Capitalist anarchy

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

The manufacturer does not produce shoes because he knows that Jones needs 
them. He produces because he knows that dozens of traders will buy certain 
numbers at various prices because they (or rather the retailer they serve) 
know that thousands of Joneses, whom the manufacturer does not know, want 
to buy them.

F.A. Hayek, "The Mirage of Social Justice"

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NY Times, October 19, 2003
Overcapacity Stalls New Jobs
By LOUIS UCHITELLE

CINCINNATI ? Much of the public outcry over America's failure to generate 
jobs has focused lately on a surge in the outsourcing of work to China and 
India. But another dynamic closer to home is weighing on job creation ? the 
slow process of working through a glut of boom-era investment that 
continues to litter the economy with underused factories.

Procter & Gamble, for example, has been dumping its weakest brands and the 
plants that produce them. At its Ivorydale industrial complex here, in 
Procter's hometown, the company has sold factories that make Crisco 
shortening, Olean fat substitute and Ivory soap to three manufacturers, 
each with plans for squeezing efficiencies from the operations. Hiring more 
workers is the last item on their agendas.

"As long as there is extra capacity available in manufacturing, there is 
going to be room to move work around among companies without having to add 
workers," said Thomas A. Kochan, a labor and management expert at the Sloan 
School of Management of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/19/business/19SOAP.html


Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org


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