With Airbnb and Uber in its current state, my time has commoditized in a way that never has been available before. Adam Smith's very first insight as we start to divide up labor: It's all divisional labor now. And here we have this extraordinary capital divided into zillions of people because they're preparing for the commercialization of our private lives. But nowadays you can choose whatever unit of work with which you want to work.
Economist and author Branko Milanovic of the Graduate Center, CUNY, talks about his book, Capitalism, Alone, with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. They discuss inequality, the challenge of corruption in the Chinese system, and Milanovic's claim that in American capitalism, the texture of daily life is increasingly affected by the sharing economy and other opportunities.