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The Passion Economy and the Future of Work

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Re: The Passion Economy and the Future of Work

#71

Post by brosinante »

stakhanov wrote: post #69

They start the first paragraph saying "The TOP earning writer here makes X ..." then "The TOP content creator there makes Y ..." The second paragraph says "This is INDICATIVE of ..." How does the logical fallacy here not occur to them? That they use a MAXIMUM to describe a distribution in the way that a person who is not completely out of touch with reality would use a median or mean. Silicon Valley megalomania par e…

Reframe the conversation by calling it a "passion" economy, then conveniently avoid mentioning what a representative "passionario" will earn.

It obviously occured to them, but they can't "monetize individuality" if you actually let people know there's no money in it for most.

Re: The Passion Economy and the Future of Work

#72

Post by stakhanov »

brosinante wrote: post #71
stakhanov wrote: post #69

They start the first paragraph saying "The TOP earning writer here makes X ..." then "The TOP content creator there makes Y ..." The second paragraph says "This is INDICATIVE of ..." How does the logical fallacy here not occur to them? That they use a MAXIMUM to describe a distribution in the way that a person who is not completely out of touch with reality would use a median or mean. Silicon Valley megalomania par e…

Reframe the conversation by calling it a "passion" economy, then conveniently avoid mentioning what a representative "passionario" will earn. It obviously occured to them, but they can't "monetize individuality" if you actually let people know there's no money in it for most.

...well, this publication is not really directed at would-be recruits for the passion economy but rather meant for circulation within the entrepreneurial community. There's a part of me that HOPES that there is a nefarious design here, instead of the industry having gone completely crazy and having lost touch with reality like this article would indicate.

Re: The Passion Economy and the Future of Work

#73

Post by angarg12 »

mc32 wrote: post #6

Yeah, I’d like to see median earnings numbers here. Passion is great for hobbies. Passion should not be an ingredient or path to being a good employee or being a good citizen. Rigor yes, dedication, sure. Passion (I.e. suffering as it were), no, no that is that companies who want to milk you tell you, of managers who want to extract more from you and away from work life balance say. Sorry, but no.

My wife was a freelancer teacher for a few years. Her earnings moved between 'being able to pay rent and little else' to 'not being able to pay the rent'. Not able to see a way forward and with the market getting more crowded, she decided to have a career change.

Now she has a 'boring office job', but at least she gets a predictable salary and career progression. Many times passion alone doesn't pay the bills.

Re: The Passion Economy and the Future of Work

#74

Post by TeMPOraL »

dsaavy wrote: post #55
taurath wrote: post #16

They need to talk about the network effect, and where the power is centered here. Hint - its not with the content creators, nor the users. Its the platform. Its the rent-seeking behavior on the part of the platforms that causes every entry in this space to rise when there's investment money, and then fall when they have to start making the money back and implement creator and user unfriendly mechanisms. Then the cont…

I think that’s a severe underestimation of the impact of a popular and easy place of congregation. The center of power being the platform is how things work in the digital realm and the in-person realm. As a random example, if someone is shopping for a steak, they normally would go to a market, grocery store, or butcher shop in a popular plaza near their home. If you’re in America, most likely that steak is sourced f…

I wouldn't say the power is "rightfully" focused on those that run the platform, just that the shape of the market makes it so. A platform - whether a streaming site or a commercial plaza - is worthless without a plethora of content/goods providers on board. But there's much more providers than platforms, so platforms get to set the rules.

Re: The Passion Economy and the Future of Work

#75

Post by barry-cotter »

claudeganon wrote: post #47
taurath wrote: post #16

They need to talk about the network effect, and where the power is centered here. Hint - its not with the content creators, nor the users. Its the platform. Its the rent-seeking behavior on the part of the platforms that causes every entry in this space to rise when there's investment money, and then fall when they have to start making the money back and implement creator and user unfriendly mechanisms. Then the cont…

As someone who has worked in the arts for over a decade, I see no path forward besides worker ownership of these platforms. Every other arrangement leads to race-to-the-bottom for the labor on these platforms. Maybe the ongoing collapse of American cities as places that are unaffordable for anyone other that the ultra-wealthy will push software engineers in this direction. The housing crisis in San Francisco alone sh…

> Maybe the ongoing collapse of American cities as places that are unaffordable for anyone other that the ultra-wealthy will push software engineers in this direction. The housing crisis in San Francisco alone should demonstrate that class interests of white collar employees are more aligned with those of the workers on the platforms they create then those of their current owners.

This is ridiculous. That some cities in the US are unaffordable and becoming more so is a result of democratic decisions. Californian voters are like Irish voters, disproportionately property owners, and you see the same insane rise in property prices in much of the English speaking world. There are the occasional bright spots, like Seattle but the problem has a bloody obvious solution, build more housing. Tokyo’s rent and house prices have been basically flat for two decades while population increased by 50%.

San Francisco has the planning and zoning and housing it votes for, just like New York. If the desirability of any area increases and housing doesn’t then housing gets more expensive.

Re: The Passion Economy and the Future of Work

#76

Post by barry-cotter »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #50
john_moscow wrote: post #49

I don't think the economy in this segment is changing drastically. Top handful of rockstars, actors, athletes, soccer players, etc were always compensated very well, while the median ones weren't. Not like you can get a Master in Talk Show Hosting degree and get a more or less predictable career path similar to the engineering/medicine degrees. Come to think of it, the rise of multiple competing content platforms wou…

It's kind of subjective. Decades ago, CEO's made 20:1 compared to workers. That's "compensated very well". Today is 200:1. It's still very well. A whole order of magnitude better. In developed countries, today's winners win bigger. The losers stagnate. Globally, many have been lifted out of poverty. The poor in developing countries are doing better. The wealthy are doing better. The middle class is not.

Decades ago CEOs consumed well over twenty times as much as the average worker even though their official wages were only twenty times as high because of a huge range of tax exemptions and write offs that were eliminated in the 80s.

Re: The Passion Economy and the Future of Work

#77

Post by cousin_it »

claudeganon wrote: post #47
taurath wrote: post #16

They need to talk about the network effect, and where the power is centered here. Hint - its not with the content creators, nor the users. Its the platform. Its the rent-seeking behavior on the part of the platforms that causes every entry in this space to rise when there's investment money, and then fall when they have to start making the money back and implement creator and user unfriendly mechanisms. Then the cont…

As someone who has worked in the arts for over a decade, I see no path forward besides worker ownership of these platforms. Every other arrangement leads to race-to-the-bottom for the labor on these platforms. Maybe the ongoing collapse of American cities as places that are unaffordable for anyone other that the ultra-wealthy will push software engineers in this direction. The housing crisis in San Francisco alone sh…

> As someone who has worked in the arts for over a decade, I see no path forward besides worker ownership of these platforms. Every other arrangement leads to race-to-the-bottom for the labor on these platforms.

Sure, less popular creators can get some monetary support from a more progressive society arrangement. But they won't get more popularity, unless you can explain how your society arrangement leads to equitable redistribution of popularity. In other words, the median book author might get a nice basic income, but their book will still get crickets.

Re: The Passion Economy and the Future of Work

#78

Post by treerock »

xwdv wrote: post #14

God I hate this stuff. It preaches the wrong ideas to people and then screws them up for life. We need to think less about “the future of work” and think more about “the history of work”. What people need to embrace is the Discipline Economy. It’s simple. Find something that is of value to society and pays enough, then work everyday to be better and better at it until you reach your maximum potential, and you will be…

> Find something that is of value to society and pays enough, then work everyday to be better and better at it until you reach your maximum potential, and you will be rewarded.

Unless society changes what it values, at which point you are fucked.

https://genius.com/Pete-seeger-john-henry-lyrics

Re: The Passion Economy and the Future of Work

#79

Post by blue_devil »

mc32 wrote: post #6

Yeah, I’d like to see median earnings numbers here. Passion is great for hobbies. Passion should not be an ingredient or path to being a good employee or being a good citizen. Rigor yes, dedication, sure. Passion (I.e. suffering as it were), no, no that is that companies who want to milk you tell you, of managers who want to extract more from you and away from work life balance say. Sorry, but no.

In my mind "passion" has become synonymous with "marketing" - it matters only when you make it visible, very visible. Whatever happened to having a calling?

Re: The Passion Economy and the Future of Work

#80

Post by blue_devil »

xwdv wrote: post #14

God I hate this stuff. It preaches the wrong ideas to people and then screws them up for life. We need to think less about “the future of work” and think more about “the history of work”. What people need to embrace is the Discipline Economy. It’s simple. Find something that is of value to society and pays enough, then work everyday to be better and better at it until you reach your maximum potential, and you will be…

>>Someone still has to shovel the piles of shit or dig a ditch.

I strongly believe that if you stay curious and pay attention to your work, any work can be(come) meaningful and rewarding.

Devise your own faster/better/lighter shovel or digger, or your own process for shovelling or digging etc.

The human mind is beautiful in that if you "feed" it the right way, it outputs the most amazing stuff.

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