How The Future of Decent Work May Make Many Of Us Happier

We’re headed towards a dramatically different economy in which most workers will be independent contractors. Freelancers will work on demand for whoever needs their services rather than for fixed periods of time for a single employer.

As The Economist describes, workers will be on a platform that matches them with customers and provides verification, security and payment systems. This is the world of Uber and will increasingly be the world of just about everything: handyman services, cooking, laundry, shopping, scheduling, personal training, coding, doctoring, lawyering, bossing and creating everything from television ads to Ebola suits. As these services spread, they will create the “on-demand economy” or the “platform economy.”

The drivers of this economy are technological forces that are standing Ronald Coase on his head. We used to need firms — vertical, centralized, collective entities — because of the transaction costs of trying to get business, pay benefits, provide back office support, supplies and workspaces themselves. Today, however, the equation is reversed. We need platforms because the transaction costs of renting a central space, centralizing services, standardizing procedures and policies and having permanent employees are just too high. It is far cheaper just to connect customers and providers, and now we can.

The Economist missed a deeper transformation, however: a set of forces that will reshape not only ways of working but also patterns of consumption. The clue to this blind spot lies in the following sentence: “The on-demand economy is unlikely to be a happy experience for people who value stability more than flexibility: middle-aged professionals with children to educate and mortgages to pay.” Perhaps that is the view of a middle-class male professional with a stay-at-home wife or husband. But for middle-aged professionals and everyone else who must combine breadwinning and caregiving, flexibility is the Holy Grail.

Souce:

http://economicdevelopment.org/2015/02/how-the-future-of-work-may-make-many-of-us-happier/