Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity (36 page)
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Authors: Douglas Rushkoff
Toyota Motor Corporation,
105
–6
tragedy of the commons,
215
–16
Treehouse,
59
Tumblr,
32
turning point,
99
tyranny of choice,
30
Uber,
4
,
93
,
94
,
98
–99,
188
,
213
,
219
,
222
,
229
peer-to-peer commerce enabled by,
45
,
46
as platform monopoly,
85
–87
pricing power of,
47
–48
unemployment insurance,
99
unemployment solution,
54
–67
guaranteed minimum income programs and,
62
–65
guaranteed minimum wage public jobs and,
65
–66
hourly-wage employment, history of,
56
joblessness as feature of new digital economy and,
55
–56
questioning need for work and,
56
–58
real needs, getting paid to address,
65
–67
reducing 40-hour workweek and,
58
–60
sharing productivity gains with employees and,
60
–62
United Steel Workers,
220
USA Today,
173
velocity of money,
140
–41
venture capital,
189
–95
Vicarious,
119
–20
Victorian exhibition,
20
Volkswagen,
106
Watson,
90
–91
wealth inequality.
See
income disparity
Welch, Jack,
132
welfare state,
99
Whole Foods,
109
Wiener, Norbert,
52
Wikinomics
(Tapscott & Williams),
49n
Williams, Anthony D.,
49n
Williams, Evan,
7
–8
Wired,
187
Wörgl,
157
–58
worker-owned collectives,
219
–20
workweek, reduction of,
58
–60
WorldCom,
133
Xerox,
98
Yahoo,
32
Yahoo Finance,
182
Young, Neil,
199
zero marginal cost society,
62
Zipcar,
218
Zobele,
107
–8
Zuckerberg, Mark,
92
–93,
120
,
146
Zynga,
192
–93
*
Most notably Chris Sacca, in public statements.
*
Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams’s widely read book
Wikinomics
points to Wikipedia as a new model for mass collaboration and value creation online. They go on to credit Amazon Mechanical Turk with creating valuable new opportunities for the next generation of digital workers.
*
I have been participating in the Open Society’s “Future of Work” initiative, and the labor theorists, union leaders, and futurists in attendance—arguably the world’s experts on the future of work—can’t even agree on the parameters for defining a “job” from this point forward.
*
The places in the world where subsistence agriculture is no longer possible are themselves largely the victims of colonialism, global market inequities, or Western-owned factory pollution. By most responsibly derived accounts, we have more than enough bounty for the entire globe.
*
See my book
Life Inc.,
which traces the emergence of corporations in the late Middle Ages. The earliest charters granted to merchants make clear that the right to invest was a
concession
made from the merchant to the monarch. The merchant didn’t need the cash and didn’t need shareholders but took the investment money in return for exclusivity over a market and the protection of the king’s army.
*
Lately, however, Costco’s approach has been winning out. It is one of the few brick-and-mortar discount retailers whose “same-store sales” have been increasing year after year. This may also be because Costco charges an annual membership fee to shop at its stores, which accounts for about 70 percent of its operating income, as well as increased loyalty from its member-customers.
*
As of this writing, lawsuits against the company contesting the independent-contractor status of its drivers are under way. Uber is objecting to the notion that it is an employer or anything more than a neutral platform enabling the business dealings between individuals.
*
There’s still some debate among participants over how to define DACs, Dapps (decentralized applications), and DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations), as well as the principles to which they must adhere.
*
People borrow not opportunistically but irrationally. As if looking at objects in the distance, they see future payments as smaller than ones in the present, even if they are actually larger. They are more reluctant to lose a small amount of money than they are eager to gain a larger one—no matter the probability of either event in a particular transaction. They do not consider the possibility of any unexpected negative development arising between the day they purchase something and the day they will ultimately have to pay for it.
*
That’s what happened in the famous Enron scandal, when the energy company used pension funds as part of its illegal investment scheme, costing employees $2 billion of their own retirement savings.
*
Midas List venture capitalists in 2013 did a study in which Pando was determined to be one of the five most trusted media brands for venture capitalists, along with the
New York Times
, the
Wall Street Journal
,
Fortune
, and TechCrunch.
*
A Web site where designers compete to create logos for companies, and only the winning designer gets paid.
*
And of course, widespread corruption within the Vatican itself played no small role in the collapse of the value system it was supposed to be promoting.
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