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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

#81

Post by ozim »

TrackerFF wrote: post #42

Global "passion economy" sounds like the devaluation of creative work. Look no further than fiverr

But creative work was always devalued. People with money don't want to pay top dollar, unless you are already dead painter or Banksy.

Companies often drag their feet and try to get away with not paying at all, counting that you will give up or they will find another sucker.

Top talented are rare, just enough talented are plenty. Good opportunities are rare, most of capital is in hands of top 1% so capital is also rare.

Re: The Passion Economy and the Future of Work

#82

Post by claudeganon »

barry-cotter wrote: post #75
claudeganon wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Of course the obvious solution would be to build more housing, but the wealthy and other incumbent interests will throw everything they have at preventing this from happening or keeping it unaffordable for those who need it.

That a society is ostensibly democratic tells you little about how the levers of power actually function around things like urban policy and real estate development. You also need a theory of power and means of change to implement whatever it is you want to accomplish. Per my original comment, I think a greater solidarity between white collar workers and the working class, as they both get soaked by rising rents and home prices, could provide a possibility for this kind of change.

Re: The Passion Economy and the Future of Work

#83

Post by claudeganon »

cousin_it wrote: post #77
claudeganon wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 equitabl…

Most of the artists and writers I’ve ever met don’t actually want massive popularity. They just want to be able to make their work and hone their skills without dying in poverty. I think this kind of pursuit of fame is more driven by the underlying material realities, where you have to either pursue being incredibly famous or be unable to survive.

Re: The Passion Economy and the Future of Work

#84

Post by xwdv »

blue_devil wrote: post #80
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.

Have you ever dug a ditch?

Re: The Passion Economy and the Future of Work

#85

Post by xwdv »

treerock wrote: post #78
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

Your passion for something can also fade, and then you are even more fucked. At least changes in society’s values happen gradually.

Re: The Passion Economy and the Future of Work

#86

Post by eigenstuff »

blue_devil wrote: post #79
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?

I have a calling/passion, I'm a sculptor. And the marketing thing is what I seriously struggle with. I'm working on it and slowly pushing myself out of my comfort zone, but I disagree with passions only mattering if you make it visible. I'd love to be left the hell alone to be lost in my work forever, but I regrettably have to start making it visible if I want it to start paying for itself or at least break even. Art supplies aren't cheap. I want a laser cutter one day and that money isn't going to appear out of thin air. Making it visible is how to make it sustainable. I'm not in it for other people's approval and validation, the person I'm most concerned about impressing is myself.

This is kind of the harsh reality of being an artist though: how successful you are is less about the quality of work you do and more about how hard you can hustle. The person who makes unoriginal garbage art but is good at selling themselves is gonna beat the recluse who does high quality, innovation work but doesn't put themselves out there every single time.

Re: The Passion Economy and the Future of Work

#87

Post by zarro »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #18
zarro wrote: post #10

Whenever you gauge the performance of any activity, there is a bell curve distribution of ability. A very small portion become superstars and a majority fall somewhere in the middle, this is a natural phenomena. What these platforms have allowed to happen is allowed individuals to capture more of the value they individually produce, with the result being these creators with abilities to perform BEYOND the average do…

The distribution of ability is a bell curve (which has small tails, btw) but the distribution of rewards is basically power law. The result is that people only slightly different in ability can have wildly different rewards.

Power laws can arise as natural consequences of aggregation of high variance data. General Central Limit Theorem says distributions of data with limited variability tend to follow the Normal (bell-shaped, or Gaussian) curve, but aggregation of high (or infinite) variance data leads to power laws. Thus, the bell curve is normal for low-variance data and the power law curve is normal for high-variance data.

Re: The Passion Economy and the Future of Work

#88

Post by zarro »

ticmasta wrote: post #27
zarro wrote: post #10

Whenever you gauge the performance of any activity, there is a bell curve distribution of ability. A very small portion become superstars and a majority fall somewhere in the middle, this is a natural phenomena. What these platforms have allowed to happen is allowed individuals to capture more of the value they individually produce, with the result being these creators with abilities to perform BEYOND the average do…

generally these types of activities don't actually follow a bell curve but a power law where a very tiny population reap the vast majority of the rewards and everyone else shares the scraps, trailing off and approaching zero. Think 10 YT videos get 10 billion views and the rest share a billion, with the mean being somewhere close to zero

Power laws can arise as natural consequences of aggregation of high variance data. General Central Limit Theorem says distributions of data with limited variability tend to follow the Normal (bell-shaped, or Gaussian) curve, but aggregation of high (or infinite) variance data leads to power laws. Thus, the bell curve is normal for low-variance data and the power law curve is normal for high-variance data.

Re: The Passion Economy and the Future of Work

#89

Post by munk-a »

matz1 wrote: post #46
munk-a wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to discover and follow your passion requires a stability of life that most people stuck in grindy jobs are deprived of. Yes there are virtually unlimited things and I wish more people had the confidence and financial independence to pursue them - but being stuck in the grind makes it hard to see a way out... hence the abundance of depression in the modern world, most people are the cogs being crushed under…

If you born poor/ugly/whatever doesn't mean you just give up, whatever state you are in you have to keep searching for it. Sure its can be hard, but there is nothing better you can do other than just keep trying.

I would love it if people felt confident in doing that. The problem is that a lot of people get caught in a dark place when they're backed into a corner and can't get themselves out. I don't know if it's ever happened to you personally but people can become accepting of a bad situation simply because they find it too difficult to find a better one - most people (IMO nearly all) can get into this sort of a rut and may need help to get themselves out.

Re: The Passion Economy and the Future of Work

#90

Post by cryptica »

matz1 wrote: post #46
munk-a wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to discover and follow your passion requires a stability of life that most people stuck in grindy jobs are deprived of. Yes there are virtually unlimited things and I wish more people had the confidence and financial independence to pursue them - but being stuck in the grind makes it hard to see a way out... hence the abundance of depression in the modern world, most people are the cogs being crushed under…

If you born poor/ugly/whatever doesn't mean you just give up, whatever state you are in you have to keep searching for it. Sure its can be hard, but there is nothing better you can do other than just keep trying.

Sometimes you worked really hard and had a great strategy and your multi-year plan is starting to come together. All the pieces are snapping into place one after the other and you feel a great sense of progress... but then, at the last minute, it all falls apart based on some random freak incident that doesn't make sense and nobody could have predicted.

That's the reality of capitalism. The successful outliers are so rare, they may as well be fictitious characters in a fairy tale. Their experience has no meaning, no bearing whatsoever on the lives of real people. Their only purpose is to propagate the lie which holds the system together for their own benefit and at the expense of everyone else.

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