Conversation

Laissez-faire was planned, planning was not — Polyani Flexworking was planned, 9-5 was not — me When you look at the history, it’s amazing how much the synchronized monotemporality of ~1884-1984 was largely an emergent convergence towards a global equilibrium temporality
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That one's on railway companies. I do see your larger point: the whole culture today is an evolved thing, not a designed one. But it evolved from lots of individual designs, like train timetables and the labor movement. Saying it wasn't designed seems . . . off.
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I do agree with your point that “unplanned” is overstating the case. I let the temptation to rhyme with the polyani quote get the better of me 🙂 Probably won’t use use that for polished argument
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At first. And then . . . evolution and unintended consequences. Like the gigwork economy, populist strife triggered by economic vulnerability, and VC-financed software giants feeding hackers billions of zero-day bugs to exploit. It may have worked, but now it's just works.
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I don’t think the neolibs in the Washington consensus era were even concerned with thinking that far ahead. I think they had 4 very tactical goals: survive collapse of USSR, beat back Japan, control emerging economies, keep profits growing. Executed as agile murder sprints 😆
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