maegul (he/they)

aah … gotchya!

Cheers and thanks for the chat!

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

Generally, IMO, everything wrong with AI has been all the stuff other than the AI itself.

The Capitalist urge to eat and digest the world, as well as its herd-hype mentality.

But also the strong willingness many have had to just accept an information overlord as though it’s a religious oracle or something. All without any critical consideration of what’s happening. I blame our education systems for stagnating at some point in the past few decades — which, along with an unmitigated embrace of big corp capitalism, left us wholly unprepared for big tech’s consumption of society.

There’s also what I’d call “the slavery urge” at play I think. At some point, an AGI will probably be conscious. But everyone is clearly so ready to turn it into our work slaves. All while pretending its output belongs to them because they “prompted it”.

Then there’s the whole attention span being eaten thing, and quick always being ordered over good amongst an ever growing pile of increasingly shitty things.