AirBnB, Lyft, etc certainly take advantage of the underemployment boom -- but did they cause it? It seems unfair to blame two relatively small companies for the result of multiple regulatory failures across multiple industries, especially considering that neither existed in its current form when the crash happened.
I don't think the article is blaming these companies for the current employment situation. It highlights that these business models are deemed clever and entrepreneurial while in fact supporting a wage model whereby everybody is responsible for the hustle, working on commission... employment as a service if you will. This in of itself isn't bad, but the article makes the point that this approach leads to an employment where nobody can just work for a fair wage, everybody is hustling. I thought it was a very thoughtful and interesting piece that revealed one of the long term consequence of something that everybody seems to be celebrating, this 'liberation' of service (and employment).
