Students in my class will often blame "capitalism"--by which they often mean "profit-seeking"--for particular outcomes they don't like. But there is something more fundamental: interest-seeking.
This is great analysis! The student may have said it in analytically insufficient terms, and they may be overly influenced by cultural sentiments around “late-stage capitalism” (whatever that means to anyone), but I too would have found the assignment uncomfortable. And likely for the same reasons. It’s like asking me - can you make cable news more addictive? Or, how can we design cigarettes that get people to buy more of them? (I think I saw articles back in the day that the ultralight cigarettes were so unsatisfying that people smoked two of them in place of one light or regular. I could be wrong.)
It feels uncomfortable to be on the side of evil interests, even for a school project. And that’s a good thing - I think - to have them feel that discomfort.
I wonder if instead of asking them to suppress their discomfort - you ask them to embrace it and bring it out analytically. What interests are they arguing against specifically? And could they find a way to address the company’s interests while addressing their own discomfort?
That is, harsh and one-sided regulation (“stop addicting users because: capitalism!”) tends to lead to unintended and worse consequences. See: plastic bag regulations in California, which are taking decades to get right, even while we increase production and disposal of plastic. Oops!
So how do we align interests? Grocery stores - and others - want a cheaper and less fragile method of packaging groceries than paper bags. The state wants less plastic disposal. You could play the role of the grocery store under the old regulations, trying to find an interest-meeting regulatorially acceptable plastic bag. Or you could play someone else - maybe the state, though my view of them is dim as well. Or play the consumer. What do we want - really?
Back to the analogy you mention from the student - unhealthy food. WHY do people eat unhealthy foods? To say it’s because users ate stupid is…unproductive and ridiculous. Have they never eaten a delicious Big Mac? If they have, are they stupid?
No, they’re hungry, and maybe they’re tired, and they don’t want to cook a healthy meal. Or they’re craving comfort food, which has inserted itself into our childhood brains through happy meals.
And so in the moment we make a “bad” decision. We decide to keep scrolling, to eat the Big Mac, to accept the plastic bag because we forgot our reusable bags in the car, or at home, or this was a spontaneous stop.
But when we have the freedom to step back, maybe we can find less simplistic ways to align our interests.
Capitalism may do it “well” through the profit motive - it is aligning at least - but school may be the perfect chance to step back, and to step away from the embrace of the dollar.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I like this idea a lot and I think I will do it this way next time. It gets at "interests" and it's more sensitive to where students are coming from which is important.
Re: social media's "addictiveness," I think "Because: capitalism" also fails as an explanation of that. I fall more into the "demand" rather than "supply" camp. In other words, social media has empowered a certain kind of voracious information consumer who thrives on a certain kind of content; what the engineers at Insta and FB end up doing is catering to this consumer; and even when they try not to, this consumer asserts himself. I'll probably write a post about this; I don't think it sounds convincing when I state it this way. But when I read Will Oremus et al's reporting on the "angry" button at FB, I can't help but think that the engineers are just at sea as the rest of us in trying to understand it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/10/26/facebook-angry-emoji-algorithm/
This is great analysis! The student may have said it in analytically insufficient terms, and they may be overly influenced by cultural sentiments around “late-stage capitalism” (whatever that means to anyone), but I too would have found the assignment uncomfortable. And likely for the same reasons. It’s like asking me - can you make cable news more addictive? Or, how can we design cigarettes that get people to buy more of them? (I think I saw articles back in the day that the ultralight cigarettes were so unsatisfying that people smoked two of them in place of one light or regular. I could be wrong.)
It feels uncomfortable to be on the side of evil interests, even for a school project. And that’s a good thing - I think - to have them feel that discomfort.
I wonder if instead of asking them to suppress their discomfort - you ask them to embrace it and bring it out analytically. What interests are they arguing against specifically? And could they find a way to address the company’s interests while addressing their own discomfort?
That is, harsh and one-sided regulation (“stop addicting users because: capitalism!”) tends to lead to unintended and worse consequences. See: plastic bag regulations in California, which are taking decades to get right, even while we increase production and disposal of plastic. Oops!
So how do we align interests? Grocery stores - and others - want a cheaper and less fragile method of packaging groceries than paper bags. The state wants less plastic disposal. You could play the role of the grocery store under the old regulations, trying to find an interest-meeting regulatorially acceptable plastic bag. Or you could play someone else - maybe the state, though my view of them is dim as well. Or play the consumer. What do we want - really?
Back to the analogy you mention from the student - unhealthy food. WHY do people eat unhealthy foods? To say it’s because users ate stupid is…unproductive and ridiculous. Have they never eaten a delicious Big Mac? If they have, are they stupid?
No, they’re hungry, and maybe they’re tired, and they don’t want to cook a healthy meal. Or they’re craving comfort food, which has inserted itself into our childhood brains through happy meals.
And so in the moment we make a “bad” decision. We decide to keep scrolling, to eat the Big Mac, to accept the plastic bag because we forgot our reusable bags in the car, or at home, or this was a spontaneous stop.
But when we have the freedom to step back, maybe we can find less simplistic ways to align our interests.
Capitalism may do it “well” through the profit motive - it is aligning at least - but school may be the perfect chance to step back, and to step away from the embrace of the dollar.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I like this idea a lot and I think I will do it this way next time. It gets at "interests" and it's more sensitive to where students are coming from which is important.
Re: social media's "addictiveness," I think "Because: capitalism" also fails as an explanation of that. I fall more into the "demand" rather than "supply" camp. In other words, social media has empowered a certain kind of voracious information consumer who thrives on a certain kind of content; what the engineers at Insta and FB end up doing is catering to this consumer; and even when they try not to, this consumer asserts himself. I'll probably write a post about this; I don't think it sounds convincing when I state it this way. But when I read Will Oremus et al's reporting on the "angry" button at FB, I can't help but think that the engineers are just at sea as the rest of us in trying to understand it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/10/26/facebook-angry-emoji-algorithm/