Firms

A HALF FORMED THOUGHT: it's a very well observed desire on the part of AI/LLM backers that these machines substitute for the labour of less trained white collar workers. The chatbot will replace assistants, junior researchers, graduates, clerks, and so on. The implication, that the path to entry into a middle class career path for younger people will close, is either pronounced silently, or expressed with a shrugging acceptance. Those workers just aren't valuable. Oh well.

It strikes me that this is not entirely new as an aspect of our modern capitalism, though. What workers through the 1990s and 2000s experienced, culturally, in organisations, were the expansion of other practices that also tended to close off pathways to career. Outsourcing of routine and back-of-house functions. The breaking of union agreements and 20th century industrial rules. The expansion of superficial 'merit' practices in hiring, which simultaneously tended to prevent internal promotion, and encouraged ambitious workers to look first to other firms to get ahead. An emphasis on continual study at university and a stress on individualisation of training. These added up to a model of white collar worker whose value was essentially portfolio-based, one they could pick up and take anywhere, infinitely substitutable.

What these all have in common is that they attack the basis of the mid-20th century unit of capitalism, the firm, vertically coordinated organisations with a strong claim to the loyalties of, and control over the working behaviours of, their employees, and a value proposition based on cultural practices (like loyalty, and overwork, but also quality control, reward, and creativity). A company is just a legal entity on paper, but a firm is a collection of people and relationships. The destruction of firms is both good and bad, and many old-school firms run on literally patriarchal lines won't be mourned. But a capitalism without firms is also a capitalism without careers.