I think you're severely misreading the original comment, and to be frank, your interpretation is pretty juvenile. Nowhere does the person say that we are robots.
the parent is critiquing the argument that we are all homo economicus - an agent whose primary function is to operate within the market at maximum efficiency to optimise for profit. The counterargument is that no, we aren't, and optimising for market exploitation is both an effort in frustration and anathema to human wellbeing. The GP is encouraging us to act like robots by living our lives in accordance with market calculations, not human actualisation and need-fulfilment.
It's an ideological position, and a harmful one at that. We aren't all totally independent actors competing in a ruthless market to maximise profits.
I'm not sure if this is a new trend, or if I've only just begun noticing it over the last decade. People seem to have completely lost the ability to infer the meaning of words if it lies beyond face value. What a trite, shallow interpretation.
Watch older movies to see this in action. A older movie might say "The terrorists will get their hands on uranium!" and leave it at that, the audience understanding the implications. A movie from the early 2000's goes as far as "The terrorists will get uranium and make a bomb!", expecting less than the audiences from before. Now it's "The terrorists will get uranium, make a bomb, and blow up San Francisco, killing millions of people, including women and children!" and repeat that statement 4 - 5 times so that the lowest common denominator in the focus group gets it.
People are always playing the "I Never Actually Said" gotcha-game these days. Someone says A, B, and C, which strongly, and obviously imply D, but when you push back against D, the retort is "Ha! I never actually said D... You're putting words in my mouth!" This often happens when D is some abhorrent viewpoint, but A, B, and C are benign when taken strictly at face value.
Not saying there was anything abhorrent in this thread, but I agree with you that I'm seeing this pattern more and more in today's hyper-sensitive climate.
Yeah but that's not what my comment was, was it? If anything, I might have been reading inferences that weren't intended by the author.
Why do you feel the need to be so condescending? Someone disagrees with your perspective and its because they are the least intelligent person in the room?
my point is that we should oppose the system that forces everybody to be in market competition with each other. I understand the position being forwarded, but I think it's describing a system that's antithetical to human values and thus should not be just accepted as a fact like gravity.
Perhaps it is you who is being shallow and trite, not understanding the actual objection I have. I know that what the OP is saying is a description of how to optimise your economic standing - I've done it plenty myself because optimisation comes naturally to me; I'm saying that's a shite way to live and invest your time and energy.
Markets can behave in ways that are either competitive (my tomatoes are better than your tomatoes) or co-operative (my tomatoes are a perfect complement to your cheese). And sometimes they morph from one mode into the other.
Maybe this is a definitional argument, but I'd say the latter would be complementary, not cooperative. A cooperative model is one where people work together to achieve an outcome, like two kids working together on a school assignment.
Outside an individual company, competition is favoured over cooperation, except when companies work together on e.g. supply chains.
Yep, you're correct about that terminology, thanks. I'll leave my comment as-is because it'll be less confusing for anyone reading yours.
It's possible that companies (knowingly or unwittingly) co-operate under some circumstances, though - even if competition is generally the {expected/favoured} model.
> The counterargument is that no, we aren't, and optimising for market exploitation is both an effort in frustration and anathema to human wellbeing
I don't see how an argument that agrees with the parent is counter argument. They literally said we all need to look out for our own well being, and a part of that is managing our participation in voluntary exchange.
> We aren't all totally independent actors competing in a ruthless market to maximise profits.
I missed the part where the parent said that. Where was it?
The model that the parent is positing is that we are all totally independent actors competing in a labour market and our primary goal should be to optimise our behaviour in said market.
While that's an accurate description of neoliberal economics, I'm arguing that it's neither natural, nor necessarily productive, nor conducive to human wellbeing to mould one's behaviour to fit that system. Or to be more concrete: you're wasting your life studying the labour market for opportunities, learning new disciplines to increase your wage, reading through employment contracts looking for advantages (obviously you should check for big fuck-you statements in contracts, just for self-protection). Not only is the market irrational, such that behaviour based on a rational model of the market is a poor guarantee of positive outcomes, but that living such a life based on market rationality is pretty immiserating and misaligned with what actually makes people happy.
> The model that the parent is positing is that we are all totally independent actors competing in a labour market and our primary goal should be to optimise our behaviour in said market.
Parent never said totally independent, just that the assumption is the most useful operating mode. "Don't jump in a pool expecting a life guard" is good advice whether there is a tower nearby or not.
They also never said optimizing our participation should be a primary goal, but that our participation needs to be managed with our actual goals in mind. It's like he told everyone they should exercise and the counter argument is "Not everyone should quit their jobs to be a fitness model". It's nonsense.
I think it's a matter of differing interpretations. When I hear "you are a company of one, and it's your job to manage your labour in the market and your investments to get the returns you want", it sounds to me like the commenter is saying that you should view yourself as a company operating in the marketplace and act accordingly. How do companies act in the market? They optimise for profit, they interact transactionally as opposed to through social and communal relations, and they hire specialised labour (or in the analogy, develop specialised skills) to fulfill their fiduciary and legal requirements. Your interpretation may differ, but that's the nature of perspectives.
The entire comment is him explaining exactly how to interpret the you are a company statement, elaborating on the ways in which he intends the metaphor to be used. Extending it with your own biases and arguing against those biases is reactionary and not super useful.
You could have phrased much of your statement as "this should not be extended to mean...", or "If you are also implying X then Y", and it would have been totally valid. The counter argument framing is the issue, because it's just not a counter argument.
I just went back and reread it to see if I missed something, but aside from the profit-centered angle (which I've already conceded was a misreading on my part), nope, it still appears to be entirely market focused. I couldn't say if that was intended or if the author just over-extended the analogy (obviously I inferred the former), but the whole comment was framed around operating effectively within the market economy. That's explicitly what it says.
> but the whole comment was framed around operating effectively within the market economy. That's explicitly what it says.
Exactly. So where does all of this other stuff about being a robot and only optimizing for profit come in? The topic is work, and he's telling you how to think about work, not how to think about relationships with colleagues, hobbies, life goals, etc.
Well I didn't make the robot comment, but I think it's valid to say that promoting people trying to operate rationally in the market can be pretty robotic if that's your primary motivation. However, given I withdrew that contention, having realised the OP was not talking about making market optimisation and profiteering your primary goal but just talking about how the labour market works, of course the robot thing isn't relevant anymore either.
My bad since that wasn't you. These threads tend to get long in both content and time between messages, and it gets easy to mix up statements.
I do think people should always try to operate rationally in the market as, even though it isn't perfect, it will generally produce the highest likelihood of success.
OP did not say that you have to optimize for profit. However, they said that we have to optimize for something. In other words, there's opportunity cost to everything we do.
> You are the boss of a company of one. Your company sells labor to the labor market, it makes investments in assets, it borrows funds, etc.
It’s your job to decide how that company is run. It’s your job to decide what investments that company needs to make to get good returns.
> It’s also your job to interpret the contracts your company enters into and decide what is acceptable, and to appropriately risk-manage legal hazard, reputational hazard, etc.
This is an argument that you have the responsibility alone to optimise your behaviour in the market. Yes, your utility function could be oriented towards something other than profit, but OP specifically oriented their argument towards getting "good returns".
While this is the direction that neoliberal capitalism pushes you in, what with the social alienation and commodification of everything in life, but that's because it's not aligned with human wellbeing. Your self-image should not be one of a company optimising its market behaviour; this precludes socialising, spending time in nature, exercising for reasons beyond increased economic productivity. It reduces human existence down to rational behaviour in a market.
To present an alternative, because criticism in a vacuum isn't very effective: I personally think that you should optimise your involvement in the economy, so that you are minimally involved in the economy, so that you can spend your precious little time on earth doing things that actually matter to you - whether that's social relationships, hobbies, communities, whatever. The market is something to be avoided, not exploited. To do this effectively you have to understand the market, sure, but it's the same way an accountant for an enterprise company has to deeply understand tax law in order to avoid paying taxes.
If that's also what OP was arguing for then that's a whole other thing, but that's not the impression I got at all with the whole "you are a company, start acting like one" spiel.
"Good returns" are what you'll make of your time that's worthwhile to you. The interpretation that this means only money is entirely your interpretation.
Yeah, I took it as rather the opposite of saying that we are robots. Ultimately, being responsible for one's self is a choice, which is something robots can't do.
