
Temps, Consultants, and the Rise of the Precarious Economy - Dowwie
http://www.iasc-culture.org/THR/THR_article_2016_Spring_Hyman.php
======
padobson
_The private planning of corporations, whose budgets were sometimes bigger
than those of governments, defined postwar American capitalism, not markets._

There may not be a practical difference between centrally planned economies by
governments and by corporations, but there's definitely a moral one.

Governments can coerce their people into participating in their plans, but
corporations cannot. They have to convince employees, customers, and other
stakeholders that dealing with them is in their best interest.

The difference is analogous to seduction and rape. The end result may be the
same, but there's a very clear moral difference between the two.

~~~
wfo
Or, alternately, everyone gets a vote in the planned economy of the
government. It is transparent, observable, and democratic. Only a tiny elite
group of capitalists get to vote on the planned economy of corporations, which
are as you say often bigger than governments.

Corporations need not convince people to participate; the impact of their
plans and decisions have effects on the entire society, and they need not ask
anyone their opinion first. The power structure in a corporation is a tyranny:
disagree with the guy on top and you're forcibly removed. Toe the line, suck
up, and maybe you'll move higher in the pyramid.

I don't need to make an analogy: there's two distinct methods for decision
making here; tyranny and democracy, and I know which one I'd choose. There's a
very clear moral difference between the two.

~~~
lliamander
Voting makes people feel powerful in the same way that playing the lotto makes
them feel rich.

The issue with voting, or any exercise of voice, is that it is a positional
good; i.e. "winner-take-all" [1]. Even if everyone has one and only one vote,
power will tend to accumulate in the hands of a few "influencers". It is easy
for influencers and rulers to serve each others interests, directly or
indirectly, while by-passing the rest of the population.

If we are doing an apples-to-apples comparison - government centrally planned
economies vs. corporate centrally planned economies - then yes, the ability to
exercise voice is a point in favor for economies that are planned by
governments. However, I find it to be a rather weak point. That corporations
are limited in what they can do to individuals (they can't imprison, kill,
rob, etc.) and that they are subject to tort and criminal law, is much more
essential to liberty, justice, and self-governance for the general population.

[1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8aRaWnf6ps&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8aRaWnf6ps&feature=youtu.be)

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perfunctory
> Though postwar American politicians juxtaposed US free markets to the
> centrally planned economies of the Soviet bloc, Galbraith recognized that
> the two were more similar than one might have thought.

Whenever I try to explain this to anyone, people look at me as if I'm crazy.

~~~
arethuza
Having witnessed the consolidated reporting and planning processes for a good
sized successful multinational the irony of "central planning" did strike me
more than once.

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blfr
Doesn't the timeline coincide with women entering the workforce (increasingly
after WW2) and massive immigration to the US (after the Immigration and
Nationality Act of 1965)? Basically, a large influx of (at least potential)
workers increased the supply and lowered the price (in wages and benefits
employees could demand) of labour.

There are other effects, like specialization, which make consultants much more
effective at certain tasks with which regular employees don't have a chance to
build experience. However, like lowered transaction costs, I don't think this
is crucial.

~~~
jpatokal
Massive immigration to the US far predates 1965. Read eg. Upton Sinclair's
_The Jungle_ (1906) for a glimpse into how new immigrants were treated around
the turn of the century.

~~~
blfr
Yes but in the 1920s strict limits on immigration were enacted. Only after
that did these large companies arise. Then the limits were basically lifted in
1968, right before the beginning of the trend article describes.

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eternalban
On demand staffing infrastructure is tooling up (and not just for taxis). If
you (fellow _worker_ ) think dealing with HR is unreasonable now, wait until
you are dealing with the Google help desk equivalent.

Guilds are a non-ideological alternative to unions. Specially for software
development, such collective organizations would have been very useful even
now, but in the future will be critically required.

~~~
pc86
Could you expand on the difference between a guild and a labor union?

~~~
eternalban
For one, the leaders of guilds are active master practitioners. Guilds should
be collectively owned for-profit organizations. No fees, rather sweat equity.
Guilds would set the industry best practices.

My working model is the Knights Templar. But I advise steering clear of King
and Church if you want to avoid a future Friday the 13th event ;)

[edited to expand]

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evoloution
Very nice article, I was introduced to a lot of concepts under a historical
perspective. However, it does not cover emerging patterns (startup culture) or
what would be the most plausible alternative future trends. Can someone
suggest some good reads?

~~~
roymurdock
VCs becoming more risk-averse, startups moving slower:

[https://blog.ycombinator.com/fundraising-advice-for-yc-
compa...](https://blog.ycombinator.com/fundraising-advice-for-yc-companies)

[http://heidiroizen.tumblr.com/post/139377970205/dear-
startup...](http://heidiroizen.tumblr.com/post/139377970205/dear-startups-
heres-how-to-stay-alive)

\---

Great paper that compares and contrasts the 3 industrial revolutions: 1)
steam/railroads, 2) electricity/internal combustion engine/running
water/chemicals/petroleum, 3) computers/phones/internet. Author reflects on
likely future challenges and what we can do to get back to growth.

[http://www.nber.org/papers/w18315.pdf](http://www.nber.org/papers/w18315.pdf)

\---

Required reading for thoughts on the state of US industry, life, liberty,
GEICO insurance, etc. (mostly outside of tech):
[http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2015ltr.pdf](http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2015ltr.pdf)

\---

My thoughts, in response to an article about the end of Moore's Law, and the
need to design more efficient software as advances in hardware slow down:

I think we're going to see this phenomenon - wringing efficiency out of what
we have now - across a lot of different fields and industries in the coming
years.

One example is the whole IoT movement. Most of the real (industrial, medical,
automotive) applications are efficiency/cost-savings focused. The central
theme is connecting devices that we have now to better monitor, analyze, and
utilize what we've already built.

Another example that is a bit further removed from computers is the whole
Uber/car sharing trend. At any given time 95% of the cars in the world are
parked somewhere, not in use. Even if we could only bring that down by 5%, we
would be utilizing billions of dollars in capital more efficiently.

I also strongly believe that we will see this reflected in living situations
with growing urban cores/hubs of activity and jobs. Suburbs are no longer
economically viable at the scale at which we built and inhabited them post
WWII, and as the infrastructure begins to decay and inequality increases, more
and more people will move to the city to take advantage of the economies of
scale of living a dense, vertical lifestlye.

~~~
vkou
Nit - taxi services utilize the capital of the vehicle more efficiently, but
are far less efficient at roadway/energy utilization (As a taxi/uber has to
travel to pick up its passenger.)

It's a private gain, at a public loss. If we really wanted efficient travel,
we'd be investing into mass transit.

~~~
Pyxl101
How is it a private gain? The cost to travel to pick up a passenger is built
into the price of the trip. Efficiently routing these fairs could be far
cheaper than owning a vehicle that's idle most of the time, while also far
more convenient than hoping your route criscrosses enough with public transit
not to be inconvenient.

I personally believe the future consists of transport networks that allow you
to enter your expected trip, either the present moment or planned in the
future, and an autonomous system will translate your request into transit
based on the price you're willing to pay (and desired level of predictable
reliability). So if you travel to work around the same time every day, you can
probably achieve a fairly low price with high reliability. Uber is the
beginning of such a network, and if self-driving cars existed, the model would
take off to a whole new level. Imagine if the vehicles were capable enough to
deliver freight and packages between businesses and residences overnight while
not in use (or less in use) for passengers.

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jbattle
I'm not an economist but it always drives me crazy when the US economy of the
1950's and 60's is seen as some sort of reasonable benchmark for how our
economy should grow. The world was still coming out of the great depression,
two world wars that massively disrupted the infrastructure of Europe and large
parts of Asia AND an astounding rise in international trade.

The US economy should have been booming, right?!

I'm sure it happens in actual scholarship but in articles like this there
seems to be little to no correcting for the factors above.

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1812Overture
People need widgets. People are willing to work to make widgets in order to
get widgets. No one has come up with a perfect solution to this problem.

