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[...] It might be that one of the really significant problems of today's culture involves finding ways for educated people to talk meaningfully with each other across the divides of radical specialization. [...] a particular kind of genius that's not really part of their specific area of expertise as such areas are usually defined and taught. There's not really even a good univocal word for this kind of genius--which might be significant. Maybe there should be a word; maybe being able to communicate with people outside one's area of expertise should be taught, and talked about, and considered as a requirement for genuine expertise. . . [...]
It’s also unclear whether computerization has actually reduced manufacturing workers to “gauge readers.” Even if these claims were true, computerization puts enormous power in the hands of the workers who set up and maintain these new machines. Deskilled workers could halt production by staying at their machines, a twenty-first-century version of the 1930s sit-down strikes.
recording it cus i agree & might want to attribute it someday
(though i think that software engineers in particular deserve a mention, especially now that the actual hardware is getting more and more general-purpose)
Writing in the Washington Post last September, the unimpeachably mainstream economist Larry Summers proclaimed, “We ... know that stronger unions are not just good for their members, they are good for our country and our descendants. Strengthening collective worker voice has to be an important component of any realistic American inclusive growth agenda.”
great quote coming from someone like Larry Summers
Well, Marx certainly didn’t view them as separate phenomena. In the first volume of Capital, he argued that the accumulation of capital went hand in hand with the accumulation of a surplus population — that wealth was being created through exploitation, but at the same time big chunks of the working class were excluded or made superfluous to the needs of capital.
just keeping here for reference, idk why really (question on exclusion vs exploitation being separate phenomena)
Contingent workers, temporary workers, part-time workers, and the long-term unemployed — this whole group is expanding, leading us down the road to pauperism. Notwithstanding the deep crisis of legitimacy this is creating for capitalism, there’s nothing, no tendency within capitalism itself, to go in a different direction. If we are going to change directions, it’s going to have to come from a mass political movement, rather than something coming out of capital itself.
The brilliant organizers of the cio understood that within the industrial economy of the mid-twentieth century, steel, coal, and other key industries mattered more than other industries. Within the service economy today, education and health care are the strategic sectors. For at least the next couple of decades, there can be no exit threat: Schools and colleges, nursing homes and hospitals, clinics, and many other components of the always-changing education and health care delivery system can’t be moved offshore, automated, or relocated from a city to its suburbs or from the North or Midwest to the Sunbelt.
aligns with what Bhaskar Sunkara said at the Momentum event
Because you see these low-level foreign workers working two or three jobs, twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours a day, longing for home (a waiter shows me exactly how he likes to hold his two-year-old, or did like to hold her, last time he was home, eight months ago), and think: Couldn't you Haves cut loose with just a little more?
But ask the workers, in your intrusive Western way, about their Possible Feelings of Oppression, and they model a level of stoic noble determination that makes the Ayn Rand in you think, Good, good for you, sir, best of luck in your professional endeavors!
is this where Saunders gets woke and becomes a socialist
[...] Although we must remember, said the husband to the wife, this is, after all, a once-in-a-lifetime experience! Yes, yes, of course, she said, I don't regret it for a minute! But there is a look, a certain look, about the eyes, that means: Oh God, I am gut-sick with worry about money. And these intelligent, articulate people had that look. (As, I suspect, did I.) There wasn't, she said sadly, that much to see, really, was there? And one felt rather watched, didn't one, by the help? Was there a limit on how long they could stay? They had already toured the lobby twice, been out to the ocean-overlooking pool, and were sort of lingering, trying to get their fifty bucks' worth.
nothing really special about this passage, it's just so sad and so relatable
Part of me wants to offer to help. But that would be, of course, ridiculous, melodramatic. He washes these stairs every day. It's not my job to hand-wash stairs. It's his job to hand-wash stairs. My job is to observe him hand-washing the stairs, then go inside the air-conditioned lobby and order a cold beer and take notes about his stair-washing so I can go home and write about it, making more for writing about it than he'll make in many, many years of doing it.
Margaret Atwood is a famous Canadian genius. Our crowd consisted of approximately three hundred Margaret Atwood fans, with the remainder of the crowd being my fan. [...]
this essay kinda sucked (not subtle enough to be good satire imo) but this part was mildly funny