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whenever i read articles like this, i can't help but think how much beneficial pressure a basic income would exert on a system like this. when no one has to do your unpleasant/tedious tasks because it's that or starve, there's suddenly an incentive for those jobs to pay much more, or be automated as efficiently as possible. i can see a post-basic-income equivalent of instacart, for example, being the one person who goes out and does grocery shopping for an entire building, but gets a lot of their other chores done for them as a quid pro quo.

The parallels between the gig economy and the increasing specialization in the First Industrial Revolution are sickening, and it's only going to get worse.

Amen. America would be a better country if even richies had to scrub a toilet now and then (or alternatively, if robots also scrubbed poor peoples' toilets for them). We could use a good dose of humility.