“As a mutant form of capitalism, neoliberalism transforms workers into entrepreneurs. It is not communist revolution that is now abolishing the allo-exploited working class - instead, neoliberalism is in the course of doing so. Today, everyone is an auto-exploiting labourer in his or her own enterprise. People are now master and slave in one. Even class struggle has transformed into an inner struggle against oneself.” View Highlight 2025-06-26 See also: ecology-of-technology
Consider the software engineer who uses these platforms: In the morning, she might be “above the LLM,” deploying AI to help her code faster and manage overseas contractors. By afternoon, she’s “below the LLM” as automated performance metrics evaluate her own deliverables at her day job. By evening, she might moonlight on Mercor, where an AI-powered matching algorithm determines which gigs she sees, placing her firmly “below” again. The same person occupies multiple positions in this hierarchy within a single day.
If you’re “above the LLM,” you tap a global reserve of on-demand labor; if you’re “below the LLM,” you scramble for tasks meted out by opaque algorithms. Platforms promise freedom yet cultivate dependency: you’re “free” to chase gigs but remain tethered to the platform’s inscrutable hand.
This dynamic echoes the invisibility once felt by “below the API” delivery drivers, only now it’s reaching the higher echelons of professional services—the lawyers, consultants, and strategists who once thought their expertise would shield them from commodification. As AI commodifies “high-skill” work, your value depends on what algorithms cannot mimic: relationships, trust, nuance, a touch of the ineffable. We’re witnessing a reconfiguration of expertise, where technical acumen intersects with distinctly human qualities that defy easy replication.
On a geopolitical scale, nations compete to make their workforces legible to foreign employers. Digital upskilling, fintech solutions, and cross-border payment tools become new forms of soft power. Meanwhile, the U.S. dollar’s gravitational pull tightens its hold; emerging economies orient entire freelance sectors around a currency they don’t control.
approach an equilibrium in which tasks and workers are matched with algorithmic precision, at the expense of sustainable relationships and the intangible qualities that make work meaningful.
Algorithmic precision in task-worker matching is not inevitable — it depends on what metrics a company chooses to optimize. Structurally, less algorithmic matching creates more space for sustained human connection, but that requires a principled decision to leave efficiency on the table.Each keystroke becomes a data point, and every pause has a potential inefficiency that needs to be analyzed.
wonder if the most profound innovations of our era will emerge not from the optimized pathways but from these very fissures in the system. In these spaces, mechanical efficiency gives way to the unpredictable nature of human creativity.
Our hunger for meaning runs deeper than automation anxiety; it reflects our alienation when our skills become interchangeable.
Henri Nouwen’s writing on self-alienation maps directly onto this: the feeling of interchangeability is not just an economic condition but a spiritual one. When skills become commodities, the person behind them disappears — and the hunger for meaning is a response to that disappearance.We must ask: Are these emerging cultures true sanctuaries or just new marketing—a “spiritual capital” we trade in an algorithmic bazaar?
Company culture is shifting from an attraction mechanism — a recruiting tool — to a working substrate: the medium through which people find meaning in their work and produce sustaining value rather than disposable mechanisms for their customers.
