New social models in the age of flexible work

 Many part time jobs with repetitive work will be  destroyed with the advent of the digital economy. “We will soon no longer need a lawyer who must tortuously go through case studies to find citations. That will be done by machines. Those activities remain for humans which cannot do without human capabilities. And these activities will probably be more flexible and such as in the case of the care of the parents badly paid for”, says Helgo Klaatt  of the network for an unconditional basic income. “We must secure our society in the age of digitization”  says the head of Telekom  Timotheus Höttges in agreement. We need innovative solutions to be able to maintain our social systems. The unconditional basic income could for example be paid for by the large internet companies whose profits are increasingly financed by the analysis of data. And Helgo Klatt: “we don’t want to abolish work, merely to abolish the compulsion to work. If people have a choice of working, but do not have to, then they work with more joy and are more willing to perform their tasks.”

 In the US Steven Hill predicts that within 10 years half the employed will be working in precarious work such as Gig-Economy. A crowd worker sits at an internet computer, logs into the platform “Mechanical Turk” and receives an assignment: arranging clothing in on-line shops, writing advertisement for furniture or making decisions for the US schooling system as to which pictures may be shown on school internet pages. During the assignment he will be continuously assessed. If the assessment falls below 75% he will only be assigned lower paid jobs. In the Gig-economy an App informs one of possible assignments. Here too the same system of digital assessment. Here too there is no social insurance and legal protection. This is already shaking the foundations of the working world in the US. To avoid a social catastrophe Hill suggests a state run insurance system which is organized on the lines of the German  social insurance for artists.