- Dec 2022
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www.robinsloan.com www.robinsloan.com
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I want to insist on an amateur internet; a garage internet; a public library internet; a kitchen table internet.
Social media should be comprised of people from end to end. Corporate interests inserted into the process can only serve to dehumanize the system.
Robin Sloan is in the same camp as Greg McVerry and I.
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- Nov 2022
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arstechnica.com arstechnica.com
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Those sticking with Musk must be prepared to work “maniacally,” he says, to support whatever move he makes next, creating an ongoing environment where employees can’t easily predict their day to day, which experts say makes it even more likely that turnover will remain high.
A billionaire following a $44 billion dollar company purchase pushing employees to work "maniacally"? As if they weren't working hard before?
What value did he possibly see here?
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doctorow.medium.com doctorow.medium.com
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twitter.com twitter.com
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<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>I've been told since the first day I started working at the Division of Hospital Medicine at @UCSF that my work doesn't bring in $ to cover my salary. It's a narrative of manufactured scarcity, a common tactic in capitalism. The CEO is making $1.85 million plus bonuses.
— Rupa Marya, MD (@DrRupaMarya) November 4, 2022
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>A Hospitalist’s economic value is in what we *save* the system in terms of quality-driven care and patient throughput (DC/unit time), not in how much we bring in through profees. Because of how the system is structured, you’ll only see our value when we aren’t there.
— Rupa Marya, MD (@DrRupaMarya) November 4, 2022This sounds a lot like hospitalists fall under David Graeber's thesis in Bullshit Jobs that the more necessary and useful you are the less you're likely to get paid and be valued.
I suspect the ability to track an employees' direct level of productivity also fits into this thesis. One can track the productivity of an Amazon warehouse worker or driver, but it's much more difficult to track the CEOs direct productivity.
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- Sep 2022
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Unemployed workers are much more likelyto fall into poverty in countries like the United States, Canada, and Japan,compared with countries such as the Netherlands and Iceland.
Is part of this effect compounded by America's history of the Protestant work ethic (see Max Weber)?
Do the wealthy/powerful benefit by this structure of penalizing the unemployed this way? Is there a direct benefit to them? Or perhaps the penalty creates a general downward pressure on overall wages and thus provides an indirect benefit to those in power?
What are the underlying reasons we tax the unemployed this way?
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One reason for this is that poverty is not something that people wish to ac-knowledge or draw attention to. Rather, it is something that individuals andfamilies would like to go away. As a result, many Americans attempt to concealtheir economic difficulties as much as possible.22 This often involves keeping upappearances and trying to maintain a “normal” lifestyle. Such poverty downthe block may at first appear invisible. Nevertheless, the reach of poverty iswidespread, touching nearly all communities across America.
Middle Americans, and particularly those in suburbia and rural parts of America that account for the majority of poverty in the country, tend to make their poverty invisible because of the toxic effects of extreme capitalism and keeping up appearances.
Has this effect risen with the rise of social media platforms like Instagram and the idea of "living one's best life"? How about the social effects of television with shows like "Keeping up with the Kardashians" which encourage conspicuous consumption?
More interesting is the fact that most of these suburban and rural poverty stricken portions of the country are in predominantly Republican held strongholds.
Is there a feedback mechanism that is not only hollowing these areas out, but keeping them in poverty?
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Although the causes of poverty have not been examined in this chapter,the findings presented here suggest that given its widespread nature, povertyappears systematic to our economic structure. In short, we have met the enemy,and they are us.
Tags
- power over
- toxic capitalism
- Republican party
- poverty
- keeping up with the Jonses
- economics
- social taxes
- unemployment
- Protestant work ethic
- human resources
- conspicuous consumption
- politics
- open questions
- social welfare
- middle America
- rural poverty
- sociology
- penalizing poverty
- invisible poverty
- keeping up appearances
- suburbs
Annotators
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www.insidehighered.com www.insidehighered.com
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I still say that students should do their own work on researching and identifying textbooks and not their professors. They should all be optional and never required. This would fix the textbook issue rapidly.
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- Jun 2022
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Local file Local file
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We’ve been conditioned to view information through aconsumerist lens: that more is better, without limit.
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- Aug 2018
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Local file Local file
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In this consumerist-led version of proletarianization, which is very per-tinent to what is happening with the commodification of higher educa-tion, the argument is that ‘consumers are “discharged” of the burden as well as the responsibility of shaping their own lives and are reduced to units of buying power controlled by marketing techniques’ (p. 34). For example, in rating and ranking scales and league tables, marketing agencies have essentially appropriated the decision-making process from students and their parents. Today’s ‘cognitive capitalism’, Lemmens says, is producing the ‘systematic destruction of knowledge and the knowing subject’ (p. 34), in what Stiegler calls the ‘systematic industri-alization of human memory and cognition’ (p. 34). As Stiegler (2010b) cryptically puts it, what is at stake is ‘the battle for intelligence’ (p. 35) which had its most recent genesis in the ‘psychopathologies and addic-tive ‘behavior patterns’ (Lemmens 2011, p. 34) brought about by the ‘logic of the market’ ushered in by Thatcher and supported by Reagan. This unleashed ‘a cultural and spiritual regression of unprecedented magnitude, transforming the whole of society into a machine for profit maximization and creating a state of “system carelessness” and “systemic stupidity” on a global scale’ (p. 34). It is literally ‘a global struggle for the mind’ in a context where there is an erasure of ‘consciousness and sociality’ (p. 35)
Draws on labour process theory and the work of Stiegler to conceptualise the de-professionalisation of academic workers and their proletarianisation. This relates to the arguments about how economic rationales have colonised all areas of social life.
This seems to mirror similar arguments put forward by Nikolas Rose and Michel Dean and other post-structuralists such as drawing on Foucault's governmentality
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