Hey. [reads thread]
I try not to argue online much anymore, because it's really a no win situation no matter what you're arguing. That said, two points, because I have somehow been name dropped:
a.) Independent contractor and/or temp work won't save the legal profession, or other professions. They do pay terribly for legal work in any case. They have leverage; you don't. Personally, I agree with the article. As pertains to professionals, you get good at something by repeatedly doing it. Doing one shot jobs doesn't provide that. There's a reason military equipment built by the lowest bidder often fails in the field....
b.) I do not understand this notion that businesses are not there to support people. It is. Good businesses used to care about the product they sold and the people they hired--trying to get the best from both. "The customer is always right," is all but dead. Companies don't care if you have to wait an hour or more on customer service lines while hearing your call is important to the company. Said company will not hire anybody to take your call. They will sell you increasingly crappy products with no support, at higher prices while
hoarding money and complaining they never have enough. We are in a race to the bottom. Giving corporations money when they are sitting on mountains of it will not help. If it would help, then how much cash do they need before they finally start spending some of it? Companies will not hire until sales improve. Sales will not improve until people can afford to buy things. We've tried throwing money at companies; not working.
c.) As for when societal change solves those things:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_movement40 hour work weeks, overtime, weekends off, paid vacations, sick leave, 8 hour days, and everything else labor got by incredibly hard work was that societal change. Tragically, it's past tense or quickly becoming that. Keep in mind, none of these things hurt the economy back then, not one bit. Rather, this lead to one of the largest economic expansions in American History.