February 28, 2019 (1475 words)
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A summary of the last 27 posts. Only 10 months to go ...
Tags: recap
This post is day 59 of a personal challenge to write every day in 2019. See the other fragments, or sign up for my weekly newsletter.
This month’s posts
- 32: The Viewer In The High Castle. The Man In The High Castle is a dystopian sci-fi TV show about fighting fascism. Set in an alternative reality where the Nazis have won WWII, the show offers some useful lessons for our own reality.
- 33: An ad on every surface. Some reflections on the growing ubiquity of advertising, driven by the systemic need to sell commodities independent of whether they’re actually useful.
- 34: The Super Bowl. On the advertising fest that the Super Bowl has become. It’s a great illustration of how advertising has expanded beyond its traditional directives to consume - corporations are now increasingly portrayed as entwined with culture and social responsibility. For further reading on this topic, see this Jacobin article about the company behind “QuickenLoans Arena” (one of the corporatised sports arenas mentioned in the original fragment).
- 35: Selling shovels. It’s common for Silicon Valley’s current tech boom to be compared to the original California gold rush, as if it were a good thing. But chasing a gold rush is a highly wasteful way of directing economic activity, and we can do better today.
- 36: Leaping into the unknown. More reflections on my personal leftward drift, and why it compelled me to change my entire belief system.
- 37: Gaming frequent flyer programs. I used to be a sucker for any sort of loyalty program, especially airline/hotel programs. Some thoughts on why frequent flyer programs are so addictive, and what that tells us about the structure of the airline industry today.
- 38: The limits of consumer action. Instacart recently reversed their tip theft policy following outcry from customers, workers, and the general public. It would be a strategic error to attribute Instacart’s backtracking to consumer action, though - rather, it speaks to the (often forgotten) power of worker organising.
- 39: No map is available. Socialism doesn’t necessarily mean a fully-fleshed-out list of directives; it’s enough to have an emancipatory vision in mind, and start moving there one step at a time. On Erik Olin Wright’s concept of a “socialist compass”.
- 40: Exploding the contradictions. The highly-paid workers in the tech industry occupy a potentially liminal class position under capitalism, but all that means is that they get to choose what side they’re on. On Erik Olin Wright’s concept of a “contradictory class location”.
- 41: When everyone else is an NPC. Capitalism is a system of dehumanisation, which thrives on workers being treated as if they were non-playable characters in a video game.
- 42: People of wealth. Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks and potential US presidential candidate (lord help us) thinks we should refer to rich people as “people of wealth”, out of respect. Because billionaires are the real oppressed class.
- 43: When a tip is not a tip. In response to Instacart backtracking on their tip theft policy, DoorDash put out a statement explainin why they refused to do the same. Their justification is (predictably) terrible - they even argue that delivery times have improved with this policy (why, I wonder?).
- 44: On advertising fraud and RuneScape’s bot economy. Fraud is rampant in the world of digital advertising, but it’s nothing compared to the more fundamental fraud that underpins all advertising: the idea that cultural production is best funded by the sale of commodities.
- 45: When your opponent plays defect every time. Mainstream US politics is like watching a game of prisoner’s dilemma where only one side ever compromises (with the exception of those on the left margins, of course).
- 46: Operation Barbarossa. In June of 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union; up until then, it kept assuring its Eastern neighbour that it would never invade, even as it kept moving its troops to the border. This is basically what capital is doing today.
- 47: ‘Old people’ are not the problem. Just because some “old people” happen to own houses doesn’t make them the enemy, and taking away their right to vote will not fix the housing crisis.
- 48: What it means to ‘abolish Silicon Valley’. The call to abolish Silicon Valley is a call to radically reimagine how resources are allocated in our society. It starts from a recognition that the wasteful exuberance of our current tech bubble is the product of deeper systemic factors, and so the system itself needs to be refactored.
- 49: Why is J.K. Rowling so rich?. Rags-to-riches stories, like that of J.K. Rowling, are not something to celebrate. That a single person can accumulate so much wealth is an indictment of the system which permits such an unproductive concentration of wealth.
- 50: Gatekeeping in the tech industry. Gatekeeping in the tech industry is about as morally misguided as being a hit man and killing your competitors to keep your wages high. Other workers are not competition - they are the whole point.
- 51: You say you’re a socialist, but …. Socialist critique departs from the simple belief that society could be improved, somewhat. That the people who make this critique themselves participate in society doesn’t invalidate their critique - in fact, the necessity of participation in such an unjust system is itself part of the critique.
- 52: I was marching. An essay by Meridel Le Sueur on her personal experience of the 1934 truck drivers’ strike in Minneapolis.
- 53: Without their permission. ‘Ask for forgiveness, not permission’ is a mantra that describes some of the most successful tech startups. But what if organised labour took the same perspective?
- 54: Capitalism, empathy, and punishment. Ascending the ranks within capitalism requires shedding empathy for the people on the bottom. This sort of behaviour should not celebrated, and perhaps should even be punished (imagine a version of the Nuremberg trials but for the most rapacious capitalists).
- 55: Life under fascist rule. In The Man in the High Castle, most of the people who live under fascist rule do so in a state of grim acquiescence, rather than fighting back (as much as that might infuriate us when we watch the show). What does that tell us about our own world?
- 56: Airbnb but for finding a place to work. So many startups that get funded today are limited to seeking a local maximum within the current (flawed) economic model. In the long run, this makes for a poor societal allocation of time & money.
- 57: The downside of tech IPOs. All the upcoming tech IPOs in 2019 are just going to further stress the Bay Area’s already catastrophically bad housing market. I probably sound like a broken record at this point, but this is a terrible way of running an economic system.
- 58: Bank of Uber. A chronicle of Uber’s attempts at behaving like a bank, and why this is both highly predictable (see: financialisation) and terrifying.
Major themes
- We have to imagine that another world - a better world - is possible. That’s the only way we’re ever going to improve our current world.
- Advertising is an insidious phenomenon, and its increasing dominance over society is both incredibly dystopian and impossible to separate from the fundamental tenets of our socioeconomic order.
- The assumptions that have led to the present iteration of capitalism have always been heuristics rather than rigid rules, and it’s starting to become apparent just how bad some of these heuristics are. In a Marxian sense, the relations of production have become fetters; in startup terms, they’re ripe for disruption. Either way, the system is in dire need of radical change.
- Consumer action is not enough to change the system, because it’s too crude a lever to truly abolish the horrors that occur in the hidden abode of production. Ethical consumption will not, by itself, engineer the world we want.
What’s coming
I’m rediscovering a major personal shortcoming of mine: my tendency to leave things until the last possible moment (or even later). This shortcoming is why so many of my blog posts have been completed at like 3am, lately. If I had to come up with an excuse, it’s that I happen to do my best work at night, but I know that’s flimsy, and it’s probably not very good for my health. I’m going to do my best to write these blog posts earlier in the day, in the future.
Also, I’m considering starting a new thing - kinda like a podcast? - where I basically talk about the reasoning that goes into any particular blog post topic, where I’d workshop my argument in real time. I’d mostly be doing it for myself (it would help me work through my thoughts), but if this is something you’d be interested in checking out, please tell me!