I listen to NPR and it seems there is a lot of anxiety among people about technology and automation and it seems all doom and gloom, it almost makes me feel guilty.

But after I though about for a while I realized its all rubbish and technology is being used as a scapegoat.

Technology has allowed constant deflation in the past 40 years for everything from food to transportation due to enormous efficiency gains.

If it WAS NOT for technological innovation there would have been a revolution by now, since cost of housing, education and healthcare has shot up ( as well explained by Elizabeth warren's research ).

While wages have been dropping in real terms. Essentially technology has allowed people to afford clothes, etc.
Without it the average person wouldn't be able to afford anything.

So the reality is things like the Uber revolution is not happening fast enough ! The average cost of taxi rides is ridiculous compared to what it was in the past.

The real controversy is not Uber causing joblessness. If we want to innovate a lot - there is always going to be constant destruction of old methods.
Uber will be replaced with driverless cars, who will be replaced by personalized solar driverless cars, etc.

Those jobless people should became part of the supply to bring those changes.

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Dr. Raghuram Rajan [1] essentially helped me see capitalism and the free market in this new more enlightened light.

Capitalism seems to be getting a lot of bad rep since 2008 - but its not the fault of the free market. This medallion bullshit is what is holding the free market behind and creating a welfare system for taxi drivers and billionaires.

In a real free market billionaires would quickly lose their wealth as new competition would destroy their wealth.

Rather than protect workers - we should try to retrain them for the coming knowledge economy.

[1] Dr. Raghuram Rajan predicted the financial crisis in 2005 while working for the IMF. He has a great book called "Saving Capitalism from the Capitalist".

His argument for reform is really controversial - essentially he states the US economy is overinflated, the military industrial complex, housing, financial services. While the real economy hasn't been able to grow, compared to germany, etc.

He doesn't believe the Keynesian argument about a loss of aggregate demand - there is always demand for things - housing, better healthcare. Its just that the supply side is completely distorted - and this taxi cartel is one example.

The US spent trillions on QE to prop up the housing bubble even more - while it could have used that money to retrain the workforce to do more productive things - more doctors, more engineers to create robots.

Even though there is no demand for houses at the price that people want to sell. Sure a lot of baby boomers will end up with negative equity but that is capitalism and Free market ! Its your decision to tie up all your wealth on your house rather than invest in your kid's education or pay higher taxes so government could pay if for you and create better healthcare.

The government is the biggest culprit, they tried distorting the market by allowing the buyers to have more credit than they could afford.

Sorry about being so ranty. But I do not want my industry to be scapegoated.