Re: Back to slavery

["Max B. Sawicky" <sawicky@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I agree that transactions costs is much in
the spirit of 'exchange,' since it is based
on the latter's infeasibility, but who is
this "NC" and what does she want?

Williams says Marshall posited organization as
a fourth factor of production.  Perelman was
around then so maybe he can elaborate.

Re: contracting, I'm reading Williamson because
he and Coase offer an implied rebuke to the privatizers.
The rational for contracting is implicitly a naive
rejection of vertical integration (one form of
which is a public agency that does its own
production, rather than outsource).  Obviously,
"businesslike" or efficient need not entail
vertical disintegration, one form of which is
contracting out.

My impression of the whole field of IO (and public
finance) (and macro) is assorted departures from the
primitive exchange paradigm.  But I'll defer to the
academics on that question.

mbs



non-existence

Oliver Williamson is not quite mainstream; his stuff doesn't appear in
standard textbooks, which to my mind represent the codification of NC
ideology. But more importantly, my assertion was that the NC _wants_
everything to be an exchange. The fact that hierarchy is needed is seen as a
"failure" of the market.

Back when I did a survey of the NC management literature (including OW), it
seemed that the main theory was that production was a collective good for
the owners and the workers alike. Workers who "shirked" and didn't produce
enough were see as free-riders who undermined the production of the
collective good. OW calls it "opportunism." I don't see this as very useful
to capitalist management except as a source of rhetoric.
------------------------
Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine




> -----Original Message-----
> From: Max B. Sawicky [mailto:sawicky@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2003 1:34 PM
> To: PEN-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Back to slavery
>
>
> Coincidently I'm reading Oliver Williamson at the moment,
> whose existence and inspired lit debunks your assertion.
>
> Transactions costs can make hierarchy (the firm) more economical
> than market exchange.
>
> mbs
>
>
>
> I don't know if this is a joke, but Marx's CAPITAL would give
> more guidance
> to managers than neoclassical economics does. The latter wants all
> relationships between people to be one of exchange...
>
> ------------------------
> Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
>