Capitalism

In a capitalist system, Filipinos are slowly having their time stolen away from them. One reason for this is the depreciation of the Philippine peso. As the value of our wages decreases, the time we invest into work becomes less worthwhile. This forces Filipinos to get more jobs just to survive, consuming even more of their time.

…[P]eople work by basically spending time, [right]...[T]he job is that you spend your time doing a thing, and then you get this unit of measurement, which is money, and that's what you get for it. So basically, what you're doing here is [that]...You're selling your time in exchange for money. And…money becomes...kind of like a unit of time. Let's say…if I have a million pesos right now, I could argue and say that I know I can probably buy 10,000 hours of time of a whole bunch of people, because I'll pay them per hour, right? So the reason why I am so passionate about cryptocurrency is because I feel like inflation and the devaluing of our money...they're not just stealing our money; they're stealing our time. Because we worked for the money that we have…[w]e exchanged our time for that money. But as the value of that money gets lower and lower, the time we put into gaining it is no longer worth it. So it's like [inflation is] stealing our time, and time is the one thing that you can't get more of. You can always earn more money by...getting more jobs. But you'll only ever have 24 hours a day, or...29,000 days in your lifetime. So…that's all you get.

LUIS BUENAVENTURA
HEAD OF CRYPTO AT GCASH

Filipinos also devalue themselves intentionally by setting low prices to remain competitive, contributing to a race to the bottom in the local market. Colonial standards of “cheap wages” are perpetuated, for Filipinos feel like they have no other choice.

Aside from this, Filipinos are alienated from their labor, making their work more unfulfilling than before.

As previously mentioned, the Philippines has distinguished itself as a renowned labor hub, working to power First World countries. Call center agents handle stressful and demanding customers; virtual assistants manage the administrative work of startup entrepreneurs; and data annotators assess hundreds of images for AI applications.

What these jobs all have in common is that they can be considered forms of grunt work; Filipinos are outsourced this work so that First World employers can do more productive things with their time. Even AI, which is feared to displace human labor, still requires annotation and quality assurance done by humans. AI is claimed to save people from labor, but in reality, it allocates it to workers in a detached way.

“Worries about AI-driven disruption are often countered with the argument that AI automates tasks, not jobs, and that these tasks will be the dull ones, leaving people to pursue more fulfilling and human work. But just as likely, the rise of AI will look like past labor-saving technologies, maybe like the telephone or typewriter, which vanquished the drudgery of message delivering and handwriting but generated so much new correspondence, commerce, and paperwork that new offices staffed by new types of workers — clerks, accountants, typists — were required to manage it. When AI comes for your job, you may not lose it, but it might become more alien, more isolating, more tedious.”

JOSH DZEIZA
"INSIDE THE AI FACTORY"

Workers not only become disconnected from their labor but also remain invisible to the society they serve. This could especially be seen in the interviews with technologists. When asked to describe their own optimistic scenarios, they focused on how future technologies would benefit users, with little consideration for the workers that would be maintaining them.

For instance, many of them believed that shopping and entertainment services in the Philippines did not require much further improvement; their reasons for this were that these services already had good enough UX, and that if they were developed any further they may encourage harmful behaviors (e.g. impulsive shopping, doomscrolling). But the well-being of contractors like delivery riders and content moderators were not thought of as much.

Another example is the prevalence of AI-powered services in interviewees’ optimistic scenarios, such as personalized recommendations and automation tools; the way data labellers would live in these scenarios was barely discussed at all. Which leaves the question: In an optimistic future where AI enables human flourishing, who will be left to keep such systems running?

Even outside of work, Filipinos are still contributing to capitalism. An anonymous expert brought up how many of the practices that bring us joy and pleasure create a lot of value. This is evident in families going to malls to spend time with one another; a pastime that was meant for social bonding can be co-opted for economic gain.

And even when doing nothing, Filipinos are still subject to extraction; thanks to surveillance capitalism, their personal data is collected and monetized. This data then informs social media platforms and AI applications, allowing them to create more value.

This level of extraction, combined with a lack of awareness, is represented in the pessimistic scenario through an Orwellian digital identity system like Worldcoin; the interviewed technologists feared that their own personal data would be unwittingly used by institutions to profit off them.

Overall, their perceived futures show that it is difficult to imagine a life outside of capitalism, especially when you get to experience the benefits of it — to the workers' detriment.

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