And as a second post - why markets tend to encourage atomization.
1) All markets end up with workers being controlled. Even worker owned co-ops in market systems end up hiring managers who are pretty much in control on a day to day system. Now from a managers point of view the ideal would be to measure and control every action every worker performed. But that is impractical. So the next best thing is for workers (including intellectual workes) to act as "black boxes" - with clearly measurable inputs and clearly measurable outputs. That way if a manager can't control a worker in detail, the manager can still make sure the worker requires no more inputs than she should, a produces the output she is supposed. So this encourages greater atomization, not only as a matter of efficiency but as a matter of control.
There are even examples where control has been chosen over productivity. In California, there was a tremendous fight to outlaw the use of short-handled hoes in agricultural labor (where employers required farm workers to use short rather than long handled hoes.) Short handle hoes destroy farm workers backs. Workers also can pull fewer weeds with them than with long-handled hoes. So why did farmers fight so hard against the change? because with a short handle hoe, you can see the muscles in a workers back tense with effort. An experience supervisor can glance a worker and instantly tell how hard he or she is working. With a long handled hoe, there is not so much strain. You actually have to look at the area the worker is clearing to tell how the worker is doing Supervison is much harder when teh workers use long handled hoes. And the farmers were willing to not only to cripple their workers, but to have them work less efficienctly until crippled, in order to keep tighter control.
2) Workers and especially intellectual workers have incentive to favor atomization in markets. Basically, in a black box situation, the worker has more bargaining power than if everything they do is easily replicated.
3) The same thing applies in other extremely top down systems - possibly more so in the case of stuff like central planning. Central planners need to keep control of workers just as owners dl. Managers working for central planners have the same need for control as managers in market systems. Workers have the same need for bargaining power with managers in central planning as they do in markets.
Okay - that was not short. But I hope it was clear.
That was nice and clear about atomization and quite worth the length.
Now I really feel dim, but can you define atomization for me? I totally get your second post about control and productivity. Studied it a lot in a management class. But I don't think I've come across that word, or if I had I've forgotten.
Wow. The consumerism and waste conversation is pretty much the same one my husband and I had today.
Not that I have anything to contribute. . . but I can talk about cartoons! I miss Blake and Mortimer from Teletoon. I'm not sure how a French comic book ended up being a Canadian (?) cartoon, but it was cool.
atomization - splitting into seperate unconnected parts. So everyone is a little black box. Everyone concentrates on their tasks and strictly defined interfaces with others; thinking about the business or system as a whole strongly discouraged.
t On Edit
So actually I think you got everything. You just were not familiar with the word in that context. Which meant it was an unneccesary piece of jargon on my part.
Oh and Fayjay - you mentioned before how slammed you were right now. I simply forgot. I should not even have asked. But thanks for your patience in any case.
wow, this thread all with the long thoughtful posts...
in a nonthoughtful post...
We Spanish kids got crap like "Destinos," despite there being Almodovar right there at the local video stores.
the kids in my hs french classes also read "huis clos"! And we in the spanish classes had to read borges and garcia marquez and garcia lorca (and god knows I couldn't make it through a page of any of those now, which makes me sad)...but when we were good, on fridays the spanish teacher would let us watch "Destinos". It was our treat. How sad is that? But really, "Destinos" was SOOOOO much better than what I had to watch in my college french class--at least in Destinos, there was a plot, and people went places and did things (though I never did find out what happened...last I recall, they'd gone to Mexico, and then some caribbean nation...and there was mystery...). Er, but anyway, "french in action"? There was no action. Grrrr.
Hee - we get Destinos every Sunday here. I TiVo it. Do you want to know how it ends, meara?
Thing was, we watched it out of order, and often only bits at a time, because the teacher would turn it off whenever we talked back to the TV. So we never knew if there was a plot. But then, he was British, so he saw it as more important to mock the fact that our Spanish pronounciations sounded funny to him since he spoke it in his Liverpudlian accent.
