[lbo-talk] Interview with Alan Finlayson

JOANNA A. 123hop at comcast.net
Fri Jul 5 00:55:29 PDT 2013


That was an interesting chat with Alan Finlayson . I recommend it to all.

But I am skeptical about the connections he makes between Occupy and Bonoism. I'm also not convinced of the extent to which the creativity of the entrepreneur is really meant to be extended to the general population.

In reality, the "creativity" of the entrepreneur, as realized by finance capital, is key in destroying any possibility of creative action by an increasingly deskilled and precarious labor force.

The most outstanding example of this is education, which is being increasingly deskilled and industrialized: from the churn of unskilled teachers, to the growth of test-based education, to the exclusion of subjects that can't be tested, to the introduction of MOOCS. There's no creativity here either for students or teachers. It is taylorization from first to last.

To take another example, my own field of technical writing. When I started, every book I wrote went through two reviews and three drafts. I was helped in my work by dedicated illustrators, editors, and production assistants, so that I could focus on writing. ALL those people are gone today, and the writers are expected to fulfill their functions. The three drafts are down to two. You can imagine the loss of quality that results from this. Some companies feel they can do without writers or support personnel altogether: users forums supposedly replace these functions (for free).

I think I posted the fact that some newspapers have fired their photographers and are expecting the journos to supply pictures using their smart phones.

This is not about creativity. This is about super-exploitation.

"Its a Wonderful Life" has been replaced by "Life is Beautiful."

Joanna



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