We are on an inevitable march towards indentured servitude. The nice thing is that this time round, it will be less racist with everyone being given the “opportunity” to participate. I don’t think this is what MLK’s “I have a dream speech” had envisioned.
1/2 of Americans don’t work a fixed number of hours
According to Forbes, there were about 57 million people working in the gig economy in the United States in 2018. These people’s lives suck. They are expected to service the whims of the middle class on demand. If I, as a member of the middle class, want food, any kind of food, it can be delivered to my door in less than an hour. The delivery person gets paid a pittance, has no healthcare, no vacation and has to pay for their own vehicle. God help that delivery person if they fail to smile and grovel when they see me because with a tap of the phone, I can send their ratings plunging. Those gig workers aren’t having a good time.
In a 2019 article, Forbes stated that 82 million Americans are paid hourly. These people’s lives suck too. Hours can vary week to week and often times employees are expected to be available to work at the drop of a hat. Sure, not all hourly jobs are bad, but most are awful especially those in the service sector.
The funny thing about both Forbes articles is that they put a very positive spin on these people’s lives.
All articles written in 2023 must mention CHAT GPT
CHAT GPT and its competitors fundamentally change the value of labor. Most people’s work will be made more efficient. This means that less of us will be needed to get the same output and therefore the value of labor will diminish.
Indentured servitude in three easy steps
Good times for most of us with desperation for some. We will see massive reductions in roles such as Customer Support. For those of who manage to hold on to our jobs, life is good. The stock market is going up and our 401Ks are looking fantastic.
Bye-bye gig economy. Companies such as Uber and Lyft have made no secret about drivers being a temporary part of their business. As soon as they can solve autonomous driving, drivers will no longer be needed. And no, those drivers won’t all just send their cars out to work for them because they won’t be able to afford to buy cars. So that’s at least a million Uber drivers who will be impacted.
Knowledge workers aren’t immune. AI is coming for all of us … including physicians. Doctors armed with AI will be able to make better decisions, more quickly. This is a double whammy for the medical community. Better decisions means less sick people which means less work. Making those decisions more quickly means improved efficiency which also means less work.
Why does this inevitably lead to indentured servitude?
The country will have tens of millions of people with nothing to do become increasingly desperate and will do whatever it takes to have their basic needs met.
Initiatives such as Universal Basic Income fall on their faces because Americans can’t come to terms with people getting something for nothing. Furthermore, income from taxes will plummet and therefore there will be no money to pay for UBI.

This isn’t like other large scale industrial shifts
The shift from agricultural economies to industrial economies painfully transitioned labor from agriculture to industry. But at least labor had somewhere to go! The shift to an economy that values knowledge workers disproportionately pushed skilled workers down the economic ladder leading to bitter bumper stickers such as the one below. These stickers aren’t typically seen on BMWs and Mercedes.
According to the Brookings Institute lower income workers went from spending 35% of their income on housing to almost 41% between 1984 and 2014. That percentage only seems to be getting worse. The following table shows that rent increase is outpacing wage increase.
This time round, the impact will be broader with people who believed that their jobs were immune from technology feeling the pinch as well. For example, a judge used CHAT GPT for advice on a legal matter. The point here isn’t to say that we will be judged by our AI overlords in the future, it is that this judge would have highly educated clerks to do this research in the past.
Previous shifts have always had a utopian promise that included new kinds of opportunity for labor. With the shift to tech everyone was supposed to be building apps. This time round the opportunities seem much harder to identify. Perhaps we all get jobs writing CHAT GPT prompts. Here’s a job ad that CHAT GPT came up with for me.
Welcome to hipster indentured servitude
An Uber-like company (let’s call it HappyHelper) with little regard for the law, will offer desperate people a devil’s bargain. HappyHelper will send workers to your door to help with life’s little challenges. As a subscriber to HappyHelper, you will be entitled to 20 hours of help for $399 per month. Naturally, there will be HappyHelper Enterprise Pro, for businesses.
HappyHelper will launch in the midst of desperate times knowing that they will break many employment laws challenge outdated labor laws. But just like the robber baron companies that came before, they will ignore the law and ultimately force the law to bend to their will. Faux liberals will clamor for the service and will feel great about subscribing because they are helping to house and feed poor people. The bumper sticker industry will be re-vitalized as they can produce new stickers complaining about those who are too lazy to work for HappyHelper.
As a customer of HappyHelper, your liberal values may feel a little stretched but don’t worry! You can let your helper wash your Lucid Air in good conscience knowing that they are treated with dignity and grace.
Happy Helper employee benefits include:
Stability. HHers and HappyHelper make a seven-year commitment to each other.
State-of-the-art accommodation with private, 50 square feet living pod (60 square feet for couples).
A ten-hour workday.
One day off every week.
A healthy lifestyle that includes free, vegan meals and recreational facilities.
A generous $50 monthly cash reward to spend as you see fit.
Giving program that allows HHers to give back to the community through programs such as Habitat for Humanity. Volunteer hours are mandatory and naturally take place during off days.
Kiran and I will be discussing this post on the February 9th episode of the One Weird Thought podcast available on substack and most other podcast players.
Please tell me you’ve bought the happyhelper.com domain name?