post-work

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Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work by Nick Srnicek, Alex Williams

3D printing, additive manufacturing, air freight, algorithmic trading, anti-work, antiwork, back-to-the-land, banking crisis, basic income, battle of ideas, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, capitalist realism, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, centre right, collective bargaining, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, decarbonisation, deep learning, deindustrialization, deskilling, Doha Development Round, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, Ferguson, Missouri, financial independence, food miles, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, future of work, gender pay gap, general purpose technology, housing crisis, housing justice, income inequality, industrial robot, informal economy, intermodal, Internet Archive, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, late capitalism, liberation theology, Live Aid, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, market design, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, mass incarceration, means of production, megaproject, minimum wage unemployment, Modern Monetary Theory, Mont Pelerin Society, Murray Bookchin, neoliberal agenda, New Urbanism, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, Overton Window, patent troll, pattern recognition, Paul Samuelson, Philip Mirowski, post scarcity, post-Fordism, post-work, postnationalism / post nation state, precariat, precautionary principle, price stability, profit motive, public intellectual, quantitative easing, reshoring, Richard Florida, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, Slavoj Žižek, social web, stakhanovite, Steve Jobs, surplus humans, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, technological determinism, the built environment, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, the long tail, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, wages for housework, warehouse automation, We are all Keynesians now, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population

And the welfare state must be defended, not as an end in itself, but as a necessary component of a broader post-work society. The future remains open, and which direction the crisis of work takes is precisely the political struggle before us. Chapter 6 Post-Work Imaginaries The goal of the future is full unemployment. Arthur C. Clarke Whereas the previous chapter analysed the changing social conditions that are making a post-work world increasingly necessary, this chapter will outline what a post-work world might mean in practice.1 To that end, we advance some broad demands to start building a platform for a post-work society. In asserting the centrality of demands, we are breaking with a widespread tendency of today’s radical left that believes making no demands is the height of radicalism.2 These critics often claim that making a demand means giving into the existing order of things by asking, and therefore legitimating, an authority.

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From the social democratic consensus to the neoliberal consensus, our argument is that the left should mobilise around a post-work consensus. With a post-work society, we would have even more potential to launch forward to greater goals. But this is a project that must be carried out over the long term: decades rather than years, cultural shifts rather than electoral cycles. Given the reality of the weakened left today, there is only one way forward: to patiently rebuild its power – a topic that will be covered in the chapters to follow. There simply is no other way to bring about a post-work world. We must therefore attend to these longer-term strategic goals, and rebuild the collective agencies that might eventually bring them about.

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Humanity has for too long been shaped by capitalist impulses, and a post-work world portends a future in which these constraints have been significantly loosened. This does not mean that a post-work society would simply be a realm of play. Rather, in such a society, the labour that remains will no longer be imposed upon us by an external force – by an employer or by the imperatives of survival. Work will become driven by our own desires, instead of by demands from outside.4 Against the austerity of conservative forces, and the austere life promised by anti-modernists, the demand for a post-work world revels in the liberation of desire, abundance and freedom.

The Problem With Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries by Kathi Weeks

antiwork, basic income, call centre, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, conceptual framework, deskilling, feminist movement, financial independence, Ford paid five dollars a day, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, glass ceiling, Kim Stanley Robinson, late capitalism, low-wage service sector, means of production, Meghnad Desai, moral panic, new economy, New Urbanism, occupational segregation, pink-collar, post-Fordism, post-work, postindustrial economy, profit maximization, Shoshana Zuboff, social intelligence, two tier labour market, union organizing, universal basic income, W. E. B. Du Bois, wages for housework, women in the workforce, work culture , zero-sum game

But before we get there, two aspects of the analysis call for further explication: first, the prescription of a politics (a postwork politics) to counter the power of an ethic (the work ethic); and second, the defense of limited demands as tools for radical change. The one requires some attention to the distinction between politics and ethics that the analysis has only presumed so far; the other concerns the specific understanding of the relationship between reform and revolution that informs the argument. POLITICS AND CHANGE I will begin here: why counter the power of the work ethic with a post-work politics and not with a postwork ethic? One could, after all, imagine the contours of a postwork ethic as something distinct from a postwork morality—a matter, to cite Virno’s formulation, of “common practices, usages and customs, not the dimension of the must-be” (2004, 49).

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LESS WORK FOR “WHAT WE WILL”: DECENTERING THE FAMILY The solution would seem to be to displace the family from the rationale for reduced hours, and the second approach I want to consider does that, emphasizing instead a broader and more open-ended set of justifications for and benefits of shorter hours. An inspired example of this approach can be found in “The Post-Work Manifesto” by Stanley Aronowitz et al. (1998). Their call for a thirty-hour week of six-hour days without a reduction in pay is part of a broader postwork vision and agenda that the authors propose as a response to current economic conditions and trends in the United States. Citing what they describe as an increase in working hours—whether through more overtime, the colonization of nonwork time by work, or piecing together multiple temporary or part-time jobs—they argue that “it is time for a discourse that imagines alternatives, that accounts for human dignity beyond the conditions of work.

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How Class Works: Power and Social Movement. New Haven: Yale University Press. Aronowitz, Stanley, and William DiFazio. 1994. The Jobless Future: Sci-Tech and the Dogma of Work. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Aronowitz, Stanley, Dawn Esposito, William DiFazio, and Margaret Yard. 1998. “The Post-Work Manifesto.” In Post-Work: The Wages of Cybernation, edited by Stanley Aronowitz and Jonathan Cutler, 31–80. New York: Routledge. Bakker, Isabella, and Stephen Gill, eds. 2003. Power, Production, and Social Reproduction: Human In/security in the Global Political Economy. Houndmills, England: Palgrave Macmillan.

Four Futures: Life After Capitalism by Peter Frase

Aaron Swartz, Airbnb, Anthropocene, basic income, bitcoin, business cycle, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, congestion pricing, cryptocurrency, deindustrialization, do what you love, Dogecoin, Donald Shoup, Edward Snowden, emotional labour, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ferguson, Missouri, fixed income, full employment, future of work, green new deal, Herbert Marcuse, high net worth, high-speed rail, income inequality, industrial robot, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), iterative process, Jevons paradox, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Kim Stanley Robinson, litecoin, mass incarceration, means of production, military-industrial complex, Occupy movement, pattern recognition, peak oil, plutocrats, post-work, postindustrial economy, price mechanism, private military company, Ray Kurzweil, Robert Gordon, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, smart meter, TaskRabbit, technoutopianism, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, Thomas Malthus, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, Wall-E, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We are the 99%, Wolfgang Streeck

As with the Koch brothers and their denialist ilk, the eco-capitalists are concerned primarily with preserving the prerogatives and lifestyles of the elite, even if they put a more environmentalist veneer on this agenda. We will return to all of this in Chapter 4. I turn now to the specific purpose of this book. Politics in Command Why, the reader might ask, is it even necessary to write another book about automation and the postwork future? The topic has become an entire subgenre in recent years; Brynjolfsson and McAfee are just one example. Others include Ford’s Rise of the Robots and articles from the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson, Slate’s Farhad Manjoo, and Mother Jones’s Kevin Drum.20 Each insists that technology is rapidly making work obsolete, but they flail vainly at an answer to the problem of making sure that technology leads to shared prosperity rather than increasing inequality.

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At best, like Brynjolfsson and McAfee, they fall back on familiar liberal bromides: entrepreneurship and education will allow us all to thrive even if all of our current work is automated away. The one thing missing from all these accounts, the thing I want to inject into this debate, is politics, and specifically class struggle. As Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute has pointed out, these projections of a postwork future tend toward a hazy technocratic utopianism, a “forward projection of the Keynesian-Fordism of the past,” in which “prosperity leads to redistribution leads to leisure and public goods.”21 Thus, while the transition may be difficult in places, we should ultimately be content with accelerating technological development and reassure ourselves that all will be for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

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By measuring the thing that money really represented—your personal capital with your friends and neighbors—you more accurately gauged your success.27 Of course, that description of “the old days” isn’t really a very accurate picture of the way capitalist society works, as demonstrated by the joke about the journalist who takes assignments for free from editors who promise her increased attention and prestige: she died of “exposure.” Being able to endure survival independent of Whuffie or any other currency makes all the difference in the world. The book’s story mostly takes place in Disneyland, which in the postwork society is now run by volunteers. But there still needs to be some hierarchy and organization, which is determined according to Whuffie. The drama of the story turns on the various intrigues and conflicts that result. Without having to worry about survival—or death, given this book’s cheery assumption that the dead can be easily resurrected from a backup—other conflicts present themselves, like whether Disneyland’s hall of presidents should include a display that interfaces with your brain to give you the experience of being Abraham Lincoln.

The Wealth of Humans: Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-First Century by Ryan Avent

3D printing, Airbnb, American energy revolution, assortative mating, autonomous vehicles, Bakken shale, barriers to entry, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, BRICs, business cycle, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, collective bargaining, computer age, creative destruction, currency risk, dark matter, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, disruptive innovation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, Erik Brynjolfsson, eurozone crisis, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, falling living standards, financial engineering, first square of the chessboard, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, Ford paid five dollars a day, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, general purpose technology, gig economy, global supply chain, global value chain, heat death of the universe, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, independent contractor, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, intangible asset, interchangeable parts, Internet of things, inventory management, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, knowledge economy, low interest rates, low skilled workers, lump of labour, Lyft, machine translation, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, mass immigration, means of production, new economy, performance metric, pets.com, post-work, price mechanism, quantitative easing, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, reshoring, rising living standards, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, savings glut, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, software is eating the world, supply-chain management, supply-chain management software, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, The Future of Employment, The Nature of the Firm, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, very high income, warehouse robotics, working-age population

The various partisans are like the allegorical blind men describing different parts of an elephant: each has his insights, but the competing stories have yet to be reconciled with each other. This book will provide that reconciliation. What is missing from the conversation is a clear explanation of how rapid technological change is compatible with both rising employment globally and disappointing growth in wages and productivity. And while it may be correct, as post-work prophets such as Ford foresee, that a world of technological prosperity and plenty awaits us in the distant future, it is wrong, I would assert, to characterize the digital revolution as something entirely different from anything that has come before. On the contrary, as this book will argue, the digital revolution is very much like the industrial revolution.

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Ray labour abundance as good problem bargaining power cognitive but repetitive collective bargaining and demographic issues discrimination and exclusion global growth of workforce and immigration liberalization in 1970s/80s ‘lump of labour’ fallacy occupational licences organized and proximity reallocation to growing industries retraining and skill acquisition and scarcity and social value work as a positive good see also employment Labour Party, British land scarcity Latvia Le Pen, Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine legal profession Lehman Brothers collapse (2008) Lepore, Jill liberalization, economic (from 1970s) Linkner, Josh, The Road to Reinvention London Lucas, Robert Lyft maker-taker distinction Malthus, Reverend Thomas Manchester Mandel, Michael Mankiw, Gregory marketing and public relations Marshall, Alfred Marx, Karl Mason, Paul, Postcapitalism (2015) McAfee, Andrew medicine and healthcare ‘mercantilist’ world Mercedes Benz Mexico Microsoft mineral industries minimum wage Mokyr, Joel Monroe, President James MOOCs (‘massive open online courses’) Moore, Gordon mortality rates Mosaic (web browser) music, digital nation states big communities of affinity inequality between as loci of redistribution and social capital nationalist and separatist movements Netherlands Netscape New York City Newsweek NIMBYism Nordic and Scandinavian economies North Carolina North Dakota Obama, Barack oil markets O’Neill, Jim Oracle Orbán, Viktor outsourcing Peretti, Jonah Peterson Institute for International Economics pets.com Philadelphia Centennial Fair (1876) Philippines Phoenix, Arizona Piketty, Thomas, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013) Poland political institutions politics fractionalization in Europe future/emerging narratives geopolitical forces human wealth narrative left-wing looming upheaval/conflict Marxism nationalist and separatist movements past unrest and conflict polarization in USA radicalism and extremism realignment revolutionary right-wing rise of populist outsiders and scarcity social membership battles Poor Laws, British print media advertising revenue productivity agricultural artisanal goods and services Baumol’s Cost Disease and cities and dematerialization and digital revolution and employment trilemma and financial crisis (2008) and Henry Ford growth data in higher education of highly skilled few and industrial revolution minimum wage impact paradox of in service sector and specialization and wage rates see also factors of production professional, technical or managerial work and education levels and emerging economies the highly skilled few and industrial revolution and ‘offshoring’ professional associations skilled cities professional associations profits Progressive Policy Institute property values proximity public spending Putnam, Robert Quakebot quantitative easing Race Against the Machine, Brynjolfsson and McAfee (2011) railways Raleigh, North Carolina Reagan, Ronald redistribution and geopolitical forces during liberal era methods of nation state as locus of as a necessity as politically hard and societal openness wealth as human rent, economic Republican Party, US ‘reshoring’ phenomenon Resseger, Matthew retail sector retirement age Ricardo, David rich people and maker-taker distinction wild contingency of wealth Robinson, James robots Rodrik, Dani Romney, Mitt rule of law Russia San Francisco San Jose Sanders, Bernie sanitation SAP Saudi Arabia savings glut, global ‘Say’s Law’ Scalia, Antonin Scandinavian and Nordic economies scarcity and labour political effects of Schleicher, David Schwartz, Anna scientists Scotland Sears Second World War secular stagnation global spread of possible solutions shale deposits sharing economies Silicon Valley Singapore skilled workers and education levels and falling wages the highly skilled few and industrial revolution ‘knowledge-intensive’ goods and services reshoring phenomenon technological deskilling see also professional, technical or managerial work Slack (chat service) Slate (web publication) smartphone culture Smith, Adam social capital and American Constitution baseball metaphor and cities ‘deepening’ definition/nature of and dematerialization and developing economies and erosion of institutions of firms and companies and good government and housing wealth and immigration and income distribution during industrial revolution and liberalization and nation-states productive application of and rich-poor nation gap and Adam Smith and start-ups social class conflict middle classes and NIMBYism social conditioning of labour force working classes social democratic model social reform social wealth and social membership software ‘enterprise software’ products supply-chain management Solow, Robert Somalia South Korea Soviet Union, dissolution of (1991) specialization Star Trek state, role of steam power Subramanian, Arvind suburbanization Sweden Syriza party Taiwan TaskRabbit taxation telegraphy Tesla, Nikola Thatcher, Margaret ‘tiger’ economies of South-East Asia Time Warner Toyota trade China as ‘mega-trader’ ‘comparative advantage’ theory and dematerialization global supply chains liberalization shaping of by digital revolution Adam Smith on trade unions transhumanism transport technology self-driving cars Trump, Donald Twitter Uber UK Independence Party United States of America (USA) 2016 Presidential election campaign average income Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS) Constitution deindustrialization education in employment in ethno-nationalist diversity of financial crisis (2008) housing costs in housing wealth in individualism in industrialization in inequality in Jim Crow segregation labour scarcity in Young America liberalization in minimum wage in political polarization in post-crisis profit rates productivity boom of 1990s real wage data rising debt levels secular stagnation in shale revolution in social capital in and social wealth surpasses Britain as leading nation wage subsidies in university education advanced degrees downward mobility of graduates MOOCs (‘massive open online courses’) and productivity see also education urbanization utopias, post-work Victoria, Queen video-gamers Virginia, US state Volvo Vox wages basic income policy Baumol’s Cost Disease cheap labour and employment growth and dot.com boom and financial crisis (2008) and flexibility and Henry Ford government subsidies and housing costs and immigration and industrial revolution low-pay as check on automation minimum wage and productivity the ‘reservation wage’ as rising in China rising in emerging economies and scarcity in service sector and skill-upgrading approach stagnation of and supply of graduates Wandsworth Washington D.C.

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Washington Nationals Watt, James wealth and income distribution absurdity of inequities and capital investment challenge of labour abundance decline of ‘labour share’ economic insecurity increasing and education levels and employment trilemma global changes in 21st-century and housing wealth impact of falling wages impact of scarcity and industrial revolution during liberal era maker-taker distinction in post-war period and post-work utopias and rich/elite cities rich-poor nation gap and secular stagnation and social capital and social wealth wealth as human wild contingency of wealth see also inequality; redistribution; rich people Weil, David welfare and social-safety institutions basic income policy and big states and ethno-nationalist separatism in Nordic countries Werth, Jayson Wikipedia World Trade Organization world wars World’s Fairs, nineteenth-century Yelp YouTube About the Author RYAN AVENT is an economics correspondent for the Economist.

Brave New World of Work by Ulrich Beck

affirmative action, anti-globalists, Asian financial crisis, basic income, Berlin Wall, collective bargaining, conceptual framework, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, full employment, future of work, Gunnar Myrdal, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, income inequality, informal economy, job automation, knowledge worker, labour market flexibility, labour mobility, low skilled workers, McJob, means of production, mini-job, post-Fordism, post-work, postnationalism / post nation state, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, rising living standards, scientific management, Silicon Valley, technological determinism, working poor, working-age population, zero-sum game

This book represents one attempt to do this – which is why it belongs to the category of ‘visionary non-fiction’.5 The argument is non-fiction because, in describing both the present and the future state of things, it has recourse to all imaginable and available arguments, data, concepts and models. It is visionary because, in opposition to the unexpressed self-perpetuation of the work society, it presents the embryonic vision of a post-work society whose basic features and traces can already be glimpsed today, in a new translocal and transnational sense of political civil society. The reader will be able to decide at the end whether this vision is plausible, eccentric, fantastic or realistic – or perhaps even all together.6 Notes 1 W.

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The new technologies promise hugely increased production of goods and services in the twenty-first century, but only a fraction of the numbers employed today will be needed for it. Since virtual firms and factories almost empty of people are what the future holds in store, every person and every country must consider the question of how society, democracy, freedom and social security will be possible in the post-work society. Scenario 3: the world market – the neoliberal jobs miracle Black magic, is the answer that the world power of neoliberalism gives to this question. Just look at the United States! Look at Asia! Full-employment societies blossoming on all sides. Of course, such references to the tiger economies have become rather out-dated, now that they are one of the world's crisis regions.

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Moreover, deregulation of the labour market tends to see off the corporately organized employee society, which used to pacify the class struggle between labour and capital by harmonizing a capitalist supply-side dynamic with a series of rights for ‘working citizens’. With the informalization of labour relations and contractual conditions, union-free zones are also spreading to the heart of the Western post-work society. Many countries of the non-Western world are considered weak states. If the neoliberal revolution continues, legitimation crises with open violence akin to civil war may be studied as one aspect of the West's future that is already present in the countries of the South. All this underlines two points: first, the urgency of a framework to analyse the world we inhabit under the risk regime, the world risk society, and to reveal the hidden connections, likenesses, oppositions and new lines of conflict between Western and non-Western countries; second, the need to break the spell of the work society and to outline the basic features and visions of a European model for the post-work society.

Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain by James Bloodworth

Airbnb, algorithmic management, Berlin Wall, call centre, clockwatching, collective bargaining, congestion charging, credit crunch, deindustrialization, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fulfillment center, gentrification, gig economy, Greyball, independent contractor, Jeff Bezos, low skilled workers, Network effects, new economy, North Sea oil, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, payday loans, post-truth, post-work, profit motive, race to the bottom, reshoring, scientific management, Silicon Valley, Travis Kalanick, Uber for X, working poor, working-age population

Politicians were in it for themselves, and it was a sign of something worse if they were not – the mark of a fanatic. The tremendous effort that Admiral went to to make work fun was really an attempt to portray themselves as one of us rather than one of them. 13 The ‘post-work’ world has become a media talking point now that the jobs of affluent professionals are threatened with automation. Yet there are parts of Britain that have long inhabited something resembling a ‘post-work’ realm. Indeed, at times the Valleys look an awful lot like a precursor to an automated – and therefore jobless – future. Putting a little bit more money into people’s pockets would have been welcome, certainly; but few here believed it would solve the myriad problems that stemmed from the loss of work.

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.: These Poor Hands 23, 149, 190 courier firms 211, 215, 217, 223, 236, 244–7, 250, 256, 257 Cwm, Wales 147, 148, 187, 190, 195, 196, 197 Cwmbran, Wales 143 Daily Express 124–5 Daily Mail 66, 134, 188 Dan (bicycle courier) 248, 249 Dangerfield, George 72 Davies, Idris 148–9 Gwalia Deserta (Wasteland of Wales) 148 ‘The Angry Summer’ 174 debt 62, 69, 146, 151, 153 Deliveroo 215, 217, 223, 250, 256, 257 democratic socialists 192 Department for Work and Pensions 133 Dickens, Charles 29, 205, 210, 249; Hard Times 138–9 Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) 88–90, 109–10, 214 Dorothy (housemate of JB) 203, 204–5 DriveNow 217 Dropit 217 Eastern Europe, migrant workers from 11, 13, 15, 21, 24, 26–7, 30, 32, 33, 34, 45, 57, 61–2, 75, 114–16, 128–9, 154, 203–4, 260–1 see also under individual nation name Ebbw Vale, Wales 147, 149, 154; legacy of de-industrialisation in 187–200 Elborough, Travis 93 emergency housing 96 employment agencies 1, 16, 19, 20, 23, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 56, 65–6, 70, 72, 73, 82, 86, 127, 130, 158, 189, 194 see also under individual agency name Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) 248 employment contracts/classification: Amazon 19–20, 53, 58 care sector 87–8, 107–8, 116 Uber 214–15, 222, 229–35, 243, 245, 250–2, 257 zero-hours see zero-hours contracts employment tribunals 38, 229–30, 243–4 English seaside, debauchery and 92–3 Enterprise Rent-A-Car 214 ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) programmes 115–16 European Economic Community (EEC) 195 European Referendum (2016) 61, 195–6 Evening Standard 208, 241 Express & Star 59–60 Fabian Society 109 Farrar, James 229–31, 232, 233, 234, 236, 238, 240, 241–2, 250, 254, 255–6 Fellows of the Academies of Management 17 Fernie, Sue 182 financial crisis (2008) 1, 2, 45, 125, 195, 209 Flash (former miner) 165–8, 170, 171–2, 174, 175, 176–8, 179, 188, 196 Fleet News 246 Foot, Michael 149 football 56, 58, 92, 94, 97, 98, 126, 135, 169 fruit picking 61 FTSE 123, 262 Gag Mag 122 Gallagher, Patrick 246 Gary (homeless man, Blackpool) 96–104, 105 Gaz (Gag Mag seller, Blackpool) 122 GDP 146 General Election (2015) 109 General Strike (1926) 148, 149, 173 gentrification 219 Geoff (former miner) 189, 190, 191, 193 ‘gig’ economy 2, 208–10, 217–18, 232, 236, 242, 243–4, 248, 249–50, 252, 257 see also Uber Gissing, George: New Grub Street 64 GMB union 36 grammar schools 261 Guardian 5, 235 Hamstead Colliery, Great Barr 169 Hazel (home carer) 110–11, 114, 115, 116, 117, 119 Heller, Joseph: Catch-22 235–6 Hemel Hempstead 54, 70 Henley, William Ernest: ‘England, My England’ vii Hoggart, Richard: The Uses of Literacy 45 home care worker (domiciliary care worker): Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks 88–90, 109–10 employment contracts 87–8, 107–8, 116, 118, 120 length of home care visits 108–9, 110 local authority budget cuts and 107–10 MAR (Medication Administration Record) sheets 114, 115 migrant workers as 114–16 negligent 86–7 privatisation of social care and 106–8, 109 recruitment 82–4 ‘shadowing’ process 88, 109–10 societal view of 106 staffing crisis 85–6, 119 suicide rate among 100 typical day/workload 110–14, 118 unions and 88 view job as vocation 86–7 wages/pay 107–8, 117, 118–19, 159 Home Instead 119 homelessness 95–105, 138, 187, 208 hostels 95, 96, 101, 102 housing/accommodation: Amazon workers, Rugeley 20–2, 24–6 Blackpool 80, 124, 137–8 buy-to-let housing market 24 emergency housing 96 homelessness and 95, 96, 101, 102, 137–8 hostels 95, 96, 101, 102 inability to buy 62 landlords and 12, 21, 24, 39, 67, 69, 95–6, 137–8, 164, 204, 206, 258 London 203–8 migrant workers and 20–2, 24–6, 197–8 social housing 62, 206 Swansea 124, 150 housing benefit 96, 137–8, 248 immigration 26–7, 61, 115–16, 128–9, 144, 193, 197–9, 236, 259–61 see also migrant workers indeed.co.uk 83–4 independent contractors 209, 248, 251–2 Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB) 230, 257 inequality 18, 73, 123, 125, 207–8, 226, 238, 262, 263 inflation 2, 122 job centres 19, 96, 133–6, 139–40, 156, 158 Joe (housemate of JB) 22 John Lewis 23, 83 Joseph Rowntree Foundation 70, 159 June (call centre employee) 181–2, 183, 184 Kalanick, Travis 215, 228, 229, 233, 235 Kelly, Kath 66 Khan, Sadiq 256 Koestler, Arthur: The God that Failed 228 Labour Party 7, 57, 59, 61, 109, 144, 149, 150, 173, 174 Ladbroke Road, Notting Hill, London 219 Lamb, Norman 109 Lancashire Evening Post 104–5 landlords, private 12, 21, 24, 39, 67, 69, 95–6, 137–8, 164, 204, 206, 258 Lea Hall Colliery, Staffordshire 31–2, 54, 55, 56, 57 Lea Hall Miners’ Social Club, Staffordshire 55, 56, 74 Len (step-grandfather of JB) 143–4 Lili (London) 203–4 living wage 1, 85, 160, 246 Lloyd George, David 172 loan sharks 151, 156 local councils 104–5, 164 London 201–57 accommodation/housing in 65, 203–8, 218 gentrification in 219 ‘gig’ economy in 208–57, 263 homelessness in 95 migrant labour in 205–6, 213, 239 wealth divide in 207–8, 238 London Congestion Charge 254 London Courier Emergency Fund (LCEF) 247 London Metropolitan Police 90 London, Jack 205 low-skilled jobs, UK economy creation of 153 Lydia (Amazon employee) 70 Macmillan, Harold 3 manufacturing jobs, disappearance of 59, 139 Marine Colliery, Cwm, Wales 190 Mayhew, Henry 4, 205 McDonald’s 52, 68, 83 Merkel, Angela 196 Metcalf, David 182 middle-class 6, 39, 51, 67, 68, 69, 72–3, 74, 75, 149, 178, 205, 258, 259, 260, 262, 263 migrant labour: Amazon use of 11, 12, 13, 15, 20, 21, 22–7, 30, 32, 33, 34, 44, 45, 46, 51, 53, 57, 61–2, 65, 71–5, 258, 260–1 care home workers 114–16 ‘gig’ economy and 203–6, 213, 239 restaurant workers 154 retail sector and 128–9 Miliband, Ed 109 mining see coal mining Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) 173 Miners’ Strike (1984–5) 3, 174–7 minimum wage 1, 7, 55, 62, 84, 107, 108, 118, 135, 155, 159, 173, 189–90, 209, 212, 235, 236, 245, 250, 262 Morecambe, Lancashire 137–8 Morgan family 156–8 Morgan, Huw: How Green Was My Valley 147 Moyer-Lee, Jason 257 National Coal Board (NCB) 54, 170, 171 National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) 108 National Union of Miners (NUM) 174, 176 New York Times 222 NHS (National Health Service) 106, 108, 247 Nirmal (Amazon employee) 45–6, 51 Norbert (Amazon employee) 71–5 nostalgia 3, 60, 93–4, 216 Nottingham 2, 151–2 objectivism 228 oil crisis (1973) 122–3 Oliver, Jamie 154 Orwell, George 56, 169 Palmer, William 29 pay see wages and under individual job title and employer name payday loans 156 PayPal 216 Pimlico Plumbers 251–2 platform capitalism 215 PMP Recruitment 19, 189–90 Poland, migrant workers from 128–9, 130, 135, 197–8 ‘poor, the’ 145 Port Talbot, Wales 166, 176, 190, 196 ‘post-truth’ discourse 199 ‘post-work’ world 165 poverty: Blackpool and 132, 137 class and 4 darkness and 96 diet/weight and 137 ease of slipping into 5 Eastern Europe and 26 monthly salary and 156 as a moral failing 188–9 press treatment of 66–7 time and 67 working poor living in 194 Preston, Lancashire 100, 105, 138–9 private school system 123 progressive thought 262 Public Accounts Committee (PAC) 107 Putin, Vladimir 71 Rand, Ayn 228–9, 235, 236; The Fountainhead 228, 229 recession (2008) 1, 45, 104, 121, 125, 156 ‘regeneration’ 55, 60–1, 146 rent-to-own 157–8 retirement, working in 58–9 Reve, Gerard: The Evenings 160 Robin (Cwm) 196, 197 Rochelle (home care worker) 117–19 Romania, migrant workers from 11, 12, 13, 15, 20, 21, 22–7, 32, 44, 46, 51, 53, 61, 65, 71–5, 203, 206, 258 Ron (former miner) 170, 195 Royal London 59 Royal London pub, Wolverhampton 71 Royal Mail 151 Rugeley, Staffordshire 28–35 Amazon distribution centre in 11–76, 79, 86, 119, 127, 128, 159, 258 decline of coal mining industry in 31–2, 54–6, 57, 169 disappearance of manufacturing jobs from 54–63 high street 28–35 immigration and 30–4, 193–4 Tesco and 58–9, 62–3 Scargill, Arthur 175 scientific management theories 17 Scotland Yard 90 self-employment: ’gig’ economy and 214–15, 222, 229–30, 234, 243–4, 245, 246, 249, 250–1 increase in numbers of workers 2, 209 ‘independent contractors’ and 209, 248, 251–2 Selwyn (former miner) 175, 178, 179, 263–4 Senghenydd, Glamorgan pit explosion (1913) 169–70 Shelter 104 Shirebrook Colliery, Derbyshire 55 Shu, William 250 Silicon Valley, California 210, 232 Sillitoe, Alan: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning 2, 3, 94 Sky Sports News 126 social democracy 3, 263 social housing 62, 206 socialism 7, 56, 131, 144, 148, 149, 173 social mobility 58, 199, 261 South Wales Miners’ Museum, Afan Argoed 166, 196 South Wales Valleys 141–200 accommodation in 150, 197 Amazon in 145–6 beauty of 148 call centre jobs in 153–64, 180–6 coal industry and 143–4, 147–9, 165–79, 180, 188, 189, 190–1, 193, 195, 196 immigration and 197–9 JB’s family history and 143–4 legacy of de-industrialisation in 187–200 nostalgia and 147 radical history of 149–50 see also under individual place name ‘spice’ 95 Sports Direct 55 squatting 96, 99 steel industry 176, 180, 188, 189, 190, 196–7 Steven (housemate of JB) 124, 126, 127–31 Stoke-on-Trent 58–9 suicide 99–100 Sunday Times 175 ‘Best Companies to Work For’ 154 Rich List 125 Swansea, Wales 145–6, 150–2, 154–64, 176, 178, 197, 205 Tata Steel 190 tax 65, 69, 70, 118, 146, 158, 159, 163, 164, 212, 229, 244, 246, 248, 251, 255 Taylor, Frederick W.: The Principles of Scientific Management 17 Tesco 35, 57, 58–9, 62–3 Thatcher, Margaret 122, 123, 146, 174–5, 193, 207, 263–4 Thorn Automation 57 Thorn EMI 59 trade unions: Amazon and 36 B&M and 130, 131 call centres and 160, 181, 184–5, 186 care sector and 88 coal industry decline and 55–6, 173, 174, 263–4 decline of 2, 3, 35 ‘gig’ economy and 230, 257, 261 objectivism and 228 oil crisis (1973) and 122 Thatcher and 123, 174, 193, 263–4 Wales and 144, 149 see also under individual union name Trades Union Congress (TUC) 173 transgender people 40–1 Transline Group 19, 20, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 65–6, 86 Transport for London (TFL) 211, 212–13, 214, 233, 254, 256 Tredegar Workmen’s Medical Aid Society 247 Trefil, Wales 149 Trump, Donald 7 Uber 207, 211–57 ‘account status’ 221 clocking in at 218 corporation tax and 229 customers 221, 222, 226–7, 237–41, 244, 257 driver costs/expenses 214, 217, 233, 241, 246, 253–5 driver employment classification/contract 214–15, 222, 229–35, 243, 245, 250–2, 257 driver hours 221, 226, 230, 232, 233, 236, 246, 253, 255 driver numbers 211–13, 233–5 driver wages/pay 212, 218, 221, 229–30, 235, 236, 237, 240, 241, 244, 246, 252–5 employment tribunal against (2016) 229–34 flexibility of working for 213–14, 218, 230–3, 248, 250–1 James Farrar and see Farrar, James migrant labour and 213, 236 ‘Onboarding’ class 224–5, 238, 241, 256 opposition to 215–17 philosophy of 228–9, 235, 236 psychological inducements for drivers 222–3 rating system 225–7, 232, 238, 239, 243, 253 rejecting/accepting jobs 221–2, 224–5 ride process 219–21 surge pricing 237, 238, 253 TFL and 211, 212–13, 214, 233, 254, 256 Travis Kalanick and see Kalanick, Travis UberEATS 256 UberPOOL 225, 240–2, 253, 255–6 UberX 212, 225, 240, 241, 255 VAT and 229 vehicle requirements 214 unemployment 2, 32, 36, 62, 121–3, 132, 138, 148, 157, 172, 178, 179, 189–95, 199, 218 Unison 88, 108 Unite 55, 160 United Private Hire Drivers 230, 257 university education 3, 6, 61, 62, 123, 150–1, 152, 153–4 USDAW 130–1 Vettesse, Tony 138 Vicky (care sector supervisor) 86, 87 Wade, Alan 121, 123–4 wages: Amazon 18, 19, 37–9, 42–3, 65–6, 68, 69, 70, 159 call centre 155–6, 158–60, 164, 180 care sector 107–8, 117, 118–19, 159 living wage 1, 85, 160, 246 minimum wage 1, 7, 55, 62, 84, 107, 108, 118, 135, 155, 159, 173, 189–90, 209, 212, 235, 236, 245, 250, 262 Uber 212, 218, 221, 229–30, 235, 236, 237, 240, 241, 244, 246, 252–5 wage stagnation 2 see also under individual employer, job and sector name Wealth and Assets Survey 207–8 wealth inequality 18, 73, 123, 125, 207–8, 238 Wells, H.

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1960s counterculture, accounting loophole / creative accounting, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, algorithmic trading, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Ayatollah Khomeini, basic income, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, carbon-based life, Charlie Hebdo massacre, cognitive dissonance, computer age, computer vision, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, decarbonisation, DeepMind, deglobalization, disinformation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, failed state, fake news, Filter Bubble, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Freestyle chess, gig economy, glass ceiling, Google Glasses, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, job automation, knowledge economy, liberation theology, Louis Pasteur, low skilled workers, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, means of production, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Mohammed Bouazizi, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, obamacare, pattern recognition, post-truth, post-work, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, restrictive zoning, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Scramble for Africa, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, TED Talk, transatlantic slave trade, trolley problem, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, zero-sum game

Yet even if enough government help is forthcoming, it is far from clear whether billions of people could repeatedly reinvent themselves without losing their mental balance. Hence, if despite all our efforts a significant percentage of humankind is pushed out of the job market, we would have to explore new models for post-work societies, post-work economies, and post-work politics. The first step is to honestly acknowledge that the social, economic and political models we have inherited from the past are inadequate for dealing with such a challenge. Take, for example, communism. As automation threatens to shake the capitalist system to its foundation, one might suppose that communism could make a comeback.

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But if it is aimed at making people subjectively more satisfied with their lot and preventing social discontent, it is likely to fail. To really achieve its goals, universal basic support will have to be supplemented by some meaningful pursuits, ranging from sports to religion. Perhaps the most successful experiment so far in how to live a contented life in a post-work world has been conducted in Israel. There, about 50% of ultra-Orthodox Jewish men never work. They dedicate their lives to studying holy scriptures and performing religious rituals. They and their families don’t starve partly because the wives often work, and partly because the government provides them with generous subsidies and free services, making sure that they don’t lack the basic necessities of life.

Mythology of Work: How Capitalism Persists Despite Itself by Peter Fleming

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", 1960s counterculture, anti-work, antiwork, call centre, capitalist realism, carbon tax, clockwatching, commoditize, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, David Graeber, death from overwork, Etonian, future of work, G4S, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, illegal immigration, Kitchen Debate, late capitalism, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, market fundamentalism, means of production, neoliberal agenda, Parkinson's law, post-industrial society, post-work, profit maximization, profit motive, quantitative easing, Results Only Work Environment, scientific management, shareholder value, social intelligence, stock buybacks, The Chicago School, transaction costs, wealth creators, working poor

When considering the present nature of work, I would go so far as to say that a critique of the state form is perhaps more pertinent than that of any other institution presently regulating our lives, including the multinational firm. In the following chapters, I focus on six themes that I believe we ought to comprehensively understand if we are to develop a post-work future. Some of the analyses developed here are somewhat bleak. However, I hope this tone is never at the expense of the optimistic conviction that a world beyond work is both desirable and feasible. Moreover, each chapter puts forward concrete suggestions about how we might conceptualize this life after work.

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Instead, I aim to focus on a number of emergent trends that I believe warrant our attention in relation to the way work has ballooned into its own ideological trope that so many find inescapable. In undertaking this exercise, we are able to more clearly identify facets of work that I will explore in more depth in forthcoming chapters and emphasise issues that are salient for the post-work movement presently gathering steam in neoliberal societies. Why Focus on Work? Important from the outset is to provide some conceptual reassurance about the centrality of work in the late-capitalist situation. If we position work as the dominant political problem in neoliberal societies, then we must account for recent arguments suggesting that work is of secondary importance in light of other socio-economic developments.

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Emancipatory dialogue within the neoliberal setting must be recalibrated to avoid the recuperative traps we have noted above. If one must speak with power at all, then caution, care and circumspection are required. The first recalibration might be labelled ‘over-identification’; this has been explored a little in the post-work literature (see Fleming and Spicer, 2010). The idea here is relatively straightforward. Because much of the ideology in the biopolitical enterprise (e.g. self-managing teams, democracy, freedom, open speech, etc.) is not meant to be taken literally, it must invariably rely upon a subtextual negation that must not be fully articulated.

Work in the Future The Automation Revolution-Palgrave MacMillan (2019) by Robert Skidelsky Nan Craig

3D printing, Airbnb, algorithmic trading, AlphaGo, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Web Services, anti-work, antiwork, artificial general intelligence, asset light, autonomous vehicles, basic income, behavioural economics, business cycle, cloud computing, collective bargaining, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, data is the new oil, data science, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deep learning, DeepMind, deindustrialization, Demis Hassabis, deskilling, disintermediation, do what you love, Donald Trump, driverless car, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, feminist movement, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, future of work, Future Shock, general purpose technology, gig economy, global supply chain, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, Internet of things, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, job automation, job polarisation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, Loebner Prize, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, moral panic, Network effects, new economy, Nick Bostrom, off grid, pattern recognition, post-work, Ronald Coase, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, SoftBank, Steve Jobs, strong AI, tacit knowledge, technological determinism, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, the market place, The Nature of the Firm, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, Turing test, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, wealth creators, working poor

Luddite-like anxiety has been fuelled by a fear of a future where jobs are scarce in number and where poverty levels increase significantly. Yet, by contrast, there has been the hope that automation processes will deliver a better future where human freedom is enlarged. Indeed, some writers have championed automation as a route to a superior ‘post-work’ society (Gorz 1985). Such concerns and hopes have resurfaced in the present, due to predictions of mass job losses via automation (see Spencer 2018). The evolution of machine learning and artificial intelligence, it is claimed, will allow for the replacement of human workers across myriad jobs.

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Wants, 3, 30, 88 Neoclassical economics, 4, 55, 60, 62, 73 Netherlands, the/Holland, 6, 68, 151, 163, 177, 181–183 Network effects, 138 Networks, 45, 48, 138, 196 Neumann, John von, 99 New Zealand, 179 Nübler, Irmgard, 6, 194, 196 Index O Obama, Barack, 164, 165, 171 Obligation, 38, 53, 73–79 Occupations, 16, 40, 41, 46, 47, 58, 70, 83, 84, 86, 87, 90, 92, 106, 178, 184, 190–192, 194 OECD, 66–68, 178 O’Neil, Cathy, 6 Ontology of work, 65 Organisations dynamics of, 164 Osborne, Michael, 90 Oswald, A, 60 209 Pre-modern/pre-industrial work, 3, 11, 47, 48 Productivity, 7, 10, 79, 86, 87, 176, 178–180, 183–185, 190–192, 199 Professional work, 1, 39 Profits (different profit models), 14–18, 30, 48, 75, 79, 93, 134, 135, 138, 152, 191 Protestant work ethic, 28 Public services, 94, 167 Puritan (view of work), 28, 75, 166 R P Painting Fool, The, 115, 116, 120 Parenting, 75, 76 Patocka, Jan, 9, 21 Pattern recognition, 129 Peasant labour, 41 Perez, Carlota, 192 Philosophy of work, 30 Physical labour, 3 Piasna, Agnieszka, 181, 183 Piece-work, 30 Platform economy/platform capitalism, 6, 140 Polanyi, Karl, 192, 193 Polanyi, Michael, 127 Policy (argument against), 7, 21, 67, 68, 95, 157–173, 180, 181, 183–185, 189–200 Population, 2, 12, 15–17, 19, 28, 30, 89, 90, 117, 147, 158, 172, 198 Postmates, 136 Post-work society, 59 Poverty, 15, 47, 59, 67, 177 Redistribution, 79, 169, 199 Redundancy, 10, 12, 15–17, 19, 78, 179 Religion/religious ritual, 12, 28, 194 Remittances, 40 Responsibility, 44, 47, 76–79, 106, 107, 115, 118, 136 Retail sector, 87, 137 Retirement, 19, 67, 78 Ricardo, David, 2, 13–17 Robinson, James, 194 Robotisation, 21, 94, 95, 192 Robots carers, 106 Romantic (view of work), 34, 35 Ruskin, John, 34 S Safety nets, 67, 68 Sahlins, Marshall, 26, 158 Salazar-Xirinachs, Jose M., 198 Schumpeter, Joseph, 190, 194 Scientific management, 30 Scott, James C., 28 210 Index Searle, John, 100–103 Self-employment, 69–70, 75 Self-realisation, 57, 165 Sennett, Richard, 3 Services/service sector low frequency vs. high frequency, 134 work, 40, 68, 161, 163 Singularity, 116 Skidelsky, Edward, 60, 176 Skidelsky, Robert, 60, 176 Skills acquisition, 33, 70 skilled vs. unskilled labour/jobs, 67 Slavery, 11, 29, 30, 45 Smartphones, 140 Smiles, Samuel, 28 Smith, Adam, 12, 13, 27, 35, 54, 55, 65 Smith, Rob, 177 Social drawing rights, 70 Social interaction, 53, 88, 91 Social media, 77, 138, 168 Societal knowledge base, 196–197 Sociology (of work), 166 Spencer, David, 4, 54, 59, 61 Spinning mills (cotton industry?)

Working the Phones: Control and Resistance in Call Centres by Jamie Woodcock

always be closing, anti-work, antiwork, call centre, capitalist realism, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, David Graeber, emotional labour, gamification, invention of the telephone, job satisfaction, late capitalism, means of production, millennium bug, new economy, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, post-Fordism, post-industrial society, post-work, precariat, profit motive, scientific management, social intelligence, stakhanovite, technological determinism, women in the workforce

Co-operative, 1883), www.marxists.org/archive/lafargue/1883/ lazy 68. Christopher Taylor, ‘The Refusal of Work: From the Postemancipation Caribbean to Post-Fordist Empire’, Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, Vol. 18, No. 2: 44 (2014), p. 1. 69. Kathi Weeks, The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011). 70. Hardt and Negri, Empire (2001). 71. Taylor, ‘The Refusal of Work’ (2014), p. 3. 72. Ibid., p. 4. 73. Ibid., p. 7. 74. C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (London: Penguin, 2001). 75. David R.

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Walker, P. (2010) ‘BA Flights Disrupted despite End of Three-Day Strike’, The Guardian, 23 March, www.theguardian.com/business/2010/ mar/23/ba-flights-cancelled-strike Walters, S. (2002) ‘Female Part-Time Workers’ Attitudes to Trade Unions in Britain’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 40, No. 1, pp. 49–68. Weeks, K. (2011) The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries, Durham: Duke University Press. Williams, S. and Adam-Smith, D. (2009) ‘Web Case: Trade Unions and the Prospects for Unionization in the Service Sector’, In Contemporary Employment Relations: A Critical Introduction, edited by S. Williams and D. Adam-Smith, 2nd edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Work Optional: Retire Early the Non-Penny-Pinching Way by Tanja Hester

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, anti-work, antiwork, asset allocation, barriers to entry, buy and hold, crowdsourcing, diversification, estate planning, financial independence, full employment, General Magic , gig economy, hedonic treadmill, high net worth, independent contractor, index fund, labor-force participation, lifestyle creep, longitudinal study, low interest rates, medical bankruptcy, mortgage debt, Mr. Money Mustache, multilevel marketing, obamacare, passive income, post-work, remote working, rent control, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, robo advisor, side hustle, stocks for the long run, tech worker, Vanguard fund, work culture

This section also covers strategies to speed up your progress toward your savings goal by increasing earnings and decreasing spending, perhaps by changing to a higher-paid career path or moving to a lower-cost-of-living area, and to build in contingency plans to create extra safety and security. Part III gets back to the life part, when life after work becomes optional, planning how you’ll adapt to a post-work life financially and emotionally, prioritize your well-being, and make the most of your newfound free time. Most of all, this part is about actually living your best life. Throughout the book, I share our story so that you can see one possible route to early retirement: how Mark and I envisioned the work-optional life we wanted to live instead of the work-centered conventional one, how we built our financial plan behind that, and the completely doable steps we took to make it our reality in a short period of time.

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So the way premiums and subsidies are calculated is unlikely to change anytime soon, though funding for the subsidies themselves is consistently under threat. To get a sense of how much an ACA plan might cost, visit Healthcare.gov or your state exchange site and enter your location, your family size and ages, and your expected post-work optional income. (Remember that if you sell a share of stock for $150 that you paid $100 for, only $50 of that is income.) Health care premiums and subsidies are based off a number called your modified adjusted gross income (MAGI), a number that does not appear anywhere on your tax return. Essentially, it’s your total income minus deductions for qualified retirement plans like 401(k)s and IRAs, as well as any alimony you paid, and any student loan interest you’re eligible to deduct from your taxable income.

Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley by Corey Pein

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 4chan, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Anne Wojcicki, artificial general intelligence, bank run, barriers to entry, Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL), Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, Build a better mousetrap, California gold rush, cashless society, colonial rule, computer age, cryptocurrency, data is the new oil, deep learning, digital nomad, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Douglas Hofstadter, driverless car, Elon Musk, Evgeny Morozov, Extropian, fail fast, fake it until you make it, fake news, gamification, gentrification, gig economy, Google bus, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Greyball, growth hacking, hacker house, Hacker News, hive mind, illegal immigration, immigration reform, independent contractor, intentional community, Internet of things, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Larry Ellison, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lean Startup, life extension, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, minimum viable product, move fast and break things, mutually assured destruction, Neal Stephenson, obamacare, Parker Conrad, passive income, patent troll, Patri Friedman, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer lending, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, platform as a service, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, post-work, public intellectual, Ray Kurzweil, regulatory arbitrage, rent control, RFID, Robert Mercer, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Ross Ulbricht, Ruby on Rails, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, Scientific racism, self-driving car, selling pickaxes during a gold rush, sharing economy, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, Singularitarianism, Skype, Snapchat, Social Justice Warrior, social software, software as a service, source of truth, South of Market, San Francisco, Startup school, stealth mode startup, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, tech bro, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, technological singularity, technoutopianism, telepresence, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, unit 8200, upwardly mobile, Vernor Vinge, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, X Prize, Y Combinator, Zenefits

But if you were really ambitious you’d know that “media” was out and “platforms” were in, and that the measure—excuse me, the “metric”—that investors used to judge platform companies was attention, because this ephemeral thing, attention, could be sold to advertisers for cash. So if someone asked “What’s your space?” and you had a deeply unfashionable job like, say, writer, it behooved you to say “I deliver eyeballs like a fucking ninja.” In my former life I’d have sooner gouged my own eyeballs out than describe myself in such a way, but in postrecession, postboom, postwork, postshame San Francisco, we all did what we had to do to survive. III Gigs Make Us Free I envied the tech workers even as I pitied them. The paychecks weren’t bad at all, and the benefits were downright Dionysian. Their industry was the alien invader that consumed everything it touched. Its radioactive presence may have sterilized the outside world, stifling organic life in all forms, but inside the warm embrace of the mother ship, the worker drones had comfort, stimulation, and plenty.

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Camgirls’ forums were filled with sad stories about panic attacks, post-traumatic flashbacks, abusive customers, and costly website glitches. “I don’t have any real friends,” one camgirl wrote. “They are all at university or living their lives or having new relationships and I feel thoroughly forgotten about.” While traditional social institutions left such underemployed, undereducated young people behind, the postwork sharing economy came to the rescue by affording them the opportunity to serve as virtual strippers. Who says the tech industry doesn’t make room for women? * * * The sharing economy’s greatest success story was a YouTube celebrity for whom work and play and reality and artifice had merged beyond all recognition.

Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves From the American Dream by Alissa Quart

2021 United States Capitol attack, 3D printing, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Burning Man, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carried interest, coronavirus, COVID-19, critical race theory, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Graeber, defund the police, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, financial independence, fixed income, George Floyd, gig economy, glass ceiling, high net worth, housing justice, hustle culture, illegal immigration, impact investing, income inequality, independent contractor, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, lockdown, longitudinal study, loss aversion, Lyft, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, microaggression, Milgram experiment, minimum wage unemployment, multilevel marketing, obamacare, Overton Window, payday loans, post-work, Ralph Waldo Emerson, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Scientific racism, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Snapchat, social distancing, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, tech worker, TED Talk, Travis Kalanick, trickle-down economics, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, W. E. B. Du Bois, wealth creators, women in the workforce, working poor, Works Progress Administration

It wasn’t a coincidence that during that time I became even more enamored with the philosopher Kathi Weeks, author of The Problem with Work, who tries to reimagine work to include a “postwork” possibility. While the individualism story tells us that hard work leads to limitless possibility, during the pandemic we learned what we already knew—that often the opposite was actually our lot: being stuck; laboring and receiving not enough in return; depending on others and endlessly being depended on. Perhaps exploring postwork, what Weeks suggests, could offer us a solution—at least for a while. * * * In 2020, I dreamed of a parents’ mass movement replete with maternal lobbyists, organizing and fighting for support.

Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition That Is Shaping the Next Economy by Nathan Schneider

1960s counterculture, Aaron Swartz, Adam Curtis, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, altcoin, Amazon Mechanical Turk, antiwork, back-to-the-land, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Brewster Kahle, Burning Man, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Clayton Christensen, collaborative economy, collective bargaining, commons-based peer production, Community Supported Agriculture, corporate governance, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Debian, degrowth, disruptive innovation, do-ocracy, Donald Knuth, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, emotional labour, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Evgeny Morozov, Fairphone, Food sovereignty, four colour theorem, future of work, Gabriella Coleman, gentrification, gig economy, Google bus, holacracy, hydraulic fracturing, initial coin offering, intentional community, Internet Archive, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, jimmy wales, John Perry Barlow, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Assange, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, low interest rates, Lyft, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, means of production, Money creation, multi-sided market, Murray Bookchin, new economy, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Pier Paolo Pasolini, post-work, precariat, premature optimization, pre–internet, profit motive, race to the bottom, Richard Florida, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rutger Bregman, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Satoshi Nakamoto, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Slavoj Žižek, smart contracts, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, surveillance capitalism, tech worker, TED Talk, transaction costs, Turing test, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, underbanked, undersea cable, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, Vanguard fund, Vitalik Buterin, W. E. B. Du Bois, white flight, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, working poor, workplace surveillance , Y Combinator, Y2K, Zipcar

Chapter 3: The Clock of the World 1. See the final summary of her thinking, Grace Lee Boggs with Scott Kurashige, The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century, 2nd ed. (University of California Press, 2012). 2. See Kathi Weeks, The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries (Duke University Press, 2011). 3. Jared Bernstein coined the term based on 2011 Bureau of Labor Statistics data comparing productivity to private-sector employment: Bernstein, “The Challenge of Long Term Job Growth: Two Big Hints,” On the Economy (blog) (June 5, 2011), jaredbernsteinblog.com/the-challenge-of-long-term-job-growth-two-big-hints; Andrew McAfee, “Productivity and Employment (and Technology): In the Jaws of the Snake” (March 22, 2012), andrewmcafee.org/2012/03/mcafee-bernstein-productivity-employment-technology-jaws-snake.

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Magazine (December 9, 2015); Foster’s and Hughes’s organization is called the Economic Security Project, and more about its approach can be found in Chris Hughes, Fair Shot: Rethinking Inequality and How We Earn (St. Martin’s Press, 2018). 18. Cryptocurrency basic-income projects go by such names as Circles, Grantcoin, Group Currency, and Resilience; they interact at reddit.com/r/CryptoUBI. 19. Kathi Weeks, The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries (Duke University Press, 2011); Andy Stern and Lee Kravitz, Raising the Floor: How a Universal Basic Income Can Renew Our Economy and Rebuild the American Dream (PublicAffairs, 2016). 20. “Black Cooperatives and the Fight for Economic Democracy,” session at the Left Forum at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice (May 31, 2015); see also Marina Gorbis’s calls for “universal basic assets” rather than merely income. 21.

No More Work: Why Full Employment Is a Bad Idea by James Livingston

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Bear Stearns, business cycle, collective bargaining, delayed gratification, do what you love, emotional labour, full employment, future of work, Herbert Marcuse, Internet of things, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, labor-force participation, late capitalism, Lewis Mumford, liberal capitalism, obamacare, post-work, Project for a New American Century, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Silicon Valley, surplus humans, TED Talk, The Future of Employment, Tyler Cowen, union organizing, warehouse automation, working poor

Politicians still whine about welfare—everybody does—but these days nobody’s willing to discuss the merits of a guaranteed income, except in the arcane terms Milton Friedman coined, as a “negative income tax,” or in the equally arcane terms the Autonomists and the futurists deploy to peddle their postwork Utopias. And this whining takes place as the crisis of unemployment foreseen by Nixon’s henchmen gets worse and worse. Instead of a guaranteed income, the battle cry we hear from both Left and Right is “full employment.” Both sides deploy the same slogan to avoid the economic and ethical implications of more “entitlements”—to get people “off welfare” and into jobs—because, unlike the advocates of Nixon’s FAP, they believe that private investment and/or government spending can create enough jobs to put everybody back to work.

The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class by Joel Kotkin

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Admiral Zheng, Alvin Toffler, Andy Kessler, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bread and circuses, Brexit referendum, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon credits, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, clean water, company town, content marketing, Cornelius Vanderbilt, creative destruction, data science, deindustrialization, demographic transition, deplatforming, don't be evil, Donald Trump, driverless car, edge city, Elon Musk, European colonialism, Evgeny Morozov, financial independence, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Future Shock, gentrification, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Google bus, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, guest worker program, Hans Rosling, Herbert Marcuse, housing crisis, income inequality, informal economy, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, job polarisation, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, land reform, liberal capitalism, life extension, low skilled workers, Lyft, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, megacity, Michael Shellenberger, Nate Silver, new economy, New Urbanism, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, Occupy movement, Parag Khanna, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, post-industrial society, post-work, postindustrial economy, postnationalism / post nation state, precariat, profit motive, public intellectual, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, rent control, Richard Florida, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Salesforce, Sam Altman, San Francisco homelessness, Satyajit Das, sharing economy, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, smart cities, Social Justice Warrior, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, superstar cities, technological determinism, Ted Nordhaus, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, trade route, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, Virgin Galactic, We are the 99%, Wolfgang Streeck, women in the workforce, work culture , working-age population, Y Combinator

fbclid=IwAR2Qubw2ENnDLE_G1GHwGwsDaOUtwmBfRZalygyhQmO-Au7xAAd28CLXGwc; “Officials in Beijing worry about Marx-loving students,” Economist, September 27, 2018, https://www.economist.com/china/2018/09/27/officials-in-beijing-worry-about-marx-loving-students. 55 Guy Standing, “A ‘Precariat Charter’ is required to combat the inequalities and insecurities produced by global capitalism,” London School of Economics and Political Science, May 5, 2014, http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2014/05/05/a-precariat-charter-is-required-to-combat-the-inequalities-and-insecurities-produced-by-global-capitalism/; Aaron M. Renn, “Post-Work Won’t Work,” City Journal, August 4, 2017, https://www.city-journal.org/html/post-work-wont-work-15383.html. 56 Wendell Berry, What Are People For? (New York: Northpoint, 1990), 125. CHAPTER 16—THE NEW GATED CITY 1 Richard Florida, “How and Why American Cities Are Coming Back,” City Lab, May 17, 2012, https://www.citylab.com/life/2012/05/how-and-why-american-cities-are-coming-back/2015/; Lauren Nolan, “A Deepening Divide: Income Inequality Grows Spatially in Chicago,” Voorhees Center for Neighborhood and Community Improvement, March 11, 2015, https://voorheescenter. wordpress.com/2015/03/11/a-deepening-divide-income-inequality-grows-spatially-in-chicago/; Aaron M.

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The third millennium augurs well.22 Wiring for Feudalism It was once widely hoped that emerging technologies would create a world of “new opportunities for personal growth, adventure and delight,” as the visionary Alvin Toffler wrote in Future Shock almost three decades ago. The prospect of a technologically advanced economy dangled like a bright gem for generations of utopian socialists, and for political thinkers on the right as well. Even today, some Marxists long for “a fully automated luxury communism” where technology has ended scarcity and created a “post-work society.”23 Sadly, such utopian visions can lead to frighteningly dystopian results. Technology may connect people in unprecedented ways, but it appears to be constraining intellectual debate under the control of a few powerful companies. The widespread censorship and “de-platforming” of unapproved views already being practiced, notes law professor and author Glenn Reynolds, could presage a new form of technologically enhanced thought control.24 The rewiring of society could be accelerated by an even more remarkable, and somewhat terrifying, biological transformation.

After Europe by Ivan Krastev

affirmative action, bank run, Berlin Wall, Brexit referendum, central bank independence, classic study, clean water, conceptual framework, creative destruction, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, illegal immigration, job automation, mass immigration, meritocracy, moral panic, open borders, post-work, postnationalism / post nation state, public intellectual, Silicon Valley, Slavoj Žižek, The Brussels Effect, too big to fail, Wolfgang Streeck, World Values Survey, Y Combinator

Y Combinator, a big start-up incubator, has already announced it will conduct a basic income experiment with roughly one hundred families in Oakland, California, giving them between $1,000 and $2,000 a month for up to a year, no strings attached, to see what people do when they do not need to work to earn a living. The prospect of a jobless future is a major intellectual and existential challenge. How people will be capable of producing meaning in their lives in a postwork society is a question no less pressing than how democracy itself can function in a posttruth political world. In the demographic dystopia, citizens face a choice no less stark. In order to ensure their prosperity, Europeans need to open their borders; yet such openness threatens to annihilate their cultural distinctiveness.

The Clash of the Cultures by John C. Bogle

Alan Greenspan, asset allocation, buy and hold, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, compensation consultant, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, diversification, diversified portfolio, estate planning, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, Flash crash, Glass-Steagall Act, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, index fund, interest rate swap, invention of the wheel, John Bogle, junk bonds, low interest rates, market bubble, market clearing, military-industrial complex, money market fund, mortgage debt, new economy, Occupy movement, passive investing, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, Ponzi scheme, post-work, principal–agent problem, profit motive, proprietary trading, prudent man rule, random walk, rent-seeking, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Shiller, seminal paper, shareholder value, short selling, South Sea Bubble, statistical arbitrage, stock buybacks, survivorship bias, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transaction costs, two and twenty, Vanguard fund, William of Occam, zero-sum game

The designs of traditional DC and DB plans are both problematical: 1. Traditional DC plans force contribution rate and investment decisions on participants that they cannot, and do not want to make. Also, little thought has been given to the design of the post-work asset decumulation phrase. As a result, DC plan investing has been unfocused, and post-work financial outcomes have been, and continue to be highly uncertain, raising fundamental questions about the effectiveness and sustainability of this individualistic pension model. 2. Traditional DB plans lump the young and the old on the same balance sheet, and unrealistically assume they have the same risk tolerance and that property rights between the two groups are clear.

Fuller Memorandum by Stross, Charles

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Beeching cuts, Bletchley Park, British Empire, carbon credits, cognitive dissonance, complexity theory, congestion charging, Crossrail, death from overwork, dumpster diving, escalation ladder, false flag, finite state, Firefox, Herman Kahn, HyperCard, invisible hand, land reform, linear programming, messenger bag, MITM: man-in-the-middle, operational security, peak oil, Plato's cave, post-work, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, quantum entanglement, reality distortion field, security theater, sensible shoes, side project, Sloane Ranger, telemarketer, Turing machine

The woman's arm follows him down with absolute precision and discharges a second round into the top of his skull, but it is unnecessary: he is already dead. She looks around with green eyes as deep as sacrificial cenotes, eyes in which a sensitive witness might see luminous worms writhing. But there are no sensitive witnesses to see through the glamour: just the ordinary post-work crowd hurrying about their business on the London streets. For a moment her face shimmers, the facade sliding--her attention is strained, flying in too many directions to maintain the illusion effectively--but then she notices and pulls herself together. She returns the chilly pistol to her bag.

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This is London. South Bank, south of the center, north of Tooting, and west of Wandsworth (come on, you can alliterate too)--suburban high street UK. It is early evening and the streets are still crowded, but most of the shops are closed. Meanwhile, the pubs are half-full with the sort of hardcore post-work crowd that go drinking on a Monday evening. I turn left, walking towards the nearest tube station: it's fifteen minutes away but once it gets this late there's no point waiting for a bus. This is London. The worst thing that can happen to you is usually a mugging at knifepoint, and I do my best not to look like a promising victim, which is why it takes me a couple of minutes to realize that I'm being tailed.

Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization by Edward Slingerland

agricultural Revolution, Alexander Shulgin, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Burning Man, classic study, collective bargaining, coronavirus, COVID-19, Day of the Dead, delayed gratification, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, Drosophila, experimental economics, germ theory of disease, global pandemic, Google Hangouts, hive mind, invention of agriculture, John Markoff, knowledge worker, land reform, lateral thinking, lockdown, lone genius, meta-analysis, microdosing, Picturephone, placebo effect, post-work, Ralph Waldo Emerson, search costs, Silicon Valley, Skype, social intelligence, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, sugar pill, TED Talk, Tragedy of the Commons, WeWork, women in the workforce, work culture , Zenefits

Distillation is not only a novel danger, it is one that also facilitates a companion peril: drinking outside of social contexts. Let us turn now to considering not only the sheer alcoholic punch contained in the corner store bag of liquor, but also the risk of being allowed to simply walk home alone with it. Isolation: The Danger of Drinking Alone If you’ve ever complained about how long it takes to get a post-work drink at a crowded pub on a Friday evening, you should be thankful that you don’t live in ancient China. An early Chinese ritual text describes the beginning of the traditional wine-drinking ritual as follows: The host and the guest salute each other three times. When they reach the steps, they concede to each other three times.

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Although neither of these studies explicitly mentions the role of alcohol, we can venture with some confidence that the missed socializing activities at the conference in New Orleans would have been well lubricated. 41Her clinical summary of experimental work on alcohol and social interactions should sound familiar to anyone who has ever been to a cocktail reception, office party, or post-work pub session: “Reports in the literature have explained [enhanced] conviviality by noting that conversations appear to flow with greater facility; that persons exhibit raised spirits; and that at low doses of ethanol there is a greater degree of social interaction. People under low and/or moderate doses of alcohol have been described as more talkative.

The Driver: My Dangerous Pursuit of Speed and Truth in the Outlaw Racing World by Alexander Roy

Bonfire of the Vanities, book value, Google Earth, messenger bag, post-work, urban planning, urban sprawl

Even his enemies—and these were restricted to business competitors—respected him, trading insults over the phone every week for decades. He spoke fluent French and Spanish, and conversational German, Russian, and Polish. All agreed he was a gifted painter, photographer, and pianist. My brother and I knew better than to interrupt his weekday postwork relaxation time, during which he plucked at the precious custom-made flamenco guitar he’d bought in Seville. He loved work, and intended to work until the day he died. Surrender was inconceivable. I never believed it possible that he could be withered by cancer, his deep radio-commercial-grade voice cracking from multiple surgeries and chemotherapy, lying in a hospital bed 15 minutes from where we’d lived for more than twenty years.

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I hadn’t been there in months, but the 2006 Bullrun’s impending departure from New York demanded that I leave the house. I took malicious glee in booking their most prominent table for dinner with five of the world’s most infamous road-going outlaws. The 9:30 crowd still contained the more conservative post-work drink holdovers, but somehow I knew Rawlings and his entourage wouldn’t need cars to scatter these pigeons. “Wilkommen!” I called out. “Wilkommen im der Soho Haus!” Rawlings stomped toward me with a broad grin sharp enough to hack bark off a tree. He stopped halfway between the crowded bar and a neighboring table, his cowboy boots clattered as he performed a five-second jig of greeting, then he froze, slapped his hands together, and began the world’s loudest one-man game of patty-cake.

Men Without Work by Nicholas Eberstadt

business cycle, Carmen Reinhart, centre right, deindustrialization, financial innovation, full employment, illegal immigration, jobless men, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, low skilled workers, mass immigration, moral hazard, post-work, Ronald Reagan, secular stagnation, Simon Kuznets, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, working-age population

Assume that one-quarter of NILF men suffered such serious limitations as to restrict their capability to perform any care for others, engage in religious activity, or volunteer out of the home but that the others were as functional as working men and women their same ages. Assume further that those three-fourths of prime-age NILF men spent the same amount of time in personal care, eating/drinking, and on “socializing, relaxing, and leisure” as working men and women. And assume that the nondisabled NILF men expended the same fraction of their remaining postwork time at these “helping” activities as do working men and women. What would this mean for their time budgets and for the availability of time to help others for the NILF group as a whole? The assumption that one-quarter of the NILF group is completely incapable of home care, care for others, volunteering, etc., is, we should note, an extremely strong one.

The New Prophets of Capital by Nicole Aschoff

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, American Legislative Exchange Council, Anthropocene, antiwork, basic income, biodiversity loss, Bretton Woods, clean water, collective bargaining, commoditize, crony capitalism, do what you love, feminist movement, follow your passion, food desert, Food sovereignty, glass ceiling, global supply chain, global value chain, helicopter parent, hiring and firing, income inequality, Khan Academy, late capitalism, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, mass incarceration, means of production, microapartment, performance metric, post-Fordism, post-work, profit motive, rent-seeking, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, school vouchers, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Slavoj Žižek, structural adjustment programs, Susan Wojcicki, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, urban renewal, women in the workforce, working poor, zero-sum game

Social movements are also telling stories and developing projects that radically challenge the capitalist status quo through an emphasis on democracy, de-commodification, and redistribution. These stories and projects foster a new vision of society—a society designed for people instead of profit. ________ 1Luc Boltanski and Eva Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism, London: Verso, 2007. 2See Kathi Weeks, The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2011. 3“The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission,” quoted in Noam Chomsky, “The Carter Administration: Myth and Reality,” Australian Quarterly 50: 1, 1978, 8–36. 4Francesca Polletta, It Was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. 5David Harvey, “The Enigma of Capital and the Crisis This Time,” in Craig Calhoun and Georgi Derluguian, eds., Business as Usual: The Roots of the Global Financial Meltdown, New York: New York University Press, 2011. 6Miles Rapoport and Jennifer Wheary, Where the Poor and the Middle Class Meet, New York: Demos, 2013. 7There are many prophets of capitalism telling stories today.

The View From Flyover Country: Dispatches From the Forgotten America by Sarah Kendzior

Aaron Swartz, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, American ideology, barriers to entry, clean water, corporate personhood, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, David Graeber, disinformation, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, gentrification, George Santayana, glass ceiling, income inequality, independent contractor, low skilled workers, Lyft, Marshall McLuhan, Mohammed Bouazizi, new economy, obamacare, Occupy movement, Oklahoma City bombing, payday loans, pink-collar, post-work, public intellectual, publish or perish, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, Silicon Valley, the medium is the message, trickle-down economics, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unpaid internship, Upton Sinclair, urban decay, War on Poverty, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce

But academia’s reliance on adjuncts makes it no different than fields that cater to the elite through unpaid internships. Anthropologists are known for their attentiveness to social inequality, but few have acknowledged the plight of their peers. When I expressed doubt about the job market to one colleague, she advised me, with total seriousness, to “reevaluate what work means” and to consider “post-work imaginaries.” A popular video on post-graduate employment cuts to the chase: “Why don’t you tap into your trust fund?” In May 2012, I received my PhD, but I still do not know what to do with it. I struggle with the closed-off nature of academic work, which I think should be accessible to everyone, but most of all I struggle with the limited opportunities in academia for Americans like me, people for whom education was once a path out of poverty, and not a way into it.

Affluenza: When Too Much Is Never Enough by Clive Hamilton, Richard Denniss

call centre, death from overwork, delayed gratification, experimental subject, full employment, hedonic treadmill, impulse control, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, McMansion, mega-rich, Naomi Klein, Own Your Own Home, post-materialism, post-work, purchasing power parity, retail therapy, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thorstein Veblen, trickle-down economics, wage slave, work culture

Expectations about the amount of income needed in retirement appear to have escalated considerably, and these self-imposed benchmarks put people under great pressure. At the same time there has been a change in perceptions of retirement where baby 173 AFFLUENZA boomers in the professions and in managerial positions are concerned. They see no clear division between their working and post-working lives and think they will be able to wind down gradually and may never retire fully. Indeed, some see the idea of working hard to save for retirement then stopping work to enjoy the fruits of their labour as pathological. As one put it, ‘If you see retirement as the end then you are doing the wrong thing’.

Beer Money: A Memoir of Privilege and Loss by Frances Stroh

cognitive dissonance, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Ford Model T, Golden Gate Park, imposter syndrome, Kickstarter, new economy, nuclear winter, post-work, South of Market, San Francisco, urban renewal

I missed the chickens Ollie would sometimes roast before she left to go home in the evening. But Ollie was gone now, back in Detroit and living on welfare, and with her had gone any sense of order. “Ollie has to take care of her mother full-time now,” my mother had told me. I went into the library with a plate. My father sat in his leather chair, a remote in his hand, in his usual postwork outfit—khaki pants, dress shirt, and Topsiders with no socks. With his light-blue eyes and cleft chin, he looked like some famous actor whose name you couldn’t quite remember. A Domino’s box sat open on the floor at his feet with a half-moon of pepperoni pizza. “Hi, Franny,” he said with an absent smile.

Ours to Hack and to Own: The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, a New Vision for the Future of Work and a Fairer Internet by Trebor Scholz, Nathan Schneider

1960s counterculture, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Anthropocene, barriers to entry, basic income, benefit corporation, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Build a better mousetrap, Burning Man, business logic, capital controls, circular economy, citizen journalism, collaborative economy, collaborative editing, collective bargaining, commoditize, commons-based peer production, conceptual framework, content marketing, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, Debian, decentralized internet, deskilling, disintermediation, distributed ledger, driverless car, emotional labour, end-to-end encryption, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, food desert, future of work, gig economy, Google bus, hiring and firing, holacracy, income inequality, independent contractor, information asymmetry, Internet of things, Jacob Appelbaum, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, lake wobegon effect, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, minimum viable product, moral hazard, Network effects, new economy, offshore financial centre, openstreetmap, peer-to-peer, planned obsolescence, post-work, profit maximization, race to the bottom, radical decentralization, remunicipalization, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rochdale Principles, SETI@home, shareholder value, sharing economy, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart contracts, Snapchat, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, Tyler Cowen, Uber for X, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, Vitalik Buterin, W. E. B. Du Bois, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, workplace surveillance , Yochai Benkler, Zipcar

And I have no doubt about the vision of platform owners like Travis Kalanick (Uber), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), or Lukas Biewald (CrowdFlower)—who, in the absence of government regulation and resistance from workers, will simply exploit their undervalued workers. I’m all on board for Paul Mason’s and Kathi Weeks’ visions for a post-capitalist, post-work future where universal basic income will rule the way we think about life opportunities. In the United States, however, unlike in Finland, the chances for this scenario becoming a reality over the next two years are not high. The question then becomes what we can do right now, with and for the most precarious among the contingent third of the American workforce, which is unlikely to see the return of the traditional safety net, the forty-hour workweek, or a steady paycheck.

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Amazon not only condones this wage theft but has made it a feature, since the employer who posts work gets to see what is submitted in order to adjudicate it. All employers have to do is reject the worker, denying them payment, and they get to keep both the work and their cash. It is scraping the bottom of the barrel when a worker not only has to face being paid pennies per hour for their hard work, but also the possibility of not being paid at all. Many people assume that workers such as myself are all from developing countries, are unskilled, barely speak English, have no education, and will cheat to steal money from those who post work on the platform. It gets worse, with comments about the fact that we are literally the unwashed masses in our pajamas doing work for pennies an hour, the lumpenproletariat so clueless that it is a favor to pay us even a pittance in order to give us any job at all.

This Is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor - the Sunday Times Bestseller by Adam Kay

airport security, butterfly effect, Kinder Surprise, post-work, Skype

Of course, medics aren’t alone in working late – you could say the same of lawyers and bankers – but at least they can become ‘weekend warriors’, letting down their hair and their ancestors in a forty-eight-hour blast of unremitting hedonism. Our weekends were usually spent at work. But it’s more than just the hours; you’re generally no fun to be around when you get home. You’re exhausted, you’re snappy from a stressful day and you even manage to deny your partner their normal post-work chat of bitching about their colleagues. They know as soon as they start on their workplace quibbles – which presumably don’t involve any near-death experiences, unless they’re a tightrope walker, firefighter or counter staff at a drive-thru Burger King – you’ll reflexively man that old ship One-Up and talk about the horrors of your own day.

The End of Traffic and the Future of Transport: Second Edition by David Levinson, Kevin Krizek

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 3D printing, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Bay Area Rapid Transit, big-box store, bike sharing, carbon tax, Chris Urmson, collaborative consumption, commoditize, congestion pricing, crowdsourcing, DARPA: Urban Challenge, dematerialisation, driverless car, Dutch auction, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Ford Model T, Google Hangouts, high-speed rail, Induced demand, intermodal, invention of the printing press, jitney, John Markoff, labor-force participation, Lewis Mumford, lifelogging, Lyft, means of production, megacity, Menlo Park, Network effects, Occam's razor, oil shock, place-making, pneumatic tube, post-work, printed gun, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, tacit knowledge, techno-determinism, technological singularity, Tesla Model S, the built environment, The future is already here, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, transaction costs, transportation-network company, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, urban renewal, women in the workforce, working-age population, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game, Zipcar

Americans now work fewer hours over their career than their working grandparents, and probably their parents (for annual hours, see Figure 3.3,58 which shows little change over the past 7 decades). They start their careers later, extending the pre-work period into their twenties, taking advantage of productivity gains of parents and ancestors, and borrowing against future productivity. They also retire earlier, post-work retirement starts into their fifties, reaping the rewards of our collective productivity. Vacation time has not changed much in recent decades. Travel patterns differ by age group, but those who do not work daily do not make work commutes daily. While some of the now available non-work time is made up with out-of-home activities requiring travel, that does not require peak hour travel, and so imposes fewer stresses on the transport system.

Into the Fire: My Life as a London Firefighter by Edric Kennedy-Macfoy

Donald Trump, fake it until you make it, post-work

The police will want to speak to you pretty soon, I thought as it moved away, and I wish I could be there to see it. Then it was back to the body on the road. I started wondering what the story was behind the crash. Did these two guys work together? Was the older guy giving the young one a lift home after a few post-work pints? Maybe he was a mate of the dead guy’s dad, he looked that much older. I wondered all these things in the moments it took us to get to where he was lying. Whatever the story was, a life had been lost, and it was tragic. I never found out what happened to the driver, whether he went to prison, lost a leg, nothing.

Into the Fire: My Life as a London Firefighter by Edric Kennedy-Macfoy

Donald Trump, fake it until you make it, post-work

The police will want to speak to you pretty soon, I thought as it moved away, and I wish I could be there to see it. Then it was back to the body on the road. I started wondering what the story was behind the crash. Did these two guys work together? Was the older guy giving the young one a lift home after a few post-work pints? Maybe he was a mate of the dead guy’s dad, he looked that much older. I wondered all these things in the moments it took us to get to where he was lying. Whatever the story was, a life had been lost, and it was tragic. I never found out what happened to the driver, whether he went to prison, lost a leg, nothing.

Notes From an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back by Mark O'Connell

Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, California gold rush, carbon footprint, Carrington event, clean water, Colonization of Mars, conceptual framework, cryptocurrency, disruptive innovation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Donner party, Easter island, Elon Musk, Greta Thunberg, high net worth, Jeff Bezos, life extension, lock screen, low earth orbit, Marc Andreessen, Mars Society, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, New Urbanism, off grid, Peter Thiel, post-work, Sam Altman, Silicon Valley, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, the built environment, yield curve

It represented everything I thought about when I thought about the end of the world. It was like being confronted with a lurid diorama of my own unease as I had come to conceive of it. It was uncanny, and terrible, and strangely perfect. * * * — Later that week, in a bar a few blocks from the harbor, I had a post-work beer with Matt Nippert, the New Zealand Herald reporter who had broken the citizenship story earlier that year. He told me of his personal certainty that Thiel had bought his property in the South Island for apocalypse-contingency purposes. In his citizenship application, he had pledged his commitment to devote “a significant amount of time and resources to the people and businesses of New Zealand.”

How Cycling Can Save the World by Peter Walker

active transport: walking or cycling, bike sharing, Boris Johnson, car-free, correlation does not imply causation, Crossrail, Donald Shoup, driverless car, Enrique Peñalosa, fixed-gear, gentrification, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Ken Thompson, Kickstarter, meta-analysis, New Journalism, New Urbanism, post-work, publication bias, safety bicycle, Sidewalk Labs, Stop de Kindermoord, TED Talk, the built environment, traffic fines, Traffic in Towns by Colin Buchanan, transit-oriented development, urban planning

This brings us back to the North London bedroom. A couple of days beforehand I had begun insulating my legs from the winter chill with a pair of my girlfriend’s thick cotton leggings, over which I wore a pair of denim shorts (I did say the courier trade wasn’t fashionable then). That evening, getting undressed ahead of the obligatory postwork bath, where I would happily steam amid a rising black tidemark of pollution residue, I decided to inspect my new look. Then came the shock. Not from the leggings. The mirror showed those to be about as curious-looking as I’d expected. What struck me was the encased silhouette of my legs. They had always been traditionally unimpressive.

Curbing Traffic: The Human Case for Fewer Cars in Our Lives by Chris Bruntlett, Melissa Bruntlett

15-minute city, An Inconvenient Truth, autonomous vehicles, bike sharing, BIPOC, car-free, coronavirus, COVID-19, emotional labour, en.wikipedia.org, global pandemic, green new deal, Jane Jacobs, lockdown, Lyft, microplastics / micro fibres, New Urbanism, post-work, RAND corporation, ride hailing / ride sharing, self-driving car, social distancing, streetcar suburb, the built environment, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, urban planning, white flight, working-age population, World Values Survey

But with 56 grocery stores within a 30-minute walk of our Delft apartment, we found ourselves buying fresher, more frequently, and in smaller quantities, and our family’s health was all the better for it. A funny thing happened as we adapted to life in a relatively small Dutch city: we actually craved that postwork stroll to the grocery store. The act of walking into the city center, passing historic buildings and traveling along streets that see virtually no car traffic, had taken on a therapeutic quality for us both. We could decompress from our day, chat about the highs and lows of our new jobs, about how the kids were adjusting to school, and any number of other things swirling through our heads at that time.

The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future by Andrew Yang

3D printing, Airbnb, assortative mating, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Ben Horowitz, Bernie Sanders, call centre, corporate governance, cryptocurrency, data science, David Brooks, DeepMind, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial engineering, full employment, future of work, global reserve currency, income inequality, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Khan Academy, labor-force participation, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, meritocracy, Narrative Science, new economy, passive income, performance metric, post-work, quantitative easing, reserve currency, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, robo advisor, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, Sam Altman, San Francisco homelessness, self-driving car, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, single-payer health, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, supercomputer in your pocket, tech worker, technoutopianism, telemarketer, The future is already here, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, traumatic brain injury, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unemployed young men, universal basic income, urban renewal, warehouse robotics, white flight, winner-take-all economy, Y Combinator

The federal government would help set up and fund the platform but it would be up to local governments, nonprofits, individuals, and companies to figure out the best ways to achieve various goals. The overall goal would be to improve social cohesion and maintain high levels of engagement for people in a post-work economy. The Freedom Dividend would elevate society beyond a need for subsistence and scarcity. The Digital Social Credit would tie together communities and give people a way to both generate value and feel valued regardless of how the market regards their time. NINETEEN HUMAN CAPITALISM Imagine an AI life coach with the voice of Oprah or Tom Hanks trying to help parents stay together or raise kids.

The Economic Singularity: Artificial Intelligence and the Death of Capitalism by Calum Chace

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, AI winter, Airbnb, AlphaGo, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Robotics, Andy Rubin, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, basic income, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, bread and circuses, call centre, Chris Urmson, congestion charging, credit crunch, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, digital divide, Douglas Engelbart, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Fairchild Semiconductor, Flynn Effect, full employment, future of work, Future Shock, gender pay gap, Geoffrey Hinton, gig economy, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Hans Moravec, Herman Kahn, hype cycle, ImageNet competition, income inequality, industrial robot, Internet of things, invention of the telephone, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, lifelogging, lump of labour, Lyft, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, McJob, means of production, Milgram experiment, Narrative Science, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, new economy, Nick Bostrom, Occupy movement, Oculus Rift, OpenAI, PageRank, pattern recognition, post scarcity, post-industrial society, post-work, precariat, prediction markets, QWERTY keyboard, railway mania, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, Rodney Brooks, Sam Altman, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, SoftBank, software is eating the world, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, technological singularity, TED Talk, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, Thomas Malthus, transaction costs, Two Sigma, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, Vernor Vinge, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, working-age population, Y Combinator, young professional

In chapter 5.4 we considered whether virtual reality might help resolve the problem of how to allocate rare goods and services in a world where incomes are hard to vary. In chapter 5.5 we tackled what may turn out to be the biggest challenge raised by the economic singularity: cohesion. We asked whether capitalism, and in particular the institution of private property, will be as suitable for the post-work world as it has been during the industrial revolution. This an uncomfortable discussion for people like me who believe that a sensibly-regulated market economy has been enormously beneficial for humanity. Along with the Enlightenment and the consequent scientific revolution, capitalism has made our time the best era to be born human, bar none.

Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream by Arianna Huffington

Alan Greenspan, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Apollo 13, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, call centre, carried interest, citizen journalism, clean water, collateralized debt obligation, Cornelius Vanderbilt, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, David Brooks, do what you love, extreme commuting, Exxon Valdez, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, greed is good, Greenspan put, guns versus butter model, high-speed rail, housing crisis, immigration reform, invisible hand, knowledge economy, laissez-faire capitalism, late fees, low interest rates, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, medical bankruptcy, microcredit, military-industrial complex, Neil Armstrong, new economy, New Journalism, offshore financial centre, Ponzi scheme, post-work, proprietary trading, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Savings and loan crisis, single-payer health, smart grid, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Timothy McVeigh, too big to fail, transcontinental railway, trickle-down economics, winner-take-all economy, working poor, Works Progress Administration

The fear that the middle class is on an extended death march—and that the American Dream of a secure, comfortable standard of living has become as outdated as an Edsel with an eight-track player. We look at our obliterated 401(k)s and dwindling pensions, and hear the whispers about Social Security going broke, and we wonder if we will ever be able to retire—let alone maintain our standard of living into our sunset years. Golden visions of post-work leisure time have been replaced by dark, fevered flashes of deprivation—of having to decide between eating and paying for the medicine we need. Of letting our homes go into foreclosure to scrape together the money to live on. The void is filled by the fear that America is becoming a nation of haves and have-nots—and that millions are in danger of becoming permanent members of the have-nots.

After the New Economy: The Binge . . . And the Hangover That Won't Go Away by Doug Henwood

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, barriers to entry, Benchmark Capital, book value, borderless world, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, business cycle, California energy crisis, capital controls, corporate governance, corporate raider, correlation coefficient, credit crunch, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, deskilling, digital divide, electricity market, emotional labour, ending welfare as we know it, feminist movement, fulfillment center, full employment, gender pay gap, George Gilder, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, government statistician, greed is good, half of the world's population has never made a phone call, income inequality, indoor plumbing, intangible asset, Internet Archive, job satisfaction, joint-stock company, Kevin Kelly, labor-force participation, Larry Ellison, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, Mary Meeker, means of production, Michael Milken, minimum wage unemployment, Naomi Klein, new economy, occupational segregation, PalmPilot, pets.com, post-work, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, rewilding, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, statistical model, stock buybacks, structural adjustment programs, tech worker, Telecommunications Act of 1996, telemarketer, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, total factor productivity, union organizing, War on Poverty, warehouse automation, women in the workforce, working poor, zero-sum game

Antolin, Pablo, Thai-Thanh Dang, and Howard Oxley (1999)." Poverty Dynamics in Four OECD Countries," Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Economics Department Working Paper 212 (Paris: OECD),April <www.olis.oecd.org/olis/ 1999doc.nsf/linkto/eco-wkp(99)4>. Aronowitz, Stanley, and Jonathan Cuder (1997). Post-Work (New York: Roudedge). Aronowitz, Stanley, and William DiFazio (1995). The Jobless Future: Sci-Tech and the Dogma of Work (Minneapolis: University of Mirmesota Press). Arrighi, Giovanni (1994). The LongTwentieth Century (NewYork and London:Verso). Atkinson, Robert D (2001). "Alive and Kicking," Blueprint Magazine (Democratic Leadership CouncU), April 25 <www.ndol.org/print.cfrn?

Give People Money by Annie Lowrey

Abraham Maslow, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, airport security, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, basic income, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, carbon tax, clean water, collective bargaining, computer age, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, deindustrialization, desegregation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, Elon Musk, ending welfare as we know it, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, full employment, gender pay gap, gentrification, gig economy, Google Earth, Home mortgage interest deduction, income inequality, indoor plumbing, information asymmetry, Jaron Lanier, jitney, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Kickstarter, Kodak vs Instagram, labor-force participation, late capitalism, Lyft, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, mass incarceration, McMansion, Menlo Park, mobile money, Modern Monetary Theory, mortgage tax deduction, multilevel marketing, new economy, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Overton Window, Peter Thiel, post scarcity, post-work, Potemkin village, precariat, public intellectual, randomized controlled trial, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, Sam Altman, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, theory of mind, total factor productivity, Turing test, two tier labour market, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, women in the workforce, working poor, World Values Survey, Y Combinator

“The most promising way forward lies in reclaiming modernity and attacking the neoliberal common sense that conditions everything from the most esoteric policy discussions to the most vivid emotional states,” Srnicek and Williams write in their engaging, radical book Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work. “This counter-hegemonic project can only be achieved by imagining better worlds—and in moving beyond defensive struggles. We have outlined one possible project, in the form of a post-work politics that frees us to create our own lives and communities.” It is worth pausing to note how radical that vision is. Economic growth, household income, and even inequality would become less important metrics than health, longevity, and thriving. GDP might even go down as more qualitative measures of human welfare go up.

Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani

"Peter Beck" AND "Rocket Lab", Alan Greenspan, Anthropocene, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Boston Dynamics, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, capital controls, capitalist realism, cashless society, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, computer age, computer vision, CRISPR, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, deep learning, dematerialisation, DIY culture, Donald Trump, double helix, driverless car, electricity market, Elon Musk, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, financial independence, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, Future Shock, G4S, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, Gregor Mendel, housing crisis, income inequality, industrial robot, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Jevons paradox, job automation, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Kuiper Belt, land reform, Leo Hollis, liberal capitalism, low earth orbit, low interest rates, low skilled workers, M-Pesa, market fundamentalism, means of production, mobile money, more computing power than Apollo, new economy, off grid, pattern recognition, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, post scarcity, post-work, price mechanism, price stability, private spaceflight, Productivity paradox, profit motive, race to the bottom, rewilding, RFID, rising living standards, Robert Solow, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sensor fusion, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Slavoj Žižek, SoftBank, stem cell, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, technological determinism, technoutopianism, the built environment, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, transatlantic slave trade, Travis Kalanick, universal basic income, V2 rocket, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, working-age population

The reason why is that, until the opening decades of the Third Disruption, communism was as impossible as surplus before the First Disruption or electricity before the Second. Instead it was socialism, still defined by scarcity and jobs, which became the North Star for hope across the world. The technologies needed to deliver a post-scarcity, post-work society – centred around renewable energy, automation and information – were absent in the Russian Empire, or indeed anywhere else until the late 1960s. Indeed, amid efforts to catch up with the more advanced capitalist economies of Europe and America, the Bolsheviks became students of the Taylorist science of productivity, applying themselves to the task of subordinating human time to economic production with ever-greater efficiency.

Money Mavericks: Confessions of a Hedge Fund Manager by Lars Kroijer

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, book value, capital asset pricing model, corporate raider, diversification, diversified portfolio, equity risk premium, family office, fixed income, forensic accounting, Gordon Gekko, hiring and firing, implied volatility, index fund, intangible asset, Jeff Bezos, Just-in-time delivery, Long Term Capital Management, Mary Meeker, merger arbitrage, NetJets, new economy, Ponzi scheme, post-work, proprietary trading, risk free rate, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, six sigma, statistical arbitrage, Vanguard fund, zero-coupon bond

Before the four of them joined the team, things still felt like a couple of guys sitting in a room. Now we were a real hedge fund, with our phones ringing and a constant stream of meetings in the office, even if our fairly academic approach to investing kept the atmosphere peaceful. We even had a company pub for post-work pints on a quiet street off Berkeley Square. As the hedge-fund industry grew massively during 2005 and 2006 towards its peak in 2007/08, a clear trend emerged. There were more and more people with hedge-fund experience interviewing for the positions we offered. This made sense. When I first interviewed for a hedge-fund position in early 1998 there were not that many hedge funds around; I doubt that someone with my background today could end up meeting an industry giant like Richard Perry at their first interview.

Generation A by Douglas Coupland

Burning Man, call centre, Drosophila, Higgs boson, hive mind, index card, Large Hadron Collider, Live Aid, Magellanic Cloud, McJob, Neil Armstrong, new economy, post-work, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, stem cell, Stephen Hawking

As this was being said, Trevor was thinking: Is Suzanne cheating on me? What good is a girlfriend you can’t trust? The whole notion of girlfriend seemed American and synthetic, an archaic pairing concept from Pixar cartoons. Domestic partner? No, they didn’t live together. Close personal friend? No. Technically, they were nothing. They just spent a lot of post-work time together, having sex and eating, and it was all going nowhere, and besides, she was so goddam political when she wasn’t in the sack, and when she got going on Zionism and all that, it was like she’d turned herself into the world’s most unlistenable satellite music station. She’d start to blab and he’d go off into daydreams about long-chain carbon molecules, his mother’s knee-replacement surgery or old Smurf cartoons, only to be roused by a poke in the ribs and a jeremiad along the lines of, “And who do you think ended up paying for the Six-Day War, huh?

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich

Alan Greenspan, business process, full employment, housing crisis, income inequality, independent contractor, McMansion, PalmPilot, place-making, post-work, sexual politics, telemarketer, union organizing, wage slave, WeWork, women in the workforce, working poor, zero day

If I can do one week, I can do another, and might as well, since there's never been a moment for job-hunting. The 3:30 quitting time turns out to be a myth; often we don't return to the office until 4:30 or 5:00. And what did I think? That I was going to go out to interviews in my soaked and stinky postwork condition? I decide to reward myself with a sunset walk on Old Orchard Beach. On account of the heat, there are still a few actual bathers on the beach, but I am content to sit in shorts and T-shirt and watch the ocean pummel the sand. When the sun goes down I walk back into the town to find my car and am amazed to hear a sound I associate with cities like New York and Berlin.

Who's Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life by Richard Florida

Abraham Maslow, active measures, assortative mating, back-to-the-city movement, barriers to entry, big-box store, blue-collar work, borderless world, BRICs, business climate, Celebration, Florida, correlation coefficient, creative destruction, dark matter, David Brooks, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deindustrialization, demographic transition, edge city, Edward Glaeser, epigenetics, extreme commuting, financial engineering, gentrification, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, happiness index / gross national happiness, high net worth, income inequality, industrial cluster, invention of the telegraph, Jane Jacobs, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, low skilled workers, megacity, new economy, New Urbanism, Peter Calthorpe, place-making, post-work, power law, Richard Florida, risk tolerance, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Seaside, Florida, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, superstar cities, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the strength of weak ties, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Tyler Cowen, urban planning, World Values Survey, young professional

According to a major study by William Frey and Ross DeVol, the rise of the “yuppie elderly”—married, in good health, with substantial accumulated resources, more active lifestyle, and greater locational choices—will coincide with the rise of another group, the “needy elderly,” particularly widows over the age of seventy-five who are especially dependent on families and social institutions.2 Generation Ageless “When it comes to finding a place to live,” the Wall Street Journal wrote in October 2006, “today’s retirees are looking for something completely different.”3 While weather and leisure remain important, retirees are looking for a community “where they can make friends and connections quickly, whether it’s a small town or a walkable neighborhood in a big city.” They also want to live where they can indulge postwork passions, a second career, or a newly adopted sport, or be near their grandkids, whether in a mixed-used development, a small town, or an urban center. Empty nesters and retirees have a wide range of communities to choose from these days. Free from the constraints of full-time jobs and full-time parenting, some even find themselves with the flexibility and means to divide their time among multiple places.

Discardia: More Life, Less Stuff by Dinah Sanders

A. Roger Ekirch, Atul Gawande, big-box store, Boris Johnson, carbon footprint, clean water, clockwatching, cognitive bias, collaborative consumption, credit crunch, do what you love, endowment effect, Firefox, game design, Inbox Zero, income per capita, index card, indoor plumbing, Internet Archive, Kevin Kelly, late fees, Marshall McLuhan, McMansion, Merlin Mann, Open Library, post-work, side project, Silicon Valley, Stewart Brand

Symptom #32: Emotional Baggage Solution #32: Opt out of Unnecessary Drama A man is rich in proportion to the things he can afford to let alone. —Henry David Thoreau, philosopher Calm helps you cope There is a moment of choice in how you react which deeply impacts your future self. When facing that moment, “Don't Freak Out” is always the best option. Maybe you’re having one of those postwork evenings that are part restoration and part collapse, and you’re watching a movie. The DVD player in your computer jams and the computer won't eject the DVD. Then the computer doesn't believe it has a DVD drive, even after restarting. You start to work yourself up into an “Oh, no! I can't afford this problem” worried state of mind.

The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age by Astra Taylor

"World Economic Forum" Davos, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Aaron Swartz, Alan Greenspan, American Legislative Exchange Council, Andrew Keen, AOL-Time Warner, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, big-box store, Brewster Kahle, business logic, Californian Ideology, citizen journalism, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, Community Supported Agriculture, conceptual framework, content marketing, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, cross-subsidies, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, digital capitalism, digital divide, digital Maoism, disinformation, disintermediation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Evgeny Morozov, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, future of journalism, Gabriella Coleman, gentrification, George Gilder, Google Chrome, Google Glasses, hive mind, income inequality, informal economy, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Laura Poitras, lolcat, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, Metcalfe’s law, Naomi Klein, Narrative Science, Network effects, new economy, New Journalism, New Urbanism, Nicholas Carr, oil rush, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, post-work, power law, pre–internet, profit motive, recommendation engine, Richard Florida, Richard Stallman, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, slashdot, Slavoj Žižek, Snapchat, social graph, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, TED Talk, the long tail, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, vertical integration, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, Works Progress Administration, Yochai Benkler, young professional

In Cognitive Surplus Shirky claims to be referring specifically to the cumulative free time of the world’s educated population but, according to Schor, that is just the population that has less free time compared to decades past: “Employees with low educational attainment have suffered more under- and unemployment, and those with high education are more overworked,” she writes. Another good take on this topic is Peter Frase’s “Post-Work: A Guide for the Perplexed,” posted on the Jacobin magazine Web site, February 25, 2013, http://jacobinmag.com/2013/02/post-work-a-guide-for-the-perplexed/. 24. Edward C. Prescott, “Why Do Americans Work So Much More Than Europeans,” Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Quarterly Review 28, no. 1 (July 2004): 2–13, www.minneapolisfed.org/research/QR/QR2811.pdf; and Robert B.

The Refusal of Work: The Theory and Practice of Resistance to Work by David Frayne

anti-work, antiwork, basic income, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Californian Ideology, call centre, capitalist realism, classic study, clockwatching, critique of consumerism, David Graeber, deindustrialization, deskilling, emotional labour, Ford Model T, future of work, Herbert Marcuse, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, low skilled workers, McJob, means of production, moral panic, new economy, Paradox of Choice, post-work, profit motive, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Skype, unpaid internship, work culture , working poor, young professional

However, Marx’s call for collective appropriation – or the ‘Plain Marxist Argument’ (Booth, 1989: 207) – can be contrasted with ideas in his later writing, where some believed he tempered his earlier enthusiasm for work. It has been suggested that Marx himself ‘could not clearly decide if communism meant liberation from labour or the liberation of labour’ (Berki, 1979: 5). For a more detailed discussion of the distinction between the ‘plain’ and the ‘post-work’ Marx, see Granter (2009: Chapter 4). Return to text. 3. Curious readers can find more detailed summaries of Marcuse’s connection with the argument for shorter working hours elsewhere (for example, Granter, 2009: Chapter 5; Bowring, 2012; Frayne, forthcoming). Return to text. 4. For a more detailed overview of the ideas of André Gorz, see the accessible introduction by Lodziak and Tatman (1997) or the more in-depth treatise by Bowring (2000a).

Bureaucracy by David Graeber

a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airport security, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, banking crisis, barriers to entry, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, collateralized debt obligation, Columbine, conceptual framework, Corn Laws, David Graeber, Future Shock, George Gilder, High speed trading, hiring and firing, junk bonds, Kitchen Debate, late capitalism, Lewis Mumford, means of production, music of the spheres, Neal Stephenson, new economy, obamacare, Occupy movement, Oklahoma City bombing, Parkinson's law, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, pneumatic tube, post-work, price mechanism, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, stock buybacks, technological determinism, transcontinental railway, union organizing, urban planning, zero-sum game

True, from the perspective of those living in Europe and North America, or even Japan, the results did seem superficially to be much as predicted. Smokestack industries did increasingly disappear; jobs came to be divided between a lower stratum of service workers and an upper stratum sitting in antiseptic bubbles playing with computers. But below it all lay an uneasy awareness that this whole new post-work civilization was, basically, a fraud. Our carefully engineered high-tech sneakers were not really being produced by intelligent cyborgs or self-replicating molecular nanotechnology; they were being made on the equivalent of old-fashioned Singer sewing machines, by the daughters of Mexican and Indonesian farmers who had, as the result of WTO or NAFTA-sponsored trade deals, been ousted from their ancestral lands.

Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen by James Suzman

access to a mobile phone, agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, back-to-the-land, clean water, discovery of the americas, equal pay for equal work, European colonialism, full employment, invention of agriculture, invisible hand, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, means of production, Occupy movement, open borders, out of africa, post-work, quantitative easing, rewilding, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade route, trickle-down economics, unemployed young men, We are the 99%

Mainstream economists and governments alike—on both the left and the right of the political spectrum—remain preoccupied with maintaining growth on the one hand and reducing unemployment on the other while debating about how much of our hard-earned wealth should be put to the common good and how much we should be able to squirrel away for ourselves. Few politicians seem willing to engage with the real challenge: the need for us to adjust to the reality of living in a post-work world. When Marshall Sahlins wrote about hunter-gatherers pursuing a “Zen road” to affluence by having few needs easily met, he was invoking a similar set of attitudes to those that Keynes hoped would prevail in a world where people’s absolute needs were adequately met. Keynes was of the view that our innate desire to solve what he referred to as our “real problems—the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behavior and religion” would be enough to distract us from any residual instinct to work.

What They Do With Your Money: How the Financial System Fails Us, and How to Fix It by Stephen Davis, Jon Lukomnik, David Pitt-Watson

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Admiral Zheng, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, buy and hold, Carl Icahn, centralized clearinghouse, clean water, compensation consultant, computerized trading, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, diversification, diversified portfolio, en.wikipedia.org, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, Flash crash, Glass-Steagall Act, income inequality, index fund, information asymmetry, invisible hand, John Bogle, Kenneth Arrow, Kickstarter, light touch regulation, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, Northern Rock, passive investing, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, payment for order flow, performance metric, Ponzi scheme, post-work, principal–agent problem, rent-seeking, Ronald Coase, seminal paper, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, statistical model, Steve Jobs, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transaction costs, Upton Sinclair, value at risk, WikiLeaks

Beth, who chose Atlanta, and Cathy, in London, will most likely pay 50 percent or more beyond what Amsterdam-based Sarah will have to spend to secure exactly the same retirement benefits at exactly the same age. Either Beth and Cathy will have to scrimp for years to afford the retirement income they want, or they face a postwork income much less than Sarah’s.1 These huge variances in outcomes occur because small differences in annual charges compound over the years. Here is how it would work. From the age of twenty-five, Beth in Atlanta socks $6,000 annually into a commercial retirement savings plan selected by her employer.

Squeezed: Why Our Families Can't Afford America by Alissa Quart

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Alvin Toffler, antiwork, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, basic income, Bernie Sanders, business intelligence, do what you love, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, East Village, Elon Musk, emotional labour, full employment, future of work, gentrification, gig economy, glass ceiling, haute couture, income inequality, independent contractor, information security, Jaron Lanier, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, late capitalism, Lyft, minimum wage unemployment, moral panic, new economy, nuclear winter, obamacare, peak TV, Ponzi scheme, post-work, precariat, price mechanism, rent control, rent stabilization, ride hailing / ride sharing, school choice, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, stop buying avocado toast, surplus humans, TaskRabbit, tech worker, TED Talk, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, upwardly mobile, wages for housework, WeWork, women in the workforce, work culture , working poor

The Ottawa Citizen kvelled: Madeline Ashby, “Ashby: Let’s Talk about Canadian Values (Values Like a Universal Basic Income),” Ottawa Citizen, November 15, 2016, http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/ashby-lets-talk-about-canadian-values-values-like-a-universal-basic-income. feminist theorist Kathi Weeks: Kathi Weeks, The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011). “no longer socially necessary”: James Livingston, No More Work: Why Full Employment Is a Bad Idea (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016). the journalist Judith Shulevitz wrote: Judith Shulevitz, “It’s Payback Time for Women,” New York Times, January 10, 2016.

The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies by Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 3D printing, access to a mobile phone, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, basic income, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, Boston Dynamics, British Empire, business cycle, business intelligence, business process, call centre, carbon tax, Charles Lindbergh, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, clean water, combinatorial explosion, computer age, computer vision, congestion charging, congestion pricing, corporate governance, cotton gin, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, data science, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, digital map, driverless car, employer provided health coverage, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, factory automation, Fairchild Semiconductor, falling living standards, Filter Bubble, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane: The New Division of Labor, Freestyle chess, full employment, G4S, game design, general purpose technology, global village, GPS: selective availability, Hans Moravec, happiness index / gross national happiness, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, income per capita, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, informal economy, intangible asset, inventory management, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, Jevons paradox, jimmy wales, job automation, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, law of one price, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mars Rover, mass immigration, means of production, Narrative Science, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, Nicholas Carr, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), pattern recognition, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, post-work, power law, price stability, Productivity paradox, profit maximization, Ralph Nader, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Rodney Brooks, Ronald Reagan, search costs, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, six sigma, Skype, software patent, sovereign wealth fund, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stuxnet, supply-chain management, TaskRabbit, technological singularity, telepresence, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, the long tail, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, total factor productivity, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Vernor Vinge, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, winner-take-all economy, Y2K

Economist Bruce Bartlett, legal scholar Michael Graetz, and others have put together alternatives to the current American tax system that rely heavily on a VAT.22 We think these are valuable contributions to the discussion about how to best pay for government services in the second machine age, and deserve serious consideration. The Peer Economy and Artificial Artificial Intelligence Changing the subsidies and taxes on labor might seem like a short-term solution. After all, isn’t the second machine age defined by relentless automation that will lead to a largely or completely postwork economy? We’ve argued here that in many domains it is. But, as we’ve also hopefully shown, people have skills and abilities that are not yet automated. They may become automatable at some point but this hasn’t started in any serious way thus far, which leads us to believe that it will take a while.

My Boring-Ass Life: The Uncomfortably Candid Diary of Kevin Smith by Kevin Smith

An Inconvenient Truth, back-to-the-land, British Empire, Burning Man, Dr. Strangelove, fake news, fulfillment center, G4S, Kickstarter, mutually assured destruction, post-work, pre–internet, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, Wall-E, Wayback Machine

We talk about a bunch of stuff, including the Poetry Reading even we’re holding up at the house next weekend to benefit Harley’s school’s Fine Arts program. After lunch, we cross the street and go to Kitson’s, this chick store on Robertson. Jen picks up an ‘Award Winning Wife’ t-shirt and an ashtray. Mos calls, and we talk about the Rats cut, and how we should perhaps deliver big chunks to Universal, as there’s a lot of post-work to do to get it presentable (they’ve gotta go back to the negative, re-mix the sound, extend music cues, create new music cues, etc.). Done shopping, Jen and I head cross town to pick up Harley from school. On the ride, Jen and I start talking sex, which evolves (or devolves) into dirty talk. I’m hard and she’s wet, but the kid gets out of school in two minutes.

…

I knew that the arrival of legal adulthood would only up the ante on their campaign to get me out of the five-buck-an-hour convenience store service industry and into a gig that paid better and might finally deliver me from the realm of the per-hour rate into the promised elysium fields of a grown-up career. So with no birthday celebration looming, how did I opt to spend my birthday? Behind the register, slinging smokes. My friends stopped by during my shift, but no post-work plans were made. When the steel shutters were closed at the end of the night, it would also signal the close of my first day as a numerical adult. Around nine at night, my friend and co-worker Vincent Pereira closed up R.S.T. Video for the evening and joined me at Quick Stop, to stock the milk and mop the floors before heading off.

The End of Men: And the Rise of Women by Hanna Rosin

affirmative action, call centre, cognitive dissonance, David Brooks, delayed gratification, edge city, facts on the ground, financial independence, hiring and firing, housing crisis, income inequality, informal economy, job satisfaction, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, meta-analysis, new economy, New Urbanism, Norman Mailer, Northern Rock, post-work, postindustrial economy, purchasing power parity, Results Only Work Environment, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, social intelligence, Stanford prison experiment, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, union organizing, upwardly mobile, white picket fence, women in the workforce, work culture , young professional

Work hours in Korea are the second longest of any advanced nation, after Japan. Office workers typically stay until eight or nine at night, and then are usually expected to go out drinking with their colleagues or clients—the Korean extreme-sport version of bonding and networking. As women have begun flooding the workforce, they have disrupted these elaborate post-work rituals, but they haven’t fundamentally transformed them. The drinking sessions still involve several rounds of high-proof soju, a sweet, vodka-like drink. Employees are asked on applications how many bottles of soju they can down in a session, and the newly ambitious working women feel pressure to keep up with the boys.

Essential: How the Pandemic Transformed the Long Fight for Worker Justice by Jamie K. McCallum

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, American Legislative Exchange Council, Anthropocene, antiwork, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, carbon tax, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, death from overwork, defund the police, deindustrialization, deskilling, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, future of work, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, housing crisis, income inequality, independent contractor, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, job automation, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, lockdown, Loma Prieta earthquake, low-wage service sector, Lyft, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, occupational segregation, post-work, QR code, race to the bottom, remote working, rewilding, ride hailing / ride sharing, side hustle, single-payer health, social distancing, stock buybacks, strikebreaker, subprime mortgage crisis, TaskRabbit, The Great Resignation, the strength of weak ties, trade route, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, women in the workforce, working poor, workplace surveillance , Works Progress Administration, zoonotic diseases

Who holds the power to decide what kinds of labor are designated as skilled or unskilled is an important social question. (It’s tempting to imagine a glorious future when being a landlord or owning stocks is diminished as unskilled labor.) As the seventies became the eighties, workers, skilled or not, relied on an increasingly tattered safety net and weaker institutions like unions to govern their postwork life. The postwar working class had built the closest thing America ever had to shared prosperity, and though they were compensated comparably well, they paid a steep price down the line. As Winant puts it, “the collapse of the industrial core of the economy created social problems that became translated, through the mediation of the welfare state, into the form of health problems.”25 The new working class in healthcare professions is basically dedicated to the task of caring for their forebears from the factories, though it would be incorrect to suggest some kind of symmetry beyond that relationship.

Big Dead Place: Inside the Strange and Menacing World of Antarctica by Nicholas Johnson

Apollo 13, Easter island, intentional community, Joan Didion, job satisfaction, Milgram experiment, Neil Armstrong, Oklahoma City bombing, PalmPilot, post-work, Ronald Reagan, telerobotics, trade route, young professional

A metal machine brought into a warm building sucks up heat so fast that it emanates cold as a fire emanates heat. Fuel gets so cold that a lit match thrown in it won’t ignite it. Pole workers get used to frostnip as McMurdo workers get used to scrapes and bruises. And Polies are also used to scrapes and bruises. This cold, which often depresses Polies to post-work catatonic slothfulness, is without financial compensation. Denver pays by job description, so Polies make no more money than if they worked in McMurdo. Furthermore, Pole has no boondoggles. There is nowhere to go. No trips to ice caves. No trips to see penguins at Cape Royds. No lucky opportunities to help out at Siple Dome or Black Island.

Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry by Helaine Olen

Alan Greenspan, American ideology, asset allocation, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, buy and hold, Cass Sunstein, Credit Default Swap, David Brooks, delayed gratification, diversification, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Elliott wave, en.wikipedia.org, estate planning, financial engineering, financial innovation, Flash crash, game design, greed is good, high net worth, impulse control, income inequality, index fund, John Bogle, Kevin Roose, London Whale, longitudinal study, low interest rates, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, money market fund, mortgage debt, multilevel marketing, oil shock, payday loans, pension reform, Ponzi scheme, post-work, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, quantitative easing, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, random walk, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Stanford marshmallow experiment, stocks for the long run, The 4% rule, too big to fail, transaction costs, Unsafe at Any Speed, upwardly mobile, Vanguard fund, wage slave, women in the workforce, working poor, éminence grise

Only one in five workers over the age of fifty-five has managed to set aside $250,000 or more for their golden years. These are not exactly sums of money that will go far in retirement, especially when you recognize that many experts in the field believe that people need to save up a minimum of $1 million to get by in their post-work lives, a net worth currently achieved by 8 percent of all households. As for that bit about how the 401(k) would encourage the high income to save in individualistic ways? Well, the top 10 percent of households own more than 80 percent of all stock and mutual funds in the United States. If you expand the number to include the top 20 percent of households, that number climbs to more than 90 percent.

Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys' Club of Silicon Valley by Emily Chang

"Margaret Hamilton" Apollo, "Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 4chan, Ada Lovelace, affirmative action, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Andy Rubin, Apollo 11, Apple II, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Benchmark Capital, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Burning Man, California gold rush, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, clean tech, company town, data science, David Brooks, deal flow, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Elon Musk, emotional labour, equal pay for equal work, fail fast, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, game design, gender pay gap, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Grace Hopper, Hacker News, high net worth, Hyperloop, imposter syndrome, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Khan Academy, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, Maui Hawaii, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, meritocracy, meta-analysis, microservices, Parker Conrad, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, post-work, pull request, reality distortion field, Richard Hendricks, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolodex, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, subscription business, Susan Wojcicki, tech billionaire, tech bro, tech worker, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, uber lyft, women in the workforce, Zenefits

PARENTHOOD AND THE PRESSURE TO KEEP UP Katharine Zaleski had just given birth to her first daughter and had just launched her first start-up, PowerToFly, which aims to find women tech jobs that offer flexible working arrangements, when she publicly apologized to all the moms she had ever worked with. In a Fortune article, Zaleski admitted that in her many years running digital products at the Huffington Post and the Washington Post, she had “silently slandered” women with kids by negatively judging their job performance. She rolled her eyes when they couldn’t make post-work drinks, repeatedly questioned their commitment, scheduled last-minute meetings at 4:30 p.m., just when parents might be wrapping up so they could go pick up their kids, and stayed at work late simply to prove she was more dedicated to the job. Some mothers would come in early and leave early, doing more work after dinner, but Zaleski wouldn’t value their after-hours contributions.

Zero to Sold: How to Start, Run, and Sell a Bootstrapped Business by Arvid Kahl

business logic, business process, centre right, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cognitive load, content marketing, continuous integration, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, domain-specific language, financial independence, functional programming, Google Chrome, hockey-stick growth, if you build it, they will come, information asymmetry, information retrieval, inventory management, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Kanban, Kubernetes, machine readable, minimum viable product, Network effects, performance metric, post-work, premature optimization, risk tolerance, Ruby on Rails, sentiment analysis, side hustle, Silicon Valley, single source of truth, software as a service, solopreneur, source of truth, statistical model, subscription business, sunk-cost fallacy, supply-chain management, the long tail, trickle-down economics, value engineering, web application

If your customers have Excel files and expect the result of using your solution to be a fully-featured one-file PDF with reports and calculations, you shouldn't ask them to supply you with CSV files and product Word documents. Envision a solution that works with the inputs and outputs that your customers will realistically have. Maybe your solution is too complicated. Often, this is related to the inputs and outputs and the necessary pre- and post-work that goes into making them compatible with the rest of the workflow your customers have. Other times, your solution involves steps that your customers can't envision taking, either because they don't have the knowledge or permission. In your solution validation calls, make sure that your prospect can take every action they need to use your solution effectively.

Dirty Genes: A Breakthrough Program to Treat the Root Cause of Illness and Optimize Your Health by Ben Lynch Nd.

23andMe, clean water, double helix, epigenetics, Helicobacter pylori, Indoor air pollution, microbiome, post-work, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI)

Maybe do some push-ups or go up and down a flight or two of stairs. Even better—go outside to get some fresh air. ■Lunch. This is likely your largest meal of the day. —Don’t use electronics. No driving. Eat lunch sitting down, conversing with others. —Chew your food well. —Take your time. Enjoy your meal. ■Postwork. Plan a nonelectronic activity for yourself when you’ve finished work obligations for the day. —Exercise, read, hike, or make progress on a hobby. —Do grocery shopping, laundry, or housecleaning. ■Dinner. Eat based on your activity for the day and how you’re feeling. —Consult the Gene Meal Guide in chapter 13 and eat accordingly.

The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney

crowdsourcing, Isaac Newton, post-work

What the name of the magic trick was that turned Tony Cusack from one kind of man to no man at all. He made the decision but it sat with him for a while, and he ended up driving from one end of the city to the other, smoking, and asking himself who the fuck he was. He picked up Karine at the hospital at clocking-off time and she jumped into the passenger seat with the post-work high she denied and he was addicted to. ‘Hey, baby boy!’ There was an even blanket of mist over the city. Karine shivered. ‘So dark,’ she complained, turning up the heat. ‘It’s like December.’ Out of the corner of his eye he noticed her narrow hers and smile. ‘You’re cranky, are you?’ ‘Not really,’ he said.

In the City of Bikes: The Story of the Amsterdam Cyclist by Pete Jordan

active transport: walking or cycling, bike sharing, business process, car-free, centre right, fixed-gear, German hyperinflation, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, post-work, Suez crisis 1956, urban planning

Eventually the dinking pair cycle straight through an open door into a liquor store. Within a year, I watched more than a hundred Dutch films. When any Netherlander learned this, he or she usually first expressed disbelief and then sympathy, saying this figure was about a hundred more than the number of Dutch films he’d ever seen. I also spent my postwork afternoons sitting and watching the cyclists while carefully tallying any number of their noteworthy characteristics. For example, intrigued by the fact that so many Amsterdammers ate while cycling, I kept track of their tastes. The most popular food item consumed, by far, was apples; they outnumbered the second-place item, ice-cream cones, three-to-one.

Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life by Adam Greenfield

3D printing, Airbnb, algorithmic bias, algorithmic management, AlphaGo, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, bank run, barriers to entry, basic income, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, business intelligence, business process, Californian Ideology, call centre, cellular automata, centralized clearinghouse, centre right, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, circular economy, cloud computing, Cody Wilson, collective bargaining, combinatorial explosion, Computer Numeric Control, computer vision, Conway's Game of Life, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, deep learning, DeepMind, dematerialisation, digital map, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, driverless car, drone strike, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, facts on the ground, fiat currency, fulfillment center, gentrification, global supply chain, global village, Goodhart's law, Google Glasses, Herman Kahn, Ian Bogost, IBM and the Holocaust, industrial robot, informal economy, information retrieval, Internet of things, Jacob Silverman, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Hawkins, job automation, jobs below the API, John Conway, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Perry Barlow, John von Neumann, joint-stock company, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, late capitalism, Leo Hollis, license plate recognition, lifelogging, M-Pesa, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, megacity, megastructure, minimum viable product, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, natural language processing, Network effects, New Urbanism, Nick Bostrom, Occupy movement, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, PalmPilot, Pareto efficiency, pattern recognition, Pearl River Delta, performance metric, Peter Eisenman, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, Ponzi scheme, post scarcity, post-work, printed gun, proprietary trading, RAND corporation, recommendation engine, RFID, rolodex, Rutger Bregman, Satoshi Nakamoto, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, sharing economy, Shenzhen special economic zone , Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart contracts, social intelligence, sorting algorithm, special economic zone, speech recognition, stakhanovite, statistical model, stem cell, technoutopianism, Tesla Model S, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Future of Employment, Tony Fadell, transaction costs, Uber for X, undersea cable, universal basic income, urban planning, urban sprawl, vertical integration, Vitalik Buterin, warehouse robotics, When a measure becomes a target, Whole Earth Review, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce

In some ways, left accelerationism is just a contemporary gloss applied to the visions of total leisure that were developed by the generations immediately preceding, in a few distinct currents. Forerunners like Constant Nieuwenhuys, the French Situationists, and the radical Italian architectural practice Superstudio explored the spatial dimensions of post-work society between the late 1950s and mid-1970s, developing conceptions of what urban environments might look like when more broadly arranged around self-actualization and play, while it was left to second-wave feminist thought to explore the social dimensions of full automation. Shulamith Firestone organizes much of the later argument of her 1970 The Dialectic of Sex on “machines that … surpass man in original thinking or problem-solving,” “the abolition of the labor force itself under a cybernetic socialism, the radical restructuring of the economy to make ‘work,’ i.e. wage labor, no longer necessary,” and ultimately the creation of a society in which “both adults and children could indulge in serious ‘play’ as much as they wanted.”16 And automated production, of course, furnishes Valerie Solanas one of the hinges of her SCUM Manifesto, with its ever-resonant demand to “overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.”17 But for that last, these themes have recently reemerged to be picked up and developed in the contemporary accelerationist discourse, after a long interval during which utopian thought on the left seemed more captivated by the possibilities of networks than by any catalyzed by automation per se.

Lonely Planet Amsterdam by Lonely Planet

3D printing, Airbnb, bike sharing, David Sedaris, gentrification, haute couture, haute cuisine, post-work, QR code, Silicon Valley, trade route, tulip mania, young professional

Tunes BarCOCKTAIL BAR ( MAP GOOGLE MAP ; www.conservatoriumhotel.com; Conservatorium Hotel, Van Baerlestraat 27; h12.30pm-1am Mon-Thu, to 2am Fri & Sat, to midnight Sun; j2/3/5/12/16 Van Baerlestraat) A small but exceedingly sleek bar inside the stunning Conservatorium Hotel, this has a long transparent bar and wow-factor flower displays to admire while you sample one of its speciality G&Ts, such as a Gin Mare, with orange, basil and fevertree tonic, or Monkey 47, with elderflower and blackberries. There's also a fine cocktail list, with all drinks around the €20 mark. Café BédierBROWN CAFE ( MAP GOOGLE MAP ; %020-662 44 15; Sophialaan 36; hnoon-1am Mon-Thu, to 3am Fri, 11am-3am Sat, to 1am Sun; j2 Amstelveenseweg) Café Bédier is a post-work favourite with a terrace out the front that is often so crowded on a summer evening that it looks like a street party in full swing. Inside it also gets rammed; the leather-upholstered wall panels, modular seats and hardwood floors put a 21st-century twist on classic brown cafe decor. Top-notch bar food, too.

Bullshit Jobs: A Theory by David Graeber

1960s counterculture, active measures, antiwork, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Black Lives Matter, Bretton Woods, Buckminster Fuller, business logic, call centre, classic study, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, data science, David Graeber, do what you love, Donald Trump, emotional labour, equal pay for equal work, full employment, functional programming, global supply chain, High speed trading, hiring and firing, imposter syndrome, independent contractor, informal economy, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, knowledge worker, moral panic, Post-Keynesian economics, post-work, precariat, Rutger Bregman, scientific management, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, single-payer health, software as a service, telemarketer, The Future of Employment, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, universal basic income, unpaid internship, wage slave, wages for housework, women in the workforce, working poor, Works Progress Administration, young professional, éminence grise

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Wall, Richard. Family Forms in Historic Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. London: Unwin Press, 1930. Weeks, Kathi. The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Western, Mark, and Erik Olin Wright. “The Permeability of Class Boundaries to Intergenerational Mobility Among Men in the United States, Canada, Norway, and Sweden.” American Sociological Review 59, no. 4 (August 1994): 606–29. White, R. “Motivation Reconsidered: The Concept of Competence.”

Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone by Sarah Jaffe

Ada Lovelace, air traffic controllers' union, Amazon Mechanical Turk, antiwork, barriers to entry, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, big-box store, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, Boris Johnson, call centre, capitalist realism, Charles Babbage, collective bargaining, coronavirus, COVID-19, deindustrialization, delayed gratification, dematerialisation, desegregation, deskilling, do what you love, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, emotional labour, feminist movement, Ferguson, Missouri, financial independence, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, future of work, gamification, gender pay gap, gentrification, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, Grace Hopper, green new deal, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, immigration reform, informal economy, job automation, job satisfaction, job-hopping, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, late capitalism, lockdown, lone genius, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, mass incarceration, means of production, mini-job, minimum wage unemployment, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, new economy, oil shock, Peter Thiel, post-Fordism, post-work, precariat, profit motive, Rana Plaza, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, school choice, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, tech worker, traumatic brain injury, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, unpaid internship, W. E. B. Du Bois, wages for housework, War on Poverty, WeWork, women in the workforce, work culture , workplace surveillance , Works Progress Administration

Through sharp analyses of the recent history and social contours of each occupation, Jaffe helps us understand the contemporary landscape and provides tools to contest how we are put to work. The result is a marvelously lucid, thoroughly readable, and wonderfully engaging book.” —Kathi Weeks, author of The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries “Sarah Jaffe’s months in the library have built the kind of analysis that you’d find in an institute of advanced study. Her years as a labor reporter have let her see frontlines where others have failed to look. And a lifetime of elegant writing has produced a prose style that pulls you through a book of rare importance.

Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time by James Suzman

agricultural Revolution, AlphaGo, Anthropocene, basic income, biodiversity loss, carbon footprint, clean water, coronavirus, corporate social responsibility, cyber-physical system, David Graeber, death from overwork, deepfake, do-ocracy, double entry bookkeeping, double helix, fake news, financial deregulation, Ford Model T, founder crops, Frederick Winslow Taylor, gentrification, Great Leap Forward, interchangeable parts, invention of agriculture, invention of writing, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, Kibera, Kickstarter, late capitalism, lateral thinking, market bubble, New Urbanism, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, Parkinson's law, Peter Singer: altruism, post-industrial society, post-work, public intellectual, Rubik’s Cube, Schrödinger's Cat, scientific management, sharing economy, social intelligence, spinning jenny, The Future of Employment, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, trickle-down economics, universal basic income, upwardly mobile, urban planning, work culture , zoonotic diseases

Even more importantly, it is now far from certain whether or not the service sector will be able to accommodate all of those whose work will be determined superfluous to requirements by the next tide of automation, whose waves are already licking against the shores of this last refuge of working men and women in the post-industrial age. 15 The New Disease ‘We are being afflicted with a new disease of which some readers may not yet have heard the name, but of which they will hear a great deal in the years to come – namely, technological unemployment,’ warned John Maynard Keynes when describing his post-work utopia. ‘This means unemployment due to our discovery of means of economising the use of labour outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labour,’ he added. It was a sensible clarification for his 1930s audience. People had worried about the possibility of their trades or livelihoods being elbowed out by new technologies and ways of working ever since the Industrial Revolution shifted into second gear.

The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America by Gabriel Winant

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, anti-communist, antiwork, blue-collar work, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, classic study, clean water, collective bargaining, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, deindustrialization, desegregation, deskilling, emotional labour, employer provided health coverage, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ford paid five dollars a day, full employment, future of work, ghettoisation, independent contractor, invisible hand, Kitchen Debate, labor-force participation, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, mandatory minimum, manufacturing employment, mass incarceration, MITM: man-in-the-middle, moral hazard, new economy, New Urbanism, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pink-collar, post-industrial society, post-work, postindustrial economy, price stability, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, the built environment, union organizing, upwardly mobile, urban renewal, vertical integration, War on Poverty, white flight, Wolfgang Streeck, women in the workforce, work culture , working poor

For the first view, see Moishe Postone, Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Michael Denning, “Wageless Life,” New Left Review 66 (November–December 2010), 79–97; Kathi Weeks, The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Post-Work Imaginaries (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011); Aaron Benanav, “Automation and the Future of Work—1,” New Left Review 119 (September–October 2019), 5–38; Aaron Benanav, “Automation and the Future of Work—2,” New Left Review 120 (November–December 2019), 117–146. For more mainstream approaches, see Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (New York: Norton, 2014); Richard Baldwin, The Globotics Upheaval: Globalization, Robotics, and the Future of Work (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).

Nothing Personal: My Secret Life in the Dating App Inferno by Nancy Jo Sales

Airbnb, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Cambridge Analytica, conceptual framework, coronavirus, COVID-19, digital divide, Donald Trump, double helix, East Village, emotional labour, fake news, feminist movement, gamification, gender pay gap, gentrification, global pandemic, helicopter parent, Jaron Lanier, Jeffrey Epstein, labor-force participation, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, moral panic, New Urbanism, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, PalmPilot, post-work, Robert Durst, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, tech bro, techlash, TikTok, women in the workforce, young professional

If he had seemed mysterious before, now he just seemed wistful and low. When we got into bed, it was if he wanted to make love to disappear in me. He was drinking more than ever. I didn’t know what to do to help him. There was no time to talk. I was still preoccupied with finishing up my film—doing the color correction and sound mixing with the guys at Postworks, working on the publicity and other things—and he seemed as busy as ever with his job at the fashion house. He’d been promoted to a managerial position, overseeing a crew. But he still seemed dissatisfied. And then, in the summer of 2018, he texted me saying he was moving to Oregon. He said he knew some “fellers” out there who made good money working construction, and they had invited him to come out and live with them.

Florence & Tuscany by Lonely Planet

Bonfire of the Vanities, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, centre right, European colonialism, haute couture, Kickstarter, period drama, Pier Paolo Pasolini, post-work, retail therapy, sensible shoes, Skype, trade route, urban planning

When to Eat » Colazione (breakfast) Breakfast for most Tuscans is a quick dash into a bar or cafe for a short sharp espresso and cornetto (Italian croissant) or brioche (breakfast pastry) balanced on the saucer standing at the bar. » Pranzo (lunch) Traditionally, the main meal of the day, though many Tuscans now tend to share the main family meal in the evening. Many businesses close for la pausa (afternoon break). Standard restaurant times are noon or 12.30pm to 2.30pm, though most locals don’t lunch before 1pm. » Aperitivo (aperitif) Fabulously popular in Florence, that all-essential post-work, early-evening drink can take place any time between 5pm and 10pm when the price of your cocktail (€8 to €10 in Florence) includes an eat-yourself-silly buffet of nibbles, finger foods, even salads, pasta and so on. » Apericena This growing trend among 20- and 30-something Florentines sees that copious aperitivo buffet double as cena (dinner). » Cena (dinner) Traditionally, dinner is lighter than lunch though still a main meal.

Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis by Jared Diamond

anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, Berlin Wall, British Empire, California gold rush, carbon tax, clean water, correlation coefficient, cuban missile crisis, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Gini coefficient, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, interchangeable parts, invention of writing, Jeff Bezos, low interest rates, medical malpractice, mutually assured destruction, Nelson Mandela, Nick Bostrom, nuclear winter, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, post-work, purchasing power parity, rising living standards, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, The Spirit Level, Timothy McVeigh, traffic fines, transcontinental railway, women in the workforce, World Values Survey

Japan’s male/female pay differential for full-time employees is the third highest (exceeded only by South Korea and Estonia) among 35 rich industrial countries. A Japanese woman employee is paid on average only 73% of a man employee at the same level, compared to 85% for the average rich industrial country, ranging up to 94% for New Zealand. Work obstacles for women include the long work hours, the expectation of post-work employee socializing, and the problem of who will take care of the children if a working mother is expected to stay out socializing, and if her husband is also unavailable or unwilling. Child care is a big problem for working Japanese mothers. On paper, Japanese law guarantees women four weeks of maternity leave before and eight weeks after childbirth; some Japanese men are also entitled to paternity leave; and a 1992 law entitles parents to take one whole year of unpaid leave to raise a child if they so choose.

Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire by Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, air traffic controllers' union, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, classic study, conceptual framework, continuation of politics by other means, David Graeber, Defenestration of Prague, deskilling, disinformation, emotional labour, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, friendly fire, global village, Great Leap Forward, Howard Rheingold, Howard Zinn, illegal immigration, Joseph Schumpeter, land reform, land tenure, late capitalism, liberation theology, means of production, military-industrial complex, Naomi Klein, new economy, Paul Samuelson, Pier Paolo Pasolini, post-Fordism, post-work, private military company, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, reserve currency, Richard Stallman, Slavoj Žižek, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Chicago School, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Tobin tax, transaction costs, union organizing, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus

See also André Gorz, Reclaiming Work: Beyond the Wage-Based Society, trans. Chris Turner (Cambridge: Polity, 1999); André Gorz, L’immatériel (Paris: Galilée, 2003); Ulrich Beck, The Brave New World of Work (Cambridge: Polity, 2000); Edoardo Matarazzo Suplicy, Renda de cidadania (São Paulo: Cortez, 2002); and Stanley Aronowitz and Jonathan Cutler, eds., Post-Work (New York: Routledge, 1998). 63 On “social-movement unionism,” see Kim Moody, Workers in a Lean World: Unions in the International Economy (London: Verso, 1997). 64 For more information on the strikes of part-time workers and “intérimaires,” see the Web site of the group “Les précaires associés de Paris,” http://pap.ouvaton.org. 65 Unfortunately, twentieth-century readings of Dostoyevsky’s novel have been dominated and impoverished by its relation to Russian communism.

Lonely Planet Florence & Tuscany by Lonely Planet, Virginia Maxwell, Nicola Williams

Bonfire of the Vanities, call centre, car-free, carbon footprint, centre right, Costa Concordia, G4S, haute couture, Kickstarter, period drama, post-work, retail therapy, Skype, trade route

BEST COOKING CLASSES » Pepenero (Click here) » Scuola di Arte Culnaria Cordon Bleu (Click here) » In Tavola (Click here) When to Eat » Colazione (breakfast) is a quick dash into a bar or cafe for a short sharp espresso and cornetto (croissant) or brioche (pastry) standing at the bar. » Pranzo (lunch) is traditionally the main meal of the day, though Tuscans now tend to share the main family meal in the evening. Standard restaurant times are noon or 12.30pm to 2.30pm; locals don’t lunch before 1pm. » Aperitivo (aperitif) is the all-essential post-work, early-evening drink that takes place any time between 5pm and 10pm when the price of your cocktail (€8 to €10 in Florence) includes a copious buffet of nibbles, finger foods, or even salads, pasta and so on. » Cena (dinner) has traditionally been lighter than lunch. The traditional Tuscan belt-busting, five-course whammy only happens on Sunday and feast days.

Lonely Planet Southern Italy by Lonely Planet

Airbnb, car-free, carbon footprint, centre right, clean water, Google Earth, Kickstarter, Kinder Surprise, land reform, low cost airline, mass immigration, Murano, Venice glass, Pier Paolo Pasolini, place-making, post-work, Skype, starchitect, urban decay, urban sprawl, women in the workforce

Traditionally the main meal of the day, lunch usually consists of a primo (first course), secondo (second course) and dolce (dessert). Standard restaurant times are noon to 3pm, though most locals don’t lunch before 1pm. Aperitivo Especially popular in larger cities like Naples, Palermo and Catania, post-work drinks usually take place between 7pm and 9pm, when the price of your drink includes complimentary savoury snacks. Cena (dinner) Traditionally a little lighter than lunch, though still a main meal. Standard restaurant times are 7.30pm to around 11pm, though many southern Italians don’t sit down to dinner until 9pm or even later.

Lonely Planet Iceland (Travel Guide) by Lonely Planet, Carolyn Bain, Alexis Averbuck

Airbnb, banking crisis, car-free, carbon footprint, cashless society, centre right, DeepMind, European colonialism, Eyjafjallajökull, food miles, Kickstarter, low cost airline, megaproject, Mikhail Gorbachev, New Urbanism, post-work, presumed consent, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, undersea cable

HressingarskálinnPUB ( MAP GOOGLE MAP ; www.hresso.is; Austurstræti 20; h9am-1am Sun-Thu, 10am-4.30am Fri & Sat; W) Known as Hressó, this large cafe-bar serves a diverse menu until 10pm (everything from porridge to plokkfiskur; mains Ikr1700 to Ikr4500), then at weekends it loses its civilised veneer and concentrates on drinks and dancing. DJs offer pop and rock Thursday through Saturday. BastBAR ( MAP GOOGLE MAP ; %519 7579; www.bast.is; Hverfisgata 20; h11am-midnight Mon-Wed, to 1am Thu-Sat, to 8pm Sun) A young, happy post-work crowd fills this warehouse-like space hosting good DJs. LavabarinnCLUB ( MAP GOOGLE MAP ; Lækjargata 6; h5pm-1am Thu, to 4.30am Fri & Sat) DJs get this former illegal gentlemen's club pumping with house, R&B, electronica and pop. English PubPUB (Enski Barinn; MAP GOOGLE MAP ; www.enskibarinn.is; Austerstræti 12a; hnoon-1am Sun-Thu, to 4.30am Fri & Sat) Reliable pub for catching football matches. 3Entertainment The vibrant Reykjavík live-music scene is ever-changing.

Sweden by Becky Ohlsen

accounting loophole / creative accounting, car-free, centre right, clean water, financial independence, glass ceiling, haute couture, Kickstarter, low cost airline, mass immigration, New Urbanism, period drama, place-making, post-work, retail therapy, starchitect, the built environment, white picket fence

Pappa Grappa Bar & Trattorian (18 00 14; Gamla Rådstugugatan 26-28; mains Skr120-255; 6pm-late Mon-Sat, pizzeria also open Sun) Gobble up a brilliant wood-fired pizza in the pizzeria, or slip into the vaulted restaurant for scrumptious antipasto and meat and fish mains. Established by an Italian ballroom dancing champion, there’s also an on-site deli for take-home treats. Favourite post-work drinking spots include cellar pub Stopet (10 07 40; Gamla Torget) and nearby Pub Wasa (18 26 05; Gamla Rådstugugatan). The Bishop’s Arms (36 41 20; Tyska Torget 2), at the Grand Hotel, is a good English-style pub with a great river view. The blocks between Drottninggatan and Olai Kyrkogata contain shopping centres that are packed with chain stores and supermarkets.

Frommer's San Francisco 2012 by Matthew Poole, Erika Lenkert, Kristin Luna

airport security, Albert Einstein, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Blue Bottle Coffee, California gold rush, car-free, centre right, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, El Camino Real, gentrification, glass ceiling, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, high-speed rail, Loma Prieta earthquake, machine readable, Mason jar, Maui Hawaii, McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit, off-the-grid, place-making, Port of Oakland, post-work, San Francisco homelessness, sensible shoes, Silicon Valley, South of Market, San Francisco, Torches of Freedom, transcontinental railway, urban renewal, Works Progress Administration, young professional

Le Colonial ★ VIETNAMESE Viet-chic environs and quality French Vietnamese food make this an excellent choice for folks who want to nosh at one of the sexiest restaurants in town. Picture slowly spinning ceiling fans, tropical plants, rattan furniture, and French colonial decor. The upstairs lounge (which opens at 4:30pm) is where romance reigns, with cozy couches, seductive surroundings, and a well-dressed cocktail crowd of post-work professionals who nosh on coconut-crusted crab cakes and Vietnamese spring rolls. In the tiled downstairs dining room and along the stunning heated front patio, guests savor the vibrant flavors of coconut curry with black tiger prawns, mangos, eggplant, and Asian basil and tender wok-seared beef tenderloin with watercress onion salad. 20 Cosmo Place (off Taylor St., btw.

The Rough Guide to Jamaica by Thomas, Polly,Henzell, Laura.,Coates, Rob.,Vaitilingam, Adam.

buttonwood tree, call centre, Caribbean Basin Initiative, centre right, colonial rule, computer age, ghettoisation, jitney, John Gilmore, Kickstarter, post-work, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, sustainable-tourism, trade route

Call ahead for details of special events. Mingles Courtleigh Hotel, 85 Knutsford Blvd T929 9000. Indoor and outdoor sections of this in-hotel nightclub provide pleasant settings for a drink during the week. Peppers 31 Upper Waterloo Rd. Late-opening and permanently popular outdoor bar that pulls in post-work drinkers and then younger clubbers, who pack out the outdoor dancefloor. There’s a huge line of pool tables, and inexpensive Jamaican food is available. Especially good every other Saturday night when the bar hosts Kingston’s best Latin party. Pure Trinidad Terrace, in the heart of New Kingston. Modern, sophisticated and uber-trendy, Pure is the first lounge to open in Kingston and is a perfect spot for early evening cocktails.

Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol by Iain Gately

barriers to entry, British Empire, California gold rush, corporate raider, Day of the Dead, delayed gratification, Deng Xiaoping, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, Fellow of the Royal Society, gentleman farmer, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Haight Ashbury, Hernando de Soto, imperial preference, invisible hand, joint-stock company, Jones Act, Louis Pasteur, megacity, music of the spheres, Norman Mailer, Peace of Westphalia, post-work, refrigerator car, Ronald Reagan, South Sea Bubble, spice trade, strikebreaker, the scientific method, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, traveling salesman, Upton Sinclair, V2 rocket, vertical integration, working poor

The Japanese divided business into two parts: “dry” relations, i.e., meetings during office hours; and mizu shobai, or the “water trade,” which took place at night in bars. For the dry portion of each working day, salarymen maintained the ancient ethos of seniority through age, and juniors were expected to refrain from passing an opinion. However, at postwork drinking sessions, after a single drink, the same subordinates were deemed to be “drunk” and given license to speak their minds. This convention allowed ideas to flow between different levels of staff that might otherwise have been stifled by tradition. Therefore, in order to make an impression, an aspiring salaryman was required to drink and to be theoretically, if not actually, drunk most evenings.

Lonely Planet London by Lonely Planet

Boris Johnson, British Empire, car-free, carbon footprint, centre right, Charles Babbage, congestion charging, Crossrail, death from overwork, discovery of the americas, Dr. Strangelove, East Village, Easter island, Edward Jenner, Etonian, financial independence, gentrification, haute couture, haute cuisine, Isaac Newton, John Snow's cholera map, low cost airline, Mahatma Gandhi, market design, place-making, post-work, Russell Brand, Skype, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, urban renewal, Winter of Discontent

The Pub The pub (public house) is at the heart of London’s existence and is one of the capital’s great social levellers. Virtually every Londoner has a ‘local’ and looking for your own is one of the highlights of any visit to the capital. Pubs in central London are mostly drinking dens, busy from 5pm onwards with the postwork crowd during the week and revellers at weekends. But in more residential areas in East, South, West and North London, pubs come into their own at weekends, when long lunches turn into afternoons and groups of friends settle in for the night. Many also run popular quizzes on week nights. Ale on tap NAKI KOUYIOUMTZIS/PHOTOLIBRARY © You’ll be able to order almost anything you like in a pub, from beer to wine, soft drinks, spirit and mixer (whisky and coke etc) and sometimes hot drinks too.

Frommer's New Mexico by Lesley S. King

Albert Einstein, clean water, company town, Day of the Dead, El Camino Real, machine readable, off-the-grid, place-making, post-work, quantum cryptography, Ronald Reagan, SpaceShipOne, sustainable-tourism, trade route, Virgin Galactic, X Prize

Lunch also brings more formal dishes such as a grilled Atlantic salmon with grilled vegetables and mango salsa. At dinner, the prime rib is a big hit, as is the filet mignon, both served with a potato and vegetable. For dessert, try the chocolate pot. The bar here romps during happy hour, when the booths fill up, martinis nearly overflow, and reasonably priced menu items sate postwork appetites. 7 SANTA FE Mexico, he grew up in Santa Fe, where he started his career as a dishwasher. After formal training, he became executive chef at some of the city’s finest restaurants. Finally at his own eatery, he serves innovative flavors often utilizing chile peppers and local, seasonal ingredients.

The Story of Work: A New History of Humankind by Jan Lucassen

3D printing, 8-hour work day, affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, anti-work, antiwork, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, basic income, Berlin Wall, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Charles Babbage, collective bargaining, Columbian Exchange, commoditize, computer age, coronavirus, COVID-19, demographic transition, deskilling, discovery of the americas, domestication of the camel, Easter island, European colonialism, factory automation, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fixed income, Ford Model T, founder crops, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, future of work, Great Leap Forward, hiring and firing, income inequality, income per capita, informal economy, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, joint-stock company, knowledge economy, labour mobility, land tenure, long peace, mass immigration, means of production, megastructure, minimum wage unemployment, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, new economy, New Urbanism, out of africa, pension reform, phenotype, post-work, precariat, price stability, public intellectual, reshoring, scientific management, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, stakhanovite, tacit knowledge, Thales of Miletus, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, two and twenty, universal basic income, W. E. B. Du Bois, women in the workforce, working poor

Weber, Max. ‘Agrarverhältnisse im Altertum’, in Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1909), pp. 52–188. Weber, Max. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, edited by Johannes Winckelman (Tübingen: Mohr, 1976). Weeks, Kathi. The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries (Durham, NC/London: Duke UP, 2011). Weil, David. The Fissured Workplace: Why Work Became So Bad for So Many and What Can be Done to Improve it (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2014). Weill, Claudie. L’Internationale et l’Autre: Les Relations interethniques dans la IIe Internationale (discussions et débats) (Paris: Arcantère, 1987).

France (Lonely Planet, 8th Edition) by Nicola Williams

active transport: walking or cycling, back-to-the-land, bike sharing, British Empire, car-free, carbon footprint, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, Columbine, company town, double helix, flag carrier, gentrification, Guggenheim Bilbao, haute couture, haute cuisine, Henri Poincaré, Herbert Marcuse, high-speed rail, Honoré de Balzac, illegal immigration, industrial robot, information trail, Jacquard loom, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Kickstarter, Louis Blériot, Louis Pasteur, low cost airline, Mahatma Gandhi, means of production, Murano, Venice glass, pension reform, post-work, QWERTY keyboard, ride hailing / ride sharing, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, Skype, Sloane Ranger, Suez canal 1869, supervolcano, three-masted sailing ship, trade route, urban renewal, urban sprawl, V2 rocket

Barberousse (Map; 04 72 00 80 53; 18 rue Terrailles, 1er; Hôtel de Ville; 7pm-3am Tue-Sat) The busiest time of day at this student-loved shooter bar, one of a handful of nightlife venues on back-alley rue Terrailles, is between 8pm and 10pm when its flavoured rums are downed sur le pouce (on the cheap). Cinnamon, chestnut, violet or rhubarb and caramel…the choice is exotic. Ké Pêcherie (Map; 04 78 28 26 25; quai de la Pêcherie, 1er; Hôtel de Ville; 7am-1.30am) Trendy with an older set, this Saône-side space spans the whole spectrum of drinking: daytime café, late-afternoon lounge bar, postwork aperitif and heaving music venue. Andy Walha (Map; 04 78 30 54 48; 29 rue de l’Arbre Sec, 1er; Hôtel de Ville; 11am-3am) Warhol inspires the pop-art decor at this cocktail bar where a beautiful set quaffs champagne, cocktails and elderflower cordial well past midnight. Food too: smoked salmon, foie gras (fattened liver) and gourmet half- or full-sized mixed platters (€14/26).

…

Montparnasse The most popular places to while away the hours over a drink or coffee in Montparnasse are large café-restaurants like La Coupole and Le Dôme on bd du Montparnasse. Cubana Café (Map; 01 40 46 80 81; 47 rue Vavin, 6e; Vavin; 11am-3am Sun-Wed, 11am-5am Thu-Sat) The perfect place to have cocktails and tapas (€3.70 to €7.10) before carrying on to the clubs of Montparnasse. A post-work crowd sinks into the comfy leather armchairs beneath oil paintings of everyday life in Cuba. Le Rosebud (Map; 01 43 35 38 54; 11bis rue Delambre, 14e; Edgar Quinet or Vavin; 7pm-2am) Like the sleigh of that name in Citizen Kane, Rosebud harkens to the past. Enjoy an expertly mixed champagne cocktail or whisky sour amid the quiet elegance of polished wood and aged leather.

The Rough Guide to New York City by Martin Dunford

Anton Chekhov, Berlin Wall, Bonfire of the Vanities, Buckminster Fuller, buttonwood tree, car-free, Charles Lindbergh, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, clean water, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, congestion pricing, Cornelius Vanderbilt, David Sedaris, desegregation, Donald Trump, East Village, Edward Thorp, Elisha Otis, Exxon Valdez, Frank Gehry, General Motors Futurama, gentrification, glass ceiling, haute cuisine, illegal immigration, Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford, machine readable, market bubble, Michael Milken, Multics, Norman Mailer, paper trading, post-work, rent stabilization, retail therapy, Saturday Night Live, subprime mortgage crisis, sustainable-tourism, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the High Line, transcontinental railway, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, upwardly mobile, urban decay, urban planning, urban renewal, white flight, Yogi Berra, young professional

Yes, that Stonewall, site of the seminal 1969 riot, mostly refurbished and flying the pride flag like they own it – which, one could say, they do. Bingo, DJs, drag variety shows, and comedy nights; call ahead to see what’s on. Therapy 348 W 52nd St, between Eighth and Ninth aves T 212/397-1700. Sleek bar/lounge geared to Midtowners and the post-work drinking crowd. DJ sets (weekends) and drag shows, washed down with signature cocktails that keep up the psychological theme like the Gender Bender (citron vodka, lemonade, and watermelon juice) and the Anorexic (rum and diet Red Bull in a Splenda-rimmed glass). Vlada 331 W 51st St, between Eighth and Ninth aves T 212/974-8030.

The Rough Guide to New York City by Rough Guides

3D printing, Airbnb, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, bike sharing, Blue Bottle Coffee, Bonfire of the Vanities, Broken windows theory, Buckminster Fuller, buttonwood tree, car-free, centre right, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, clean water, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, congestion pricing, Cornelius Vanderbilt, crack epidemic, David Sedaris, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, East Village, Edward Thorp, Elisha Otis, Exxon Valdez, Frank Gehry, General Motors Futurama, gentrification, glass ceiling, greed is good, haute couture, haute cuisine, Howard Zinn, illegal immigration, index fund, it's over 9,000, Jane Jacobs, junk bonds, Kickstarter, Lewis Mumford, Lyft, machine readable, Nelson Mandela, Norman Mailer, paper trading, Ponzi scheme, post-work, pre–internet, rent stabilization, ride hailing / ride sharing, Saturday Night Live, Scaled Composites, starchitect, subprime mortgage crisis, sustainable-tourism, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the High Line, transcontinental railway, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, uber lyft, upwardly mobile, urban decay, urban planning, urban renewal, white flight, Works Progress Administration, Yogi Berra, young professional

Bingo, DJs, drag variety shows, male dancers and lesbian nights; call or check the website to see what’s on. Daily 2pm–4am. Therapy 348 W 52nd St, between Eighth and Ninth aves 212 397 1700, therapy-nyc.com; subway C, E to 50th St; map. Sleek bi-level bar/lounge geared to Midtowners and the post-work drinking crowd. DJ sets, drag shows and theme nights make up the weekly calendar; wash down bar snacks while imbibing signature cocktails that keep up the psychological motif like the Freudian Sip (citron vodka, lemonade and fresh ginger) and the Psychotic Episode (suffice to say it includes banana liqueur).

Germany Travel Guide by Lonely Planet

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, bank run, Berlin Wall, bike sharing, Boeing 747, British Empire, call centre, capitalist realism, car-free, carbon footprint, centre right, company town, double helix, Dr. Strangelove, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Frank Gehry, gentrification, glass ceiling, Gregor Mendel, haute couture, haute cuisine, high-speed rail, Honoré de Balzac, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johannes Kepler, Kickstarter, low cost airline, messenger bag, Mikhail Gorbachev, Neil Armstrong, New Urbanism, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Eisenman, post-work, Prenzlauer Berg, retail therapy, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, sensible shoes, Skype, starchitect, three-masted sailing ship, trade route, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban renewal, V2 rocket, white picket fence

Hops & Barley PUB Offline map Google map (2936 7534; Wühlischstrasse 40; Warschauer Strasse, Warschauer Strasse) Conversation flows as freely as the unfiltered pilsner, malty dunkel (dark), fruity weizen (wheat) and potent cider produced right at this congenial microbrewery inside a former butcher’s shop. Fellow beer lovers range from skinny-jean hipsters to suits swilling post-work pints among ceramic-tiled walls and shiny copper vats. Half a litre is €3.10. Monster Ronson’s Ichiban Karaoke Offline map Google map Ronson’s Ichiban Karaoke KARAOKE (8975 1327; www.karaokemonster.com; Warschauer Strasse 34; Warschauer Strasse, Warschauer Strasse) Knock back a couple of brewskis if you need to loosen your nerves before belting out your best Britney or Lady Gaga at this mad, great karaoke joint.

The Defence of the Realm by Christopher Andrew

Able Archer 83, active measures, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, Bletchley Park, Boeing 747, British Empire, classic study, Clive Stafford Smith, collective bargaining, credit crunch, cuban missile crisis, Desert Island Discs, disinformation, Etonian, Fall of the Berlin Wall, false flag, G4S, glass ceiling, illegal immigration, information security, job satisfaction, large denomination, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, Mahatma Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, Neil Kinnock, North Sea oil, operational security, post-work, Red Clydeside, Robert Hanssen: Double agent, Ronald Reagan, sexual politics, strikebreaker, Suez crisis 1956, Torches of Freedom, traveling salesman, union organizing, uranium enrichment, Vladimir Vetrov: Farewell Dossier, Winter of Discontent, work culture

Germany by Andrea Schulte-Peevers

Albert Einstein, bank run, Berlin Wall, Boeing 747, call centre, capitalist realism, car-free, carbon footprint, centre right, company town, computer age, credit crunch, Donald Trump, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Frank Gehry, gentrification, glass ceiling, Google Earth, haute couture, haute cuisine, Honoré de Balzac, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johannes Kepler, Kickstarter, low cost airline, messenger bag, Mikhail Gorbachev, New Urbanism, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Eisenman, place-making, post-work, Prenzlauer Berg, retail therapy, ride hailing / ride sharing, sensible shoes, Skype, trade route, urban planning, urban renewal, V2 rocket, white picket fence

Pop Idol wannabes can pick from thousands of songs and hit the stage; shy types may prefer renting a private party room (per hour €12). Hops & Barley (Map; 2936 7534; Wühlischstrasse 38) Conversation flows as freely as the beer (and cider) produced right at this congenial microbrewery. Share a table with low-key locals swilling postwork pints and munching rustic Treberbrot, a hearty bread made with a natural by-product from the brewing process. Return to beginning of chapter Charlottenburg & Schöneberg Galerie Bremer (Map; 881 4908; Fasanenstrasse 37; from 8pm Mon-Sat) Entering this tiny bar tucked behind an art gallery feels like slipping into a swanky ’20s speakeasy.

Frommer's California 2009 by Matthew Poole, Harry Basch, Mark Hiss, Erika Lenkert

airport security, Asilomar, Bay Area Rapid Transit, California gold rush, call centre, car-free, Charles Lindbergh, clean water, Columbine, Donald Trump, Donner party, East Village, El Camino Real, European colonialism, Frank Gehry, gentleman farmer, gentrification, Golden Gate Park, Haight Ashbury, high-speed rail, housing crisis, indoor plumbing, Joan Didion, machine readable, Mason jar, mass immigration, Maui Hawaii, post-work, retail therapy, rolling blackouts, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, Skype, South of Market, San Francisco, sustainable-tourism, transcontinental railway, urban sprawl, white picket fence, Works Progress Administration, Y Combinator

Finds VIETNAMESE Viet-chic envir ons—picture slo wly spinning Le C olonial ceiling fans, tr opical plants, rattan furnitur e, and F rench Colonial decor—and quality French Vietnamese food make this an ex cellent choice for folks who want to nosh at one of the sexiest r estaurants in town. The upstairs lounge (which opens at 4:30pm) is wher e romance r eigns, with cozy couches, seductiv e surr oundings, and a w ell-dressed cocktail crowd of post-work professionals who nosh on coconut-crusted crab cakes and Vietnamese spring rolls. In the tiled downstairs dining room and along the stunning heated front patio, guests savor the vibrant flavors of coconut curry with black tiger prawns, mangos, eggplant, and Asian basil and tender wok-seared beef tenderloin with watercress onion salad. 20 Cosmo Place (off Taylor St., btw.

Bookkeeping the Easy Way by Wallace W. Kravitz

double entry bookkeeping, information retrieval, post-work, profit motive

Know Your Vocabulary Balance Cross referencing Footings In balance Posting Trial balance < previous page page_48 next page > < previous page page_49 next page > Page 49 Questions 1. What steps are followed in posting journal entries? 2. On which side of accounts are balances normally found? 3. a) What does the journal posting refer to? b) What does the account posting refer to? 4. A bookkeeping clerk resumes his/her posting work after returning from lunch. How will he/she know where to resume? 5. What does a trial balance ''in balance" prove? Problems 7-1 After each account is posted, enter the account number in the posting reference column. < previous page page_49 next page > < previous page page_50 next page > Page 50 (A partial ledger is shown here

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Steps in posting journal entries: (1) For the account debited, enter the amount on the debit side of the account. (2) Enter the year, month, and day in the date column (do not repeat the year or month). (3) Enter the journal page number in the posting reference column of the account. (4) Enter the account number in the posting reference column of the journal. 2. Account balances are normally found on the side the account increases. 3. (a) Journal posting refers to the account. (b) Account posting refers to the journal page. 4. A clerk resumes posting work after the last account posting indicated in the journal. 5. A trial balance ''in balance" proves that debit and credit column totals are correct. < previous page page_241 next page > < previous page page_242 next page > Page 242 Problems < previous page page_242 next page > < previous page page_243 next page > Page 243 7-2 (1) and (2) Cash 2,020.00 Equipment 3,965.00 Supplies 60.00 Korn, Drawing 500.00 Advertising Expense 100.00 Utilities Expense 50.00 Total 6,695.00 Hi-Tech 1,925.00 Comp-Software 465.00 Korn, Capital 3,060.00 Services Income 1,245.00 Total 6,695.00 < previous page page_243 next page > < previous page page_244 next page > Page 244 < previous page page_244 next page > < previous page page_245 next page > Page 245 7-3 (3) Cash 1,275.00 Equipment 1,642.50 Supplies 355.00 Schaffer, Drawing 300.00 Miscellaneous Expense Total Jessup Bank Schaffer, Capital Fee Income Total Think It Over 65.00 3,637.50 825.00 2,372.50 440.00 3,637.50 Fowler should retrace the steps in the procedure: 1) check trial balance column totals 2) verify that accounts are entered in proper debit or credit column 3) verify correct account balances 4) check posting procedure for each entry 5) verify proper journal entry Jacobs neglected to journalize and post an entry for the same amount$50thus not affecting the equality of debits and credits in the trial balance.

The Left Case Against the EU by Costas Lapavitsas

anti-work, antiwork, banking crisis, Bretton Woods, capital controls, central bank independence, collective bargaining, declining real wages, eurozone crisis, financial engineering, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, global reserve currency, hiring and firing, low interest rates, machine translation, neoliberal agenda, offshore financial centre, post-work, price stability, quantitative easing, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Washington Consensus, Wolfgang Streeck

Ruoff (2016) shows the rapid rise of precarious work and the decline of stable employment after the Hartz Reforms. The rapid increase in low-paid employment already from the mid-1990s is noted by Hassel (2014). Benassi and Dorigatti (2015) document the relentless rise of agency work at the heart of the German industrial complex, eliciting the response of IG Metall. Posted work in the construction sector (i.e. work undertaken by employees sent by their employers to another EU member state) has also grown enormously (see Wagner 2015). The figures can be striking: thus Bispinck and Schulten (2011), drawing on the German Federal Employment Agency, report that ‘as a rule of thumb’ 40% of the total labour force can be considered as having an ‘atypical’ employment relationship. 13.

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Vavouras, I. 2013. Economic Policy (in Greek), Athens: Papazisis. Verdun, A. 1999. ‘The Role of the Delors Committee in the Creation of EMU: An Epistemic Community?’, Journal of European Public Policy, 6(2): 308–28. Wagner, I. 2015. ‘Rule Enactment in a Pan-European Labour Market: Transnational Posted Work in the German Construction Sector’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 53(4): 692–710. Webber, D. 2014. ‘How Likely Is It That the European Union Will Disintegrate? A Critical Analysis of Competing Theoretical Perspectives’, European Journal of International Relations, 20(2): 341–65. Weiler, J.H.H. 2012.

Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising by Ryan Holiday

Aaron Swartz, Airbnb, data science, growth hacking, Hacker News, iterative process, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, Marc Andreessen, market design, minimum viable product, Multics, Paul Graham, pets.com, post-work, Silicon Valley, slashdot, Steve Wozniak, Travis Kalanick

His results were equally stunning: 2,765,023 downloads, 276,409 page visits, 166,638 iTunes impressions, 52,151 Alex Day website impressions, and 5,000 new e-mail sign-ups for Alex’s mailing list. And we know what worked and what didn’t because we pored over the analytics. We looked at which blog posts worked and which didn’t, which drove traffic and which didn’t, what drove spikes in Amazon rank and what didn’t. This information will be crucial in subsequent launches and, of course, with my other clients. The Future of Marketing If you know the Way broadly you will see it in everything. —Musashi If something as old-school as publishing can be invigorated by the growth hacker approach, what else can?

Getting Real by Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson, Matthew Linderman, 37 Signals

call centre, David Heinemeier Hansson, iterative process, John Gruber, knowledge worker, Merlin Mann, Metcalfe's law, performance metric, post-work, premature optimization, Ruby on Rails, slashdot, social bookmarking, Steve Jobs, web application

. ;) An example from our own history is the Yellow Fade Technique, a method we invented to subtly spotlight a recently changed area on a page. We wrote a post about it on Signal vs. Noise. That post made the rounds and got thousands and thousands of page views (to this day it's doing huge traffic). The post worked on both an educational and a promotional level. A lesson was learned and a lot of people who never would have known about our products were exposed to them. Another example: During our development of Ruby on Rails, we decided to make the infrastructure open source. It turned out to be a wise move.

Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral by Ben Smith

2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, AOL-Time Warner, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, blockchain, Cambridge Analytica, citizen journalism, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, data science, David Brooks, deplatforming, Donald Trump, drone strike, fake news, Filter Bubble, Frank Gehry, full stack developer, future of journalism, hype cycle, Jeff Bezos, Kevin Roose, Larry Ellison, late capitalism, lolcat, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, moral panic, obamacare, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, post-work, public intellectual, reality distortion field, Robert Mercer, Sand Hill Road, Saturday Night Live, sentiment analysis, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, skunkworks, slashdot, Snapchat, social web, Socratic dialogue, SoftBank, Steve Bannon, Steven Levy, subscription business, tech worker, TikTok, traveling salesman, WeWork, WikiLeaks, young professional, Zenefits

This was Arianna’s side of the operation, the side that would hire Rachel Sklar the next year to both cover the media and recruit new bloggers—celebrities large and small, who would write for free and talk up their connection to The Huffington Post, creating buzz and social currency and thus, Huffington claimed, traffic. But, as Coen had intuited in that moment with John Cusack, that couldn’t really be how The Huffington Post worked. Arianna brought elite attention and talent to the site. But even as Huffington went around talking to anyone who could listen about how millions of people wanted to read an alternative view on the Iraq War, Jonah and his team knew the truth: nobody was reading that stuff. In fact, not that many people were reading The Huffington Post at all.

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He was a perfect mark for Arianna, whose own reality-distortion field had created an image of The Huffington Post—a mecca for young viewers, powered by earnest concern about politics and “citizen journalists” blogging for free—that bore little resemblance to the dark arts KT, Jonah, and Breanna had mastered of gaming Google and getting middle-aged men to click on links that promised photographs of attractive young women. Armstrong does not appear to have actually understood much about how The Huffington Post worked. He was particularly taken by “the importance of recruiting hordes of free bloggers,” Forbes’s Jeff Bercovici later reported, under the apparent impression that the bloggers were the ones driving most of The Huffington Post’s traffic. “It was always, ‘Arianna does it. That’s what she’s built her business on.

JQuery Pocket Reference by David Flanagan

Firefox, functional programming, post-work, web application

Ajax Utility Functions The other high-level jQuery Ajax utilities are functions, not methods, and they are invoked directly through jQuery or $, not on a jQuery object. jQuery.getScript() loads and executes files of JavaScript code. jQuery.getJSON() loads a URL, parses it as JSON, and passes the resulting object to the specified callback. Both of these functions call jQuery.get(), which is a more general purpose URL-fetching function. Finally, jQuery.post() works just like jQuery.get() but performs an HTTP POST request instead of a GET. Like the load() method, all of these functions are asynchronous: they return to their caller before anything is loaded, and they notify you of the results by invoking a callback function that you specify. jQuery.getScript() The jQuery.getScript() function takes the URL of a file of JavaScript code as its first argument.

Gigged: The End of the Job and the Future of Work by Sarah Kessler

"Susan Fowler" uber, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, basic income, bitcoin, blockchain, business cycle, call centre, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, crowdsourcing, data science, David Attenborough, do what you love, Donald Trump, East Village, Elon Musk, financial independence, future of work, game design, gig economy, Hacker News, income inequality, independent contractor, information asymmetry, Jeff Bezos, job automation, law of one price, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, minimum wage unemployment, new economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, payday loans, post-work, profit maximization, QR code, race to the bottom, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, TaskRabbit, TechCrunch disrupt, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, working-age population, Works Progress Administration, Y Combinator

If Kristy couldn’t figure out how to make a living, it wouldn’t be because she hadn’t tried, and it wouldn’t be because she wasn’t a fighter. Her first idea was to work more hours on Mechanical Turk. Founded in 2005, Mechanical Turk is an online “crowdsourcing” marketplace run by Amazon. Its clients post work tasks on a dashboard that a “crowd” of workers can choose to complete. The process doesn’t work that much differently than Gigster’s process. But the tasks on Mechanical Turk are often simple and pay just cents each. They’re jobs like adding tags to images, filling out spreadsheets with contact information, or writing product descriptions for websites.

The Year Without Pants: Wordpress.com and the Future of Work by Scott Berkun

barriers to entry, Big Tech, blue-collar work, Broken windows theory, en.wikipedia.org, Firefox, future of work, Google Hangouts, Jane Jacobs, job satisfaction, Kanban, Lean Startup, lolcat, lone genius, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum viable product, post-work, remote working, Results Only Work Environment, Richard Stallman, Seaside, Florida, side project, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Skype, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the map is not the territory, The Soul of a New Machine, Tony Hsieh, trade route, work culture , zero-sum game

Of the many features we knew it would have to include, we narrowed them down to find the simplest, easiest, highest-value project we could release first (what's often called MVP or minimum viable product). Putting our list of feature ideas aside for the moment, we applied the same design thinking we'd done for posting. If the blogger's experience posting worked like this: then the visitor's experience commenting was like this: The largest burden of convincing a visitor to decide to comment was on the blogger. Bloggers who wrote a better post were more likely to get visitors to write comments in response. But anything we could do to help the process was worth doing.

Curation Nation by Rosenbaum, Steven

Amazon Mechanical Turk, Andrew Keen, AOL-Time Warner, barriers to entry, citizen journalism, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, disintermediation, en.wikipedia.org, Ford Model T, future of journalism, independent contractor, Jason Scott: textfiles.com, Mary Meeker, means of production, off-the-grid, PageRank, pattern recognition, post-work, postindustrial economy, pre–internet, Sand Hill Road, Silicon Valley, Skype, social graph, social web, Steve Jobs, Tony Hsieh, Yogi Berra

Having put aside for a moment the politics of the change in publishing, Blau says that there is a meaningful transformation under way: “What is clearly happening is that there are many, many, many more people speaking in public or some version of public without having to ask permission, some of whom seem to be able to accumulate large audiences, some audiences, the scale of traditional broadcast television or feature films.” But, of course, Keen doesn’t agree. “The reason why the Huffington Post is growing is because specialization is changing, and because of the existence now of more and more personal brands,” he argues. “The Huffington Post works because people get their stuff for free because they’re promoting themselves, their expertise; it reflects a free-agent nation. So again, it’s a new kind of meritocracy. The old kind of meritocracy would be you publish yourself and you sell it as a journalist, or you’d publish it in one of your professional guild magazines or publications.

The Globotics Upheaval: Globalisation, Robotics and the Future of Work by Richard Baldwin

agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, AlphaGo, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, Apollo 11, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Big Tech, bread and circuses, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, commoditize, computer vision, Corn Laws, correlation does not imply causation, Credit Default Swap, data science, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, declining real wages, deep learning, DeepMind, deindustrialization, deskilling, Donald Trump, Douglas Hofstadter, Downton Abbey, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, facts on the ground, Fairchild Semiconductor, future of journalism, future of work, George Gilder, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, Hans Moravec, hiring and firing, hype cycle, impulse control, income inequality, industrial robot, intangible asset, Internet of things, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Kevin Roose, knowledge worker, laissez-faire capitalism, Les Trente Glorieuses, low skilled workers, machine translation, Machine translation of "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." to Russian and back, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, mass incarceration, Metcalfe’s law, mirror neurons, new economy, optical character recognition, pattern recognition, Ponzi scheme, post-industrial society, post-work, profit motive, remote working, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, Robert Metcalfe, robotic process automation, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social intelligence, sovereign wealth fund, standardized shipping container, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, telepresence, telepresence robot, telerobotics, Thomas Malthus, trade liberalization, universal basic income, warehouse automation

What I got was a dozen or so proposals, including some from freelancers that were suggested by Upwork’s matchmaker bot. After reading the proposals (short cover letters) and checking out their online profiles (which included the wage they were asking), I interviewed two of them online for about 15 minutes each. After hiring my preferred candidate, I started posting work via Upwork’s file sharing service, and communicating with the copyeditor on the site (the site sends me an email when there is a new message, or file posted). To reassure me that the hours billed by the freelancers are real, Upwork takes occasional screenshots of the freelancer’s screen while she is claiming to be working for me.

From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas L. Friedman

Ayatollah Khomeini, back-to-the-land, Mahatma Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mount Scopus, Neil Armstrong, post-work, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, Thomas L Friedman, Unsafe at Any Speed

The first to be snatched, while walking to work, on March 7, 1984, was Jeremy Levin of Cable News Network, who lived in our apartment building just two floors above us. Levin had had a somewhat stormy relationship with the CNN bureau in Beirut, largely because he came in and tried to clean house and post work rules in what was a typical Beirut news bureau, where the local staff were all relatives and bookkeeping was “creative,” to say the least. It was a bit like posting work rules in Sodom and Gomorrah, so when Levin was abducted in the spring of 1984 my first thought was that one of the Lebanese in his own bureau might have arranged a pair of cement boots for him. The day Levin disappeared, CNN sent a two-man film crew over to our apartment house to take one of those clichéd close-up shots of the mailbox with his name on it.

The End of Secrecy: The Rise and Fall of WikiLeaks by The "Guardian", David Leigh, Luke Harding

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, air gap, banking crisis, centre right, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, Climategate, cloud computing, credit crunch, crowdsourcing, Downton Abbey, drone strike, end-to-end encryption, eurozone crisis, Evgeny Morozov, friendly fire, global village, Hacker Ethic, impulse control, Jacob Appelbaum, Julian Assange, knowledge economy, machine readable, military-industrial complex, Mohammed Bouazizi, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, operational security, post-work, rolodex, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, Skype, Steven Levy, sugar pill, uranium enrichment, WikiLeaks

In the Guardian, Timothy Garton Ash confessed he had been impressed by the professionalism of the US diplomatic corps – a hard-working and committed bunch. “My personal opinion of the state department has gone up several notches,” he wrote. “For the most part … what we see here is diplomats doing their proper job: finding out what is happening in places to which they are posted, working to advance their nation’s interests and their government’s policies.” Some world leaders brushed off the embarrassing revelations, at least in public, while others went on the attack. Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who did not come out well in the disclosures of his regional unpopularity, dismissed the WikiLeaks data drop as “psychological warfare”.

Possiplex by Ted Nelson

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Bill Duvall, Brewster Kahle, Buckminster Fuller, Computer Lib, cuban missile crisis, Donald Knuth, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dr. Strangelove, Herman Kahn, HyperCard, Ivan Sutherland, Jaron Lanier, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, Marc Andreessen, Marshall McLuhan, Murray Gell-Mann, nonsequential writing, pattern recognition, post-work, Project Xanadu, RAND corporation, reality distortion field, semantic web, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, Ted Nelson, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Vannevar Bush, Zimmermann PGP

Even I, when I went to use JOT, found that it would effortless [sic] do what I expected it to do, and what I wanted it to do. So long as I could make myself forget what I actually knew about the underlying formal complexity, JOT always seemed simple." -- Email from Mark Miller to the author, 2005.08.11. What would Jon Post have said about JOT? (ca.1978) Jonathan vos Post worked with Mark Miller on a version of JOT for the Z-80, as I recall. As they worked, Jon said to Mark, ‘Ted’s got some good ideas, but I think we should fix them.’ Mark replied, ‘I know Ted better than you do. Let’s try it his way first.’ Both were surprised by the result. Here is Jon’s reply when I recently asked him to summarize: “… your genius was not just in that JOT worked as you said it would, albeit with 100 times more lines of code than you predicted, but that it FELT the way you said it would.

Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley From Building a New Global Underclass by Mary L. Gray, Siddharth Suri

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Apollo 13, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, basic income, benefit corporation, Big Tech, big-box store, bitcoin, blue-collar work, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cloud computing, cognitive load, collaborative consumption, collective bargaining, computer vision, corporate social responsibility, cotton gin, crowdsourcing, data is the new oil, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, deindustrialization, deskilling, digital divide, do well by doing good, do what you love, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, employer provided health coverage, en.wikipedia.org, equal pay for equal work, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, financial independence, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane: The New Division of Labor, fulfillment center, future of work, gig economy, glass ceiling, global supply chain, hiring and firing, ImageNet competition, independent contractor, industrial robot, informal economy, information asymmetry, Jeff Bezos, job automation, knowledge economy, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, machine translation, market friction, Mars Rover, natural language processing, new economy, operational security, passive income, pattern recognition, post-materialism, post-work, power law, race to the bottom, Rana Plaza, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Coase, scientific management, search costs, Second Machine Age, sentiment analysis, sharing economy, Shoshana Zuboff, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, software as a service, speech recognition, spinning jenny, Stephen Hawking, TED Talk, The Future of Employment, The Nature of the Firm, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, two-sided market, union organizing, universal basic income, Vilfredo Pareto, Wayback Machine, women in the workforce, work culture , Works Progress Administration, Y Combinator, Yochai Benkler

In interviewing dozens of on-demand workers, we saw two types of hypervigilance. The first was the need to spend hours wading and sorting through spam or suspicious offers for “at-home work,” searching for legitimate work on a legitimate platform. Because there are no legal requirements screening who posts work to on-demand marketplaces, workers had to make sure they weren’t signing up to a site that was simply looking to harvest their email address or that would open them up to identity theft. Lijo, 24, works for a business processing organization and lives in Bangalore, India. He learned about MTurk from a flyer stapled to a tree.

Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth by Noa Tishby

An Inconvenient Truth, Ayatollah Khomeini, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Boycotts of Israel, British Empire, Burning Man, centre right, COVID-19, disinformation, epigenetics, European colonialism, failed state, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, financial engineering, George Floyd, haute couture, if you build it, they will come, it's over 9,000, Jeremy Corbyn, lockdown, post-work, psychological pricing, RAND corporation, Silicon Valley, Social Justice Warrior, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, women in the workforce, Yom Kippur War

It was like heading into the Wild West with an iPhone and a MacBook Pro. This was when my advocacy became not just this thing I did at dinner parties but a true calling. I started working with pro-Israel organizations around the US, with NGOs, and unofficially with the Israeli government. We created tweets and posts, working to push out positive news and debunk falsehoods when we saw them. Act for Israel also created presentations to explain to people in positions of power, in the Israeli government and in other big organizations, how this new world worked. We leaned on data, like the fact that 87 percent of people under the age of thirty got their news from Facebook.

Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe by Roger McNamee

"Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Bill Atkinson, Black Lives Matter, Boycotts of Israel, Brexit referendum, Cambridge Analytica, carbon credits, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, computer age, cross-subsidies, dark pattern, data is the new oil, data science, disinformation, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Elon Musk, fake news, false flag, Filter Bubble, game design, growth hacking, Ian Bogost, income inequality, information security, Internet of things, It's morning again in America, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, laissez-faire capitalism, Lean Startup, light touch regulation, Lyft, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, messenger bag, Metcalfe’s law, minimum viable product, Mother of all demos, move fast and break things, Network effects, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), PalmPilot, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pets.com, post-work, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Russian election interference, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, social graph, software is eating the world, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, subscription business, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The future is already here, Tim Cook: Apple, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Upton Sinclair, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, Yom Kippur War

Sensational headlines work better than calm descriptions of events. As Tristan says, the space of true things is fixed, while the space of falsehoods can expand freely in any direction—false outcompetes true. From an evolutionary perspective, that is a huge advantage. People say they prefer puppy photos and facts—and that may be true for many—but inflammatory posts work better at reaching huge audiences within Facebook and other platforms. Getting a user outraged, anxious, or afraid is a powerful way to increase engagement. Anxious and fearful users check the site more frequently. Outraged users share more content to let other people know what they should also be outraged about.

The Confidence Game: The Psychology of the Con and Why We Fall for It Every Time by Maria Konnikova

Abraham Maslow, attribution theory, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Bluma Zeigarnik, British Empire, Cass Sunstein, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, coherent worldview, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark triade / dark tetrad, endowment effect, epigenetics, Higgs boson, higher-order functions, hindsight bias, lake wobegon effect, lateral thinking, libertarian paternalism, Milgram experiment, placebo effect, Ponzi scheme, post-work, publish or perish, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, seminal paper, side project, Skype, Steven Pinker, sunk-cost fallacy, the scientific method, tulip mania, Walter Mischel

But, he said, although it was a “very dehumanizing experience to be in prison,” adding that he and his fellow inmates were “treated like cattle,” he was staying creative, using the computer at Villa Devoto to continue with his research and follow field developments, like the Higgs boson discovery. He continued to post works in progress on ArXiv, an Internet repository of preprints in mathematical and scientific fields. Over the phone, he persisted in supervising two graduate students. He even found time to referee some journal articles. In October 2012, Frampton was allowed to leave the prison and instead spend his days under house arrest at an old friend’s home.

On the Road: Adventures From Nixon to Trump by James Naughtie

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alistair Cooke, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, centre right, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Donald Trump, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, gentrification, Haight Ashbury, illegal immigration, immigration reform, Julian Assange, Mikhail Gorbachev, Norman Mailer, obamacare, Oklahoma City bombing, plutocrats, post-work, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Seymour Hersh, South China Sea, Steve Bannon, trickle-down economics, white flight, WikiLeaks, Yom Kippur War, young professional, zero-sum game

Hadn’t he said in the campaign that he knew more about ISIS than his generals, and didn’t need the help of CIA intelligence to navigate the world? After the inauguration, some of his officials had to begin to accept that he meant it. I spoke in early 2017 to a State Department lifer who had reason to understand. Tom Countryman became a diplomat in the early 1980s and, between foreign postings, worked in counter-terrorism, in the US delegation at the UN, on the staff of the National Security Council and, from 2011, was assistant secretary of the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, dealing with Russia and arms reduction. He worked at the heart of the foreign policy and security machine for three Republican and two Democratic administrations, serving as a non-partisan official for presidents and secretaries of state of different colours, from Reagan to Obama.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: 50th Anniversary Edition by Ken Kesey

financial independence, hiring and firing, post-work

He’d won his bet; he’d got the nurse’s goat the way he said he would, and had collected on it, but that didn’t stop him from going right ahead and acting like he always had, hollering up and down the hall, laughing at the black boys, frustrating the whole staff, even going so far as to step up to the Big Nurse in the hall one time and ask her, if she didn’t mind tellin’, just what was the actual inch-by-inch measurement on them great big ol’ breasts that she did her best to conceal but never could. She walked right on past, ignoring him just like she chose to ignore the way nature had tagged her with those outsized badges of femininity, just like she was above him, and sex, and everything else that’s weak and of the flesh. When she posted work assignments on the bulletin board, and he read that she’d given him latrine duty, he went to her office and knocked on that window of hers and personally thanked her for the honor, and told her he’d think of her every time he swabbed out a urinal. She told him that wasn’t necessary; just do his work and that would be sufficient, thank you.

The Clockwork Rocket by Greg Egan

air gap, place-making, plutocrats, post-work

Yalda put the rubble sacks on holding hooks at the side of the machine, grasped a nearby support post with her two left hands, then started turning the crank that ratcheted the catapult’s launching plate back along its rails, stretching a set of springs below. As the crank began stiffening its resistance, she could feel the support post working itself loose from the ground. Cursing, she shifted her lower hands to the catapult, dug a mallet out of the tool hold, and bashed the support post half a dozen times. Yalda checked the post; it felt secure now. But as she bent to put the mallet back in the hold, she could feel a tiny rocking motion in the catapult itself: she’d managed to loosen some of the tapered wooden pegs that held its base against the ground.

The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight: Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, Capote, and the New Journalism Revolution by Marc Weingarten

1960s counterculture, Bonfire of the Vanities, British Empire, citizen journalism, cognitive dissonance, Donner party, East Village, Easter island, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Haight Ashbury, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Kickstarter, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, New Journalism, non-fiction novel, Norman Mailer, post-work, pre–internet, public intellectual, rent control, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Stewart Brand, upwardly mobile, working poor, yellow journalism

Delighted by the exciting portrayals of newspaper life to be found in films such as Lewis Milestone’s The Front Page, he hungered for the competition and adrenaline rush of urban newspaper work, where reporters from four different papers might battle it out for a scoop. In 1959 Wolfe took a pay cut and landed a job at the Washington Post, working the city desk. Wolfe chafed at the Posts institutionalized, regimented approach to news gathering. “It was very much like an insurance office, with gray metal desks all lined up,” said Wolfe. “You couldn’t eat at your desk, and at one point, they even tried to ban smoking, but everyone just started climbing the walls.”

The Content Trap: A Strategist's Guide to Digital Change by Bharat Anand

Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, AOL-Time Warner, Benjamin Mako Hill, Bernie Sanders, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, commoditize, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, death of newspapers, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, driverless car, electricity market, Eyjafjallajökull, fulfillment center, gamification, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, information asymmetry, Internet of things, inventory management, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Just-in-time delivery, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, late fees, managed futures, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, Minecraft, multi-sided market, Network effects, post-work, price discrimination, publish or perish, QR code, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, selection bias, self-driving car, shareholder value, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social graph, social web, special economic zone, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuart Kauffman, the long tail, Thomas L Friedman, transaction costs, two-sided market, ubercab, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, zero-sum game

We’d graded students in our residential courses this way for years. During the previous decade, social networks had exploded, and so had the study of them. One question receiving attention had to do with why some social networks succeeded in encouraging certain behaviors, while others did not. For example, how did LinkedIn encourage participants to post work-related information, whereas Facebook postings were more personal? Why were users on Friendster interested in dating rather than building friendships, as its founders had intended? One emerging and powerful insight was that success rested on attracting the “right” users, giving them the “right” incentives to participate, and providing the “right” tools to engage in certain behaviors—it wasn’t about platform quality or social features per se.

Tailspin: The People and Forces Behind America's Fifty-Year Fall--And Those Fighting to Reverse It by Steven Brill

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airport security, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, asset allocation, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Blythe Masters, Bretton Woods, business process, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, carried interest, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, computerized trading, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, Credit Default Swap, currency manipulation / currency intervention, deal flow, Donald Trump, electricity market, ending welfare as we know it, failed state, fake news, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, future of work, ghettoisation, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, hiring and firing, Home mortgage interest deduction, immigration reform, income inequality, invention of radio, job automation, junk bonds, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, mortgage tax deduction, Neil Armstrong, new economy, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, obamacare, old-boy network, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, paper trading, Paris climate accords, performance metric, post-work, Potemkin village, Powell Memorandum, proprietary trading, quantitative hedge fund, Ralph Nader, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Robert Gordon, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, Salesforce, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, stock buybacks, Tax Reform Act of 1986, tech worker, telemarketer, too big to fail, trade liberalization, union organizing, Unsafe at Any Speed, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, working poor

Issue One executive director Nick Penniman explained that he had come to the same conclusion when he left a journalism career to merge two smaller non-profits into Issue One in 2014. “I saw that all the issues I was writing about could be traced back to some policy dysfunction, which could always be traced back to money.” Although Penniman, then forty-four, had a left-leaning background (he ran investigative projects for The Huffington Post, worked with veteran public television broadcaster Bill Moyers, and was an editor at the liberal American Prospect), he has pushed Issue One in a determinedly bipartisan direction. In fact, he has worked hardest at converting Republicans, especially conservative Republicans, to the cause. Penniman’s website and the materials distributed to donors by Issue One—which raised about $2.5 million in 2017 and was hoping to raise a million dollars more in 2018—are adorned with pie charts demonstrating how fed up both Republicans and Democrats are: Polls show that 72 percent of Americans, including 66 percent of Republicans, favored government-financed, small-donor campaign finance systems.

An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin’s Master Agent by Owen Matthews

Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, British Empire, colonial rule, company town, disinformation, fake news, false flag, garden city movement, Internet Archive, Kickstarter, military-industrial complex, post-work, South China Sea, urban planning

Miyagi had no local contacts of any sort, and though friendly and gregarious, Miyagi did not move in the kind of circles that could be of any use to the spy ring. What Sorge needed to make his Tokyo assignment worthwhile was a Japanese agent of a much higher calibre. Ozaki Hotsumi had spent the two years since the end of his Shanghai posting working in Osaka at the foreign desk of the Asahi Shimbun and living a quiet family life with his wife Eiko and young daughter Yoko, born in November 1929. A sweeping purge of Japanese communists had caught several of his old friends and comrades, but since Ozaki had always been careful never to formally join the party he remained above suspicion.

Facebook: The Inside Story by Steven Levy

active measures, Airbnb, Airbus A320, Amazon Mechanical Turk, AOL-Time Warner, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, augmented reality, Ben Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Blitzscaling, blockchain, Burning Man, business intelligence, Cambridge Analytica, cloud computing, company town, computer vision, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Dunbar number, East Village, Edward Snowden, El Camino Real, Elon Musk, end-to-end encryption, fake news, Firefox, Frank Gehry, Geoffrey Hinton, glass ceiling, GPS: selective availability, growth hacking, imposter syndrome, indoor plumbing, information security, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Jony Ive, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, lock screen, Lyft, machine translation, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, MITM: man-in-the-middle, move fast and break things, natural language processing, Network effects, Oculus Rift, operational security, PageRank, Paul Buchheit, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pets.com, post-work, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Robert Mercer, Robert Metcalfe, rolodex, Russian election interference, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, sexual politics, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skeuomorphism, slashdot, Snapchat, social contagion, social graph, social software, South of Market, San Francisco, Startup school, Steve Ballmer, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, techlash, Tim Cook: Apple, Tragedy of the Commons, web application, WeWork, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, Y2K, you are the product

LeCun presented a list of requirements that Facebook would have to meet if he were to set up a lab. It would have to be a separate organization, with no ties to product groups. It would have to be completely open—no restrictions on publishing. The results they came up with would have to be open-source so they would benefit everyone. Oh, and LeCun would retain his NYU post, working there part-time, and base the new lab in New York City. No problem! said Zuckerberg, and the Facebook Artificial Intelligence Lab, or FAIR, now is centered in New York City, on the edge of NYU’s Greenwich Village campus. It is the horizon-exploring partner to the company’s Applied Machine Learning team, which directs its AI work to products.

Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers by Timothy Ferriss

Abraham Maslow, Adam Curtis, Airbnb, Alexander Shulgin, Alvin Toffler, An Inconvenient Truth, artificial general intelligence, asset allocation, Atul Gawande, augmented reality, back-to-the-land, Ben Horowitz, Bernie Madoff, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Beryl Markham, billion-dollar mistake, Black Swan, Blue Bottle Coffee, Blue Ocean Strategy, blue-collar work, book value, Boris Johnson, Buckminster Fuller, business process, Cal Newport, call centre, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, Carl Icahn, Charles Lindbergh, Checklist Manifesto, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, Colonization of Mars, Columbine, commoditize, correlation does not imply causation, CRISPR, David Brooks, David Graeber, deal flow, digital rights, diversification, diversified portfolio, do what you love, Donald Trump, effective altruism, Elon Musk, fail fast, fake it until you make it, fault tolerance, fear of failure, Firefox, follow your passion, fulfillment center, future of work, Future Shock, Girl Boss, Google X / Alphabet X, growth hacking, Howard Zinn, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Lao Tzu, lateral thinking, life extension, lifelogging, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mason jar, Menlo Park, microdosing, Mikhail Gorbachev, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Neal Stephenson, Nelson Mandela, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, off-the-grid, optical character recognition, PageRank, Paradox of Choice, passive income, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Singer: altruism, Peter Thiel, phenotype, PIHKAL and TIHKAL, post scarcity, post-work, power law, premature optimization, private spaceflight, QWERTY keyboard, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, rent-seeking, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, selection bias, sharing economy, side project, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, Skype, Snapchat, Snow Crash, social graph, software as a service, software is eating the world, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, superintelligent machines, TED Talk, Tesla Model S, The future is already here, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas L Friedman, traumatic brain injury, trolley problem, vertical integration, Wall-E, Washington Consensus, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

A superlative sitter is someone who doesn’t have any agenda of their own. They don’t want you to see a certain thing. They don’t want you to be a certain way. They don’t want you to discover a certain thing.” With or without psychedelics, sounds like good criteria for close friends, too. On the Importance of “Pre” and “Post” Work There’s a saying in the psychedelic world: “If you get the answer, you should hang up the phone.” In other words, when you get the message you need, you shouldn’t keep asking (i.e., having more experiences), at least until you’ve done some homework assignments, or used the clarity gained to make meaningful changes.