The elephant in the room is that freelancers are, above all things, cheap. Since the rise of on-demand platforms, they’re quite easy to find. Besides, lots of them don’t need training and firing/replacement is always a costless click away. You can get premium web designers or programmers for $15 to $20 an hour. I don’t know, it’s like an open field, a race. If more workers than companies shift to on-demand, compensation for work will drop sharply. There’s not much distance from that scenario to the survival of the cheapest.