4 Comments

The move-fast-break-things doctrine has consistently been about “kill an existing business for which there is a real need, cash in via provision of a substitute, and then maybe cash in again when the people who can actually meet the need trickle back in, making pennies to the dollar they once made. But sooner or later, the need just goes unmet and another group of people aren’t making enough to even pay their basic costs.” They were running out of things to break that could be broken, but now they’re going to break coders, break white-collar middle management, break the remaining writers and artists, and do their damnedest (once again) to break teachers. We’ll need all those people on the other side, but the point has always just been to impoverish them by pushing them out for a while.

Expand full comment

This is pretty much it. And would you believe it, this has been it since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, when factory bosses used new machinery as occasion to replace skilled cloth workers with precarious workers (often children) — giving rise to the Luddite rebellion, among other things.

Expand full comment

I dont know if you saw that the CBC gave the book a rave review yesterday better when you listen https://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/toyne-holiday-reads-2023-1.7061083

Expand full comment

Cheers Lloyd, this was great. I went on CBC spark a bit back and had a good chat there, too

Expand full comment