MISINFORMATION’S DEADLY PROFIT MOTIVE

By Jessica González and Carmen Scurato,Common Dreams.

July 24, 2021



https://popularresistance.org/misinformations-deadly-profit-motive/



Big Tech companies continually put profits and growth over the safety of their users.

We cannot wait for more people to die before we take action.

Are social-media companies killing people?

Last week, President Biden said they were. But on Monday, he clarified his remarks, saying it’s misinformation that’s the real threat.


The user-engagement model driving businesses like Facebook and YouTube makes it easy for deadly misinformation to spread at a speed and scale never before possible.

Actually, it’s the combination of the two that’s costing lives. Biden’s comments followed a U.S. surgeon general advisory, which found that the user-engagement model driving businesses like Facebook and YouTube makes it easy for deadly misinformation to spread at a speed and scale never before possible. These online platforms have designed their products in a way that encourages users to share false content—causing people to reject public-health initiatives against COVID-19, attack public-health workers, and embrace dangerous “miracle cures.”

“When it comes to misinformation, not sharing is caring,” Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said during a White House press briefing last week. His advisory offers a detailed account of the ways that the spread of health mis- and disinformation has flooded communities with lies.

Health misinformation was deadly prior to the rise of internet platforms, but the problem is proliferating in new ways because of the technology these companies use to extract and exploit our demographic and behavioral data.

This data extraction fosters the precision-targeting of people with ads, content and group recommendations, including the more than 43 million people in the United States whose first language is Spanish. According to multiple reports, bad-faith actors and the misinformed have taken to Spanish-language YouTube programs, WhatsApp communities and Facebook groups to spread fake cures and conspiracy theories about a range of health threats. While these companies have done a poor job of tackling this problem to protect English-speaking users, they’ve done far worse when addressing the spread of misinformation in languages spoken by the country’s many immigrant communities.

Dr. Murthy urged platforms to “step up” and do more, including operating with greater transparency, monitoring misinformation more closely and taking action against the multitude of disinformation super-spreaders who’ve found a lucrative home on their services.

It’s an unprecedented statement coming from the nation’s top doctor, but platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube will do only so much without regulations that hold them accountable to public health and welfare. Like Big Tobacco before them, Big Tech companies continually put profits and growth over the safety of their users. We cannot wait for more people to die before we take action.

And while the many public-interest campaigns pressuring the platforms to do better are important, the government has a critical role to play in reining in the companies’ toxic revenue models.

Free Press Action has outlined three measures lawmakers and the White House must take to respond to the dangerous spread of platform mis- and disinformation. These steps—more than any changes technology companies have voluntarily made—are an essential way to begin safeguarding the future of our information ecosystem and the health of its users.

First, Congress must pass the Algorithmic Justice and Online Platform Transparency Act, introduced earlier this year by Sen. Edward Markey (D–Massachusetts) and Rep. Doris Matsui (D–California). This crucial legislation would disrupt the way social-media platforms use personal data and discriminatory algorithms to target users and increase company profits at all costs. It would force more transparency on the ways tech companies use engagement algorithms, prevent the discriminatory use of personal information, and establish an interagency task force to set public-safety-and-effectiveness standards for algorithms.

Second, we need to better support trustworthy local news and information as an antidote to the spread of online lies. A recent study from UNC’s Center for Media Law and Policy found that mis- and disinformation spread on social media often fills the vacuum left when communities lose trusted sources of local-news coverage. Free Press Action has proposed a tax on the advertising revenues that power Big Tech to fund the kinds of diverse, local and independent journalism that’s gone missing as local newsrooms have shut down and journalists have lost their jobs. A portion of these ad-tax revenues should go to supporting non-English news and information in communities often neglected or misinformed by mainstream outlets.

Third, the White House needs to appoint an interagency official to coordinate study and action on tech companies’ harmful data practices, including the ways their business models scale up the spread of deadly health misinformation. This work includes encouraging the Federal Trade Commission to begin a rulemaking on harmful data and algorithmic practices, which would examine the algorithm-based business model that promotes toxic lies and relies on engagement-for-profit over public accountability. Focusing attention on the ways platforms monitor and remove multilingual misinformation should be a priority.

When the surgeon general’s office first sounded the alarm about tobacco in 1964, Congress followed with measures to begin to repair the extensive harms the industry had inflicted on generations of first- and secondhand smokers. Now that Dr. Murthy has issued a similar health warning against platform misinformation, the government must do more than just slap a warning label on Big Tech’s products. Lawmakers must protect people from a business model that makes deadly misinformation profitable.

WHY THE ISRAELI SPY EXPORT PEGASUS IS A DANGER TO FREEDOM

By Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com.

July 24, 2021



https://popularresistance.org/scheer-intelligence-why-the-israeli-spy-export-pegasus-is-a-danger-to-freedom/



The journalist has been sounding the alarm bells about the private surveillance spyware sold by Israel’s NSO for years.

In recent days, Pegasus, the name of Israeli spyware implicated in everything from the murder of journalists to the surveillance of world leaders, has been splashed across headlines around the globe. Reports in the Washington Post, The Guardian, and 15 other media outlets, as well as Amnesty International, which uncovered the spyware’s reach, revealed that Pegasus, sold by the Israeli company NSO, was used in attempts to track the most intimate details of thousands of people, including French President Emmanuel Macron and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, as well as hundreds of human rights activists, journalists and lawyers around the globe. The revelations have prompted Haaretz columnist Eitay Mack to declare in no uncertain terms that “Israel’s NSO and Pegasus are a real and present danger to democracy all over the world.”

News that a private intelligence company run by former Israeli spies and military officials created a practically undetectable malware that can make its way onto cell phones without so much as a click likely came as a shock to many. And yet years before this recent story broke, journalist Richard Silverstein had been sounding the alarm bells about two Israeli private intelligence tech firms. As early as 2018, Silverstein wrote in The Nation:


“…in the past two decades or so, Israel has greatly expanded use of these technologies. Veterans of these spy shops have transferred their knowledge into the commercial sphere and marketed themselves as agents of repression for clients around the globe. This is a dark, dirty secret that lies behind the hype of the ‘start-up nation.’

Two Israeli companies are at the forefront of this commercialization of dirty ops: NSO Group and Black Cube.”

On this week’s “Scheer Intelligence,” Silverstein joins host Robert Scheer to discuss the dangers of Pegasus and how the latest stories about NSO are even more shocking than previous reports.

“The Post story really is remarkable,” Silverstein tells Scheer. “There have been many stories written since 2018, [but] what the Washington Post documented is that the company had targeted 50,000 cell phone numbers [located] in 50 different countries–over one-third of all the countries in the world. NSO Group has perhaps as many as 50 client states, intelligence agencies, police agencies, and military forces that are using them.

“[Although] NSO claims that the only purpose for their technology is to break up criminal gangs and drug gangs, and to stop terrorism, and to help find kidnapped or missing children,” says the Tikun Olam blogger, “but in effect, that’s really rarely what is actually done with this technology. It’s mostly used by intelligence agencies of repressive governments, like Azerbaijan, or Hungary, or Saudi Arabia. These are countries that feel that their citizenry is the enemy. They are repressive regimes that are based on authoritarian rule, on corruption, and on violence. And this is what this technology facilitates. It facilitates the worst in human behavior, and the worst in the behavior of nation-states.”

Scheer, whose most recent book, “They Know Everything About You,” centers on mass surveillance, points out that while the Israeli government has so far escaped direct criticism due to the companies being privately run, the same assumptions are never made about Chinese or Russian hackers, for example. Listen to the full conversation between Silverstein and Scheer as the two discuss what can be done to curtail surveillance, and whether NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s approach to the issue will ever work.

You can also read about how to detect Pegasus on your own phone here.





Credits:

Host: Robert Scheer

Producer: Joshua Scheer

Introduction: Natasha Hakimi Zapata

Transcript: Lucy Berbeo

Robert Scheer: Hi, this is Robert Scheer with another edition of Scheer Intelligence, where the intelligence comes from my guests. In this case it’s Richard Silverstein. He’s well known as a podcaster about a number of issues, but you know, Israel has certainly been high on his list of concerns, and many other topics.

But I want to talk to him because of a big story that’s broken in the Washington Post on Pegasus, the product of a private Israeli firm, NSO, and which draws upon many veterans of the Israeli military establishment. It can’t sell its products without the approval of that government. But nonetheless, a private company, and a major take-out fueled by research done by Amnesty International, and I believe it’s 26 news organizations, that ran in the Washington Post. And the New York Times had another big follow-up on it. Technology that has the name of Pegasus, which is again a privately produced product, ostensibly, sold to governments around the world, a very large number. And according to the revelations that appeared in the Washington Post, can be used by brutal dictatorships–and has been–to oppress their people, to learn about the people. And because of a really advanced technology, and ingenious, where you don’t even have to click on to give them any access to your phone; they’re able to even do it without a click. Maybe this is something the NSA or Chinese or Russian security can do, but nonetheless here is a private company that has sold it to Saudi Arabia, others, that turns people’s cell phone into an audio/video observation post without there being any evidence.

And if Amnesty International had not managed to document this, along with some other organizations and the Washington Post, they said we would be unaware of it. Well, Richard Silverstein actually in his podcasting was really one of the first to expose this. That’s how it came to my attention. And he wrote an article in The Nation magazine back in 2018 exposing the work of basically two Israeli organizations, Black Cube and NSO, which is the one connected with this Pegasus. And so I thought I would turn to him and find out: How significant is this Washington Post, Amnesty International breakthrough now, as a news story and as an insight into surveillance? Take it away, Richard.

Richard Silverstein: Well, the Post story really is remarkable. Because it is–there have been many stories written, as you mentioned, since 2018 and even before then, about NSO and how

widespread the technology was, and how intrusive it was. But what the Washington Post article documented was that the company had targeted 50,000 cell phone numbers throughout the world, belonging to–and that–these were, that was the total number of cell phones they were targeting. They, in order to actually infect your phone with the malware, they actually have to succeed in getting it onto your phone. So they didn’t succeed in all 50,000 cases. But those 50,000 cell phones were located in 50 different countries around the world, and that is over one-third of all the countries in the world. So NSO Group has perhaps as many as 50 client states, intelligence agencies, police agencies, military forces that are using them.

Now, NSO claims that the only purpose for their technology is to break up criminal gangs and drug gangs, and to stop terrorism, and to help find kidnapped or missing children; that’s the sort of story that they put out to the public. But in effect, that’s really rarely what is actually done with this technology. It’s mostly used by intelligence agencies of repressive governments, like, you know, Azerbaijan, or Hungary, or Saudi Arabia, as you mentioned. These are countries that feel that their citizenry is the enemy. They are repressive regimes that are based on authoritarian rule, on corruption, and on violence. And this is what this technology facilitates. It facilitates the worst in human behavior, and the worst in the behavior of nation-states.

Robert Scheer: Well, let’s begin, first of all, talking about what is ominous about the technology. I mean, NSO, we should be very clear here, denies that it in any way condones any nefarious behavior; denies the evidence of the Washington Post and others; and claims that it has acted to deny their services to any groups that would do such things. On the other hand, they also say they’re not responsible for how their clients use this technology; they claim they don’t monitor it, and so forth. So we have to put that out there, and I’ll let you address that.

But let’s just talk about the ingenious viciousness of this technology. Because, again, this is not your normal hacking where you somehow have to be complicit, you have to sign on, click on, accept the bait. This is a technology, Pegasus, where they can invade your phone without your knowing it, and indeed it requires a great deal of expertise for anyone to do the forensics to find out you have been invaded. That’s what Amnesty International’s technical competency helped demonstrate. That’s what the Washington Post and others, 26 other news organizations have helped. So let’s first talk about the technology emanating, at least in claim, from the private sector rather than–even though many of these people are veterans of Israeli intelligence, the Israeli government has to approve any export. But they’re claiming that this is a private sector, for-profit venture. So tell us what it does that we didn’t know any private company could do.

Richard Silverstein: Well, Pegasus is the most sophisticated malware of its kind produced anywhere in the world, and NSO is the most successful company of all of its competitors in doing this sort of thing. And what happens is, these cases are called zero-click exploit–that means all that NSO needs, all the client needs, is your phone number. It sends a text message to your phone number; you don’t know that you’ve received it, and the text message itself then begins to download the malware onto your phone, without you doing anything, as you mentioned. And once it’s on your phone, it controls your phone. It knows everything that you are doing, everything you’re saying, every keystroke that you make, every photo that you look

at, everything that you browse on the internet, every password that you have. It has access to your financial accounts as long as you’re using a banking app or PayPal or anything like that.

And in addition, it knows not just what you’re doing, it knows what every person who communicates with you through your cell phone is doing as well. So in effect, one of the cybersecurity analysts that was quoted in that Washington Post article said that this really gives NSO and the client access almost to the entire world. Not just confined to those 50,000 cell phones, but just like a branching tree, it gives you access to everything going on in the world that has any connection to electronic devices. And that really, I think, is the danger here.

I wanted to address also this claim by NSO, this false claim that it has no responsibility because it doesn’t know what clients do with the technology. For one, NSO maintains servers around the world, including in the United States, which have Pegasus on the server. The server then will download Pegasus to the cell phone, and then it will upload the data from the cell phone to the server. So Pegasus has absolute control over everything that is done. And it claims that it will cut off a client if the client is doing something it doesn’t like. The only reason that NSO has ever cut off a client is because of bad publicity. So when Saudi Arabia was discovered to have been involved in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, and there were claims–that are legitimate in my opinion–that the technology, Pegasus, was used to track Khashoggi and allow the assassins to know where he was and target him.

So NSO is claiming that it doesn’t, it’s not responsible. But the fact of the matter is that Pegasus is used by the Saudis and by other people, and [there are people] who have been actually murdered by assassins, by these governments using Pegasus. Now, while we can’t say that Pegasus fired the bullet that killed Khashoggi, or the Mexican journalist who was murdered after his cell phone was hacked by Pegasus, we have to say that Pegasus is implicated in these crimes. So we’re not just–

Robert Scheer: OK. So let’s establish right now that the technology itself, for the private sector–we have to assume that government, big governments like China and Russia and the United States, have their ways of intruding on our phones that are maybe even more dazzling. But this is an example of where governments, even maybe less accountable, can get this right off the shelf from NSO, this Pegasus. Then the question of accountability comes up. Now, the U.S. government has taken the position, both under Trump and under Biden now, of holding the Russian government responsible for what the Russian government says may be private. They’re now extending that to the Chinese government and what emanates from their territory in terms of hacking and intruding. And in this case, this is a company–along with another one, Black Cube, which we may talk about–NSO–which are basically composed of a lot of veterans of the Israeli defense community, seem to have ties with something called Unit 8200, which has honed itself by surveilling its own, mostly Palestinian population.

And so the question really is, it seems to come from the private sector, but at what point do we hold the government responsible for what it allows its private sector to do? Now, in this case, the Israeli government has said, and NSO said, they don’t target Americans; I guess that’s

because of our special relationship. They’ve also said they will not do anything that counters the Israeli government need. But what is the relationship of these companies, private companies, particularly NSO, to the Israeli government?

Richard Silverstein: Well, NSO–really, I see NSO as almost an extension of the Israeli state. Because the Washington Post article noted, there’s a term used for this malware technology that is “backdoor.” And U.S. law enforcement has wanted Apple to install a backdoor on its devices so law enforcement can get access to the devices and can defeat the security that protects the device from being hacked. But the Israeli government, according to the Washington Post story, U.S. intelligence agencies believe that the Israeli government, the Israeli intelligence agencies, have a backdoor to Pegasus. That means that when Pegasus is used by a repressive government, and it’s attacking a human rights activist or a lawyer or a journalist, not only does the client, the intelligence agency, have access to their private life, but the Israeli government itself does.

And who has been the target of the Pegasus technology? The Washington Post says heads of state; Cabinet ministers; diplomats; military officials; security officials. And in one case in particular, a U.S. high-level Biden administration official, Rob Malley was, his cell phone was infected with Pegasus. That means that whoever did that wants to know what Rob Malley is saying about Iran, because he’s the representative of the Biden administration to Iran, and dealing with the Geneva talks and the Iran nuclear agreement. So somebody–probably the Saudis, could be anybody else–who wants to know what is happening with those negotiations, is using Rob Malley’s cell phone to gain that information.

So I want to say that the Israeli government is benefiting in an extraordinary way from what this private NSO group is doing. And, as you say, the very employees who are doing, who are creating Pegasus come out of the Israeli military, have devised all of these technologies inside the Israeli military, and then are exporting them and privatizing them and using them in this fashion.

Robert Scheer: Well, let me just say that we will learn a lot more. The story just broke this last week. And again, it was done by a consortium, and the Washington Post was most prominent; Amnesty International was involved, and a lot of research went into developing this case of a very ominous software, Pegasus, which turns your cell phone into basically a spy. That raises serious questions for other companies, like you mentioned Apple, who their whole profit model is to sell us these devices and to entrust our most personal information, our every movement, to track our movements, to track our associations–every detail of our life, they now have turned that into an enemy of individual freedom throughout the world.

The question is–and this is why Apple has pushed back; why WhatsApp, which was intruded on by the company, has pushed back; there are lawsuits pending, developing. Because can you really have a multinational business, internet economy in which people around the world are expected to surrender their private moments and trust in the product. And here is an ostensibly private company–but I would point out that many of the hackers in China and Russia and

elsewhere, the government there claims they are on their own. But the fact of the matter is, here is a company that could totally subvert the whole marketing strategy of an Apple. And they’re going to push back, and we might actually have here–you know, I know Senator Wyden from Oregon has already pushed for that. Maybe we should talk about that, that this separation between the private and government sector doesn’t hold very well.

Richard Silverstein: Well, I think it’s really important that one hopeful aspect of all of this–which is very depressing in a lot of ways–is that there are ways in which citizens and companies can unite to fight back against this. There already are NGOs like Amnesty, like Citizen Lab, which do the forensic analysis, and which detect all of these infections, and expose them. But they are really still small voices in the wilderness. What we need is we need our legislators, like Senator Wyden, and we need members of the House Democratic Caucus to call for legislation which regulates these very dangerous products. And which says to a company what they can and can’t do, who they can and they can’t surveil, when they can do it and when they can’t, and gives you the reason and gives punishments that are–you know, and enforcement mechanisms that will deter the companies.

Now, Snowden has gone even farther beyond what I’m saying right now. Snowden basically says he wants to wipe out this business model as a commercial entity completely, around the world. I have immense respect for Edward Snowden; I’m not sure that, you know, that we can get there. But at the very least, I think we could have international treaties that the United Nations could help negotiate, where countries could get together that are either threatened by the technology, or if they’re enlightened enough to have companies that are doing this and want the companies themselves to have regulation, they could get together. And there could be both federal laws and international regulation that could stop some of the worst of this from happening. This is going to require–

Robert Scheer: Well, let me defend Edward Snowden in this respect. Why is this without precedent? Governments make rules all the time about private corporate behavior–can you sell cigarettes to children, or alcohol. Even in the wiretap area, we have laws in the United States about informing the person who’s being recorded, to what degree you can violate their privacy, to what degree they have to have knowledge. And as I said before, we are demanding that the Russian and Chinese government control anyone within their borders who might be hacking, or take responsibility for not controlling them. The Israeli government has taken that responsibility as far as NSO tapping phones of Americans, or at least the company makes a special exemption for people in the United States–they say, we don’t tap anyone in the United States if the phone is based there. And they also say, we don’t violate anything the Israeli government wants to do. Well, if we can make those kinds of demands in specific situations, why isn’t everyone in the world who has a cell phone given a guarantee that they will not have their most intimate, private moments captured without their knowledge? Why is that beyond reasonable legal regulation, as Snowden suggested?

Richard Silverstein: Well, there’s a distinction here between regulation and eliminating the market. So Snowden, I think–you know, and I don’t want to argue against Snowden, because I

have immense admiration for him. But I think what his position is, is that he wants to do away with this as a business completely; he wants to end all of these companies doing these things. I think that’s a pretty radical solution; I would love to see that solution, because I think this is a totally pernicious business model with terrible, damaging ramifications around the world. But I think that until we can get to completely eliminating it, at the very least we need to regulate it carefully. We regulate lots of dangerous products. We regulate cigarettes, we regulate products that can kill people. So there’s every reason why we need to stop this being a Wild West situation, where people can be killed, people can be imprisoned, and we need to tell companies what they can’t do. And right now, they can do just about anything they want, without any restrictions on them. And that needs to change.

Robert Scheer: Yeah, and as I say, knowledge is the thing here. The fact is that had Amnesty International and these news organizations, including the Washington Post, not been able to break this story–and I say with all due credit to you, you were early to this criticism, but you didn’t have the megaphone. Once it’s revealed, it’s like the abuses of NSA that Snowden revealed. Lots of people can see why they don’t want this marketed. And that, you know, we don’t market alcohol to children, or hard drugs to children. So, you know, why should spying of this kind be made a legal commodity in the world? Why is it assumed that this is a victimless activity, when clearly people are being killed all over the world now, and tortured, based on the invasion of their cell phone, right?

Richard Silverstein: I think the danger of this technology is that it’s invisible, and that it’s very difficult to detect. And even if you can detect it, as Amnesty and Citizen Lab have done, the companies themselves are 10 steps ahead of you. Because they know what you’re doing, and they’re going to counteract whatever it is that you’ve discovered. So Amnesty has done this amazing thing of revealing every aspect, technical aspect of what NSO is doing, and the product itself, and how it works, and they’ve laid it out on the page for technologists and for hackers to learn how Pegasus works. But the fact is that NSO is reading the same Washington Post article or Amnesty publication that you and I are reading, and they’re going to take everything that’s written on that page and they’re going to have countermeasures.

So the problem is that when, you know, a bullet is fired or a missile is fired, you know–you have a general idea of who the victim is and who the perpetrator is, and you can see the damage physically; you can see the weapon physically. With this malware, it’s invisible. That’s what makes it so dangerous. You don’t know who’s targeted, you don’t know to what extent they’ve been targeted, you don’t know what they’ve learned about these people; you only know when they end up either dead or in prison. And that’s what I think makes it so dangerous.

Robert Scheer: But once you find people–and I’m assuming if the case is made against NSO, or any company, if it’s made against Russian or Chinese hackers, whether they’re called public or private; anywhere, whether it’s made as Snowden did against the NSA–this kind of invasion of privacy–and we used to have a distinction between the public and private based on our Constitution, that we the citizens are entitled to protection against our government in terms of our privacy; that’s what the Fourth Amendment and others are all about. All I’m saying is,

reading these stories about what a company can do with this Pegasus product means that you shouldn’t be making such a product. Because what is the purpose of it except to spy on individuals without their knowing it? And whether that spying, wherever it comes from, it’s done with government convenience and support anyway. And if we can tell somebody you can’t sell a bottle of liquor to somebody under a certain age, I don’t see why we can’t say you can’t sell spyware that intrudes on cell phones without people knowing it and grabs and kidnaps their data. Why can’t we?

Richard Silverstein: Well, I want to point out–I want to take a devil’s advocate position here– Robert Scheer: No, don’t, we have enough devils out there that advocate for themselves. Richard Silverstein: [Laughs]

Robert Scheer: I’m just saying, just as a matter of common sense, I mean, this is lethal stuff. And why should they just be able to–it gets people killed, it takes away their freedom. If the Saudis know everything that anyone with a cell phone says or writes or knows, forget about any prospect for freedom. And that’s true in every society in the world.

Richard Silverstein: Well, so the danger here–not danger, but the problem, the complication is once you say–and I’m for this. I would like to see NSO go out of business, be driven out of business. I hope that the WhatsApp lawsuit bankrupts NSO. But if you take that position, then the next logical step is to say: What about the NSA? What about the Russian internet research agency, which messed up our 2016 election? What about the Chinese that are, you know, potentially trying to sabotage our infrastructure? Because it’s one step from saying we’re going to outlaw private companies from doing this, but then you have to go and talk about nation-states which are doing it, and which are far more dangerous. And I’m all in favor of restraints on governments, and I think this needs to happen, but you’re going to have a lot of pushback from the countries that are going to be the most inhibited, or the most targeted, with this. Because once the United States sees that the malware companies are being forced out of business, they’re going to realize the NSA is in danger as well.

Robert Scheer: OK, but let me wrap this up, and maybe you’ll agree with me, I don’t know. But listeners can decide for themselves. At least when governments do it–[Laughs] we can hold them accountable. You know, if in fact this was not a private Israeli company, but it was the Israeli government that did it, and they in any way contributed to the death of a Washington Post columnist who was from Saudi Arabia, that would be an incredible international scandal. It’s an incredible international scandal for Putin to be accused of what the U.S. has said hackers did, or for China, for any government. So as long as a government is attached to it, that they had to approve this–and it does seem that the Israeli government has complicity here, but we don’t know. But if you can attach a government to it, then you can have international pressure, at least awareness of what is happening. When it’s done in the private sector, and you just have these millions of people doing stuff, whether they’re selling cigarettes to children or what have you, or spying on everyone and so forth–and even a company like Facebook and WhatsApp and

Apple and everyone, they can’t control it. They’re no match for it. You have anarchy of, you know, the Wild West here, of everyone with their six-shooter.

And it doesn’t seem to me that regulation is such a–of the private sector here, in any country–is such a stretch. I just beg to differ with you. I’ll give you the last word, but I don’t think this is really what’s going to tie it all up. What’s going to tie it up is whether companies like Apple and Facebook say, wait a minute, you’re destroying the best thing about the internet, which is people’s confidence in it and our ability to sell them stuff. And this is really making your cell phone a lethal weapon in your pocket. That’s what I would–that’s what I got out of the Washington Post story. My god, I don’t even want to touch that cell phone anymore; it’s spying on me 24/7, and you know, who knows what gangsters have gained possession of it. Anybody who could pony up the money probably can get that technology. That is really threatening.

Richard Silverstein: I think there needs to be an alliance between the cell phone makers, the cell phone carriers, and the technology companies that you mentioned–and the public, and all of the victims of this malware technology. They all have to create an alliance; they all have to exert massive pressure on Congress to legislate. And we know how difficult it is to get Congress to do the right thing, and so it’s not going to be an easy thing. But someone like Ron Wyden is really on to the direction that this needs to go. We need legislation that will restrict these companies from doing some of the horrible things that they do.

And if I could just go back to what you said about the difference between the private sector and nation-states, is–you made an important point. There is a certain level of responsibility when a country is doing it. Because at the very least, if you have a concept like nuclear deterrence–where you had Russia and the United States having enough weaponry that there could be no first use without the destruction of the other country–I think that there needs to be some level of deterrence here. There is–I mean, I’m sorry, there is some level of deterrence between Russia, China, and the United States in terms of limitations on behavior. So there are certain things maybe that Putin is willing to do in terms of sabotaging the U.S. election; there are certain things he won’t do. There are certain things the NSA probably won’t do, because they know that they’re too dangerous, and they’re too likely to escalate into some cataclysm. That is not on the horizon with the private sector. NSO has no controls over what the clients do, over its own behavior, so that’s what makes it so dangerous. And that “Wild West” term that you used, I think, is really apt. There is total anarchy in that private sector, and there needs to be some order imposed on it.

Robert Scheer: Well, that’s coming together on that, we recognize that this power has to be controlled in order to have accountability. And on that note, that’s it for this edition. I want to thank you, Richard Silverstein, who was early to this party of accountability, because he three years ago wrote really a very important article in The Nation magazine sounding the alarm about these particular companies possibly being out of control. I also want to thank Christopher Ho, our engineer at KCRW, for getting these things professionally posted. Joshua Scheer, our executive producer, who has the control of everything. Natasha Hakimi Zapata, who writes the introductions. Lucy Berbeo, who does the transcription. And I want to thank the JWK

Foundation, which in the memory of a great journalist and writer, Jean Stein, helps fund this programming.

Wilderness survival hack: start a fire with coffee grounds.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmZnCurkInQ

Jokes about being sick - Dusty Slay

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCoGdZB5Zfw

Workers Are Being Crushed by Governors’ Unemployment Benefit Shutoffs

Republicans are cutting off unemployment benefits at a time when huge numbers of workers still desperately need them — and the Democrats aren’t putting up a fight over it.




July 24, 2021 Julia Rock and Andrew Perez JACOBIN




https://portside.org/2021-07-24/workers-are-being-crushed-governors-unemployment-benefit-shutoffs




The federal government’s unemployment assistance program became a “lifeline” for Susan Hardy when the pandemic made it impossible to find work as an oil and gas title researcher, a job she held as a contractor. Hardy, seventy-one, has six grandchildren living with her and relied on the $724 a week she received in benefits to take care of them and support her son, who was denied unemployment benefits.

At least, she relied on the money until West Virginia governor Jim Justice (R) announced that beginning on June 19, the state would end its participation in federal unemployment programs enacted during the pandemic to encourage people to go back to work. As an independent contractor, Hardy was receiving Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), a federal program created last March as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act to provide unemployment insurance for workers like Hardy, who don’t normally qualify for jobless aid.

Now, Hardy is at a loss. “If I needed $10 worth of gas right now, I can’t get it,” she said, adding that she has also maxed out her credit cards. “I used all the savings that I had just to maintain the household.”

Hardy is one of more than four million people who stopped receiving pandemic-related jobless aid during the past two months due to decisions by twenty-five Republican governors and one of their Democratic counterparts.

The governors said they ended the supplemental benefit programs to help businesses struggling to find workers as more companies fully reopened from the pandemic.

“West Virginians have access to thousands of jobs right now,” Justice said when he announced the cut-off. “We need everyone back to work. Our small businesses and West Virginia’s economy depend on it.”

Hardy was one of many workers who wrote to Justice’s office and asked him to reconsider his decision to end the benefits early. The Daily Poster obtained over two dozen such emails via public records request. According to these appeals, the pandemic-related unemployment benefits weren’t simply a reason for people to avoid going to work. Instead, the aid was the only thing keeping them afloat during unprecedented times — and cutting off that support was simply punishing.

“With me caring for six grandchildren, plus my age, I can’t go out and work at McDonald’s, or another restaurant, or in a warehouse,” Hardy said in an interview with the Daily Poster.

As she put it in her email to the governor’s office, “This unemployment is our lifeline.” She said she never received a response.

While President Joe Biden allowed governors to cut off benefits without putting up any fight, workers have now won lawsuits to block the unemployment cut-offs in two states and are suing in several more. AFL-CIO chief economist William Spriggs wrote last week that the Biden Labor Department “should have been a party to defend workers” in the lawsuits.
Blaming the Unemployed

The war on jobless aid began on May 4, when Montana governor Greg Gianforte (R) announced that the state would cut off federal unemployment benefits at the end of June.

“Montana is open for business again, but I hear from too many employers throughout our state who can’t find workers,” Gianforte said in a statement announcing the end to the benefits. “Nearly every sector in our economy faces a labor shortage.”

The governor’s announcement catalyzed a movement among GOP governors across the country, who similarly declared their authority to prevent their residents from receiving benefits under the various federal COVID-related unemployment programs established by Congress last year.

“This labor shortage is being created in large part by the supplemental unemployment payments that the federal government provides claimants on top of their state unemployment benefits,” South Carolina governor Henry McMaster (R) wrote to the state’s labor department.

Biden and his team pushed back on the idea that the federal benefits were to blame for a sudden shortage of workers, but they quickly changed course, with White House press secretary Jen Psaki ultimately saying that Republican governors “have every right to” reject the pandemic unemployment money.

That’s not the whole story: twenty-two governors decided they would stop paying the PUA assistance for self-employed workers. As Sen. Bernie Sanders (Ind.-VT) pointed out at the time, “Congress did not grant states the ability to strip PUA benefits away from vulnerable workers.”

Sanders told Biden’s labor secretary Marty Walsh that he had an obligation “to ensure this aid gets to workers.” Instead, an unnamed Biden administration official told CNN: “There is nothing we can do.”

“You’re Punishing Us”

This spring, as more Americans were allowed to get vaccinated and states started loosening restrictions on businesses, companies and industry groups quickly began to complain of a labor shortage.

Countless news stories featured restaurant owners claiming they couldn’t hire enough workers to reopen, and blamed the enhanced unemployment benefits for providing some people more money than they might make working full time.

After a jobs report in early May showed that hiring was lagging far behind economists’ projections, Republican officials, the US Chamber of Commerce, and business owners called on the federal government to end the enhanced unemployment benefits, repeating the line that the benefits were deterring people from taking jobs.

But there are plenty of reasons why people may not have raced back into the workplace when businesses started reopening.

US Census surveys have consistently found that millions of Americans are still afraid of contracting or spreading COVID, while many people are handling new care responsibilities due to the pandemic, such as taking care of children without day care services or relatives who need help.

A survey last month from the jobs website Indeed found the most common reasons people cited for not urgently searching for work was not unemployment benefits, but rather fear of COVID and care responsibilities.

According to one analysis of census data by Arindrajit Dube, an economist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, states saw no uptick in employment in the two to three weeks after benefits were cut off. However, in that same time period, people in the states where benefits were cut off did report more economic hardship, measured by difficulty paying usual household expenses.

Another study from Indeed similarly concluded that ending the benefits had not encouraged people to return to work. Other reports found that cutting off benefits may have contributed to a small increase in employment in those states.

Many West Virginians who wrote to the governor’s office explained that they had been unable to return to work due to childcare needs or health problems. Others said they couldn’t find any work in their field and didn’t believe they could make enough money to support themselves if they took a minimum-wage job.

“By you choosing to end the federal programs early, you are going to cause those of us who truly need this money to end up penniless because we cannot take restaurant jobs getting only 15 hrs a week with no benefits and min wage pay!” one woman wrote on May 14.


She added: “I am in kidney failure and when COVID hit my self employment took a huge hit, and because of my illness I cannot subject myself to working out in the public. I have been trying to find a work-from-home job and haven’t been able to.”

Multiple emails to Justice referenced the fact that many job postings in their area have been for fast-food restaurants, which pay far below what they were making before the pandemic.

“I’m unsure where you get your numbers from, but I’m encouraging you to look at a local job site and see how many jobs are available besides fast food,” one person wrote, adding: “You’re punishing us and forcing us to work low-wage jobs in a pandemic that’s still ongoing — while you sit in your fancy resort.” (Justice owns the luxury Greenbrier hotel.)

Some people said even suitable low-wage jobs weren’t available.

“There isn’t enough jobs out there, the jobs don’t pay enough, we have to travel a long way to the job’s location and the job doesn’t pay enough to do so, or we just can’t find a job,” another West Virginia resident wrote. “I have put in over 60 applications, myself, in the last 2 months. Out of all of the applications I have put in, I have not been hired or offered a job from any of the places I have applied to.”
Worker Victories in the Courts

As governors around the country moved to cut off federal unemployment programs, the Biden administration has repeatedly trotted out anonymous officials to say their hands are tied, and there’s nothing they can do to help people — even those on PUA, the program for self-employed workers.

“We don’t have the legal authority,” an unnamed staffer told CNBC in early June.

While Biden and his team have pleaded powerlessness, workers have already won lawsuits in two states to prevent their governors from cutting off the federal unemployment benefits.

In Indiana, two organizations sued Governor Eric Holcomb (R) on behalf of five unnamed workers set to lose benefits after Holcomb announced he was ending all federal unemployment payments.

“By prematurely deciding to stop administering these federal benefits, Indiana has violated the clear mandates of Indiana’s unemployment statute — to secure all rights and benefits available for unemployed individuals,” the lawsuit argued.

In late June, Marion County Superior Court Judge John F. Hanley blocked Indiana’s benefit shutoff, finding that a “preponderance of evidence” supports the plaintiffs’ argument that the plan violated state law.

Indiana sought a stay to avoid reinstating the federal unemployment benefits, but an appeals court denied that request, and the state said it would restart the payments soon. On Tuesday, Holcomb formally appealed the Marion County judge’s order to restart the unemployment payments.

In Maryland, workers filed a class action lawsuit on July 1 arguing that Republican governor Larry Hogan’s decision to cut off the federal unemployment benefits violated state laws governing the administration of unemployment programs. They also questioned whether Hogan had the authority to suspend PUA payments.

Last week, a Baltimore Circuit Court judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the benefit shutoff, finding that the “personal magnitude of the harm associated with losing benefits for plaintiffs and other individuals currently receiving them is greater than the purely fiscal impact on the state of being required to continue to administer these benefits.”

Judge Lawrence Fletcher-Hill also concluded the plaintiffs would likely succeed in their claim that state laws require the Maryland labor secretary to make use of all available federal unemployment benefits.

A Hogan spokesperson said the governor and his labor secretary “fundamentally disagree” with the judge’s decision, but would not appeal.

Workers have filed similar lawsuits in Oklahoma, Texas, and Ohio, and an activist in Florida is getting ready to sue her state’s governor, too.

In the meantime, Hardy has been left scrambling. Her frustrations have been exacerbated by the fact that while her benefits were cut off, the state has been offering millions in prize money to encourage people to get vaccinated, as part of its Do It For Babydog COVID-19 vaccine lottery.

“I don’t even know what my grandkids are going to have for dinner tomorrow, but West Virginia is giving the money away right and left,” said Hardy. “That was a huge insult.”

Robots Were Supposed to Take Our Jobs. Instead, They’re Making Them Worse.

Technology doesn’t have to exploit workers, it doesn’t have to mean robots are coming for all of our jobs. These are not inevitable outcomes, they are human decisions, and they are almost always made by people driven by a profit motive.

July 24, 2021 Emily Stewart VOX




https://portside.org/2021-07-24/robots-were-supposed-take-our-jobs-instead-theyre-making-them-worse




The robot revolution is always allegedly just around the corner. In the utopian vision, technology emancipates human labor from repetitive, mundane tasks, freeing us to be more productive and take on more fulfilling work. In the dystopian vision, robots come for everyone’s jobs, put millions and millions of people out of work, and throw the economy into chaos.

Such a warning was at the crux of Andrew Yang’s ill-fated presidential campaign, helping propel his case for universal basic income that he argued would become necessary when automation left so many workers out. It’s the argument many corporate executives make whenever there’s a suggestion they might have to raise wages: $15 an hour will just mean machines taking your order at McDonald’s instead of people, they say. It’s an effective scare tactic for some workers.

But we often spend so much time talking about the potential for robots to take our jobs that we fail to look at how they are already changing them — sometimes for the better, but sometimes not. New technologies can give corporations tools for monitoring, managing, and motivating their workforces, sometimes in ways that are harmful. The technology itself might not be innately nefarious, but it makes it easier for companies to maintain tight control on workers and squeeze and exploit them to maximize profits.

“The basic incentives of the system have always been there: employers wanting to maximize the value they get out of their workers while minimizing the cost of labor, the incentive to want to control and monitor and surveil their workers,” said Brian Chen, staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project (NELP). “And if technology allows them to do that more cheaply or more efficiently, well then of course they’re going to use technology to do that.”

Tracking software for remote workers, which saw a bump in sales at the start of the pandemic, can follow every second of a person’s workday in front of the computer. Delivery companies can use motion sensors to track their drivers’ every move, measure extra seconds, and ding drivers for falling short.

Automation hasn’t replaced all the workers in warehouses, but it has made work more intense, even dangerous, and changed how tightly workers are managed. Gig workers can find themselves at the whims of an app’s black-box algorithm that lets workers flood the app to compete with each other at a frantic pace for pay so low that how lucrative any given trip or job is can depend on the tip, leaving workers reliant on the generosity of an anonymous stranger. Worse, gig work means they’re doing their jobs without many typical labor protections.

In these circumstances, the robots aren’t taking jobs, they’re making jobs worse. Companies are automating away autonomy and putting profit-maximizing strategies on digital overdrive, turning work into a space with fewer carrots and more sticks.
A robot boss can do a whole lot more watching

In recent years, Amazon has become the corporate poster child for automation in the name of efficiency — often at the expense of workers. There have been countless reports of unsustainable conditions and expectations at Amazon’s fulfillment centers. Its drivers reportedly have to consent to being watched by artificial intelligence, and warehouse workers who don’t move fast enough can be fired.

Demands are so high that there have been reports of people urinating in bottles to avoid taking a break. The robots aren’t just watching, they’re also picking up some of the work. Sometimes, it’s for the better, but in other cases, they may actually be making work more dangerous as more automation leads to more pressure on workers. One report found that worker injuries were more prevalent in Amazon warehouses with robots than warehouses without them.

Amazon is hardly the only company that uses automation to keep tabs on workers and push them to do more. In 2020, Josh Dzieza at the Verge outlined the various ways artificial intelligence, software, and machines are managing workers at places such as call centers, warehouses, and software development shops. He described one remote engineer in Bangladesh who was monitored by a program that took three pictures of him every 10 minutes to make sure he was at his computer, and a call center worker who learned to say “sorry” a lot to customers in order to meet an artificial intelligence-based empathy monitor. A web of technologies has enabled the management of every minute of the working day.

“It would have been prohibitively expensive to employ enough managers to time each worker’s every move to a fraction of a second or ride along in every truck, but now it takes maybe one,” Dzieza wrote. “This is why the companies that most aggressively pursue these tactics all take on a similar form: a large pool of poorly paid, easily replaced, often part-time or contract workers at the bottom; a small group of highly paid workers who design the software that manages them at the top.”

A 2018 Gartner survey found that half of large companies were already using some type of nontraditional techniques to keep an eye on their workers, including analyzing their communications, gathering biometric data, and examining how workers are using their workspace. They anticipated that by 2020, 80 percent of large companies would be using such methods. Amid the pandemic, the trend picked up pace as businesses sought more ways to keep tabs on the new waves of workers working from home.

This has all sorts of implications for workers, who lose privacy and autonomy when they’re constantly being watched and directed by technology. Daron Acemoglu, an economist at MIT, warned that they’re also losing money. “Some of these new digital technologies are not simply replacing workers or creating new tasks or changing other aspects of productivity, but they’re actually monitoring people much more effectively, and that means rents are being shared very differently because of digital technologies,” he said.

He offered up a hypothetical example of a delivery driver who is asked to deliver a certain number of packages in a day. Decades ago, the company might pay the driver more to incentivize them to work a little faster or harder or put in some extra time. But now, they’re constantly being monitored so that the company knows exactly what they’re doing and is looking for ways to save time. Instead of getting a bonus for hitting certain metrics, they’re dinged for spending a few seconds too long here or there.

The problem isn’t technology itself, it’s the managers and corporate structures behind it that look at workers as a cost to be cut instead of as a resource.

“A lot of this boom of Silicon Valley entrepreneurship where venture capital made it very easy for companies to create firms didn’t exactly prioritize the well-being of workers as one of their main considerations,” said Amy Bix, a historian at Iowa State University who focuses on technology. “A lot of what goes on in the structure of these corporations and the development of technology is invisible to most ordinary people, and it’s easy to take advantage of that.”
The future of Uber isn’t driverless cars, it’s drivers

Uber’s destiny was supposed to be driverless.

In 2016, former CEO Travis Kalanick told Bloomberg making an autonomous vehicle was “basically existential” for the company. After a deadly accident with an autonomous Uber vehicle in 2018, current chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi reiterated that the company remained “absolutely committed” to the self-driving cause. But in December 2020 and after investing $1 billion, Uber sold off its self-driving unit. A little over four months later, its main competitor, Lyft, followed suit. Uber says it’s still not giving up on autonomous technology, but the writing on the wall is clear that driverless cars aren’t core to Uber’s business model, at least in the near future.

“A lot of this boom of Silicon Valley entrepreneurship where venture capital made it very easy for companies to create firms didn’t exactly prioritize the well-being of workers as one of their main considerations,” said Amy Bix, a historian at Iowa State University who focuses on technology. “A lot of what goes on in the structure of these corporations and the development of technology is invisible to most ordinary people, and it’s easy to take advantage of that.”
The future of Uber isn’t driverless cars, it’s drivers

Uber’s destiny was supposed to be driverless.

In 2016, former CEO Travis Kalanick told Bloomberg making an autonomous vehicle was “basically existential” for the company. After a deadly accident with an autonomous Uber vehicle in 2018, current chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi reiterated that the company remained “absolutely committed” to the self-driving cause. But in December 2020 and after investing $1 billion, Uber sold off its self-driving unit. A little over four months later, its main competitor, Lyft, followed suit. Uber says it’s still not giving up on autonomous technology, but the writing on the wall is clear that driverless cars aren’t core to Uber’s business model, at least in the near future.

“When a new thing like this comes on, there’s huge new consumer benefits, and then over time they are the market, they have less competition except one another, probably they’re a cartel at this point. And then they start doing stuff that’s much nastier,” said David Autor, an economist at MIT.

One of the gig economy’s main selling points to workers is that it offers flexibility and the ability to work when they want. It’s certainly true that an Uber or Lyft driver has much more autonomy on the job than, say, an Amazon warehouse worker. “People drive with Lyft because they prefer the freedom and flexibility to work when, where, and for however long they want,” a Lyft spokesperson said in a statement to Vox. “They can choose to accept a ride or not, enjoy unlimited upward earning potential, and can decide to take time off from driving whenever they want, for however long they want, without needing to ask a ‘boss’ — all things they can’t do at most traditional jobs.” The spokesperson also noted that most of its drivers work outside of Lyft.

But flexibility doesn’t mean gig companies have no control over their drivers and delivery people. They use all sorts of tricks and incentives to try to push workers in certain directions and manage them, essentially, by algorithm. Uber drivers report being bothered by the constant surveillance, the lack of transparency from the company, and the dehumanization of working with the app. The algorithm doesn’t want to know how your day is, it just wants you to work as efficiently as possible to maximize its profits.

Carlos Ramos, a former Lyft driver in San Diego, described the feeling of being manipulated by the app. He noticed the company must have needed morning drivers because of the incentives structures, but he also often wondered if he was being “punished” if he didn’t do something right.

“Sometimes, if you cancel a bunch of rides in a row or if you don’t take certain rides to certain things, you won’t get any rides. They’ve shadow turned you off,” he said. The secret deprioritization of a worker is something many Lyft and Uber drivers speculate happens. “You also have no way of knowing what’s going on behind there. They have this proprietary knowledge, they have this black box of trade secrets, and those are your secrets you’re telling them,” said Ramos, now an organizer with Gig Workers Rising.

Companies deny that they secretly shut off drivers. “It is in Lyft’s best interests for drivers to have as positive an experience as possible, so we communicate often and work directly with drivers to help them improve their earnings,” a Lyft spokesperson said. “We never ‘shadow ban’ drivers, and actively coach them when they are in danger of being deactivated.”
The future of innovation isn’t inevitable

We often talk about technology and innovation with a language of inevitability. It’s as though whenever wages go up, companies will of course replace workers with robots. Now that the country is turned on to online delivery, it can be made to seem like the grocery industry is on an unavoidable path to gig work. After all, that’s what happened with Albertsons. But that’s not really the case — there’s plenty of human agency in the technological innovation story.

“Technology of course doesn’t have to exploit workers, it doesn’t have to mean robots are coming for all of our jobs,” Chen said. “These are not inevitable outcomes, they are human decisions, and they are almost always made by people who are driven by a profit motive that tends to exploit the poor and working class historically.”

Chase Copridge, a longtime California worker who’s done the gamut of gig jobs — Instacart, DoorDash, Amazon Flex, Uber, and Lyft — is one of the people stuck in that position, the victim of corporate tendencies on technological overdrive. He described seeing delivery offers that pay as little as $2. He turns those jobs down, knowing that it’s not economically worth it for him. But there might be someone else out there who picks it up. “We’re people who desperately need to make ends meet, who are willing to take the bare minimum that these companies are giving out to us,” he said. “People need to understand that these companies thrive off of exploitation.”

Not all decisions around automation are ones that increase productivity or improve really anything except corporate profits. Self-checkout stations may reduce the need for cashiers, but are they really making the shopping experience faster or better? Next time you go to the grocery store and inevitably screw up scanning one of your own items and waiting several minutes for a worker to appear, you tell me.

Despite technological advancements, productivity growth has been on the decline in recent years. “This is the paradox of the last several decades, and especially since 2000, that we had enormous technological changes as we perceive it but measured productivity growth is quite weak,” Autor said. “One reason may be that we’re automating a lot of trivial stuff rather than important stuff. If you compare antibiotics and indoor plumbing and electrification and air travel and telecommunications to DoorDash and smartphones or self-checkout, it may just not be as consequential.”

Acemoglu said that when firms focus so much on automation and monitoring technologies, they might not explore other areas that could be more productive, such as creating new tasks or building out new industries. “Those are the things that I worry have fallen by the wayside in the last several years,” he said. “If your employer is really set on monitoring you really tightly, that biases things against new tasks because those are things that are not easier to monitor.”

It matters what you automate, and not all automation is equally beneficial, not only to workers but also to customers, companies, and the broader economy.

Grappling with how to handle technological advancements and the ways they change people’s lives, including at work, is no easy task. While the robot revolution isn’t taking everyone’s jobs, automation is taking some of them, especially in areas such as manufacturing. And it’s just making work different: A machine may not eliminate a position entirely, but it may turn a more middle-skill job into a low-skill job, bringing lower pay with it. Package delivery jobs used to come with a union, benefits, and stable pay; with the rise of the gig economy, that’s declining. If and when self-driving trucks arrive, there will still be some low-quality jobs needed to complete tasks the robots can’t.

“The issue that we’ve faced in the US economy is that we’ve lost a lot of middle-skill jobs so people are being pushed down into lower categories,” Autor said. “Automation historically has tended to take the most dirty and dangerous and demeaning jobs and hand them over to machines, and that’s been great. What’s happened in the last bunch of decades is that automation has affected the middle-skill jobs and left the hard, interesting, creative jobs and the hands-on jobs that require a lot of dexterity and flexibility but don’t require a lot of formal skills.”

But again, none of this is inevitable. Companies are able to leverage technology to get the most out of workers because workers often don’t have power to push back, enforce limits, or ask for more. Unionization has seen steep declines in recent decades. America’s labor laws and regulations are designed around full-time work, meaning gig companies don’t have to offer health insurance or help fund unemployment. But the laws could — and many would argue should — be modernized.

“The key thing is it’s not just technology, it’s a question of labor power, both collectively and individually,” Bix said. “There are a lot of possible outcomes, and in the end, technology is a human creation. It’s a product of social priorities and what gets developed and adopted.”

Maybe the robot apocalypse isn’t here yet. Or it is, and many of us aren’t quite recognizing it, in part because we got some of the story wrong. The problem isn’t really the robot, it’s what your boss wants the robot to do.

Factory farms pose an 'existential threat' for rural Wisconsin communities

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs7WfJKMfaY