maegul@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
“I earn a living based on outcomes,” he says. “Nobody sends me a check for how many hours I work in a week.”
This is the key, whatever label or trend you want call it.
The bottom line is that employment is kinda anti-capitalist. The employee doesn’t own anything real and so isn’t incentivised by real rewards to deliver real outcomes.
Instead, showing up, making appearances and convincing their colleagues/managers that they’re valuable, however virtual, is the natural response to virtual incentives.
What if we owned an outcomes based contract instead? Of maybe even the company itself in someway (with meaningful decision making power and stakes). Otherwise, we’re mostly paid to sit in the chair at the office and do what we’re told … frankly not a great look at such a scale as we do it.
The mega employment market strikes me as obviously fraught for both sides of politics.
Working for outcome dies not have the best track record. We kind of abolished it, because it was so bad. Factory workers getting paid for every piece of product they make is not good. That means they have to pay for their own lunch breaks and if the machine breaks down, they’re paying for it. All the risk, none of the reward.
Maybe it works better for office workers, but I can’t imagine it does.
Being able to felxibly fill your schedule is a whole other thing though. More like common sense.
Interesting.
I’m not sure we disagree much, especially if a flexible schedule is common sense.
In a way my main point was that however much we think it common sense, I suspect for a lot of work culture it crosses a line that maybe isn’t made explicit that much. Which, I think, is that your job is to be there and follow orders as much or more than it is to deliver well defined outcomes.
And so my point was that if we want flexible scheduling and believe it can be as productive (or more) … then I suspect we’ve gotta address this “line” … and I’m not sure what can replace it other than some established concept of “owning” your job more. Which I’m not sure has to be working for outcomes, as you say.
NewDark@lemmings.world 1 day ago
Working for a wage is very capitalist. By that I mean that capitalist owns the capital and rents labor hours for less than what will be made from them.
Wage labor is one of the core tenents of capitalism.
maegul@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
Well, coming from the perspective or justification of trying to maximise efficiency through a market of incentivised actors, is mass multi-level-hierarchy wage labour “optimum/peak capitalism”?
That’s what I was aiming for in saying “anti-capitalist” … in that the opportunity to incentivise was being missed so that an existing power structure could persist.
And, I don’t know, my experience tells me lots of places struggle with the quality of their managerial leadership, some times a lot, while people on the ground keep the place together and have plenty of insight on how to do things better.
NewDark@lemmings.world 1 day ago
There’s only one goal, profit / capital maximization. Everything else is secondary or in service of that end, such as efficiency.
A for-profit health insurance industry is deeply inefficient but very profitable for example.
maegul@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
Capital maximisation for a small set of individuals (the wealthy) or the economy in total? Where the latter can also achieve the former to some extent.
In the end I think capitalism can be more than one thing, which is something the strident anti socialism reflex of the US has stagnated.
And it’s easy to confuse ends with means and the status quo with its justifications.