Your second paragraph makes intuitive sense to me. For every knowledge worker that got 2x as productive in the past decade thanks to new tech alone, there's a person who left their job where they were doing productive (perhaps grindy) things to do gig work because of the flexibility it provides. It might be nice burning VC money so someone can drive you home when you've had one too many (instead of taking public transit), and having someone shop for your groceries and walk your dog and do your laundry, but the individuals doing these tasks would probably accomplish more in terms of raw productive output if they were doing more traditional jobs.