
On being the right size (1928) - nn3
https://www.marxists.org/archive/haldane/works/1920s/right-size.htm
======
breakyerself
This is really an argument against socialism as the communists tried to
implement it. Where the state nationalizes every industry and all workers
become employed by the state which plans everything centrally. Most socialists
have moved beyond that model and would instead prefer to see a system of
enterprise that uses co-op's instead of privately or publicly owned business.
Some industries would probably be nationalized or socialized, but not much
more than already is in the best parts of Europe. The main idea is to make the
enterprises benefit those who do the actual work and also make them
accountable to those people and their communities. The main problem with
capitalism is that someone other than the people doing the work get to decide
how the work is done and how to spend the surplus of value that work
generates. If the workers decided these things they would never vote to
outsource their own jobs and would rarely choose to pollute their own
communities. They wouldn't vote to reward a tiny minority with a fortune while
they pay themselves poverty wages.

~~~
gnarbarian
One problem with this is people as a group tend to be stupid. What stops the
workforce from voting to reduce their work hours to 30 hours per week?

Take the Automotive unions as an example. Their demands contributed in many
ways to the US auto companies nearly going bankrupt and requiring state
bailouts.

Moving manufacturing to cheaper places can have a bad local effect in pockets
that depend on it, but there is a net gain for us as consumers in an economy
to be able to acquire things cheaply.

So our auto manufacturers complained they can't compete against the Japanese
imports, we cranked up a bunch of tariffs to artificially increase the cost of
foreign produced goods. For consumers that is a net loss as it drives up our
prices.

Now, foreign companies produce many of their cars in the united states with
union free labor and american companies have started producing cars in mexico
so they can pay the pensions for all the retired union employees.

This is a simplification but that's how I understand it.

I'm not arguing that unions are bad. only that they can be very bad. There are
benefits when there is an /abusive/ monopoly supplying jobs. (think foxconn),
but unions can be just as abusive as employers and literally kill their own
employers in the process. The free market is the best solution to the problem
which enables a company to hire non-union employees when the union's demands
become too great.

My philosophy is that if you can't compete on price you need to compete on
quality and offer a superior product. (This is why people still buy German
produced cars in other countries regardless of the increased cost in
manufacturing).

For clarification sake I'm saying that the mass of people at the bottom of an
organization can have demands that conflict with the survival of the business.
It's good that there are smart people who fought their way up the bureaucracy
through a meritocracy. They generally won't make a decision that will
obviously drive a company straight into the dirt while this is distinct risk
in unions with entitlement issues.

~~~
guelo
It's funny you mention Germany there at the end since it undermines your whole
argument. German auto workers are all unionized and they earn double what
American auto workers do.

~~~
gnarbarian
It doesn't undermine my argument. I said they compete on quality. Unions can
be just as tyrannical as a monopoly. If German companies didn't produce better
cars than cheaper countries there would be no reason to buy them and very few
people would.

Added to my above comment:

"For clarification sake I'm saying that the mass of people at the bottom of an
organization can have demands that conflict with the survival of the business.
It's good that there are smart people who fought their way up the bureaucracy
through a meritocracy. They generally won't make a decision that will
obviously drive a company straight into the dirt while this is distinct risk
in unions with entitlement issues."

~~~
k__
The problem with this is, that the demands, that can destroy a company, still
can be real demands.

The company says, it has to pay you $5 per hour or they couldn't employ you
and it isn't even lying.

You say, you can't work for a wage below $10 per hour and your reasons for
this are valid, too.

If the company wins, the workers can't live from their wage. If the workers
win, the company can't employ enough of them to conduct business.

~~~
gnarbarian
I fail to see a problem with this at all.

1: The company goes out of business (due to inefficiency and an inability to
compete) in which case it was a shitty business and shouldn't exist in the
first place.

2: The company hires someone who can do the work for $5 per hour, in which
case the worker who needs $10 to live is simply not living within their means.

I equate this to someone earning minimum wage complaining that they can't
support their numerous kids. NO SHIT. you are not entitled to a wage capable
of supporting other people.

~~~
k__
This is what seems logical, but most of the time the second thing will happen,
because there are many people who think every job is better than no job.

There are lesser jobs than people, so the companies have the bigger lever.

~~~
LekkoscPiwa
Before there was minimum wage established in the US there was this job of pump
attendant. Pump attendant was someone who would pump your gas into your car.
These were jobs that paid next to nothing. These jobs disappeared almost
immediately after the minimal wage law was enacted.

Now, think about it. A 16-year old would come to the gas station after school
and pump gas for (let's say) 2usd/hour. But he would also learn other skills.
At that time there were also body shops/car mechanics at the gas station.
Because they could use cheap 2usd/hr labor of this kid. And the kid could
learn car mechanics. After finishing school the kid could be actually pretty
good mechanic. Go there on the job market nad having this real-life experience
demand 7usd/hr job of a car mechanic. That was also a time that unemployment
rate among the young was the lowest out of all the age groups. Soon after the
minimal wage law was enacted the unemployment rate among the young started to
be the highest among all ages group. Not only that, but also there is no one
to help you at the gas pump today in the US. There are no car mechanics at the
gas stations too. These people are permanently unemployed. Because 16 year old
after school isn't worth the current minimal wage. He's worth half of it. He
could be worth the minimal wage enacted by the Government after 6 months
experience while he would be paid market rate as gas pump attendant. But
that's illegal now. It's illegal to hire him, pay him and let him grow to
better position. He is permanently unemployed now. Maybe for years. Again, the
unemployment rate among the young is the highest among all group ages. Before
the minimal wage law it was the lowest. But socialism isn't about letting
people who want to work, work. About letting them grow and prosper in their
future. It is about permanent ruin. 60% of people below the age of 30 in Spain
are unemployed. The country is doomed because of socialism. And doesn't even
get it.

~~~
jswinghammer
Amusingly that job still exists in my neighborhood of Boston for reasons that
I cannot explain. I suspect there may be a law about it but I'm not certain.

~~~
LekkoscPiwa
In New Jersey it is illegal for you to fill up the gas on your own. It has to
be done by the pump attendant. That's the law. Not sure about Boston ;-) It
might be that it makes business sense for the owner to have pump attendant at
the rate or above of the minimal wage. Which is nice.

------
nn3
As opposed to the maximum size I find it more interesting what the minimum
size of organisations is (Haldane's example was the mouse's eye):

Can you write viable software with a small team (<5)? Yes

Can you write very complex software like a distributed database or a web
browser with a small team (<20)? Maybe, but will already be very difficult for
the web browser (assuming not just writing a WebKit wrapper)

Can you develop a CPU with a small team (<10people)? Depends on the
complexity, but typically CPU teams are larger for more faster chips.

Can you develop the silicon process needed to make the CPU with a small team?
(<100) No

~~~
tracker1
In all of your examples, it depends on the team, their skill level as
individuals and how well they communicate... the large the extended teams that
have to coordinate, the larger a part communication takes, and the less time
each member of a team has to accomplish any work. In software, I've seen this
time and again. Adding more people to a team is sometimes a very bad thing.

------
mildweed
Relate this to Dunbar's Number and an effective small business. Dunbar says
150 total for a social group. But we operate across multiple social groups,
across all realms of life, not just your job.

If you wanted to put together an elite group of excellent professionals, how
big do you suspect that could be? In other words, how large should you let
your company get before you spit it down the middle into two subsidiaries? My
guess: 125

125 = 150 - (5 close family + 5 extended family + 4 close friends + 6 extended
friends + 5 extracurricular friends)

~~~
ordinary
Dunbar's number is the number of people in a group in which every individual
knows every other individual personally. This is not the same as the number of
people an individual can know personally.

The way you can split a company in two is identical to the way our brains
already distinguish between social groups. I don't need to remember that John
from work doesn't know Mary from the bridge club, only that there is no
overlap between the two groups.

Another problem with the maximum company size that you propose is that
Dunbar's number is not a hard limit of 150, it depends on the conditions under
which such a group forms and operates. The Wikipedia article on it is, as so
often, a good primer.

------
pndmnm
If you find this article interesting, it's also worth finding and flipping
through D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's classic "On Growth and Form". A copy is
available at the Internet Archive:
[http://archive.org/details/ongrowthform00thom](http://archive.org/details/ongrowthform00thom)

------
curiouslurker
Same goes for so called 'lifestyle businesses'. I have heard it said that you
can run a life style business till about $1 million per year in revenue before
you need the systems and processes that only make sense for a $10 million per
year business.

------
cstross
There seems to be a chunk missing in the third paragraph: _Or it can compress
its body and stretch out its [???] these two beasts because they happen to
belong to the same order as the gazelle_

~~~
Flenser
" legs obliquely to gain stability, like the giraffe. I mention "

[https://www.marxists.org/archive/haldane/works/1920s/right-s...](https://www.marxists.org/archive/haldane/works/1920s/right-
size.htm)

There are no other differences with that version.

------
xerophtye
As amazing as the article is, i have one confusion. What about dinosaurs?

In the eagle part, he said eagles CAN'T be as big as tigers etc. But what
about Pterodactyls? How did they manage to be so big?

Oh and weren't all the dinosaurs cold-blooded? So, if I am not mistaken,
didn't the author say that we get over the problem of heat loss by being warm-
blooded? Or does that just mean that they had to eat ALOT more? (though i
suppose due to frequent volcanic eruptions etc maybe the environment was hot
enough to sustain them)

~~~
yk
The size is not only determined by the underlying physics, but also by the
environment. So there can be a arms race of size, the predator needs to be
roughly the same size as its pray, so the larger pray has a evolutionary
advantage which gives larger predators an evolutionary advantage.

And to stay with the analogy of the article, the same is true for
organizations. Some parts of organizations need to be as large as the
corresponding parts of competing organizations. For example the legal
department and marketing.

~~~
xerophtye
I wouldn't say it doesn't depend on the physics. Of course it does. As for my
original question, i realize the flying mechanism of an eagle is completely
different from that of a Quetzalcoatlus (thank you @sejje). Modern day birds
use their feathers to trap air (or somthing like that), no? Where as the
Quetzalcoatlus would simply use the surface-area of their leathery wings to
glide, like human-made gliders.

------
_delirium
Background on the author:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._B._S._Haldane](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._B._S._Haldane)

------
6ren
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nature_of_the_Firm](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nature_of_the_Firm)

------
nephorider
the "biological part" in the article is good and seems to be factual. The
political conclusion looks however more"cut and paste there".

~~~
bcoates
A decade later, Coase worked out the economic argument in much more detail in
"The Nature of the Firm". (The logic works the same for business enterprises
in a market economy as it does for nation- or world-sized Communist economies)

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0335.1937....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0335.1937.tb00002.x/full)

------
fcatalan
A great post about the same problem but from a Math/CS perspective, and as fun
to read:
[http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/918.html](http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/918.html)
[Cosma Shalizi's "In Soviet Union, Optimization Problem Solves You]

~~~
pja
Red Plenty was such a good book. Highly recommended.

------
forkandwait
The Hutterites have been living communally for about 400 years (I think), and
have evolved an ideal size for a "colony" of about 90 people. At about 110
they start getting ready to "hive off". Colonies have been very successful,
often pissing off the less organized (and less successful) locals.

[http://www.hutterites.org/day-to-
day/structure/](http://www.hutterites.org/day-to-day/structure/)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutterite](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutterite)

While similar in ways to Amish, Hutterites rather like new technology and put
it to good use on their farms.

~~~
pron
Another interesting read is the rise and fall of the Kibbutz, possibly the
most famous form of a commune.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz)

------
tlo
tl;dr
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Being_the_Right_Size](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Being_the_Right_Size)

------
n1ghtm4n
"[God has] an inordinate fondness for beetles" \-- favorite J.B.S. Haldane
quote. About 1/4 of all known animal species are beetles.

------
flycaliguy
So, horse sized duck then?

------
veganarchocap
Marxists.org? Really?

~~~
drjesusphd
This smells like ad hominem.

~~~
veganarchocap
It's not ad hominem, it's just that Hacker News is often so (quite rightly, in
my view) focused on growth of private industry and tech start-ups. It seems
bizarre a Marxist forum crops up, with seemingly swarms of support.

~~~
drjesusphd
I don't see "swarms of support". I see informed debate and discussion, which
is a breath of fresh air compared to the knee-jerk reactionism usually
associated with the topic.

And it's the same kind of reactionism that you're illustrating all too
perfectly.

