“Under a capitalist system of production or any system of production based on the extraction of value via wages, it’s always going to be the case that mechanization leads to more work and lower wages...”
In this episode, we welcome Annie McClanahan, an Assistant Professor of English at UC Irvine, where she is also a faculty advisor for UCI-LIFTED, a prison education program. Her first book, Dead Pledges: Debt, Crisis, and 21st Century Culture, was published in 2016, and she is currently finishing a second book, Tipwork, Gigwork, Microwork: Culture and the Wages of Service.
Some of the topics we explore in this conversation include the history of today's service and tip work economies, the trend of automation driving deskilled labor and microwork, the possibility of a world disentangled from wages, and more.
(The musical offering featured in this episode is Come The Rain by Maggie Clifford. The episode-inspired artwork is by Ellie Yanagisawa.)
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