The problem isn't, and never was, technology taking away jobs. The problem is, and has always been, economies taking assaulting dignities.
Conversation
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
2
10
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
6
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
1
12
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
12
There's an argument to be made here that this is the main problem with inequality. It is a condition stabilized by an accumulating dignity deficit problem that will blow up in our faces at some point and destroy wealth.
1
9
Now of course, there is such a thing as a reasonable expectation of respect for dignity that can get very unreasonable indeed. Here the US actually has good priors: nobody is any better or worse than anyone else.
2
6
Explicitly classist societies like India have historically had dignity levels and you only have a right to the dignity default of your level. This creates a sclerotic, compartmentalized economy, effectively regulated by dignity boundaries. Economies of scale are lost.
2
6
But a reasonable response here is to let the market handle it. You can choose whatever dignity ideal you like, and jobs will be designed not to knowingly assault or drain your dignity. By not demanding pieces of flair etc.
1
5
But you don't have the right to be employed at your chosen arbitrary dignity level far out of the 3-sigma bounds of humanity. You only have the right not to have it callously assaulted by work that is structurally blind to the fact that you are maintaining a dignity state at all.
2
6
I suppose I should write this up as a sequel to my economics of pricelessness post. Economics of Dignity. I'm guessing this will languish on twitter for a year, then in a draft for another year, before I finally write it long after it could be useful.
Replying to
I think this is a very interesting and thorough take on how human dignity is historically changing (correct) and has specific degradations under increasingly exploitative capitalism. I do have a question/comment for you though. I'll keep it brief
1
1
Replying to
And yet many are unaware or simply unable to respond effectively because the system economics are abstracted away at the intra-personal level. Which plays out at the localized level where were anesthetized and/or distracted by dignity-adjacent issues like race and identity id-pol
1
Replying to
How much would it take to move this up? Dignity feels like another antiscalable leverage point, and I need more of those.
Having you explain it would (as is often the case) save me the trouble of doing a worse job of it.
Show additional replies, including those that may contain offensive content
Show



