OVER THE COURSE OF SEV­ER­AL MONTHS, Uber, Lyft, Instacart, Door­Dash, and Post­mates invest­ed more than $200 mil­lion in a scheme to strip their work­ers of labor pro­tec­tions guar­an­teed under Cal­i­for­nia state law.

USED TO BE THAT GIG WORK­ERS were those cool cats blow­ing a mean sax into the wee hours. After the show they’d be sip­ping Cana­di­an Club with the quar­tet until sun­rise. Now even the tone deaf can get a gig. All you need is a car and the will­ing­ness to shop for some­one else’s gro­ceries, deliv­er car­ry­out, or chauf­feur ran­dom strangers.

“We do not intro­duce a speed lim­iter!” Euro­pean Par­lia­ment mem­ber Róża Thun said emphatically.

Although aca­d­e­m­ic his­to­ri­ans of the last gen­er­a­tion have giv­en voice to new per­spec­tives and the­o­ries of his­tor­i­cal change around Ford, the text­book view has not strayed far from the nar­ra­tive con­struct­ed by Ford’s biographers.