Skip to content
By using Twitter’s services you agree to our Cookies Use. We and our partners operate globally and use cookies, including for analytics, personalisation, and ads.
  • Home Home Home, current page.
  • About

Saved searches

  • Remove
  • In this conversation
    Verified accountProtected Tweets @
Suggested users
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Language: English
    • Bahasa Indonesia
    • Bahasa Melayu
    • Català
    • Čeština
    • Dansk
    • Deutsch
    • English UK
    • Español
    • Filipino
    • Français
    • Hrvatski
    • Italiano
    • Magyar
    • Nederlands
    • Norsk
    • Polski
    • Português
    • Română
    • Slovenčina
    • Suomi
    • Svenska
    • Tiếng Việt
    • Türkçe
    • Ελληνικά
    • Български език
    • Русский
    • Српски
    • Українська мова
    • עִבְרִית
    • العربية
    • فارسی
    • मराठी
    • हिन्दी
    • বাংলা
    • ગુજરાતી
    • தமிழ்
    • ಕನ್ನಡ
    • ภาษาไทย
    • 한국어
    • 日本語
    • 简体中文
    • 繁體中文
  • Have an account? Log in
    Have an account?
    · Forgot password?

    New to Twitter?
    Sign up
vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

Tweets

  • © 2020 Twitter
  • About
  • Help Center
  • Terms
  • Privacy policy
  • Imprint
  • Cookies
  • Ads info
Dismiss
Previous
Next

Go to a person's profile

Saved searches

  • Remove
  • In this conversation
    Verified accountProtected Tweets @
Suggested users
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @

Promote this Tweet

Block

  • Tweet with a location

    You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more

    Your lists

    Create a new list


    Under 100 characters, optional

    Privacy

    Copy link to Tweet

    Embed this Tweet

    Embed this Video

    Add this Tweet to your website by copying the code below. Learn more

    Add this video to your website by copying the code below. Learn more

    Hmm, there was a problem reaching the server.

    By embedding Twitter content in your website or app, you are agreeing to the Twitter Developer Agreement and Developer Policy.

    Preview

    Why you're seeing this ad

    Log in to Twitter

    · Forgot password?
    Don't have an account? Sign up »

    Sign up for Twitter

    Not on Twitter? Sign up, tune into the things you care about, and get updates as they happen.

    Sign up
    Have an account? Log in »

    Two-way (sending and receiving) short codes:

    Country Code For customers of
    United States 40404 (any)
    Canada 21212 (any)
    United Kingdom 86444 Vodafone, Orange, 3, O2
    Brazil 40404 Nextel, TIM
    Haiti 40404 Digicel, Voila
    Ireland 51210 Vodafone, O2
    India 53000 Bharti Airtel, Videocon, Reliance
    Indonesia 89887 AXIS, 3, Telkomsel, Indosat, XL Axiata
    Italy 4880804 Wind
    3424486444 Vodafone
    » See SMS short codes for other countries

    Confirmation

     

    Welcome home!

    This timeline is where you’ll spend most of your time, getting instant updates about what matters to you.

    Tweets not working for you?

    Hover over the profile pic and click the Following button to unfollow any account.

    Say a lot with a little

    When you see a Tweet you love, tap the heart — it lets the person who wrote it know you shared the love.

    Spread the word

    The fastest way to share someone else’s Tweet with your followers is with a Retweet. Tap the icon to send it instantly.

    Join the conversation

    Add your thoughts about any Tweet with a Reply. Find a topic you’re passionate about, and jump right in.

    Learn the latest

    Get instant insight into what people are talking about now.

    Get more of what you love

    Follow more accounts to get instant updates about topics you care about.

    Find what's happening

    See the latest conversations about any topic instantly.

    Never miss a Moment

    Catch up instantly on the best stories happening as they unfold.

    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      When you "pull yourself together" you pull yourself together to approximate a consensus definition of human. For eg. stand up straight or slouch depending on what's fashionable right then. That definition evolves over time.

      4 replies 9 retweets 47 likes
      Show this thread
    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      The idea of "respecting the dignity of humans" is really trying to define basic human rights in a way that allow anybody to "pull themselves together" to the current local consensus definition at reasonable cost.

      1 reply 1 retweet 16 likes
      Show this thread
      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      The idea that having to crawl on all fours in front of an old-fashioned monarch is dehumanizing is relative to a modern definition of human. Back then, it was probably the case that "pulling yourself together" in the king's court meant crawling on all fours in a particular way

      2:43 PM - 14 Feb 2020
      • 14 Likes
      • SUNSHINE ☀️ REVIVAL Divia Eden ian m hines NothingBetter Lorec Sophie May 🏴 🚀 💣 Adolf Richter Brill 🐮 ivashko Mike Abundo
      1 reply 0 retweets 14 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          arguing for human rights and dignity becomes much more complex when you want to avoid assuming a particular definition of 'human' but still capture humane ideas about how to treat people in the concept

          1 reply 0 retweets 12 likes
          Show this thread
        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          A good part of the project of civilization is to construct and sustain a notion of the human that creates a meaningful separation from other animals. And to a surprising degree, this is defined in terms of keeping one's composure... as in the composed performance of "humans"

          1 reply 0 retweets 13 likes
          Show this thread
        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          This might seem arbitrary. One might cynically say that in these terms, human rights become defined as "the right to act" in a certain theatrical way. Except those performances are how we transact social sustenance with each other. Hello, how are you, pleased to meet you.

          1 reply 1 retweet 9 likes
          Show this thread
        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          One of the problems with labor economics is that it is structurally blind to the evolving invisible notion of dignity that we must maintain to feel human and that life is worth living.

          1 reply 0 retweets 16 likes
          Show this thread
        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          I recall an episode of shark tank or something where mark cuban refused to invest in someone because she refused to play air guitar for him. I forget the context.

          1 reply 0 retweets 8 likes
          Show this thread
        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          My reading of the incident was that the woman was anchored on a particular notion of performed (but not performative) dignity that would have been debased by that kind of behavior among strangers.

          1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
          Show this thread
        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Cuban was unwittingly asking her to debase herself by her idea of dignity for no good reason. He seemed confused by her refusal because by his notion of dignity, it would have been a low-cost way to land an investment, because it wouldn't have bothered him to do it

          1 reply 1 retweet 12 likes
          Show this thread
        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Now there's a pragmatic thing here... he could, as an investor, be thinking, "you came on a tv show for investment, and if you're not willing to debase yourself a bit for the cameras, how will you get through the endless humiliation of being an entrepreneurial success"

          1 reply 1 retweet 9 likes
          Show this thread
        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          As I argued in the economics of pricelessness, it is axiomatic in the saints-and-traders dialectic that traders *expect* to trade dignity for profit. That's almost the whole definition of the commerce ethos posture in Jane Jacobs sensehttps://www.ribbonfarm.com/2014/08/12/the-economics-of-pricelessness/ …

          1 reply 2 retweets 14 likes
          Show this thread
        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Now this brings up an interesting question. Sure you should have the right to debase yourself in others' eyes as much as you like in pursuit of personal profit. But can/should you use any power you have to force *others* to debase themselves by *their* definition of dignity?

          1 reply 0 retweets 11 likes
          Show this thread
        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          This is pretty much the definition of humiliation. In the mild case, I adopt a conservative posture: never knowingly ask anyone to compromise their personal sense of dignity. This is the reason the opening joke in the EoP post works.

          1 reply 0 retweets 14 likes
          Show this thread
        13. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          It is doubly humiliating because first the rich guy used the power of money to undermine the woman's sense of her own dignity, then took away the incentive for the undermining. That's pure sadism. Dehumanizing someone because you can.

          1 reply 0 retweets 15 likes
          Show this thread
        14. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          In a way, humiliation is the currency of the labor economy. A purely dignity-respecting economy wouldn't work. It wouldn't be liquid enough. The way you get it moving is to allow *unknowing* assaults on dignity.

          2 replies 1 retweet 17 likes
          Show this thread
        15. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Original version of joke in EoP -- Man: will you sleep with me for $1 million? Woman: Okay Man: will you sleep with me for $5? Woman: WHAT! What kind of woman do you take me for? Man: we’ve already established what kind of woman you are. Now we’re just haggling over the price.

          1 reply 1 retweet 8 likes
          Show this thread
        16. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Dignity respecting kinda non-joke (modulo your absolute moral view of prostitution) -- Man: will you sleep with me for $500? Woman: WHAT! Do I look like a hooker to you? Man: My apologies, in my country prostitution is legal, and I don't yet understand dress norms here

          1 reply 1 retweet 9 likes
          Show this thread
        17. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          The boundary of the labor economy is a noise band around common knowledge of the local ecosystem of "dignities". It moves slowly towards "more corrupted" by traditionalist scopes

          1 reply 1 retweet 8 likes
          Show this thread
        18. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          In an increasingly connected, globalized, remote transactions world, it is becoming harder and harder to price in the cost of navigating the fuzzy boundary of "dignity". Distant remote corporations can unknowingly assault local dignities for decades, with the resentment building

          1 reply 1 retweet 8 likes
          Show this thread
        19. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          The dissonance shows up in the gap between performed and felt dignity. This is why the waiter may smile at you, but spit in your food. He's performing dignity in a way that allows him to go on living because he can't overtly challenge the expectations.

          1 reply 1 retweet 7 likes
          Show this thread
        20. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          So a good question for economists to consider is: can price-based mechanisms price dignity in a way that lowers the rate of waiters spitting in your food?

          1 reply 1 retweet 9 likes
          Show this thread
        21. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          And note that surveillance is not the answer, since people forced to perform a debilitating and dehumanizing level of dignity they are powerless to resist will always find some unobservable space to indulge in compensatory behaviors.

          1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
          Show this thread
        22. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          If the waiter can't spit in the food because there are now cameras in the kitchen, he will key the car of patrons in the parking lot. If you put cameras there he will start anon-trolling members of the patron class online. Etc. etc. It's a dignity arms race.

          1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
          Show this thread
        23. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          It's also the human face of the perfect information problem faced by markets. The challenge is to put a price on hostile behaviors practiced in darkness by those forced to perform in humiliating ways just to survive.

          1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
          Show this thread
        24. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Pricing in invisible restorative behaviors sentient agents practice to maintain themselves in a state they consider "dignified human" while living visibly under conditions that constitute a continuous assault on their idea of dignity.

          1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
          Show this thread
        25. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Even perfect surveillance doesn't solve the problem. In that case, the rage and resentment just builds up invisibly in the psyche, until it explodes, either in isolation (mass shootings say), or via collective aggression.

          1 reply 1 retweet 7 likes
          Show this thread
        26. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          In a way, this is *the* central problem of our times, for both technology and economics. Creating a properly priced dignity market that can seek equilibrium without periodically exploding via beserking or rioting or other kinds of humiliation-revenge/dignity-balancing.

          1 reply 1 retweet 16 likes
          Show this thread
        27. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          The problem isn't, and never was, technology taking away jobs. The problem is, and has always been, economies taking assaulting dignities.

          1 reply 1 retweet 17 likes
          Show this thread
        28. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Not sure how to approach solving the problem, but a good starting point is, if you have to have a policy that your employees have to act nice in certain ways beyond the natural niceness levels of random pairs of humans, you're creating an invisible dignity deficit

          1 reply 1 retweet 10 likes
          Show this thread
        29. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          That, or you're somehow hiring exactly the wrong people. Like selecting the naturally rudest sorts of people for waiter jobs. Which is... not smart. Selecting for natural cheery/nice temperament otoh is fine. But demanding 15 pieces of flair means you're doing dignitynomics wrong

          1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
          Show this thread
        30. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          And if otoh, your mix of incentives draws only the desperate who will comply with any kind of absurdly dignity assaulting policy, it means you're a predatory business. You're arbitraging baseline levels of misery/desperation and externalizing the costs.

          1 reply 1 retweet 13 likes
          Show this thread
        31. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Feb 14
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          A much more explicit example of this is if your employees have to seek social welfare like food stamps to make ends meet in your full-time job. That's a straight-up subsidy you're taking advantage of. The state keeps 'em breathing, you suck out what life remains in them.

          1 reply 0 retweets 12 likes
          Show this thread
        32. Show replies

      Loading seems to be taking a while.

      Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.

        Promoted Tweet

        false

        • © 2020 Twitter
        • About
        • Help Center
        • Terms
        • Privacy policy
        • Imprint
        • Cookies
        • Ads info