Comment by speak_plainly
9 days ago
In Republic I, Socrates distinguishes the art of medicine from the art of wage-earning. One is about the work; the other is about getting paid. Historically, the craft was the primary goal, and the money was an extrinsic side effect.
Today, the money-making side has staged a hostile takeover.
The attention conundrum is just a symptom of a deeper financialization. Multi-billion dollar companies have turned profit into a data-driven science – analytically turning the screws on every script, product, and interaction to optimize for extraction. This is the destruction of the art of making things.
The real issue is that you cannot compete with an entity that has no respect for the art. When a platform replaces the integrity of the work with the logic of a metric, the independent creator is no longer an underdog – they are functionally excluded. You can be the best at any art, but in a system that prioritizes sheer extraction over excellence, your craft effectively ceases to exist.
It seems that we have forgotten how to distinguish between value and profit, and now celebrate the latter instead of the former. Currency enables ever broader and more niche markets, but the financialization of everything is the Faustian bargain; we gained niche hobbies but lost our souls?
Not only value and profit, but also assets, cash flow and debt.
Altogether in terms of currency, very hard to distinguish in the most meaningful way.
It's too easy for the real non-dollar value element to slip through the cracks, and even end up completely gone, in a system where true value itself is not prominent enough to be recognized as the source of highest growth, like it often happens so many times but has been forgotten.
Success can spoil you too.
Once you've got so much more cash than value at any one time because you've been leveraging a productive opportunity well, and taking profits aside regularly, if you're not careful the currency amount alone can seem like enough on its own.
Uh oh.