Here's an interesting discussion on a source of unpaid labor, a source which often remains invisible because of existing preconceptions on labor and earning.
Of course the idea of "paid" labor becomes pretty preposterous when we consider the history. When we look at feminists' observations of unpaid care labor, and we gaze over the history of unpaid slave labor, both in agriculture and on the railroads in particular, and then we look at the dividends paid off by stealing land through enclosure and the invasion of indigenous land, well, the concept of paid labor becomes pretty absurd; an insult even, to say the least.
But for the sake of the discussion, let's assume the concept intact, at least as a starting point, though we'll quickly find it reduced to tatters yet again.
The Internet has wrought all sorts of havoc on our conceptions of labor and property, a good thing I think. Take the "illegitimate" torrent and streaming sites, which distribute free media to consumers all over the world, while collecting ad revenue and possibly spreading spyware and other surreptitious mechanisms to scrape in an income and keep their operations running.
In their own way, they're performing a valuable service by distributing media in an efficient manner, but they have to do it in a way that is declared illegitimate by an entertainment industry that has been slow to adjust its business model to meet digital realities, such as nearly instant delivery and infinitely replicable media artifacts, which are free.
Of course the costs are now passed on to those who maintain the physical infrastructure that facilitates media distribution and consumption, and those costs are passed on by the owners to those who have the privilege of using the infrastructure. This sector of the market has been profoundly restructured.
Newer tech companies however have been a little more savvy to the unique market properties of the Internet. The idea now is to distribute free platforms, whereupon user activity generates profit over time, such as by providing free content, data, and eyeballs for advertisers, all of which goes unpaid, only to be rewarded by various free services built into the platforms.
And so the media companies demand that customers pay a fair share for their products, while the customers spend so much unpaid time online, and get paid in peanuts by their existing employers, while additionally being taxed and tolled to hell by various governments and rentiers. Let's feign surprise as us fleeced sheep have no more wool to spare, and deign to get relief on free media besides.
Basically we have a situation in which everyone is eating everyone else's lunch, so everyone has to get their lunch from somewhere else. Eventually you have to reach someone who doesn't get a lunch. Though of course it is much more than that.
To point to a parallel phenomenon, the mortgage loan becomes so chopped up and fragmented in the course of becoming a derivative, and passes through so many hands, and undergoes so many fraudulent processes of authentication, that we can no longer tell who the rightful owner of the property is. The chain of title ownership system becomes steadily corrupted, and we merely demure to the judgement of large financial institutions, who for all intents and purposes decide to go on their merry way stealing people's houses in order to regain solvency.
Similarly, we have no simple way of determining labor and earning on the Internet marketplace. There are no mechanisms, no punch cards or time clocks to distinguish between labor and leisure, and we simply demure to the tech companies and advertisers who profit off of all that free activity.
All of this goes pretty far to explain Silicon Valley's support for the universal basic income. Reason enough to raise one's eyebrows right off the bat, but it couldn't hurt, especially those hurting the most, those left without a lunch.
