Item — HN Reader

Funny how we went from the 17th/18th century model of self employed craftsmen, to the 19th/20th century model of working for a large manufacturer, and now the trend appears to be back towards self employment.

Of course, as jacquesm noted in his comment, a lot of this is probably due to people being unable to find other, desirable work.

1 comments

While it is great if people started businesses when they can't find work this has not been my experience. The people that I see starting businesses are the most ambitious and are seeking more.

Well "starting a business" and being a 1099 earner are conceptually two very different things that only sometimes overlap, though within this thread they are often being used interchangeably (probably because the article this thread is about conflates them in some places).

I know of a few people who are now 1099 earners not because they wanted to "start a business" in the traditional sense but rather because they are working through temporary staffing agencies structured this way to avoid the benefits they would otherwise have to provide when using full-time W2 employees. Celebrating this state of affairs as people being empowered to become their own bosses is very misleading. To be fair to the original article, it does make mention of the fact that this situation is not all roses, but the message is overall somewhat muddled by the title and overall gist.