If we're going to change the world, then we need to actually have an inspiring vision of what it is that we want to build.

And we have to convince people that that is not just a fairy tale.

Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. I'm your host, Harris Marx, and this week I'm joined by Aaron Bannonov.

Aaron is an economic historian and social theorist.

He's a postdoctoral researcher at Humboldt University of Berlin, and he's the author of a new book called

Automation and the Future of Work, published by Verso Books. In recent years, there's been a lot

of discussion about how automation is purportedly destroying jobs around the world, but especially

in the West, and how that's leading to worse prospects and lower quality of life for nearly everyone.

But Aaron digs into the economic data and finds that's not actually what's occurring.

There's another reason for why jobs are getting worse and good jobs are getting harder to find,

and it's not simply because technology is advancing at some rapid pace. In fact, it's probably not

advancing as rapidly as it used to, even though we have a ton of PR that's making us think that way.

This is a really interesting conversation, but I think it also presents some much bigger issues

that we need to be thinking about. At the time I record this, the results of the

2020 U.S. election are still being counted, but we do know that in California, Proposition 22,

which cements the classification of gig workers as contractors instead of making them employees

which have access to all the rights, the minimum wage protections, the benefits

that would come with that, has been accepted by voters. Gig companies poured $200 million

into defeating labor laws that serve workers' interests instead of what's best for their profit

and their power, and now they will be fighting to roll those laws out across the rest of the United States and possibly the

world. I think this is important in the context of what Aaron and I talk about because Aaron discusses

how as the global economy has slowed down, as these jobs have been getting worse, there's already

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