ABSTRACT
The disruption is technological, as it simplifies the taxi business by connecting customers to drivers through a web application, as well as institutional as Uber claims to be a technology company without responsibility for the drivers who are independent contractors. The network economy, typical of digitalization, has an inbuilt tendency to undermine competition and favour oligopoly, which further stimulates a skewed wealth distribution, allowing the winners to pocket super-fortunes. The concern with the limited capacity of the economy, under liberalist governance, to combine AI & robotization with an inclusive work life has been expressed by the MIT researchers, Brynjolfsson and McAfee. In the longer run, Brynjolfsson and McAfee, in line with Moravec and Krugman, question whether new job-creation will be sufficient to keep pace with digital rationalization. The problem is that many of these positive spillovers have come in service activities with highly divergent income distribution.
