Raise the Hammer

Interesting article, and comments. Seems to me to be headed toward the traditional divide between management and labour, and rightly so. The division between the old industrial and the new information economies is merely the stage on which the play is being performed, showing how the labour/management divide needs to adapt.

When it looked as though computerization might wipe out middle management in North American institutions and folks like Mike Harris cut back on funding for advanced education, universities responded by offering high-cost MBA courses that would train middle-managers to become corporate "leaders." Same skills, upgraded with digital-aged jargon and advanced yesmanship to make graduates acceptable to nervous corporate executives. This politicized middle management more than it had ever been and contributed in no small part to the costs of its products. But the decision-makers aren't going to take the hit for that, and so internationalized its labour workforce. Kapow:globalization.

Meanwhile improved digital communications de-institutionalized knowledge and folks who like doing and making things, as opposed to those who seek the power to tell others how to do and make things, quickly gained access to their information peers. Now we have two economies- an information-based manufactory that is growing and an overly managed mass-production economy that is in crisis. It should come as no surprise that corporate and government managers are throwing money at ways to keep the mass-production economy going, often at the expense of this new, growing manufactoring sector. Why is the funding for early-childhood education considered an insurmountable difficulty, or hiring more nurses or doctors impossible, while the auto sector gets bucks by the bucket?

Ryan asked Think/Haus folks what the city could do to support it. I'm not connected with either party, but my suggestion would be that the city, with its teams of players constantly competing to be "community leaders" should just get out of the way. Think of the Pearl Company's problems. So many of what we now consider important civic issues -- essentially issues of municipal infrastructure -- might actually be answered or at least mitigated through home workshops or Think/Haus style collectives. Do cyclists really need the city's permission to find the best and safest routes from A to B, or do they merely need the city not to interfere as cyclists gradually take over these routes?

Maybe some current infrastructure, electricity grids, water and waste treatment, can and should soon be deconstructed rather than rebuilt, the actual work done more efficiently, close to home.