[PEN-L:3944] Re: Re: subsumption questions, round 2

[Rob Schaap <rws@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I like your hypothesis, Tom, and am only answering because I can't bear the
thought of my favourite reverend feeling his formidable research and
finely-tuned rhetoric are going unheeded by the congregation.

The bit that struck me was Rae's impressive 'productivity paradox' (and
what's this business of bringing in all relevant opposing points of view so
that all may be fairly tried by argument, when you had the laughably
irrelevant 'lump of labour' stuff at your tender mercy already?  Heterodox
economist practice, indeed!).

Seems to me, you're pointing at reduced time as appropriate in some
settings and not in others.  Where Asian women stitch x Nikes in every y
hours on the job, increased shift changes and (undoubtedly minimal)
additional non-wage costs would make for lessened productivity, no?  I
mean, such workers are simply sacked if they don't keep up, their children
die if they are sacked, so they keep up.  Productivity per worker per hour
is simply an ordained magnitude.

Sounds optimally productive to me.

But in a western white collar setting, we do have a promising setting for
your 'covenant'.  Individual productivity per hour might well increase,
much of what we do is 'unproductive' (in the Marxian sense at the very
least), unquantifiable, depends on a certain degree of wakefulness, and has
no logical capacity/consumption limit to it (you can always learn more
about the behaviour of rubber bands at sea level on the equator, or come up
with another amendment to another memo) - so the fact that we add a worker
for every forty hours extra work we don't do between us adds diversity and
all the benefits that promises in the context of an information sector
suddenly not exhausted into unproductive silence.  The 'productive' (ie
quantifiable) consequences might even soar.  And Rae's concerns apply
neither to our increased per capita 'productivity' nor to any lack there-of
- ya can't have too informed an academic/research/engineering community,
nor, if Parkinson was right, too much administrative product.

BTW, seems the notion of 'productivity' is a real site for struggle to the
extent we can be said to be in an information economy - but I take the
point that this covenant is supposed to appeal to MBA-poisoned bosses, not
real people.

'Trouble is, if I'm making even a skerrick of sense, it's those women in
the Nike factory who seem most needful of a rational argument with which to
impress their utility-maximising bosses.

It all depends on the character of Canada's economy, I s'pose.

Usual apologies if this is embarrassing twaddle,
Rob.


>It has occurred to me often that my hypothesis could be wrong, even
>puzzling, but I can't quite figure out why it seems to slip past without
>comment.
>
>
>regards,
>
>Tom Walker