Labor Under Capitalism

Platform workers’ liminal status makes them much more vulnerable to exploitation. In the United States, most gig workers and creators are classified as “independent contractors,” a categorization the IRS defines as “people who offer their services to the general public” in an independent trade, business, or profession. In practical terms, this clas... See more

I know what kind of work it takes to complete a book manuscript, and I want to do that work, but to arrive at the end of it and learn that what I should have been doing instead is flooding the zone on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok? That is fundamentally demoralizing.

Just because something’s cheap and efficient doesn’t mean that it should be that way — or that your ability to access it doesn’t have significant human cost.

It is often only in the interludes that we come to realise just how much our busy lives are an active conspiracy against the very things that supposedly give our existence a deeper sense of meaning and purpose.

The fact that many American companies are paying paltry wages to workers while lavishing cash on top executives and investors is no happenstance. It's a policy choice. In the United States we have a tax and regulatory environment that rewards that behavior. We can decide to maintain the status quo or change it.

If your role is focused on creating user and customer value, but management and leadership are incentivized to goose shareholder value, you are subject to that structural relationship and often have very little power to change it.