Hustling has been the ONLY way of life until very recently, perhaps the past few hundred years. This is really only since yesterday as far as the history of humanity is concerned. Things could be better in the U.S. for the middle class but we are still wealthy as far as most of the planet's population is concerned. I'm sorry I have no sympathy for the author's chief complaint. You can still find a nice quiet well paying job at a place like Exxon or Goodyear where you can in fact work until retirement. You could also choose to live in a place that isn't so expensive that the only way to survive is to hustle. Then you could save a little money, purchase some income producing assets, and become a capitalist yourself.
Given all that, some of us do enjoy the hustle. For us, the only true safety is that which we provide for ourselves through the hustle.
The hustle isn’t anything new; anyone who’s lived in what’s termed the inner-city knows about people selling bootleg CDs and DVDs on the street and people offering rides for money--they’re called 'gypsy cabs' in Boston. Most of the people who participate in this underground economy are desperate to keep a roof over their heads and to know they’ll have a next meal.
When you take this point of view, you can kind of see why they (the companies and investors) use the warm and fuzzy term ‘the sharing economy’, which puts a nice spin on it. Sharing is good, right?
It’s a slippery slope issue too: what else will get monetized in the name of the sharing economy? People often share prescription drugs with each other now; you could totally see an app that lets you see everyone around you who’s willing to share their Prozac or whatever.
I think the concern is not that hustling-based work exists, but that other types of work will increasingly struggle to compete with it. It's true that a stable middle class with a high standard of living is a recent innovation, but that's no argument for letting it slip away. It was a good innovation, and it makes sense for people to fight to hang onto that way of life.
Hustling has been the ONLY way of life until very recently, perhaps the past few hundred years.
Except, for example, for the several centuries of the feudal system in Europe, in which most of the population existed as agricultural serfs with no hustle involved. Other parts of the world have similar, non-hustling histories.
I suppose what I'm saying is that the statement I quoted simply isn't true.
Given all that, some of us do enjoy the hustle. For us, the only true safety is that which we provide for ourselves through the hustle.