The insecure nature of work is a result of decisions by corporations and policymakers. This article is about how it's policy, not technology that has created the horrific gig economy we have.
I didn't know this:
Consider the Industrial Revolution. Well before it took place, in the 19th century, another revolution in work occurred in the 18th century, which historians call the “industrious revolution.” Before this revolution, people worked where they lived, perhaps at a farm or a shop. The manufacturing of textiles, for example, relied on networks of independent farmers who spun fibers and wove cloth. They worked on their own; they were not employees.
In the industrious revolution, however, manufacturers gathered workers under one roof, where the labor could be divided and supervised. For the first time on a large scale, home life and work life were separated. People no longer controlled how they worked, and they received a wage instead of sharing directly in the profits of their efforts.
Of course, I think the factory owners are still to blame for exploiting workers, even if it's not the factories themselves that are to blame.
Also, assuming this is true, I didn't know this start of a way of thinking started in the seventies:
What changed this? The emergence in the 1970s of a new, strictly financial view of corporations, a philosophy that favored stock and bond prices over production, of short-term gains over long-term investment. Theories of “lean” corporate organization became popular, especially those sold by management consultants and business gurus.