Some workers who have soured on the 9-to-5 schedule are interested in trying "microshifting," which may offer greater flexibility and control over their time.
“I earn a living based on outcomes,” he says. “Nobody sends me a check for how many hours I work in a week.”
This is the key, whatever label or trend you want call it.
The bottom line is that employment is kinda anti-capitalist. The employee doesn’t own anything real and so isn’t incentivised by real rewards to deliver real outcomes.
Instead, showing up, making appearances and convincing their colleagues/managers that they’re valuable, however virtual, is the natural response to virtual incentives.
What if we owned an outcomes based contract instead? Of maybe even the company itself in someway (with meaningful decision making power and stakes). Otherwise, we’re mostly paid to sit in the chair at the office and do what we’re told … frankly not a great look at such a scale as we do it.
The mega employment market strikes me as obviously fraught for both sides of politics.
Working for a wage is very capitalist. By that I mean that capitalist owns the capital and rents labor hours for less than what will be made from them.
Wage labor is one of the core tenents of capitalism.
Well, coming from the perspective or justification of trying to maximise efficiency through a market of incentivised actors, is mass multi-level-hierarchy wage labour “optimum/peak capitalism”?
That’s what I was aiming for in saying “anti-capitalist” … in that the opportunity to incentivise was being missed so that an existing power structure could persist.
And, I don’t know, my experience tells me lots of places struggle with the quality of their managerial leadership, some times a lot, while people on the ground keep the place together and have plenty of insight on how to do things better.
There’s only one goal, profit / capital maximization.
Capital maximisation for a small set of individuals (the wealthy) or the economy in total? Where the latter can also achieve the former to some extent.
In the end I think capitalism can be more than one thing, which is something the strident anti socialism reflex of the US has stagnated.
And it’s easy to confuse ends with means and the status quo with its justifications.
Profit definitionally is value extracted from laborers. I own a factory. For every $40 of materials, and $40 dollars of labor, I can sell a product for $100 dollars. I definitionally made profit of $20 simply for owning the property it happens in.
You’ll notice there is an incentive to pay less to labor in order to make more profit. Labor wants to work the least amount of effort for the most amount of money, and capitalists want the most labor for the least amount of money. It’s an adversarial relationship. Any gains to claw back more profits will necessarily be adversarial and technically anti-capitalist.
Any gains to claw back more profits will necessarily be adversarial and technically anti-capitalist.
Hmmm, not sure what you mean by the anti capitalist part here
Otherwise, I think I’m still stuck on how we’re dwelling on profit maximisation as the crux of capitalism. It may be the incentivising factor for the agents operating in the system … but is it the justification for committing to the system?
Where, as far as my ignorant mind goes, maximising the efficiency of the whole economy and/or its total productivity from the assets available … are the obvious justifications.
In which case, embracing a profit maximising ethos is a means to an end. And disrupting a particular profit process for the sake of the economy’s productivity perfectly justifiable as good capitalism.
It’s OK. I’m just describing these systems from a Marxist lens. As in, I’m not being prescriptive, but descriptive of how these processes work and their definitions. Your confusion is normal as there’s a lot of incentive to obfuscate to protect those with wealth and private property. It’s also not exactly simple either.
And to clarify what I meant, it was more anti-“people who own capital / owner” rather than anti-“capitalist system” exactly. The most anti capitalist system would be the workers themselves owning the tools, buildings, property, etc; collectively and with democratic control of the workplace. Obviously the above described where workers collectively bargain is closer in that direction but the capital owner still ultimately remains in control of the company and assets.
Working for outcome dies not have the best track record. We kind of abolished it, because it was so bad. Factory workers getting paid for every piece of product they make is not good. That means they have to pay for their own lunch breaks and if the machine breaks down, they’re paying for it. All the risk, none of the reward.
Maybe it works better for office workers, but I can’t imagine it does.
Being able to felxibly fill your schedule is a whole other thing though. More like common sense.
I’m not sure we disagree much, especially if a flexible schedule is common sense.
In a way my main point was that however much we think it common sense, I suspect for a lot of work culture it crosses a line that maybe isn’t made explicit that much. Which, I think, is that your job is to be there and follow orders as much or more than it is to deliver well defined outcomes.
And so my point was that if we want flexible scheduling and believe it can be as productive (or more) … then I suspect we’ve gotta address this “line” … and I’m not sure what can replace it other than some established concept of “owning” your job more. Which I’m not sure has to be working for outcomes, as you say.
“I earn a living based on outcomes,” he says. “Nobody sends me a check for how many hours I work in a week.”
This is the key, whatever label or trend you want call it.
The bottom line is that employment is kinda anti-capitalist. The employee doesn’t own anything real and so isn’t incentivised by real rewards to deliver real outcomes.
Instead, showing up, making appearances and convincing their colleagues/managers that they’re valuable, however virtual, is the natural response to virtual incentives.
What if we owned an outcomes based contract instead? Of maybe even the company itself in someway (with meaningful decision making power and stakes). Otherwise, we’re mostly paid to sit in the chair at the office and do what we’re told … frankly not a great look at such a scale as we do it.
The mega employment market strikes me as obviously fraught for both sides of politics.
Working for a wage is very capitalist. By that I mean that capitalist owns the capital and rents labor hours for less than what will be made from them.
Wage labor is one of the core tenents of capitalism.
Well, coming from the perspective or justification of trying to maximise efficiency through a market of incentivised actors, is mass multi-level-hierarchy wage labour “optimum/peak capitalism”?
That’s what I was aiming for in saying “anti-capitalist” … in that the opportunity to incentivise was being missed so that an existing power structure could persist.
And, I don’t know, my experience tells me lots of places struggle with the quality of their managerial leadership, some times a lot, while people on the ground keep the place together and have plenty of insight on how to do things better.
There’s only one goal, profit / capital maximization. Everything else is secondary or in service of that end, such as efficiency.
A for-profit health insurance industry is deeply inefficient but very profitable for example.
Capital maximisation for a small set of individuals (the wealthy) or the economy in total? Where the latter can also achieve the former to some extent.
In the end I think capitalism can be more than one thing, which is something the strident anti socialism reflex of the US has stagnated.
And it’s easy to confuse ends with means and the status quo with its justifications.
Profit definitionally is value extracted from laborers. I own a factory. For every $40 of materials, and $40 dollars of labor, I can sell a product for $100 dollars. I definitionally made profit of $20 simply for owning the property it happens in.
You’ll notice there is an incentive to pay less to labor in order to make more profit. Labor wants to work the least amount of effort for the most amount of money, and capitalists want the most labor for the least amount of money. It’s an adversarial relationship. Any gains to claw back more profits will necessarily be adversarial and technically anti-capitalist.
Hmmm, not sure what you mean by the anti capitalist part here
Otherwise, I think I’m still stuck on how we’re dwelling on profit maximisation as the crux of capitalism. It may be the incentivising factor for the agents operating in the system … but is it the justification for committing to the system?
Where, as far as my ignorant mind goes, maximising the efficiency of the whole economy and/or its total productivity from the assets available … are the obvious justifications.
In which case, embracing a profit maximising ethos is a means to an end. And disrupting a particular profit process for the sake of the economy’s productivity perfectly justifiable as good capitalism.
It’s OK. I’m just describing these systems from a Marxist lens. As in, I’m not being prescriptive, but descriptive of how these processes work and their definitions. Your confusion is normal as there’s a lot of incentive to obfuscate to protect those with wealth and private property. It’s also not exactly simple either.
And to clarify what I meant, it was more anti-“people who own capital / owner” rather than anti-“capitalist system” exactly. The most anti capitalist system would be the workers themselves owning the tools, buildings, property, etc; collectively and with democratic control of the workplace. Obviously the above described where workers collectively bargain is closer in that direction but the capital owner still ultimately remains in control of the company and assets.
aah … gotchya!
Cheers and thanks for the chat!
Working for outcome dies not have the best track record. We kind of abolished it, because it was so bad. Factory workers getting paid for every piece of product they make is not good. That means they have to pay for their own lunch breaks and if the machine breaks down, they’re paying for it. All the risk, none of the reward.
Maybe it works better for office workers, but I can’t imagine it does.
Being able to felxibly fill your schedule is a whole other thing though. More like common sense.
Interesting.
I’m not sure we disagree much, especially if a flexible schedule is common sense.
In a way my main point was that however much we think it common sense, I suspect for a lot of work culture it crosses a line that maybe isn’t made explicit that much. Which, I think, is that your job is to be there and follow orders as much or more than it is to deliver well defined outcomes.
And so my point was that if we want flexible scheduling and believe it can be as productive (or more) … then I suspect we’ve gotta address this “line” … and I’m not sure what can replace it other than some established concept of “owning” your job more. Which I’m not sure has to be working for outcomes, as you say.