Indentured Servitude 2.0

A hallmark of the big Web 2.0 companies is old capitalist exploitation dressed up as innovative, empowering progress. Facebook makes money selling our personal information to ad companies, compensating users by providing the opportunity to share and be "open." Uber's independent contractors are generating the data that will be used to automate all Uber rides within the next five years, making obsolete these jobs that were only created a few short years ago.

The unofficial mantra of Web 2.0 billion dollar companies comes from Netflix: "We are a team, not a family." This has been a convenient way to sell the lack of traditional support structures employers used to offer their employees as an innovative, fresh, forward-looking, positive thing. Which of course it is--just not for the workers.

This is why the buzzwords that Web 2.0 companies like Netflix use are so inflected with sports and entertainment ideas--superstars, rock stars, Like "star' athletes, low-level workers at Web 2.0 companies have no job security, no benefits, and can be cut or traded like widgets. Except that with real sports stars and entertainers, workers can make enough money to retire on by the time they're 35. These "cutting-edge" tech companies, on the other hand, pay recent college grads $30,000 a year if they're lucky, and work these poor souls so hard that burnout rates are outlandishly high.

So what's the next major frontier in the increasingly absurd landscape of contemporary capitalism? How about selling college students on the buzzy, progressive idea of indentured servitude! How hip, how new, how exciting!

Purdue University has spearheaded a new method of getting students to accept outrageously high tuition rates that they will almost certainly be crushed under the weight of for decades. In exchange for funds to pay their tuition, students can pledge to pay a percentage of their future incomes.

The new agreement goes by a few names, like "income-sharing agreements" or "human capital contracts," and are seen  as a way to spread risk and prevent students from being locked into dangerously high debt payments. Of course, what it really is is a textbook case of indentured servitude. Such are the grave times in which we live, the student debt crisis is so bad, it makes indentured servitude seem like a reasonable, perhaps even preferable, alternative to the current prospects.

Web 2.0 companies sell us freedom, opportunity, individuality and self-empowerment. What they've mostly done is get rich dressing up old capitalist control systems as an exciting fresh future.

Reminder that Seth Godin is the Worst

Seth Godin is a perfect exemplar of how capitalism sells its collapse as a great opportunity for workers to strike it rich. Why resist or revise a corrupt system when you can "disrupt" it.

He is fond of detailing the death of traditional structures, be they in media, manufacturing, or whatever else. The traditional employer-employee relationship is gone--you can't look to any kind of institutional framework to support you as you attempt to raise a family, buy a home, and save for college.

Now, because of new, smart technologies, workers can be entrepreneurs. Before, in the bad old days when there were stable structures that could help writers have careers, you had to gain entry to a publishing house to sell your book. Now if you want to write a book, self-publish! Before, if you wanted to have a singing career, you needed to be accepted by a label--now you can just record a song on your phone and put it on SoundCloud! So much better, OMG!

This doubling down on capitalist individualism, in the face of the collapse of capitalism caused by an excessively individualistic outlook, is of course absurd. The cure for the evils of capitalism is not a new breed of hypercapitalist, hyper-individualism. It is socialism.

Capital is lucky to have a spokesman like Godin, who can persuade huge numbers of people that the collapse of the capitalist system is just an opportunity to take advantage of the changing structures. Exploit the crisis of capitalism for your own individual gain. That is the only kind of change that makes sense to sophists like Godin.

Fake Jobs, Long-Term Unemployment, and the Future

Today in unprecedentedly dire signs that the world economy is in a permanent post-employment phase comes a story from the New York Times about Potemkin companies.

That's right, there are over one hundred totally fake companies in France designed to give the long-term unemployed (or long-term underemployed) confidence and skills training in administrative and other office positions. There are literally over one hundred companies that do not make or sell anything, or conduct any actual business in the economy, but have lots of desperate people come in to play-act at having a job.

These are mainly administrative, coordinator, and data entry jobs that will be almost entirely automated within about the next decade and a half. We're creating fake companies to provide fake jobs to people, because those jobs are so scarce and valuable and to get one you need to be ready to do impeccable work because there are thousands of people desperate to take even the crappiest office job, and these jobs won't even exist in a few years.

The article is remarkable for a number of reasons, not the least of which is how the Times, in true Times fashion, reports the story as if the rise of fake companies designed to give the millions of permanently unemployed/underemployed some kind of daily dignity is a vaguely quirky, interesting, positive thing, rather than the clear death knell of our traditional economic reality.

This trend of Potemkin companies is also mostly presented in the article as an odd tick of those whacky Europeans, saddled with the irresponsible and damaging economies of Greece and other southern nations of the Eurozone. It is made clear that such a thing won't catch on in the prosperous United States, since our long-term unemployment situation is much rosier than Europe's: "By contrast, the share of the long-term unemployed in the United States — defined as people looking for work for at least six months — is falling as a recovery takes hold. Last year it was 31.6 percent, down from a record 45.1 percent in 2010, according to the Labor Department. The share of those unemployed for a year or more was 22.6 percent in 2014."

Of course, since this is the New York Times, the actual direness of the economic situation cannot be even hinted at. The reason, the obvious, clear reason, that the long-term unemployment number in the U.S. has been "dropping" steadily since its record high is that you only count as part of the long-term unemployed if you are eligible for unemployment benefits, meaning that you are actively seeking employment. The prospect of finding a job, any job, let alone that rarest thing, a full time career type of job with wild, exotic things fit for only the luckiest dukes and lords of the land, like health and dental benefits, are so bleak that millions have dropped out of the labor force entirely.

The long-term unemployed are the most likely, the next in line, to just drop out of the labor force altogether--it's one rung up from totally  giving up and checking out. People in this group are face to face with the hopeless reality that these wealthy economists and journalists write about so blithely. So as the official long-term unemployed numbers in this country "drop," this is not a sign of some sort of phantom recovery--which should be obvious seeing as how a recovery shouldn't be jobless! The drop in long-term unemployment is simply the byproduct of the labor force participation rate shrinking.

These brilliant status quo economists and journalists will keep telling us how great our economic recovery has been, as millions more keep giving up participating in the economy entirely. It's unclear how monstrously high the real unemployment rate has to get before the well-paid, highly educated, comfortable mainstream economists and journalists begin to acknowledge the reality staring everyone right in the face. If you factor in underemployment with the official unemployment rate, you get something close to 12.6%, and add that to the 37% of the population not participating in the labor force at all, you're right about at 50% of the total population.

It will be interesting to see how much higher than 50% we can go before the reality of the post-employment economy, and the need for a universal basic income, are acknowledged.

There is some cause for hope to be found in this despicable article about this disgusting practice of creating fake office environments for sad human beings to salvage some sort of self-respect.

It signals how this way of doing things must be close to its end. First and foremost, it shows how completely out of ideas we are for what makes a human life valuable and worthwhile. We have all leaned on the idea that work is what gives a life meaning and value, that when the need for work has so clearly and beyond all dispute dried up, we create fake work environments for people.

How insane is that? Are we really so unimaginative as a species that we are creating living museums of a crumbled socioeconomic system for people to while away their lives in? Can we really think of nothing else that a human being might do? If this isn't the tipping point of the absurdity of our situation, I don't know what will be.

Brooklyn Botanic Garden: A Review

If you live anywhere near the 2/3 line in Brooklyn and don't have a membership to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, you should probably consider reevaluating things.

If you are over, say, 23 years old and have developed a moderate sensitivity to the most pressing type of pollution in New York City--noise pollution--you will immediately love the place for being an outdoor oasis where noise is drastically reduced. Sure, Prospect Park is right next to the Garden, but if you go to parks to sit peacefully to think or read, moments that approach actual quiet are far too fleeting in Prospect Park.

Individual admission to the BBG is $12, and yearly membership is $50, so it's one of the best deals in a city with precious few of them. It pays for itself in about four visits. The quiet alone is well worth the price, but the plants, ponds, turtles, fish and birds are impressive too.

There are some issues though, of course, since this is New York City and no experience can be totally free of jarring unpleasantness. Since the entire world is just an open playground for obnoxious children to run and scream in now, and adults have no place in the world, the BBG is of course rife with screaming, running children. This is just the cost of living in New York.

Most days the child groups are tolerably sparse, but some days seemingly every school in Brooklyn has taken a field trip to the BBG. If you visit and this seems to be the case, you're better off just leaving entirely and trying your luck a different day.

A seemingly more controllable issue is the noise generated by the nearly constant lawn and plant maintenance by the dozens upon dozens of staff. Between the hordes of screaming children and the menacing industrial roar of mowers and trimmers, moments of actual quiet are fleeting--not as fleeting as in a public park, but so much so that it is all but impossible to sit outside and think without being interrupted for any meaningful stretch of time.

This need not be the case. There are plenty of products available for even domestic use that operate close to noiselessly. The maintenance equipment used by the industrious staff at the BBG seemingly haven't been updated in decades--they rival the overhead airplanes in noise pollution.

A final issue is the striking disjunction in energies between tourists and members. Tourists, often in somewhat large groups, rush through the place crunching their maps, talking loudly, and generally storming around. They paid $12 a pop to get in, so they are damn well going to march around to every crevice of the place to pose for cell phone pictures in front of every moderately intriguing item. They are damn well going to treat it like an open air museum in which they have vowed to extract every last ounce of gawking value, rather than a serene, green outdoor space where moments of sanity-nurturing quiet may be greedily horded.

Not to sound like an elitist, but there should be a members only space to the BBG, where people who come multiple times a week for the peace it provides can retreat. The difference in energy between people who are treating it like a purchase they want to extract maximal value from, and people who treat it like a home away from home, is simply too stark to be permitted.

The BBG has all the makings of a truly invaluable oasis in an evil city lousy with noise pollution, but it fails in a variety of ways to make good on its tantalizing promise.

What the Fight for $15 Campaign Means

It looks like the once seemingly quixotic campaign for fast food workers to get something close to $15 per hour will continue to pick up steam, and maybe even be successful. Since this is America, and this story is about allowing more people to live better lives, there is a whole lot of opposition to it of course.

Opponents of the "Fight for $15" movement claim that such jobs are meant to be temporary shelters for people who are trying to find their way into more respectable, gainful employment. Such conservative opponents argue that fast food jobs should not be legitimized as a decent, permanent occupation by paying living wages--they think these workers should suffer and scrape by so that they will be properly motivated to win access to better jobs.

What these conservative opponents fail to realize is that those "better jobs" don't exist anymore, and they haven't for some time now. As it becomes increasingly impossible to secure any employment at all, regardless of training and educational background, fast food jobs represent a life raft to millions who would otherwise be penniless.

Opponents of this campaign are stuck in the mindset of forty years ago, when anyone with half a brain and moderate ambition could make enough money to buy a house, a car, and send three kids to college, all on a single income too. In the past, you really did have to be somewhat lazy to be among the long-term unemployed. Now, you have to be highly trained, highly skilled, highly intelligent, superhumanly persistent and incredibly lucky just to scrape by.

The new reality is that working at a fast food joint is the best that the majority of graduates from even moderately good high schools can hope for. Even colleges too. The average age of a fast food worker today is 25. It's no longer a summer job for students or for ex-cons or recovering drug addicts trying to reintegrate into society. There's no stable society capable of absorbing these people. The support system has become the system.

What was once considered a safety net for marginal characters is now an irreplaceable resource for millions of people with families trying to be decent citizens. They have little to no hope of clawing out anything better.

Of course, giving fast food workers a decent hourly wage is a temporary Band-Aid on the festering, mortal wound of automated corporate capitalism. Machines are already nearing the market that can obviate fast food workers entirely.

Making fast food jobs into decent middle class jobs is no way to build a sustainable middle class of people with sufficient purchasing power to drive a robust market economy for generations. It is rather a way to incentivize capitalists to double down on automation as rapidly as possible, to remove labor from the equation entirely.

The solution is so obvious and sensible that it will of course meet with immense challenges before being accepted. Every citizen must be guaranteed a minimum, basic level of annual income by the government. This solution requires fostering a genuine, vivid appreciation for the human spirit and mind, reconfiguring our attitude towards fellow citizens from one of constant annoyance to something approaching fraternity and empathy. It requires finding value in human beings beyond their work output. It means divorcing the concept of an income from the concept of working. It means rediscovering what humans are really worth, beyond their productive capacity.

So Long, David Letterman and the Middle Class

This week was David Letterman's last on TV, after being on it nonstop since about 1982. It's also the first week I ever paid any real attention to him. In 1996, when I was ten, I saw Independence Day, and President Bill Pullman's daughter tattles on her dad to her mom, saying "Daddy let me watch Letterman." I didn't know who Letterman was, but if he was name-checked in Independence Day, which at that time for me was the coolest movie that could every possibly exist, he must be important.

I think I tried to stay up and watch some of this mysterious Letterman person shortly after, but either couldn't stay awake late enough, or found him to just be an average adult man, who looked like a teacher, in a suit saying things I didn't care about.

In high school and college, I religiously watched Conan O'Brien, who, I would later realize, did exactly what Letterman did with that same show--innovated and pushed the envelope as hard as he could. Conan carried the legacy of what Letterman did with the Late Night franchise as well as it could be carried. But this was the late nineties/early oughties, when envelopes had been pushed for a while. Letterman was Conan starting in 1982, doing things on TV that no one had ever seen before.

Awash in nostalgia as we all have been recently, I went back and watched some clips of Late Night era Letterman. I was only dimly aware until recently that he started the show currently helmed by Seth Myers until 1993, when he got his current show, Late Show on CBS. The only Letterman I've ever known has been a tired, slightly bored, stiff, cranky old man who seemed way more beloved than his show-to-show performance seemed to merit. But watching YouTube clips of his NBC show from the late 80s was revelatory.

The first thing that leapt out was how fast his mind worked, and how his guests seemed genuinely excited to try to keep up with him. He exuded energy in a way that seems light years away from the guy I've seen for the past ten or even fifteen years. Generally I don't like energetic comedic personas, from Dane Cook to Kevin Hart to Jimmy Fallon. But where Dane Cook's energy is (was?) fratty, and Jimmy Fallon's is saccharinely ingratiating and designedly viral, Letterman's seemed to come from a genuine overabundance of comic mania, of critical intelligence. He had a lot to say and a lot of entertaining ideas to communicate, and wanted to make sure it all got out there.

Watching the montage that ended the series as the Foo Fighters played "Everlong" brought out just how different his show was from the current crop. It truly is from a different era. There are so many tactile experiences in the highlights, so many things happening, so many spectacles, events, real, tangible things taking place out in the world. If Jimmy Fallon does the Tonight Show for another thirty years, I have a hard time picturing him producing a clip package with this much real, out in the world stuff happening. People are much more detached and isolated now. It was striking to see how engaged and part of the world Letterman and his show were through these images.

In my sampling of 80s/early 90s era Letterman clips, I also noticed how many regular people he had on. One episode he had on the entire population of a tiny town in Iowa that had recently been removed from the map because they were too small. He had two very old ladies on to talk about their town, giving them plenty of air time and not rushing them at all. He would have bag boys on and other people from regular jobs, and not exactly mock them but share them as being part of the fun world he created.

I see no real tactile engagement with the world from the current crop of late night hosts, and certainly no dialogue with the middle class. In a way it's appropriate that Letterman is retiring now, since the middle class doesn't exist anymore either. His audience is gone, and now so is he.

Post-Employment Reality Tentatively Acknowledged by Mainstream Press

In this week's Sunday New York Times, the economic realities that have been glaringly obvious for years and years were, albeit in the most halting and qualified of general academic fashions, acknowledged. The piece, Signs of a Shakier New Normal, didn't appear in the influential Sunday Review section, where something like this belongs, but in the Sunday Business section. Still, this is a highly unusual breach in the armor of neoliberal propaganda, and worth exploring.

In true mainstream conciliatory fashion, as it is written by a full professor at a good university, and so a person who both has things to lose (rare these days), and hasn't been personally effected by the permanent post-employment economy that has been staring us in the face for a while now, the baseline thesis is that of course the economy will "reset" to normal, pre-Recession levels. Of course there is an underlying normality, which will allow the vanishing middle class to return, and people under 35 will be able to start families, buy cars and homes in great numbers or at the very least not have to live with their parents any more. Of course this will happen--it's so obvious, because it always has in the past.

But what differentiates this piece from the usual Panglossian neoliberal economic tripe, is that there is the very merest of allowances that maybe, just maybe, our post-employment economy is permanent. The closing sentence of the piece: "No one knows whether or how much of a reset may be underway. Yet I can't help but wonder which features of current data might prove to be harbingers of larger, more permanent changes to come." This is classic neoliberal economist thinking--you need to know fully and for sure before making a claim. All thinking must at every possible point be supported by as much data as is conceivably possible. Thought may not begin until data is as close to 100% complete and accurate as possible, until peak, optimal sufficiency is reached. But since data is never sufficient, and can always be bolstered and refined, thinking never starts. And so we end up being led by "experts" who think that our obviously permanent post-employment economy is almost certainly just a passing phase before the salvific Grand Reset.

For these economists, trends are merely passively commented on, data is fetishized, and distance is kept. But the "data" in these economic musings represent years of life for an entire generation in which their confidence is sapped, their experiences constricted, their outlooks permanently and irrecoverably dampened. The "larger, more permanent changes to come" Cowen's allows himself to mention at the very end of this scandalously realistic article are where the piece should begin, since they are already here. What the passage of time will do is allow them to become undeniable. Then once there has been a solid decade in which these larger, more permanent changes can be studied as fully formed data points, Cowen and his ilk will tell us how it all came to pass.

Judging by his picture, the author, Tyler Cowen, seems to be in his early fifties, and came of age in a time when young people could find entry level, $35,000/year jobs without feeling like they won the lottery. In his day, you probably didn't have to be a "rock star" to make 35k. Now you do. Ten years from now, you'll have to be a rock star to make $11/hr.

Though Cowen's piece is rare in that it dares to even begin acknowledging the bald-faced realities that have been a part of daily life for millions of people in their twenties for years and years and years, it is still drenched with the requisite neoliberal self-deception that is the price of admission into mainstream thought. Consider these lines: "One consequence is that young people are living at home longer and receiving more aid from their parents. They also seem to be less interested in buying their own homes." It's rare that neoliberal capitalist self-deception is so baldly stated--of course millions of people in their twenties aren't interested in buying homes. It's not that they desperately want to but regard that as a pipe dream, even if they have degrees in good fields from good schools. It's that they think having a home is totally lame!

There's a similar, equally grotesque, bit of such ideological contortion in this piece by the grating Kyle Chaka, who valorizes the perilous, schizophrenic post-employment vista as an invigorating, freedom-increasing entrepreneurial wonderland. The lengths that intelligent people will go to to defend the rationality of an obviously broken system are astounding.