Tech algos are engineered to isolate, capture and monetize attention. @CoffeeandaMike

Today is Labor Day. A day America created to honor work. So there may be no better day to ask two questions. What kind of work are we creating? And what does American society actually value? The latest jobs report says America added 162,000 jobs in August. The headline was strong. Look underneath it. Much of the growth came from leisure and hospitality, government and schools, healthcare and social assistance. Meanwhile information and financial activities lost jobs. A job that pays the rent is different from a job that buys a house. A job that covers this month’s bills is different from one that creates savings. A job that requires a second job is different from one that creates independence. Counting them all the same and telling Americans everything is great is like peeing on somebody’s feet and telling them it’s raining. People know the difference. The American bargain was never simply employment. It was mobility. Work was supposed to change the circumstances of your life. You became more valuable. You earned more. You saved. You bought a house. You accumulated equity. You took a risk. Maybe you started a business. Maybe your children had opportunities you never had. Work became capital. Capital became ownership. Ownership created independence. That was the deal. Last week in The Physics of Money, I described money as having three states: ice, liquid and gas. When you have almost none, money is ice. Every dollar is already committed to housing, food, transportation, healthcare and debt. Work is supposed to melt the ice. But if the cost of living consumes everything the job produces, the paycheck arrives and disappears. The government counts the person as employed. The politician counts the job as a success. The worker hasn’t moved. The ice never melted. But there is something even more disturbing underneath this. What does America pay people to do? We say we value education. What do we pay the teacher? We say we value health. What do we pay the nurse? We say mental health is a national crisis. What do we pay the person sitting across from a suicidal teenager trying to keep that child alive? Then look at what the modern economy can reward spectacularly well. Attention. Get people to look. Keep them looking. Make them angry. Make them afraid. Make them horny. Give them somebody to hate. Sexual content works. Political extremism works. Outrage works. The algorithm doesn’t care. Attention is the commodity. A teacher can spend a lifetime educating children and struggle to accumulate capital. A mental-health professional can do work we call essential and worry about rent. A nurse can care for the dying and struggle to buy a home. Meanwhile, someone who discovers a sufficiently effective way to extract attention can become enormously wealthy. The point isn’t that entertainers shouldn’t make money. The point is that economic rewards send signals. Human beings respond to them. If we say teaching matters, healthcare matters, mental health matters and raising children matters, while building an economy that can reward outrage, extremism and sexual stimulation vastly more than any of them, we shouldn’t be surprised by the society that economy produces. So on Labor Day, celebrate work. Then ask what that work pays. What kind of lives it creates. What behavior our economy rewards. And what kind of country those rewards are building. Because a job isn’t the American bargain. Mobility is. +++I write one of these every day. If you’d rather get them directly from me instead of hoping an algorithm shows them to you, subscribe free to dylanratigan.substack.com