The Art of Gig, Volume 2: Superstructures

From the point of view of normal middle-class people fully invested in the paycheck lifestyle, gigworkers appear to unreasonably and perversely reject perfectly fine standardized consumption-based life scripts, scripts that have worked for a century for billions of people. We have weird lives with lots of non-default aspects. We live in unexpected

The most obvious example of reality arbitrage is of course playing “chess postman”: picking up tricks watching one client and putting them to work on behalf of another.

People take jobs where their inner realities will be most relevant to the inner realities of the company, allowing them to express those realities and be seen. For consultants though, it is less important to be seen and more important to be seen through. In both senses: you are an optical instrument that enhances the vision of another and your moti

Being outside their organization means you can get closer to outer realities relevant to their business, while also remaining closer to their inner realities than most outsiders. This closeness may be some form of literal closeness. Maybe you spend more of your time going to industry conferences than they do, or spend more time tracking academic li

If leaders are missionary, their indie consultants are mercenary. If leaders are idealistic, their indie consultants are cynical. If leaders are holy warriors, their indie consultants are pragmatic operators. If leaders are charismatic stars, their indie consultants are grey blurs. If leaders are taciturn doers, their indie consultants are voluble

A leader is someone with a high level of individual agency within an organization, with responsibility for an independent connection to external reality.

Trend report/analyst work: This is probably the most legible kind of indie consulting work, and is the most research-y kind of offering. It also has the biggest moat for indies since it takes serious time, effort, and network capital to produce, which means you’re most likely to get this kind of work via an intermediary analyst firm. Or you burn up

The gig economy is defined primarily by the glitches, exceptions, and incoherencies of the mainstream paycheck economy. Our messy map is the reason their suspiciously clean map doesn’t fall apart.