Why do we work so hard? by Ryan Avent in 'The Economist'
AL comments:
"Although it terrifically dissects the "Cant live without it. Cant live with it" nature of work it rests almost entirely on a single distinction between types of labour in the post-industrial world: immersive,creative & satisfying "cognitive" labour vs physically demanding & emotionally taxing "service" labour. This is a false and politically self-serving distinction. For all of the intellectual satisfaction of cognitive wagework, is it not relevant to point out that newer forms of appropriation (e.g., licenses, royalties and rents based on copyright and patents instead of ownership of products) have been devised by employers to still extract value from the creative class? The social inequality impacts of this self-valorization of creative work are equally profound: Becoming blind to the lives of others, not contributing to social life outside of one's narrow professional class, and the outsourcing of emotional work to caregivers are all mentioned in the article but not causally linked to cognitivization. "
AL comments:
"Although it terrifically dissects the "Cant live without it. Cant live with it" nature of work it rests almost entirely on a single distinction between types of labour in the post-industrial world: immersive,creative & satisfying "cognitive" labour vs physically demanding & emotionally taxing "service" labour. This is a false and politically self-serving distinction. For all of the intellectual satisfaction of cognitive wagework, is it not relevant to point out that newer forms of appropriation (e.g., licenses, royalties and rents based on copyright and patents instead of ownership of products) have been devised by employers to still extract value from the creative class? The social inequality impacts of this self-valorization of creative work are equally profound: Becoming blind to the lives of others, not contributing to social life outside of one's narrow professional class, and the outsourcing of emotional work to caregivers are all mentioned in the article but not causally linked to cognitivization. "
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