the contrary.
The issue is about socioeconomics and classism, very much like what I saw and grew up around in Mumbai, India, as a child.
American venture capitalists and their host of cheerleaders, from investors to media, to the very startups themselves, beat a steady drum of how all such endeavors are a healthy sign of entrepreneurial innovation. They convince us that this is technology at its finest and our young college graduates are being hired to engineer “global solutions” — that this type of “disruption” is good.
When it comes to many aspects of the “sharing” or “peer-to-peer” economies (the euphemisms applied by esteemed analysts and investors), this sort of enterprise is really nothing new. The apps and digital tools that support it may be new, and the new generation of American users may be new to the concept, but anyone who has spent time in countries with enormous wage disparity will tell you these services are not innovative.
They are, in fact, the signs of emerging oppression and growing social stratification. These app-based services are virtual canaries in the coal mine of a country that is foundering and struggling to make meaningful work for its young people.
Forty years ago in India, there were no apps, yet you could have just about any food or service at your doorstep in minutes. A whistle or catcall from the apartment balcony, a quick shout to your house servant, a hand gesture to the man with a basket on his head, and you had a hot lunch, car service, shave or even currency exchange at your door.
This sort of personalized service still exists in India today (a reason many app-based similars haven’t taken off there) and is far more efficient and integral to Indian society than the novelty it provides in the United States. But in India, there are no corporate behemoths or T-shirt-wearing Sand Hill Road billionaires with their hands in the pockets of the on-the-ground workers. It is self-employment and small business at its most basic level: survival.
Countries such as India, China, the Philippines and many others in the East have always had that elusive “scale” that venture capitalists are constantly chirping about when it comes to the “sharing” economy. The reason is simple — the haves can afford to pay the have-nots for the convenience of having their hair cut or earwax removed on their porch. (Yes, those are real and actual services.) With a market size of billions, scale happens quickly.
The difference, however, between food delivery in Mumbai and San Francisco is that in India it is the uneducated and impoverished class who have realized serving the wealthier is their only hope for survival and upward mobility. It is one step up from begging, two steps up from perishing — which there is plenty of in India as well.
There is a big gap between launching new business ventures and necessity — the entrepreneur is trying to dream, while the poor man serving out of need is trying to wake up from his nightmare. There are, and have been, billions of people in India and other developing nations who served and continue to serve in undignified occupations merely for the hope their children will not have to follow in their footsteps.
In America, and the American form of capitalism, we are led to believe, through flashy apps and crafty logos, that Uber, DoorDash, Postmates and so many more “peer” services are the seedlings of the entrepreneur and the progress of society. Yet look closely at those who are actually performing the service — they are simply trying to avoid the rapid descent into the impoverished class. Most Uber drivers will tell you they also drive for Lyft and participate in other delivery-based services. They will also tell you that this is not a job they do for fun or virtue, but simply as a means to make ends meet.
I have met immigrants with equivalent to an M.D. who are now resigned to earning some algorithmic percentage of whatever surge value a Silicon Valley startup has charged to the beneficiary of the service. Unlike those underdeveloped nations, here the service provider doesn’t even set his own price, let alone handle his own transaction. You are last in line to get paid for a job you never dreamed about.
What is certain is that everyone using these services would never wish for their children to pursue such livelihoods.
And it is also certain that we all nod in agreement, while attending our respective churches and temples, when told that it is the rich who should serve the poor, that the fortunate should bring food to the less fortunate.
While we probably are fast creating a new super-subclass of worker in America, we shouldn’t feel sorry for those workers. Except in the most extreme circumstances of famine and illness, the world’s poor are, in fact, much happier and stronger from having faced adversity than the privileged they serve.
They know how to live below their means, work harder, cook their own food, and do more with less in all aspects. It is the users of these divisive services and apps who ought to be worried. Americans stopped slowing down to cook their own meals nearly 75 years ago. Fast food became the rare treat, then the norm, and now is no longer fast enough — it must arrive with the swipe of a finger.
And for what? So our young minds can spend more time working and consuming — building “scale” — with disregard to health, nature and selfsufficiency. The Roman philosopher Seneca, even in A.D. 14, wrote about the man so wealthy and served that he had to ask his servant whether he was standing or sitting.
Perhaps what America really needs to invest in is a new type of VC, as in Virtue Consciousness.