Tara McMullin

Successful platforms do not just discover what consumers want — they produce the consumers and the forms of consumer desire that they need.

Although repetition is necessary, practice isn’t just repetition. When we practice, we do two things: we isolate a technique for study, and we engage with difficulty.

Over the course of the last century, the number of workers employed as domestic servants, in industry, and in the farm sector has collapsed dramatically. At the same time, ‘professional, managerial, clerical, sales, and service workers’ tripled, growing ‘from one-quarter to three-quarters of total employment.’ In other words, productive jobs have,... See more

The distinction Wark makes of the vectoralist class vs. the capitalist is its power not to actually own anything but to simply extract enormous profit from various flows of value.

According to Asana’s Anatomy of Work Index, which surveyed over 10,000 knowledge workers from around the globe, the average person only spends about a quarter of their time on skills-based work—like coding, designing, or creating marketing campaigns—and another 13% on strategic planning. The remaining 60% of their day is spent communicating about... See more

That's why we have intermediaries, and why disintermediation always leads to some degree of re-intermediation. There's a lot of explicit and implicit knowledge and specialized skill required to connect buyers and sellers, creators and audiences, and other sides of two-sided markets. Some producers can do some of this stuff for themselves, and a... See more

Even when we allow for all the investors who need to be paid back, and all the expenses that need be deducted, there is always going to be some amount of money reasonably available in the “WORKER COMPENSATION” column. Why is it such a chore to agree on what that amount is?

The most intractable problem is that the management of your company does not... See more

Now, further, there is even a sadder industry yet, which is forced on many, very many, of our workers - the making of wares which are necessary to them and their brethren, because they are an inferior class . For if many men live without producing, nay, must live lives so empty and foolish that they force a great part of the workers to produce... See more