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A batch of the best highlights from what Jophin's read, .
purportedly “normal” people in hierarchical environments typically ended up locked in a kind of pathological variation of the same sadomasochistic dynamic: the (person on the) bottom struggles desperately for approval that can never, by definition, be forthcoming; the (person on the) top going to greater and greater lengths to assert a dominance that both know is ultimately a lie—for if the top were really the all-powerful, confident, masterly being he pretends to be, he wouldn’t need to go to such outrageous lengths to ensure the bottom’s recognition of his power.
Bullshit Jobs
David Graeber
The ILO recognizes burgeoning unemployment in the global North and South and the worrying trend towards casual and low-quality work. Its response has been to announce an agenda called ‘decent work’ for all, and to make ‘decent work’ a core ‘sustainable development’ goal. But the ILO has no concrete plan for how ‘decent work for all’ could be accomplished under the current mode of capitalist development, where the proliferation of casual work is not an accident, but a strategy to increase profit and enhance productivity — specifically the productivity of labour in relation to capital, which is how economists define it (Munck, 2013).
After Development: Surplus Population and the Politics of Entitlement
Tania Murray Li
__Work expands to fill the time available for its completion__,” as the British historian C Northcote Parkinson realised way back in 1955, when he coined what would come to be known as Parkinson’s law.
Why Time Management Is Ruining Our Lives | Oliver Burkeman
Oliver Burkeman
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