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So apparently the economists analyzing the pin factory didn't even know how pin production actually worked? As Kay notes, it doesn't affect their conclusion, bu

by SilasX 7y ago

So apparently the economists analyzing the pin factory didn't even know how pin production actually worked? As Kay notes, it doesn't affect their conclusion, but interesting nonetheless. There's also a neat dispute on the pin factory analysis I thought I'd share. Kevin Carson, drawing on work by Steven Marglin, argued that the pin factory example doesn't prove what Smith thinks it did, because it neglected the possibility of a single worker batching each step himself and reaping the same benefits[1]: >Marglin took Adam Smith's classic example of the division of labor in pin-making, and stood it on its head. The increased efficiency resulted, not from the division of labor as such, but from dividing and sequencing the process into separate tasks in order to reduce set-up time. This could have been accomplished by a single cottage workman separating the various tasks and then performing them sequentially (i.e., drawing out the wire for an entire run of production, then straightening it, then cutting it, etc.). George Reisman, in a Mises Institute article, disputed these claims [2], saying that you can't get the enhanced efficiency this way because of set-up time, tool duplication, the requirement to do it at scale to make a profit: >If, for example, there were six distinct steps entailed in pin making, then instead of six workers working side by side continuously,in one factory, each continuously using a definite tool or piece of equipment, we would have, under cottage production, six cottage workers each performing a large volume of a given operation, while the tools and equipment required for the other five operations remained idle. His output from any given operation would also then remain idle until he finished that operation and turned to the next operation. >The clear implication is that under the arrangement of cottage production so beloved of Carson and Marglin, the six workers would need between them thirty-six sets of tools and equipment instead of only six such sets and would have an unnecessarily large volume of partially finished product on hand at any given time. ... >In sum, cottage production would entail a tremendous waste ofcapital and be enormously inefficient, ... [1] http://www.mutualist.org/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/MPE.pdf http://www.mutualist.org/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles... p. 166 [2] https://cdn.mises.org/20_1_5.pdf https://cdn.mises.org/20_1_5.pdf p. 7 in PDF

dragontamer 7y ago
And then we have single Chinese painters painting 10,000 paintings per month. https://www.instapainting.com/blog/company/2015/10/28/how-to-paint-10000-paintings/ https://www.instapainting.com/blog/company/2015/10/28/how-to... Different forms of manufacturing have different constraints. Trying to generalize everything from a pin-factory (which initially wasn't even abstracted correctly) seems like navel gazing to me. In the case of painting: it seems like creating a whole slew of blue-paint so that you can do stroke#465 on your 10,000 mass-produced oil paintings is more efficient than spurting out just a little bit of blue paint for stroke#465, then another paint for stroke #466, (etc. etc.) Its more efficient to perform that individual stroke 10,000 in a row, more efficiently using your paintbrush, paint, and other tools, before moving on to stroke #466. --------- Now I don't know much about 1700s based pin-making, but apparently Adam Smith didn't either. :-) I'm going to guess that every mass-production line is setup slightly differently, and will have slightly different "parallelization" mechanisms.
aalleavitch 7y ago
I could make an argument against that: The factory workers are leaving underutilized what is by far the most useful tool in the entire process, the human brain. A cottage worker has sight over the whole process and is directly empowered to make adjustments to it that increase efficiency or improve the product. The factory worker is helpless to do anything but repeat a repetitive act as according to orders, leaving their mind to rot.
- zhte415 7y ago
  Often only the first parts of the book are quoted, most often the famous pin factory. But this misses the book as a body of work. An except from later in the book that I think aligns with your point: > the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life... But in every improved and civilized society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it. It's worth noting that Smith's work was a prelude to that of, for example, Ricardo on the pricing of land (labour/capital) and Marx on ownersip of land/capital.

by SilasX 7y ago

dragontamer 7y ago

And then we have single Chinese painters painting 10,000 paintings per month. https://www.instapainting.com/blog/company/2015/10/28/how-to-paint-10000-paintings/ https://www.instapainting.com/blog/company/2015/10/28/how-to... Different forms of manufacturing have different constraints. Trying to generalize everything from a pin-factory (which initially wasn't even abstracted correctly) seems like navel gazing to me. In the case of painting: it seems like creating a whole slew of blue-paint so that you can do stroke#465 on your 10,000 mass-produced oil paintings is more efficient than spurting out just a little bit of blue paint for stroke#465, then another paint for stroke #466, (etc. etc.) Its more efficient to perform that individual stroke 10,000 in a row, more efficiently using your paintbrush, paint, and other tools, before moving on to stroke #466. --------- Now I don't know much about 1700s based pin-making, but apparently Adam Smith didn't either. :-) I'm going to guess that every mass-production line is setup slightly differently, and will have slightly different "parallelization" mechanisms.

aalleavitch 7y ago

I could make an argument against that: The factory workers are leaving underutilized what is by far the most useful tool in the entire process, the human brain. A cottage worker has sight over the whole process and is directly empowered to make adjustments to it that increase efficiency or improve the product. The factory worker is helpless to do anything but repeat a repetitive act as according to orders, leaving their mind to rot.

zhte415 7y ago
Often only the first parts of the book are quoted, most often the famous pin factory. But this misses the book as a body of work. An except from later in the book that I think aligns with your point: > the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life... But in every improved and civilized society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it. It's worth noting that Smith's work was a prelude to that of, for example, Ricardo on the pricing of land (labour/capital) and Marx on ownersip of land/capital.