I honestly thought this was going to be another one of those books where there was a really well-written, clear, introduction that made all of the points the author had and that the rest of the book was going to just be repitition of those points; but it wasn’t.

  • “shift in our relationship to our own stuff…what they once fixed for themselves, they replace entirely or hire an expert to repair…” [p 2]
  • “hardheaded economists will point out the ‘opportunity costs’ of spending one’s time making what can be bought” [p 2]
  • “This book is concerned less with economics than it is with the experience of making things and fixing things.” [p 3]
  • “honestly could not see the rationale for my being paid at all — what tangible goods or useful services was I providing to anyone? … dispiriting” [p 5]
  • “’teamwork’ has made it difficult to trace individual responsibility” [p 9]
  • “social currency” [p 14]
    • “The effects of my work were visible for all to see” [p 14]
  • “craftmanship has been said to consist simply in the desire to do something well, for its own sake.” [p 14]
  • material things lie outside the self [p 16]
  • specialist vs generalist [p 19]
    • There is fear in being a specialist. A fear of a pre-determined path. [p 19]
    • A community of specialists encourages reciprocal favors [p 25]
  • “I feel like I have a place in society. Whereas ’think tank’ is an answer that, at best, buys you a few seconds when someone asks what you do and you try to figure out what it is that you in fact do, with ‘motorcycle mechanic’ I get immediate recognition.” [p 27]
  • “antimodernism” [p 29]
  • “you can’t hammer a nail over the internet” [p 34]
  • “the twentieth century saw concerted efforts to separate thinking from doing.” [p 37]
  • “abstract labor” [p 40]
    • “The activity of self-directed labor, conducted by the worker, is dissolved or abstracted into parts and then reconstituted as a process controlled by management.” [p 40]
    • To some degree, I disagree that we can continue without abstracting labor at some level. As we get “deeper” into things, it’s necessary to abstract labor.
  • Ford saw that doubling wages intensified labor because workers became even more anxious about losing their jobs. [p 42]
    • “Ford himself later recognized his wage increase as ‘one of the finest cost-cutting moves we ever made’” [p 42]
  • “Changing attitudes toward consumption” [p 43]
    • Consumption meant production.
    • “the only way to get them to work harder was to play upon the imagination, stimulating new needs and wants.” [p 43]
  • “the early twentieth century saw the moral legitimation of spending.” [p 44]
    • no longer “Be frugal and free”
    • “‘Indebtedness could discipline workers, keeping them at routinized jobs in factories and offices, graying but in harness, meeting payments regularly.’” [p 44]
  • “alienation of judgment from professionals” [p 45]
    • “Standardized tests remove a teacher’s discretion in the curriculum.” [p 45]
  • Find engaging work [p 52]
  • “Freedom from hope and fear is the Stoic ideal” [p 53]
  • “Even if you do go to college, learn a trade in the summers.” [p 53]
  • “master of one’s own stuff” [p 55]
    • pride and worth versus opportunity costs
    • “Economics recognizes only certain virtues, and no the most impressive ones at that. Spiritedness is an assertion of one’s own dignity, and to fix one’s own car is not merely to use up time, it is to have a different experience of time, of one’s car and of oneself.” [p 55]
  • “to be a master of your own stuff entails also being mastered by it.” [p 57]
  • “freedomism, as a marketing hook” [p 56]
  • “There are now layers of collectivized, absentee interest in your motor’s oil level” [p 62]
  • “things that were unabigiously our own” [p 62]
  • “Agency versus Autonomy” [p 63]
    • “agency is built up from an ongoing submission” [p 64]
    • learning that we aren’t in control and that we must submit
  • “A thing requires practice while a device invites consumption. Things constitute commanding reality, device procure disposable reality.” [p 66]
  • “choosing is not creating” [p 68]
  • “it is not the product but the practice that is really attractive.” [p 71]
  • different perspective [p 92]
  • “finding the truth requires a certain disposition in the individual: attentiveness, enlivened by a sense of responsibility to the motorcycle.” [p 98]
  • “The truth does not reveal itself to idle spectators.” [p 98]
  • “idiot… ethical and a cognitive failure” [p 98]
  • “metacognition… the activity of stepping back and thinking about your own thinking.” [p 99]
  • “stop for a moment in your pursuit of a solution, and wonder whether your understanding of the problem is adequate.” [p 99]
  • A balance between “a mechanic’s metaphysical responsibility to the machine and his fudiciary responsibility to its owner” [p 120]
  • “The best business decision would be to forget I’d ever seen the amiguously buggered oil seal” [p 122]
  • The metaphysical responsibility is acting out a need of our own. [p 123]
  • “A lot of academic work has this quality of curiousity without circumspection” [p 124]
  • “Learned irresponsibility” [p 138]
  • “Credential inflation” [p 143]
  • degrees have become symbols rather than true proof of knowledge. [p 146]
  • Exposure to situations not rules to be followed to build intuition. [p 166]
    • And this intuition comes from understanding the first principles of the situation. [p 175]
    • “To be capable of sustaining our interest, a job has to have room for progress in excellence.” [p 195]
    • “Too often, the defenders of free markets forget that what we really want is free men.” [p 209]