For the decade between the end of the financial crisis and the coronavirus pandemic, the ride-hailing app Uber worked as a perfect illustration of wider trends. The company’s business model relied on the one-sided flexibility of the burgeoning gig economy. Its sky-high valuation depended on abundant Silicon Valley venture capital, willing to tolerate years of losses in exchange for growth and the promise of a dominant market position. It even sparked the neologism “Uberisation” to describe how its example helped transform industries, jobs and society.
從全球金融危機結束到新冠疫情爆發之間的10年裏，網約車應用Uber(Uber)完美地詮釋了大趨勢。該公司的商業模式依賴於蓬勃發展的「零工經濟」的單方面靈活性。其天價估值得益於矽谷充裕的風險資本，這些資本願意忍受Uber多年的虧損，就是看中該公司的成長和有望佔據市場主導地位的前景。該公司甚至催生了新詞「Uber化」(Uberisation)，用來描述Uber的例子如何幫助改變了行業、就業和社會。