5LL #126 - Automation, Pinkertons, Gentry, Postcapitalism, Spotify

The Full Automation Fallacy
Gavin Mueller, Futures of Work
When we realize that what is pitched as “automation” is actually an assortment of techniques and technologies that function to degrade our work, sap our autonomy, exploit the poor, and give us more to do, we can start to envision alternatives.
The Pinkertons Have A Long, Dark History of Targeting Workers
Kim Kelly, Teen Vogue
Gilded Age robber barons, craven aristocrats, murderous bosses, and traitorous scabs have long populated workers’ nightmares, but few enemies of the working class have loomed larger than the Pinkertons.
American Gentry
Patrick Wyman, Perspectives
Power resides in group photos of half-soused overweight men in ill-fitting polo shirts, in gated communities and local philanthropic boards.
Turning Nothings Into Somethings
Phil Christman, Commonweal
If Mark Fisher’s other work asks the question Can we retake the present?, the lectures captured in Postcapitalist Desire ask a more troubling one: Do we want to?
#Wrapped and Sold
Liz Pelly, The Baffler
‘Tis the season for social media feeds peppered with free advertising for Spotify.
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