Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism

This was an interesting and thought provoking book. The author, Richard Wolf, has written an intriguing and valuable history of the development of democratic capitalism. I found this part of the book very valuable. I also learned from his distinctions and history of the development of socialism and communism. He reverts back to the ideas of Karl Max and defines capitalism not in terms of markets and private property to ideas based on the means and goals of production:

“A capitalist system is, then, one in which a mass of people-productive workers-interact with nature to fashion both means of production (tools, equipment, and raw materials) and final products for human consumption. They produce a total output larger than the portion of that output (wages) given back to them.
The wage portion sustains the productive workers: it provides their consumption and secures their continued productive labor. The difference between their total output and their wage portion is called the "surplus," and it accrues to a different group of people, the employers of productive laborers: capitalists.

The capitalists receive the surplus from the productive laborers by virtue of a wage labor contract entered into between capitalist and worker. This wage labor contract specifies a particular commodity exchange. The capitalist agrees to buy-pay the worker regularly for-her or his labor time. The worker agrees to sell her or his labor time to the capitalist. The worker further typically agrees to use the tools, equipment, raw materials, and space provided by the capitalist. Finally, the worker agrees that the total output emerging from her or his labor is immediately and totally the private property of the capitalist
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The productive laborers-those who produce the surplus-use the wages paid to them by the capitalists to buy the goods and services they consume and to pay personal taxes. The capitalists use the surplus they obtain from their productive employees to reproduce the conditions that allow them to keep obtaining surpluses from their productive employees. For example, they use part of their surplus to hire supervisors to make sure the productive laborers work effectively.

They use another part to pay taxes to a state apparatus that will, among other activities, enforce the contracts they have with their workers. They use another part of the surplus to sustain institutions (churches, schools, think tanks, advertising enterprises) that persuade workers and their families that this capitalist system is good, unalterable, and so on, so that it is accepted and perpetuated.

The workers who sign contracts with capitalist employers fall into two categories. Productive laborers are those directly engaged in the production of the goods and services that their employers sell; their labor yields the surplus that employers receive and distribute to reproduce their positions as capitalists. The term "unproductive laborers" refers to all those engaged in providing the needed context or "conditions of existence" for productive workers to generate surpluses. The unproductive laborers have their wages paid and their means of work provided by capitalists. The latter distribute parts of the surplus they get from productive laborers to pay and provide for the unproductive laborers.

In short, the capitalist economic system divides people into three basic economic groups: productive laborers, capitalists, and unproductive laborers. Just as the social context for the economic system-politics and culture-shapes and influences the economy, so the reverse also holds. To focus on a society's economic system, as this book does, does not mean that economics is any more important than politics, culture, or nature in the interaction among them that shapes every society. My focus on the capitalist economic system is driven chiefly by the widespread neglect of this dimension of today's social problems.”

He discusses the transition from private capitalism to regulated capitalism, and private capitalism to state capitalism (referred to by many as socialism). He makes little distinction between communism and socialism. And, he introduces the ideas of social capitalism.

The author develops his ideas for worker self directed enterprises. He introduces what I think is an unfortunate acronym “WSDE”. Weapons of mass destruction come to mind, “WMD”.  I found the latter part of the book discussing WSDEs to be a stretch and tedious. It’s certainly idealistic, and I am in no position, as a non expert, to judge this idea. I only know that it will be very difficult to gain acceptance and usage of this concept except in very special cases. There are just too many unknowns, and the barriers are enormous. The entire political-social-economic system is structured to fight this type of change. And, it’s not just the U.S. It’s the whole world.

Yet, here we are. All well known economic -political-social systems have either failed, are in crisis or are headed for a crisis. Let’s stay open and keep talking.

To read more, click here.

Redesigning Knowledge Work

"A worsening shortage of high-skill knowledge workers is one of the biggest challenges facing organizations. These talented and highly paid experts—doctors, lawyers, engineers,salespeople, scientists, and other professionals—are companies’ most valuable assets.

In response, some firms are redefining the jobs of their experts, transferring some of their tasks to lower-skill people inside or outside their organizations, and outsourcing work that requires scarce skills but is not strategically important.

Redesigning jobs in this fashion involves several basic steps: identifying the gaps between the talent your firm has and what it will need; creating narrower, more-focused job descriptions in areas where talent is scarce; choosing from various options for filling the skills gap; and revamping talent- and knowledge-management processes to accommodate the new way of working."
Martin Dewhurst, Bryan Hancock, and Diana Ellsworth, Harvard Business Review, Jan-Feb 2013

In my opinion, this is a dangerous extension of the industrial model. And, it is just the opposite of what should be happening (trans-disciplinary skills) to solve today's wicked problems. In addition it adds additional layers of communications - boundaries that lead to errors and oversights.

A Mechanical Turk

Amazon Mechanical Turk: The Digital Sweatshop by Ellen Cushing

Utne Reader, Jan-Feb 2013

The Turk or Mechanical Turk or Automatron[1] Chess Player was a hoax of the late 1700s. The Turk was in fact a mechanical illusion that allowed a human chess master hiding inside to operate the machine.

“The funny thing about the biggest shift in production in years is that almost nobody knows it happened. Which makes sense, if you think about it: It occurred invisibly, online, anonymously, all over the world, but at the same time, nowhere in particular. And it’s poised—if most people who know about it are to be believed—to completely change the way we think about work, the way we consume technology, and the way the global economy functions.

It’s called microtasking[2], and it works by outsourcing small, virtual tasks to an army of online workers, who then perform them for pennies. These tasks vary widely in scope and substance, but what links them all is that they’re essentially too difficult or too dependent on human analysis for a computer to do, but too simple for skilled labor. And they’re the bedrock of the internet.

Crowdsourced[3] microtasking—conducted largely via Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk site—is now a multimillion-dollar industry, and one that doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon. Even as the global economy continues to falter, Turk is thriving, due in no small part to what it can do for companies under pressure to do more with less.

“There’s this sort of competitive insanity of the business environment,” said Six Silberman, a longtime observer of the field who helped create a forum, Turkopticon, for people doing this kind of work. “And everyone’s trying to cut costs as strenuously and as rapidly as possible.” In a globalized economy, that’s easy to do: Mechanical Turkers—even those who live in the U.S.—make somewhere around $1.50 an hour on average, enjoy no worker protections, and have no benefits.”

Read more at Utne Reader.

 Bezos describes the work as “artificial artificial intelligence”. Hence the nod to the Mechanical Turk.

It’s not only being used to add a few bucks to people’s income, it’s being used to replace a lost job.

Laws don’t exist to cover this type of work.

The output of a Turker can be rejected for any reason and the Turker gets no feedback, just the rejection.

This is another commercialization of the trend begun by open source projects[4] in the world of programming.

It’s touted as a revolution as important as the industrial revolution and the future for the Internet.

In my opinion, it’s a trend headed in exactly the wrong direction. It’s the industrial revolution on steroids – hierarchy, segmentalism, exploitation, fragmentation, purposelessness, siloing, soullessness and all the other ills we should be trying to get away from. It like the Mechanical Turk is a fraud, a cruel hoax, perpetrated on the people.

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[1] “An automaton is a self-operating machine. The word is sometimes used to describe an old-fashioned robot, more specifically an autonomous robot.” Wikipedia

[2] “Microtasking is the act of breaking a large project into tiny, well defined tasks. The resultant microtasks are proposed to a crowd and are characterized because: it can be performed independently, it requires human participation or intelligence (so it cannot be performed automatically by a computer) and because it can be done in a short period of time. Some experts, like Sharon Chiarella, vice president of Amazon Mechanical Turk, indicates that this “short period” should be less than an hour.”  Crowd Sourcing Blog

[3] “Crowdsourcing is a process that involves outsourcing tasks to a distributed group of people. This process can occur both online and offline. Crowdsourcing is different from an ordinary outsourcing since it is a task or problem that is outsourced to an undefined public rather than a specific body. Crowdsourcing is related to, but not the same as, human-based computation, which refers to the ways in which humans and computers can work together to solve problems. These two methods can be used together to accomplish tasks.” Wikipedia

[4] “In production and development, open source is a philosophy, or pragmatic methodology that promotes free redistribution and access to an end product's design and implementation details. Before the phrase open source became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of terms for the concept; open source gained hold with the rise of the Internet, and the attendant need for massive retooling of the computing source code. Opening the source code enabled a self-enhancing diversity of production models, communication paths, and interactive communities. The open-source software movement arose to clarify the environment that the new copyright, licensing, domain, and consumer issues created.” Wikipedia

Ann Herrmann-Nehdi on Creativity and the Future of Work

How will the practice of creativity be a driving force in the future world of work? What role can we play to take advantage of the current uncertainty to leverage creative thinking? What are the links between strategic and creative thinking? How do you totally engage the brain in the creative process? Come and engage your brain in this thought provoking session that will stimulate your thinking!

Ann Herrmann-Nehdi is CEO of Herrmann International, publisher of the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI) which is based on extensive research on thinking and the brain. Multiple applications of whole brain technology include creativity, strategic thinking, problem solving, management and leadership, teaching and learning, self-understanding, communication and team/staff development. Ann seeks to apply the principles of whole brain technology to her varied responsibilities: from day-to-day operations, to sales, to workshop design and presentations. Having resided in Europe for 13 years, Ann brings a global perspective to the company. Since joining Herrmann International USA 19 years ago, Ann has expanded the network of international offices to 16, spanning Europe, the Pacific Rim and Latin America.

Her personal goal is to promote better understanding of how individuals and organizations think and become more effective, as well as enhance learning and communication technologies worldwide through the application and development of whole brain concept. Ann is an advisor to the American Creativity Association, and has served such clients as Bank Of America, Coca Cola, General Electric, BMW, Target, Cintas, Cisco Systems, Hallmark, IBM, Milliken, Novartis, the US Forest Service and The Wharton School, Vanderbilt, as well as many educational groups. A powerful and highly energetic speaker, Ann has delivered keynotes and large group presentations around the world including events for ACA, CPSI, ASTD, ISA, American Planning Association, Training, the International Alliance for Learning and Innovative Network.

Herrmann International, celebrating its 25th year in 2006, was founded by Ned Herrmann, a Past President and founding member of the ACA and major contributor to the association for many years before he passed away in 1999. Ned, a physicist by education, was Manager of Management Education for General Electric where he began his groundbreaking study of the brain, creative human development and learning which resulted in the formation of the HBDI. The HBDI has been used worldwide to profile individuals’ learning and thinking styles and preference in accordance with brain theory. Herrmann developed and validated the HBDI and the Whole Brain Model while at GE, and designed several workshops that are internationally recognized for their use of cutting-edge creativity-learning models. Herrmann authored several books outlining his findings, including The Creative Brain published in 1996; The Whole Brain Business Book, published in 1998.The work of the North Carolina company has been featured in O Magazine, Business Week, USA Today, Discover, Scientific American and the Harvard Business Review. Herrmann International, with affiliates world-wide, continues to research and develop products and applications in the fields of thinking, creativity, leadership and learning