https://vegasharmon.com/works/shop-class-as-soulcraft-the-new-atlantis/ Recent content in “Shop Class as Soulcraft” (The New Atlantis) on Vegas Harmon Hugo en Tue, 12 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/a-rising-sea-of-clerkdom/ Tue, 12 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/a-rising-sea-of-clerkdom/ It seems we must take a cold-eyed view of “knowledge work,” and reject the image of a rising sea of pure mentation that lifts all boats. More likely is a rising sea of clerkdom. To expect otherwise is to hope for a reversal in the basic logic of the modern economy — that is, cognitive stratification. https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/consumer-debt-as-discipline/ Tue, 12 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://vegasharmon.com/commonplace/consumer-debt-as-discipline/ Adopting Ford’s methods, the industry would soon be reduced to the Big Three. So workers eventually became habituated to the abstraction of the assembly line. Evidently, it inspires revulsion only if one is acquainted with more satisfying modes of work. Here the concept of wages as compensation achieves its fullest meaning, and its central place in modern economy. Changing attitudes toward consumption seemed to play a role. A man whose needs are limited will find the least noxious livelihood and work in a subsistence mode, and indeed the experience of early (eighteenth-century) capitalism, when many producers worked at home on a piece-rate basis, was that only so much labor could be extracted from them.