[arebop]

* working hours: but this time around, the market for piecework is much more competitive; just look at the lyft/uber drivers for example. * health care: realistically, health care costs for poor people are born by society in any case. The questions are about whether we should do it in a simple, centralized way (socialized medicine) or in more complex ways (employer-purchased insurance companies and laws that require hospitals to provide emergency care) * retirement: Pensions are already dead except for government workers. And it's the government that binds 401(k) plans to corporate employment; that can easily be changed. * insurance: the government already insures the population against risks such as disability and unemployment. We can do more of this or less...

No, our society is not prepared to handle this new way of coordinating labor. I'm sure the political process of agreeing about how to change will be pretty rocky. But the industrial revolution didn't wait for societies to prepare, and I don't see any fundamental reason to think we can't handle this.