4 ms·

Interesting but opinionated and dated. "Wage slavery" became an acceptable and necessary trade-off after the move from an industrial to service economy. This wa

by darien 17y ago

Interesting but opinionated and dated. "Wage slavery" became an acceptable and necessary trade-off after the move from an industrial to service economy. This was possible in the US due to the rise in immigrant population (population boom of cities) and the automation of agriculture.

wisty 17y ago
Interesting and opinionated - good summary. But there are plenty of owner-operators in the service industry. One person can run a small cafe single-handed. 2 founders (a head cook, and a head waiter) can run a mid-sized restaurant. They still need a few kitchen hands and waiters, but they don't need to hire any managers. Once the whole management structure can be manned by founders the wage system has been undermined. The point isn't that everyone will be an owner-operator or contractor. The point is that all the good jobs will be. If you want to scrub floors, that's OK, but everyone else will be a manager or a hired gun.
- barrkel 17y ago
  To take your example, a restaurant, the most important factor in success is how well the kitchen works. That requires a solid head chef. How well will that chef run a business when he or she's also running a kitchen? That requires them to specialize in two domains, rather than one. There's a reason why corporations are more efficient than coalitions of self-employed singletons operating in a free market. The transaction costs kill you. In order to specialize with sufficient depth to compete in pretty much any non-local market, you necessarily must either work for someone else, or hire many other people to work for you - and thereby make your specialism planning, coordination and managing, rather than anything else.
  - d4nt 17y ago
    That may well have been true for a while but I think the information revolution will eventually make it so easy to organise, collaborate and outsource that the managerial overhead of a corporation will put big companies at a disadvantage.
  - nazgulnarsil 17y ago
    the division of labor should have a natural schelling point WRT balance between organizational complexity and increased efficiency from specialization. this point moves as humans get better at logistics (computers continue to create an explosion in this area).

by darien 17y ago

wisty 17y ago

Interesting and opinionated - good summary. But there are plenty of owner-operators in the service industry. One person can run a small cafe single-handed. 2 founders (a head cook, and a head waiter) can run a mid-sized restaurant. They still need a few kitchen hands and waiters, but they don't need to hire any managers. Once the whole management structure can be manned by founders the wage system has been undermined. The point isn't that everyone will be an owner-operator or contractor. The point is that all the good jobs will be. If you want to scrub floors, that's OK, but everyone else will be a manager or a hired gun.

barrkel 17y ago
To take your example, a restaurant, the most important factor in success is how well the kitchen works. That requires a solid head chef. How well will that chef run a business when he or she's also running a kitchen? That requires them to specialize in two domains, rather than one. There's a reason why corporations are more efficient than coalitions of self-employed singletons operating in a free market. The transaction costs kill you. In order to specialize with sufficient depth to compete in pretty much any non-local market, you necessarily must either work for someone else, or hire many other people to work for you - and thereby make your specialism planning, coordination and managing, rather than anything else.
- d4nt 17y ago
  That may well have been true for a while but I think the information revolution will eventually make it so easy to organise, collaborate and outsource that the managerial overhead of a corporation will put big companies at a disadvantage.
- nazgulnarsil 17y ago
  the division of labor should have a natural schelling point WRT balance between organizational complexity and increased efficiency from specialization. this point moves as humans get better at logistics (computers continue to create an explosion in this area).