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Am I missing something or are of these "I'm too rich to be bothered with this task" services just creating a new servant class in the United States?

This "servant class" has already existed, but now I feel as if it's being carved out of the already diminishing middle class.




>Am I missing something

I think you are a bit, because I use a lot of these services and am not rich

Uber/Lyft isn't "I'm too rich to drive" it is "I'm drunk at the bars and need a ride home." or "The BART is closed because high winds blew stuff on the tracks and my flight leaves out of SFO in just a bit. "(Lyft really saved me on that one, no cabs around)

Instacart isn't "I'm too rich to go grocery shopping" it is "I'm a mom of two kids, one of them has diarrhea right now, we need some things from the store"

Etc - have to run but you get the idea


Even daily Uber use is cheaper than owning a car where I live (Toronto). Car insurance alone is $400 a month for a young single male.


I'm honestly not sure how much larger on a percentage basis the labor pool is that's associated with "I'm too rich to be bothered with this task" services is.

After all, lawn/cleaning/etc. services have long been a thing. So are babysitters, taxis, etc. For someone with enough money, they could have had full-time personal assistants, cooks, drivers, etc.

What seems to be mostly new is that technology is making certain tasks more efficient and/or more efficient to time-slice in a way that people who are merely comfortably well-off but not really wealthy can afford them. (And the challenge is that tasks that are sliced up that way need to be sufficiently cookie-cutter that the context and knowledge a full-time assistant might have aren't required.)


> After all, lawn/cleaning/etc. services have long been a thing. So are babysitters, taxis, etc.

With the exception of taxis, those have traditionally been cash (i.e. untaxed) businesses with no middlemen and long-term relationships. They're "I'm too rich to be bothered," but also "I've been paying you to mow my lawn for years." The new insta-serf companies break this relationship and take a big cut to pay six-figure salaries to a handful of techies.


I think it's bringing services to people that were previously only available to those who could afford a personal assistant.




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