I just listened to an episode of The Portal podcast in which the host Eric Weinstein interviewed Democratic Presidential candidate Andrew Yang. At around the 24-minute mark, their discussion turns to the dignity of work and what happens when a machine replaces your job and how to find meaning outside of your career or what you do to make money.

Eric shared a paradigm that he says comes from object-oriented programming. I have no experience with this concept, but perhaps this will make sense to the esteemed coders who check in on my non-coding musings from time-to-time. 

The difference between “is a” vs “has a.”

If a Lamborghini can play an FM broadcast through its speakers, by some definition one could say it IS a radio but that seems absurd. It makes more sense to say the Lamborghini HAS a radio just like it has a transmission. 

We make this error when we talk about workers. We say a person IS a worker, a plumber, an architect. The argument is that we need to shift the model of thinking. Shifting to the “has a” model one can say you have a breadwinner, and have a contributor, and have a consumer. We need to have a model of humans that recognizes a need to be active in the economy whether or not the marginal product of our labor is sufficient to take care of our families.

I completely agree that we need to re-think the “human as widget” model that has dominated the culture going back to the Industrial Revolution.

I have been thinking about this concept for my own life in terms of finding fulfillment beyond the regular day job that pays the bills. This is one of the driving forces for why I’m writing every day and pursuing development and learning in areas of great interest to me.