Beyond the valley of the gig economy

‘Raw Deal’ author Steven Hill on Uber tech, the perils of the “Californian Ideology,” and the twilight of the elites.

By Johnny Ray Huston (first published at 48 Hills)

The overarching theme of this year’s LaborFest is “Labor On the Edge: Dystopia or a Future for Workers.” One of the events most relevant to that pressing concern is “The Gig Economy, AI, Robotics, Workers and Dystopia San Francisco.” For a window into the subject matter, which is applicable to anyone living in the Bay Area today, I caught up with one of the event’s speakers, Steven Hill, author of 2015’s influential Raw Deal: How the “Uber Economy” and Runaway Capitalism are Screwing American Workers.

48 HILLS How would you say the symbiotic relationship between San Francisco and Silicon Valley has changed over time?

STEVEN HILL When you ask about the history between San Francisco and Silicon Valley, I go back to the 1950s. People think of Silicon Valley as Facebook, Google and Apple, but really the basis of Silicon Valley is military funding. That’s what it’s been since the 1950s. The semiconductor industry, the first big tech companies that were funded by the military here, became the basis for everything else. That’s why you can have an ecosystem in which seven out of every 10 startups fail. It’s gambling at this point. The only reason…