Tech firms engage in capitalist logic to achieve it: wherein the true costs of production are externalized and obscured from public view (or worse, portrayed as being virtuous and of benefit to the user). Willing or not, we are in their employ when we engage in their services, much in the same way we contribute to climate change merely by participating in industrialized Western society. We are both the victims and perpetrators, because even individual moral responsibility has been externalized, seemingly to the point of irrelevance. And as the complex systems (e.g., near-omnipotent global surveillance, totalitarian fiat currency, Bernays' propaganda) we've designed and implemented to run our world are beyond the comprehension, let alone control, of any single mind, how could it be any other way?
Interesting points. You write about externalities, which touch on an economist view. And you also note Ed Bernay and his work on human psychology/propaganda.
Is there empirical literature that further explains this paradox? I wonder if there’s anything in anthropology that describes this.
The paradox here is pretty difficult to break down because it its function and causes are so intertwined with everything in "industrialized Western society" as the above comment makes note of.
The book "24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep" captures many social phenomenon and mechanisms of the neoliberal/"late capitalism" moment.
Here is an excerpt from a book review: "the emergence, rationalization, and normalization of the “observing subject” across the 19th century, revealing new techniques of discipline, such as the regulation of attention in industrial labour and later the pathologization of deviant forms of perception and attentiveness" from https://muse.jhu.edu/article/580561
The article is so confusing. I'm hooked when it started at "The point of the experiment, one imagines, was to prompt the question: “How do they know this?” in the target’s mind." and then it just ends without answering anything.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 33.7 ms ] threadIs there empirical literature that further explains this paradox? I wonder if there’s anything in anthropology that describes this.
The book "24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep" captures many social phenomenon and mechanisms of the neoliberal/"late capitalism" moment.
Here is an excerpt from a book review: "the emergence, rationalization, and normalization of the “observing subject” across the 19th century, revealing new techniques of discipline, such as the regulation of attention in industrial labour and later the pathologization of deviant forms of perception and attentiveness" from https://muse.jhu.edu/article/580561