According to a lushly animated Chobani ad from last year, the future of work is agrarian and cutting-edge, folksy and modern— WWOOF meets Wakanda, perhaps. The commercial pictures a world in which farming retains a familial, salt-of-the-earth vibe despite the existence of robots so prehensile they can pick fruit. “A business is only as good as its people,” a farmer narrates as workers gather around a peculiar spread of bread, tomato soup, and a heaping bowl of yogurt, and a drone drops off a carton of oat milk. The ad may be set on a future farm and designed to peddle dairy products, but its pastoral setting and utopian veneer riff on the pitches of many companies seeking to present a change to workplace scenery as an upgrade in quality of life. During the pandemic, predicting “the future of work” has become a cottage industry among economists and marketers alike. Though the future is likely to bring widespread hardships for many—whether via stagnant wages or reduced … [Read more...] about The Parasitic Workplace
Good employees
The Rise and Fall of an All-Star Crew of Jewel Thieves
In March 2019 , the retired police detective Mike Crowley met me in the lobby of a hotel near the Miami Dolphins’ stadium. Crowley, a 71-year-old Vietnam vet, was wearing shorts, a white undershirt, and a camouflage baseball hat that said MARINE in block caps. Over the course of three hours, he sipped a single rum and Coke. Four years earlier, Crowley said, he’d noticed a pattern in a string of jewelry-store robberies happening all over Florida: The same means of entry had been used every time. As he spoke, I eyed a large stack of paperwork teetering on the table in front of us, including thick folders labeled DRILL TEAM in black marker. At first, Crowley had had multiple suspects for these crimes. He walked me through a laundry list of itinerant safecrackers who had passed through Florida in recent years, pulling off heists in various cities throughout the state. Florida, seen through Crowley’s eyes, is a migratory stopover for the most elite burglars and safe teams. If you … [Read more...] about The Rise and Fall of an All-Star Crew of Jewel Thieves
The Most Important Alliance You’ve Never Heard Of
In Venezuela, students have been killed while protesting against the government of Nicolás Maduro, who is jailing opposition leaders and just closed a television station that dared broadcast the demonstrations. Argentina is irresponsibly racing toward a dangerous economic cliff. The Brazilian economy is in recession and 2014 will mark its fourth consecutive year of subpar growth, as the country reels from its largest capital flight in more than 10 years. Amid all the bad news in the region, the presidents of Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru met with little fanfare in Cartagena last week to seal an economic pact launched in 2012. They call their project the Pacific Alliance, and it will soon include Costa Rica and possibly several other countries. The four founding members are the most successful economies in Latin America; they boast the region's highest economic-growth rates and lowest inflation rates. Together, they represent 36 percent of the region’s economy, 50 percent … [Read more...] about The Most Important Alliance You’ve Never Heard Of