Redefining responsible tech
How tech workers can prefigure economic democracy
Jason Hickel's recent piece on climate socialism has been rattling around my head for weeks, particularly his blunt assessment that "capital cannot be trusted to resolve the climate crisis". As someone who has watched countless design teams agonize over dark patterns, engagement metrics, and the ethical implications of their work, I keep returning to a simple question: what if the problem isn't that tech workers lack moral clarity, but that they're trapped in a system that makes moral action nearly impossible?
Walk into any tech company today, and you'll find designers, engineers, and product managers who genuinely want to build things that matter. They talk passionately about "user-centered design" and "building for good". They organize internal ethical communities of practice, push back on surveillance features, and lobby for accessibility. Yet somehow, we keep ending up with apps designed to maximize screen time, platforms that amplify misinformation, and products that extract data like strip mines extract coal.
This, of course, isn't a failure of individual conscience. It's the predictable outcome of a system where, as Hickel puts it, "the purpose of production is not to meet human needs or improve society, much less to achieve any ecological goals. The purpose is to maximize and accumulate profit". No amount of good intentions can overcome the structural logic that governs how resources get allocated, what problems get solved, and whose needs matter.
The designer who wants to build sustainable, privacy-respecting software will find themselves constantly battling metrics that reward addiction and data collection. The engineer who sees the climate impact of the endless cloud infrastructure will be told that server costs are someone else's problem. The product manager who questions whether we really need another food delivery app will be reminded that market opportunity waits for no one.
The prefigurative power of tech labor
Tech workers possess something that is sort of a super power (we often forget about it), and is immediate, tangible control over the means of production. A tech worker doesn't just influence what gets built; they literally shape the digital infrastructure that increasingly governs how we work, communicate, and understand the world. A tech worker doesn't just write code; they architect the systems that could either accelerate ecological collapse or help coordinate a just transition.
This creates an unusual opportunity for what activists call "prefigurative politics", which is the practice of embodying the change you want to see, rather than waiting for permission from above. Tech workers are uniquely positioned to begin experimenting with economic democracy right now, through new cooperative ventures.
Consider what this might look like: design teams that prioritize repairability and longevity over planned obsolescence. Engineering collectives that build open-source tools for mutual aid organizations. Product managers who measure success by community resilience rather than user engagement. Worker cooperatives that develop software for local food systems, renewable energy networks, and democratic participation.
These aren't pipe dreams. They might be happening, and could happen on a large scale. The question is whether they can scale up fast enough to matter.
The urgency of now
The temptation, of course, is to frame this as yet another individual responsibility narrative. "If only more designers would choose ethical employers!". But this misses the deeper structural issues. Even the most ethically-minded tech worker operates within constraints imposed by venture capital, stock markets, and the broader logic of accumulation.
Real transformation requires moving beyond individual consumer choices (even when those choices involve where to work) toward collective action that challenges the underlying system. This means tech workers organizing for democratic control over what gets built and how, not just better salaries and working conditions.
It means demanding that companies be structured as cooperatives or public trusts rather than extractive machines for shareholders. It means building alternative funding mechanisms that prioritize social and ecological outcomes over financial returns. It means using technical skills to support broader movements for economic democracy.
The climate crisis won't wait for us to figure this out through incremental reform, though. As Hickel argues, we need "new mass-based political parties that can unite workers and environmentalists in a shared project of transformation." Tech workers, with relative economic security, their direct control over crucial infrastructure, and their growing awareness of their industry's social impact, could be a crucial part of that coalition.
But only if they're willing to think beyond the narrow confines of "ethical design" toward the broader question of economic democracy. The real challenge is designing better systems for deciding what gets built in the first place, not just what is the best way to deploy a pattern library.
The tools of digital production are still fairly democratically available. The question is whether we'll use them to prefigure a more democratic economy, or whether we'll continue tinkering with the ethical implications of fundamentally exploitative systems. The climate crisis is forcing that choice upon us, whether we like it or not.