Post #375279

2026-02-23 12:41 UTC

RE: https://wandering.shop/@cstross/116119828985746886 "Capitalism has always required two economies to function: The productive economy — making things, building things, the factory, the office, the visible work that gets measured and compensated. Masculine-coded. Paid. The reproductive economy — making the workers able to work. Feeding them, clothing them, managing their schedules, remembering their appointments, processing their emotions, maintaining their bodies and minds, raising the next generation of workers. Feminine-coded. Unpaid or underpaid."

Replies (5)

@livcomp@hachyderm.io 2026-02-24 10:37

reupping my 2018 nerd rant, imagining: "productive economy" -> computational thinking "reproductive economy" -> systems thinking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_2MHScD9rg

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@decapitae@mastodon.social 2026-02-23 13:27

@livcomp@hachyderm.io Hindsight is 20/20 - maybe more people will look back before November... 😞🤞

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@bkahn@beige.party 2026-02-23 16:10

@livcomp@hachyderm.io I read a piece in the CQ Quarterly or Whole Earth Catalog decades ago which quoted Ivan Illich's discussion of "shadow labor" -- all the unpaid work, like cooking, house cleaning, child rearing, etc. done for no pay but without which the world would grind to a halt.

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@foolishowl@social.coop 2026-02-23 17:23

@livcomp@hachyderm.io My partner was just commenting on how common pedophilia turns out to be with right wing men, that it must be about domination. I'm thinking about how the stupidity of the powerful is not an accident. Power is about stupidity. It's about ignoring the complexity of things in the real world, living beings and ecosystems and human relationships, reducing it to something simple they can control. And then they invert it, calling real insight and awareness stupid. Conversations in the real world are often about the complexities of our feelings and our relationships, the fine details of our life plans, knowing the nuances of the behavior of people and animals, understanding the microclimates of our own homes. Who pays most attention to these things, and is mocked for it and treated with contempt? Who is trained to ignore them and feels strangely disconnected from the world? Here is gender. It is similar with other forms of oppression and hierarchy. Wisdom is condemned as petty.

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@clew@ecoevo.social 2026-02-23 19:59

There’s another labor split within paid labor that doesn’t line up. Eg, Ag labor and much gig labor is styled male but pays crap, and professionalized care labor — doctors, *representative government * — is styled male and treated very well indeed. Don’t know how this will come up with “agentic AI” but it always does. “Below the API”, people briefly grimly said. “Dual labor theory”, when studied, afaik. @livcomp@hachyderm.io

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