1. How Technological Innovation Tears Down Barriers to Entry
As I mentioned in my previous post, I spend Monday through Thursday reading and writing, and Friday through Sunday working for Baedal Minjok (UberEats). Today, I’d like to share a brief essay on why technological innovation inevitably creates a surge in jobs.
Last Sunday, I happened to share an elevator with a female courier in her 60s who was delivering to the same address. Since it was my first time at that residential-commercial high-rise, I was struggling to operate the elevator—which required tapping a keycard—and she kindly helped me out. In that moment, a sudden memory from my childhood surfaced.
When I was young, delivery was a profession dominated almost exclusively by local men with hyper-specific geographic knowledge. Back then, administrative systems were far less precise. Navigating door numbers or unpermitted structures required municipal maps, hand-drawn neighborhood diagrams from shop owners, and above all, “embodied spatial knowledge” gained from endlessly roaming the alleys. Because it took an outsider well over a year just to learn the terrain, owners actively sought out and recruited local youths who grew up in the area. Top-tier couriers were even scouted competitively.
However, technological innovations—namely GPS navigation, smartphones, and dispatch algorithms—dismantled these entry barriers entirely, allowing a vast wave of unskilled labor to enter the market instantly. In a country like South Korea, where the dual labor market structure is severe, without delivery platforms, hundreds of thousands of people would likely be unemployed.
2. The Dual Labor Market and the True Direction of Innovation
South Korea’s labor market is far from a flexible environment where wages strictly reflect productivity and entry/exit are fluid. Instead, it is a deeply polarized, rigid dual structure divided into a “labor aristocracy” and a “labor precariat.” Employees at major conglomerates enjoy institutional protection, virtually guaranteed job security, and wages far exceeding their productivity. Backed by solid credit, they secure bank loans to monopolize real estate and equity markets. Meanwhile, workers at small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) earn roughly half those wages, face constant employment vulnerability, and bear the full brunt of inflation due to restricted access to credit—a textbook example of the Cantillon Effect.
According to the production theory of the Austrian School of Economics, production costs ultimately reduce to wages and rent, with wages accounting for roughly 80% of total production costs—since even capital goods have labor embedded at their core. In a modern democracy, however, wages are neither paid according to actual productivity nor allowed to adjust flexibly. Consequently, a privileged few enjoy inflated wages far above their output, forcing the remainder into unemployment. As the cartel controlling the upper tier of the labor market solidifies, the burden on the younger generation intensifies. Therefore, technological innovation aimed at boosting productivity has no choice but to evolve toward resolving these deep-seated inefficiencies in the wage market.
3. Intangible Innovation and the Collapse of Free-Riding
Historically, technological innovation focused on physical and tangible infrastructure. Yet physical machinery and facilities possess “rivalry.” When workers occupied these assets during strikes, capital owners had limited leverage to retaliate. Furthermore, because entrepreneurs bore the full weight of depreciation and bankruptcy risks, workers could free-ride on the capital system and claim high rewards simply by barring others from entering—even without increasing their own productivity. Before the 2000s, when low-wage communist nations entered global manufacturing, building wealth through regular corporate employment in the West was possible primarily because democracies tolerated this political rent-seeking (via rivalry and excludability) by labor. It was entirely rational, then, that getting a job at a major enterprise became everyone’s ultimate goal.
Since the advent of digital technology in the 2000s, innovation has evolved precisely to dismantle this inefficient architecture:
- Dismantling Rivalry: It eliminates the possibility of labor capturing or holding physical production infrastructure hostage.
- Dismantling Excludability: It dismantles the free-riding reward system that allowed workers to hide behind legal protections without innovating productivity or bearing risk (such as demanding guaranteed retirement while blocking low-skilled entrants).
By replacing the specialized knowledge that once had to be laboriously embodied in human minds and bodies, technology now enables anyone—regardless of age or gender—to earn an income immediately with nothing more than a motorcycle and a smartphone. In return, the individual courier assumes the risks of depreciation and physical injury.
This algorithmic labor model pioneered in delivery will inevitably reshape white-collar office work through AI. It will dismantle the rivalrous leverage of personal knowledge or physical strength, collapsing the structures that allow free-riding on capital assets while excluding others. Ultimately, this wave of innovation will significantly alleviate unemployment. The sole reason unemployment exists in the first place is that certain groups command wages far higher than their productivity and refuse wage adjustments. Thus, if we genuinely wish to create a society free of unemployment, we must ease regulatory employment burdens on producers, reduce tax drag, and grant the freedom to compensate labor according to actual output. Demanding regular employment status only for oneself ultimately turns the next generation into the unemployed.
4. Overcoming Marginal Productivity: The ‘Time Poaching’ Strategy
In a society where physical rivalry and legal excludability have been dismantled, accumulating wealth through simple labor alone becomes nearly impossible. Labor serves merely to defend against baseline fixed costs; building true wealth requires stepping into the role of a producer or capital owner.
In this context, I witnessed a fascinating scene on the road. A young female courier was live-streaming with a camera attached to her helmet. While waiting at a red light, she would pull over to the far-right lane to read and respond to chat comments.
In a system where technology flattens and standardizes productivity, an individual cannot increase the marginal productivity of delivery work through sheer personal effort alone. Hence, she leverages her time doubly to earn delivery fees and viewer donations simultaneously. To borrow Michel de Certeau’s concept, this is a 2020s adaptation of the strategy: “If you cannot control space, poach time.” While this substantially boosts earnings, it carries the trade-off of heightened accident risks among aggressive drivers like taxis and heavy trucks.
5. Observation and Record: My Own Productive Time Poaching
At their core, office workers trading stocks while working from home and platform couriers streaming while following algorithmic orders are doing the exact same thing. The most uninspired approach I see on the road is couriers mounting a phone to watch baseball, YouTube Shorts, or scrolling social media while driving. It generates no value whatsoever while severely compromising safety.
My approach is different: I attached a wireless Bluetooth microphone to my helmet to utilize voice recording. As I ride, I observe the shops, people, and vehicles around me, capturing my raw thoughts in real time. Later, I convert these audio notes into written essays. Within the constraints of platform labor, this is my personal method of “poaching time”—transforming routine execution into creative output as a true producer.
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