Lost in Work: Escaping Capitalism (Outspoken by Pluto)

How do you record data on something so inherently relational and reciprocal? The first step is to change the tasks involved in a given job so that they can actually be recorded. Measuring something changes it.

Addressing the problem of work must involve raising the floor rather than making it easier for a tiny number to puncture the ceiling.

Denaturalising makes visible that something is a historically contingent set of power-relations, rather than a ‘natural’, unchanging permanent state of affairs.

The threat of paltry benefits or of losing our homes leaves us vulnerable to worse treatment: we, almost always, need a job more than a job needs us. Our entrance into work is unfree, and while we’re there, our time is not our own.

Fordism wasn’t a revolution in technology alone – the production line isn’t just a piece of neutral infrastructure. It’s also a technology of control.

the arcane and ritualised customer service practices that shape a great deal of contemporary work leave people detached from the tasks their jobs involve or should involve, and from their own selves. No wonder so many of today’s workers are so miserable.

we shouldn’t assume that our consumer needs are natural or fixed any more than capitalism itself is.

While this balance between the side and the main gig can and does shift across different periods of capitalism, what is really significant to this moment is not just the amount of time spent on side gigs, or hustles, or second jobs, but that hobbies and interests are approached as something that could be or even should be monetised. This is the job

Poverty and unemployment become individual failings rather than unwanted features of the economy.

New technologies and labour-saving processes can be good things: the problem is who owns the technology required for these processes and in whose interest that technology is developed and run.