It started slowly. We dial our own phone numbers instead of an operator. We pump our own gasoline (except in New Jersey). With pensions phasing out, most of us plan for our own retirement and trade our own stocks. I call it the You Do Economy.
Technology, which eats people, replacing low-end jobs, has turned this trend into a runaway train. We use self-checkout lines at grocery stores. Airlines prefer if we check in ourselves and either show or print our own boarding passes. Airline kiosks spit out baggage tags that often take a doctorate to figure out how to attach. Hotels want us to check in and out ourselves (though I always forget to print out the bill so I can expense it). Need customer service? Forget it. Read the FAQ. Or go watch a video on YouTube. Else we’re on hold for 45 minutes, minimum.
We are almost forced to buy clothes and shoes online. Physical stores don’t stock the quantity or variety of Amazon and other sellers. Then, of course, we have to haul ourselves to Whole Foods, Staples or UPS with our returns—lugging with us five boxes of uncomfortable sneakers.
We swipe our own credit card to pay—cash is almost dead. Even worse, restaurants don’t bother with menus (remember when Covid spread via paper?). Instead, we scan QR codes and squint at menus on our phones. We’re asked to tip at counter-service restaurants.
Is that it? Heck no. People used to rely on editors to fact-check or amend the record. Now on X and most recently Facebook, we get “community notes,” which are corrections done by, you guessed it, you and me! Artificial intelligence could do the fact checking, but, no, it hallucinates so bad we’re forced to question everything it comes up with.
We have to install our own updates, and we’re even subject to buggy beta software, so we have to find all the problems instead of quality-assurance teams doing the job. We install a dozen streaming services instead of the old cable feed. Changing shows means almost acrobatic precision presses on our remote.
We do our own taxes, even though the Internal Revenue Service has virtually all our financial information already. We need to be our own health advocates. All this takes more time, and time is money. It’s unpaid work for all of us.
But I hope you don’t think I’m complaining. Do I want the old ways to come back? Coddled. Comforted. Decisionless. One size fits all. Led like sheep to slaughter. No. The You Do Economy is the embodiment of pushback against those telling us what to do. We’re in charge now.
It’s coming fast, furious and personal. Choice. Freedom. Worth it even if it’s more work. We’re all free-range now. And we’re free-market, as the sum of our individual decisions are point progress in the right direction. We’re empowered. We’re in an increasingly self-governed, self-taught, self-insured and self-driven world.
Feeling nostalgic for easier times? Why? Life felt like a giant homeowner’s association—we had to ask permission to do everything. But life is no longer a packaged tour, following a guide holding a red flag. It isn’t “The Love Boat” with cruise director Julie McCoy telling us the day’s activities. Walled gardens such as America Online were training wheels for the real world. Now it’s the Wild West—an American rugged individualism. Embrace it.
You Do means You Power. There’s no master plan. No collectivism. You’re free to choose. Good and bad. But you own your mistakes.
The You Do Economy may be the ultimate incarnation of small-l liberalism: individual rights, a limited state and a sensible rule of law. More school choice. More states offering voter propositions on ballots. It’s messy, but it takes back power from unaccountable representatives. Which is why I’m enjoying even a partial dismantling of the administrative state.
My favorite expression uncovers the real secret to Silicon Valley: “Intelligence moves out to the edge of the network.” Decentralized smartphones instead of Big Brother running mainframes. Individualized artificial-intelligence agents instead of government or corporate mandates. User-generated stuff on Instagram and TikTok rather than network TV’s lowest common denominator. Buyers and sellers on stock markets drive prices up and down, telling companies when to hire and fire employees.
Like it or not, the “intelligence at the edge” is you and me. We’re quickly replacing centralized control. We’re unpaid but free. Annoyed? Get over it. Freedom’s just another word for nothing to lose by doing it your way. We’re unfettered and enfranchised. You do you.
Write to kessler@wsj.com.