Every day is labor day (E)

0:00What do birth control, pop music, and air conditioning have in common? Hey, it's Matt, and this is a special archived episode of Akimbo.

0:17For more than 20 episodes, we've been talking about bending the culture. In this special Labor Day episode of Akimbo, I want to talk about the most efficient culture bending device ever created. Capitalism. Now it's not clear whether all of the many changes in our culture over the last 200 years were caused by capitalism, or whether capitalism benefited from the fact that we live in a changeable culture. But one thing is undeniably true. A ratchet exists. That what What capitalism does, for all its flaws, for all its errors, for all the people left behind, what capitalism does is enable a forward ratchet.

1:07It turns out that when you give a solar flashlight to people who are used to living in the dark, it will create more demand for more solar power. Productivity increases lead to demand for more productivity. Availability of good-tasting espresso leads to a demand for more good-tasting espresso. And what capitalism does is mobilize itself around those demands. So air conditioning has rewritten the history of mankind. There are entire swaths of the world that are now fully functioning year-round simply because someone can work in 70-degree comfort instead of sweltering in 100-degree heat. How did the air conditioning get there?

2:03While there may be side effects unintended or intended of the air conditioning, it's undeniable that the air conditioning got there because Carrier and then the people who followed in his footsteps found a demand and relentlessly filled it. Same thing's true with birth control. It took pioneers like Margaret Sanger to argue for it, but it took capitalists to relentlessly build the systems that would produce it, distribute it, and sell it. And pop music. What about pop music? Well, the technological innovation of the transistor radio with the earplug enabled teenagers for the first time to listen to music without sitting in the family living room.

2:52But once that began to catch on, well, then the media industrial complex kicked in. And the people in the record industry were only too happy to turn the ratchet, as were the people in the hi-fi industry, as were the people in all other forms of media eager to get on the pop bandwagon. And so the culture changes. And so it changes faster and faster and faster. that the accelerating pace of our cultural change is due almost entirely to the ratchet of competitive capitalism, of institutions and organizations that seek to first fill a demand and then amplify that demand. And they do it in a competitive race.

3:42Now, some would argue that the purpose of our culture is to enable capitalism, that what we need to do is get out of the way and let the capitalists make more money. But I think it's totally appropriate to argue the opposite, that the purpose of capitalism is to enable our culture, that the purpose of capitalism is to make life better for people, because it's people who live in the culture. But I'm getting distracted on my Labor Day riff here, so here we go. Labor Day, the one day of the year when we pay lip service to the overworked, disrespected, underappreciated working person. The women who perished in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.

4:26The men who have miners' lung and will never be able to walk a mile. The people who have shown up in the factories and done what they were told. If we go all the way back to Marx and Smith, we see that they agreed about several things. It turns out that over a hundred years ago, it was very difficult to make a pin, those little metal pins that hold shirts together in the store. It might take a skilled craftsperson half an hour to make a pin, a single pin. Adam Smith saw the pin-making machine, and he said, wait a minute, if we get two or three the untrained workers, day laborers here, they, working together, can make hundreds or thousands of pins a day for much less money and with much more reliability than relying on the craftspeople we used to use.

5:22He said, the secret is to go buy yourself a pin-making machine because you don't want to be the person who's working with a pin-making machine. You want to be the person who owns one. Karl Marx saw the same phenomenon, and he said, workers, the deal's going to keep getting worse. It's going to keep getting worse because the people who own the machines will relentlessly push to make as many jobs as they can, as trivial as they can, to make humans replaceable cogs in a giant system. so they agreed about that shift. And over time, there has been a bifurcation of what it means to do labor. If you go to a McDonald's, the amount of skill that is required to make a batch of french fries is really minimal.

6:17It involves pressing a button or two. Yes, you're still exposed to burns in a harsh working condition, but really all you've got to do is press a button or two. It's way different than when Ray Kroc had to train somebody to do it just right. That in every corner of every industry, there are people with a stopwatch inspired by Frederick Taylor and scientific management trying to figure out how to make it so that the worker can be disrespected. Because if the worker is easily replaceable, you don't have to pay the worker extra and you don't get caught in a jam if the worker quits. Hence, one day a year for labor.

7:02The other half of the coin, though, is there's a different sort of labor that's getting done, and this is the labor of craft, the labor of skill, the labor that requires emotional labor as much as physical labor. Being fully present and showing up with emotion and humanity to do a job that can't be done by an AI, a robot, or a dumb machine. This sort of labor we weren't taught to do in school. This sort of labor is a real challenge for many people because they keep waiting for someone to tell them what to do. So what does all of this have to do with air conditioners, pop music, and birth control pills?

7:49When you're doing the second kind of labor, the emotional labor, the craftsmanship, the labor that requires skill and ingenuity and intuition. When you are a linchpin, well, you're then a step away from running your own gig. When you're a linchpin, you are responsible. You are the one who decides how you will change the person you are engaging with, how you will change the culture. And that leads to this discussion about what it means to run your own gig and what it means to be an entrepreneur and what it means to be an artist in the world who has a ratchet, who's pushing forward with scale. There are two really common types of independence.

8:35The first one is the freelancer, or as my grandmother used to say, a freelancer. A freelancer from the Middle Ages, somebody a warrior without a king, up for hire. This freelancer shows up, does a job, and then moves on. You are independent. You are looking for a job without a boss. And there are tons of freelancers in the world, and you can really make a difference that way. At the other end of the spectrum, let's call this person the media-friendly entrepreneur. This is the person who knows what their company was valued at in their last funding round. This is the person who has a board who is building something significantly bigger than themselves.

9:24She's showing up trying to build something that she can sell later. She might have hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of employees. This is the entrepreneur that gets on the cover of a magazine. It's really easy to look at these two extremes and say, but what about me? Where do I fit in? Well, I'm delighted to tell you that today we're launching something new, the Bootstrappers Workshop. You can find it at boot.work. It'll be open through the end of 2018. And the idea is to build a community of people who are looking for a third way. And I call this way bootstrapping. It's based on the idea that you can build an entity, an entity bigger than yourself, an entity that changes your customers for the better.

10:15And it gets funded by your customers. Hence the idea of bootstrapping. Bootstrapping is a concept that comes from the impossibility of pulling yourself up in the air by your bootstraps. You have no leverage. You can't do that. But you can in the business world if the thing you want to offer is worth more than the money those customers have in their pocket. If they need you to exist and the enterprise you're building has enough leverage, then yes, you don't need to go raise 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 million dollars. That what you have the opportunity to do is to show up for a community, within a community, and say, here, I want to make this.

11:02Who wants to come? So four different kinds of bootstrapping that I want to outline here to help you think about this kind of work. The first one we'll call a jobber. The jobber is the bootstrapper who brings something from here to there. I needed that thing. Thank you for bringing it here. A super simple example is the scrappy entrepreneur who's standing there at the entrance to the park with a big cooler filled with cold water. bottles of cold water, a dollar a piece. She's able to buy that cold water for 15 cents a bottle down the street at the big box store. But you didn't do that. She did that.

11:47And she hauled it all the way to the entrance to the park. And it's 90 degrees up. And here's a bottle of cold water for a dollar. You want one? The jobber does that. You would miss her if she were gone. Of course, she doesn't stop there. She uses the profits from Saturday to buy more water to sell on Sunday. And she uses the profits from Sunday to hire three kids to man the booth next Saturday so that she can go to a second park. And the next thing you know, the problem of how do I get cold water on the way into the park is solved. This multiplies. It's not just about the simple act of moving something from a Costco down the street.

12:33It's the act of providing access to people who want access, whatever it is and wherever they are. The second method that I'm talking about is to be a coordinator. The coordinator is the impresario, the one who says, on this day, at this time, this is going to happen. This job fair is going to happen. This trade show is going to happen. This conference is going to happen. Here, I made this. I put together all of these pieces, and everyone in the room is glad to be in the room, but the room wouldn't be here if I hadn't coordinated it, if I hadn't put the whole thing together. A third kind of bootstrapper is the labor organizer, and we see them almost everywhere.

13:21You want to build a house? Well, you're going to need workers. Are you going to go find each and every worker yourself? Probably not. You'll pick a contractor. And what exactly does the contractor do? She messes with people. She figures out how to get people through their problems. She puts together teams of people, right place, right time, deals with all the details. The next thing you know, a house has been built. And the fourth example I'll give you is someone who owns an asset. You've got yourself a laser cutter, and there are lots of people in your community who need things laser cut. Every time you use your laser cutter, you're creating value for the people who needed something cut.

14:06In each of these four examples, what we're seeing is that a human can come along, coordinate, organize, tell a story, be in the middle, say here I made this, not for everyone, but for a specific group. And this act of coordinating, of bootstrapping, of being there, this is a generous act. This isn't something you're doing to the market, it's something you're doing for the market. And so the opportunity. The opportunity is to decide that there's a piece of culture that you think is important enough to change. And then to raise your hand, speak up, and lean into it, and go ahead and make that change happen.

14:54Labor Day is a commemoration of freedom in a whole bunch of different ways. It marks the end of the summer, the end of freedom from school. It reminds laborers how good it is to have a good job and how bad it is to have a lousy one. And it's about seeking the freedom that comes with a good job. But it's also a chance to think about the freedom that we can find to be independent, to do work, whether it's for a boss or on our own, that we can be proud of, that we can say, I made this. I changed the culture in this way, on purpose. I'll own that. That's on me. The freedom to do that, to be a contributor to our community, to do work that matters, it's hard for me to think of something that can lead to a longer, more fulfilling career than that.

15:55So when I say to people, go make a ruckus, what I'm saying to them is, go find the freedom to own it, to own the work you're doing, not to simply be a cog in the industrial system, but instead to be an independent actor, somebody with the freedom to make change happen. Hey Seth, it's Maria. Hey Seth, my name's Kyle. Greetings, Seth. This is Stephen out in Madison, Wisconsin. Hi Seth, Alicia from Charleston here. Hi Seth, this is Anupam. Hi, this is Caitlin. Hi Seth. Warm greetings from Curacao. Hey Seth, my name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey Seth, this is Rex. Hey Seth. Hi, this is Vasilis from Greece.

16:37Hi, this is Roberta Perry. My question is... And that completes my question. As usual, we got some great questions from last week's episode. Here are two of them. Hey Seth, Abhishek from Mumbai here. I noticed an inherent tension in what you said in your podcast about sunk costs. First, there's this idea that it doesn't matter if you've been in a job for five years. If you realize you don't like it, then take it as a gift and feel free to change what you do tomorrow. The second idea is aim to be the best at what you do in the world, whatever that world constitutes. but isn't there a tension there that if you've been doing something for five years you have skills resources networks assets that you've built in that particular space that increases the increases your chance of being the best at doing that particular thing so how do you reconcile that tension between doing what you want to do and ignoring the past versus realizing that your past experience will actually impact your skills and your ability to do good work in the future Yeah.

17:48You're right. There is an apparent tension between the idea of walking away from something that's not working, of ignoring sunk costs, and the desire to get to the dip, to show up as the best in the world at what you do, to figure out how to be a meaningful specific who stands for something, even though it's tough to get there. Here's the way I decode it. You shouldn't stick with it simply because you've already spent a lot of time. You should stick with it because the incremental, the added effort of getting through it is worth the journey. Here's a simple hypothetical. Let's say you have spent six years already learning a craft, earning a certificate, getting training.

18:44But now, upon analysis, looking at the marketplace, thinking about your life, understanding the competition, you realize it's going to be 10 more years of effort, 10 more years of putting yourself into it before you will come out on the other side of the dip where you seek to be. The fact that you've already put years into it is completely irrelevant. All that matters to your decision is this. is it worth the new effort, the new decade worth of effort to get through this dip compared to the other ways you could be spending your time? It's that simple. Paying attention to what you've already done, to the effort you've already put into it, simply confuses the issue.

19:36That time you've put into it, it's a gift from your past self. And if you don't want that gift, don't take it. Hi, Seth. It's Mia from Michigan. Thank you so much for your last episode. I loved your rebuttal of the sunk cost analysis, but I can't help but think about how this line of reasoning could be used as a bad argument for ageism in the workplace. Let's say I'm the CEO of a company and I've invested time and resources into developing an employee. If they're aging and potentially slowing down while new shiny postgrads are emerging into the workplace with more to offer into the future, tomorrow's company.

20:10Wouldn't your analysis validate my choice to lay off the older employee in favor of the new emerging talent since developing that old employee was a sunk cost? Is there a way to reconcile this? Thanks for this, Mia. I have to disagree with you, not about the ageism. There's a good reason not to lay off your most experienced workers, but that good reason has nothing to do with how hard you worked to train them. It doesn't help you make a better decision. And even more vitally important, if that's the reason that you should keep experienced employees, I worry a lot about the organization and whether they're going to be consistent in doing the right thing.

20:55No, the reason we ought to keep experienced employees is because we need more than shiny new enthusiasm. We need wisdom. We need relationships. We need people who are able to look at new opportunities, embrace them for what they are, but also have the perspective to talk about what's come before. Now, if an experienced employee isn't able to do those things, If the experienced employee is merely using tenure or longevity as an excuse to stay there, well, then the organization needs to take a deep breath and say, well, what are the benefits of working with someone who is not contributing? One of the benefits might be that it sends a message to your team.

21:46And the message to your team is, if you stick it out and do hard work for a long time, you'll be safe here for the foreseeable future. But a lot of organizations don't want to send that message to their team. The message they want to send is, we're on a mission here. And if you're in the boat, we expect you to paddle the boat. All of that, though, has nothing to do with how much it costs to get here with that person. So I guess what I'm saying is this. We need to make decisions on the merits. And the merits are complicated. It could be about signaling. It could be about wisdom. It could be about participation.

22:24It could be about promises made. All of those things need to be included in how we make decisions of how we will treat people. and treating them fairly is a good way to be in the world. But the fact that we put something into it yesterday, that's not a good reason to make a decision. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time.