Triple with two runs scoring. :>))
Thanks that was very helpful. REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Sandwichman Sent: Saturday, September 24, 2011 4:03 PM To: [email protected]; RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] Professional Ethics (of economists) On Sat, Sep 24, 2011 at 11:56 AM, Mike Spencer <[email protected]> wrote: Sandwichman wrote: > Try "incidental uncharged disservices"... That works, tnx. > "Gaming the system" is a non-technical (but also non-specific) term for > what I'm talking about. Would you care to expand on that just a tad? I don't know a technical term for "Gaming the system". Yes, I would like to expand on that but it'll be more than a tad. I'm researching/writing something fairly comprehensive 'as we speak'. The issue, as I see it has to do with what is commonly referred to as "market failure" and the moral hazard that can result from attempts to correct such inefficiencies and inequities through government intervention. Or put it this way, the invisible hand of the market doesn't necessarily lead to an beneficent result but attempts by the state to fix the problems are not fool-proof (or, more to the point, game-proof) either. If you can game the state as readily as you can game the market, what's the solution? Well, maybe "solution" is taking things a bit too far, too fast. Before we start talking about solutions, it's important to get a grasp of how the question has been wrongly framed by focusing on the "incidentals": sparks from locomotives that start fires in woods or rabbits that overrun the neighboring squire's country estate. The founding instance of "market failure" occurs not in those incidental, which might be of concern to the gentry but in work, unemployment and working conditions. I'll just mention in passing that Marx analyzed these so-called market failures as contradictions. But leaving Marx aside, the pioneers of neoclassical analysis ALSO analyzed the same so-called contradictions as market failures. Nothing incidental about them. To glide from work, unemployment and the hours of labor to ravaging rabbits and locomotive sparks (I'm not kidding!) is to adopt an Aesopian evasiveness that requires some explanation. Ever ask an Englishwoman if she would like a cup of tea? Better ask three times. It is rude to say yes the first time. (what say you, Keith?). These Cambridge neoclassical economists, having once broached the idea that the conventional employers' perspective on work was unsatisfactory, were reluctant to press the issue. Instead, they figured they could examine the theoretical issues by talking about sparks and coneys (rabbits); lighthouse, chimney-smoke and laundry.-- just as sex education can be winsomely bowdlerized as "the birds and bees." But I digress. Sydney J. Chapman's 1909 theory of the hours of labor blasted a gaping chasm right into the heart of the classical notion of the market as a "system of natural liberty" channeling self-interest into social utility. Chapman didn't supply the solution to the problem but he identified the problem. Pigou and the Pigovian then tradition went off on a tangent, changed the subject and eventually lost the thread of the argument. Attendant on my own remarks, me> The state university system, originating with a notion of serving me> the public welfare, has now become an industry, a highly me> bureaucratized system in its own right and a player in the arenas me> of other similarly bureaucratized systems -- state and federal me> politics, state finance, international academic publishing, me> organized fund-raising etc. is an interesting article. Not about work/jobs per se but about inculcated attitudes or baggage graduates of the current academic system will bring to the workplace. http://www.palgrave-journals.com/dbm/journal/vaop/ncurrent/pdf/dbm201118a.pd f >From the article: If students face increasingly poor quality in higher education, and duplicity in the discourse about the reasons for this poor quality, what will they expect of the large organisations that many of them will work for later in life? How will they behave as customers or employees of these organisations, whether in the commercial or public sectors? How should they cope with this when they are students? Will the coping behaviour they learn be transferred to their lives as employees or customers? [snip] In 2007, Osipian....argued that the negative impact of higher-education corruption on economic development and social cohesion was disturbing, and that with Notably (perhaps oddly), these authors are marketing guys. Both your authors are strongly in favour of the idea of students as customers, perhaps because we have taught marketing all our lives. By this, we do not mean that `the customer is always right'. Instead, we mean that `the student has the same *rights* and *responsibilities* as customers'. [Emphasis theirs] I'm not so sure I like their marketing-mentality frame of reference but they're pointing to a problem that related my earlier remarks included above. - Mike -- Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~. /V\ [email protected] /( )\ http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework -- Sandwichman
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