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Chandler, Alfred
Dupont. The Visible Hand. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1977. ISBN 0674940512, Page 14
Little institutional
innovation occurred in American business before the 1840s. Why was this so?
As long as the processes of production and distribution depended on the
traditional sources of energy—on man, animal, wind power— there was little
pressure to innovate. Such sources of energy simply could not generate a
volume of output in production and number of transactions in distribution
large enough to require the creation of a large managerial enterprise or to
call for the development of new business forms and practices. The low speed
of production of the slow movement of goods through the economy meant that
the maximum daily activity at each point of production and distribution
could be easily handled by small personally owned and managed enterprises.
Grant, Neil.
The Industrial Revolution. United States of America: 1973. ISBN
0531008088, Page 64
The astonishing
expansion of U.S. manufacturing after the Civil War can most briefly be
indicated by a few more figures. In 1850 capital invested in manufacturing
totaled $533 million; in 1880 it totaled $2,790 million. In the same thirty
years, the total value of products increased from $1,019 million to $5,370
million; the number of wage earners from less than one million to 2.7
million. By 1913 the United States accounted for 35.8 percent of the world
total of manufacturing production. Germany, its nearest rival, had 15.7
percent; Britain (including Ireland), third largest, had 14 percent.
Slater, Robert,
Leadership -- Get Better Or Get Beaten, U.S.A.: 1994. ISBN
078630256, Page 99
There is something
about speed that transcends its obvious business benefits of greater cash
flows, greater profitability, higher share due to greater customer
responsiveness and more capacity from cycle time reductions.
Speed exhilarates and
energizes ... This is particularly true in business, where speed tends to
propel ideas and drive processes right through functional barriers, sweeping
bureaucrats and their impediments aside in the rush to get to the
marketplace.
Miller, Fred J.
“Prevention of Wastes in Industry.” Transactions of the American Society
of Mechanical Engineers 43 (1921): 1097-1103. Page 1097, cited in
Knoedler, Janet T., “Veblen and technical efficiency.” Journal of
Economic Issues, Dec97, Vol. 31 Issue 4, p1013, 16p
Those who would be
supposed to have the greatest incentive for the prevention of industrial
wastes are found to be responsible for the major portion of the wastes that
occur.... they, the owners and directors of industries, are the ones and the
only ones, who can adopt effective means to stop these wastes.
Elmar Altvater, The Future of the Market.
New York: Verso 1993. ISBN 0860914259
Page 183
Market efficiency has been achieved by drawing
upon nature’s reserves as if they were limitless, as if people did not have
to be sparing with both inner and outer nature. A ‘positive feedback
mechanism’ may thus be set up between the economic system and nature.
Interest-rate signals force the production of a surplus through the
overexploitation of natural resources. The degraded natural basis of
production and consumption then makes it more difficult to achieve profits
commensurate with the rate of interest. The debt crisis has negative
ecological effects, while the degradation of nature intensifies the debt
crisis. If tight management of flows then leads to a reduction in stock
levels, the traditional models break down and the transition to ‘positive
feedback economics’ becomes unavoidable.
Economic behaviour is blind to its natural
bases as long as these do not make themselves felt as economic limits—that
is, as a cost burden within the economic system. The social ties between
human beings, mediated by commodities and money, involve the
‘nature-blindness’ of behaviour. For the mirroring of human sociality as a
natural property of the things people produce—that is, the ‘fetishism of the
commodity’—also entails the screening out of the natural conditions of
social behaviour. The individual commodity (and qua commodity every thing
is individual) does not make visible the conditions attending its production
and consumption. For example, advertising gives the details about a car’s
horsepower, maximum speed, acceleration, comforts, optional extras, retail
price, and so on; it attracts customers by playing on prestige or
convenience value. But it says nothing about the using up of the
countryside for highway construction; it remains silent about the inevitable
victims of road accidents, or the vast quantities of water and energy used
in the process of production. In the individual thing social relations are
only imperfectly reflected, as in a magic mirror which blanks out the
‘celestial constraint’ of the thing’s production and consumption. The
commodity is narcissistic: it sees only itself reflected in gold. In the
first chapter we observed that reified socialization, stemming from the
fetish character of commodities, has a disinhibiting effect which speeds up
the evolution of society. But now we need to discuss whether the very
reification of social relations - whereby people relate to each other with
money and commodities on the market - does not cause the natural constraints
on production and consumption to disappear from the consciousness of
society. It would appear that nature again becomes relevant only when it
imposes additional costs, or when its destruction lastingly disrupts the
conditions of human life. Then a flash of lightning makes it clear even to
reified consciousness that economic compulsions - such as those brought to
bear in the servicing of debt - interfere with the natural conditions of
business activity. But when the destruction of nature eventually ‘makes
itself felt’ in economic categories (costs), it is often too late for any
alternatives, especially since the processing of ecological problems into
economic calculation does not move beyond the reification that resulted in
the ‘forgetting of nature’.
Interferences between economy and ecology do
not come into the field of vision so long as the former is seen in principle
as a balanced system, and so long as time and space are not given explicit
significance (as causal elements of transaction costs) within production and
consumption, the exchange process and the sphere of distribution. In an
economy without spatial or temporal constraints, economic analysis can
perfectly well dispense with the transformation of raw materials and energy,
leaving this to other branches of science. Once it is assumed, however,
that all economic processes have a spatio-temporal location, the analyst’s
attention turns not only to the instabilities of the market (which have been
discussed in Part II above) but also to the explicit significance for
economic theory of the transformation of materials and energy.
The question immediately arises how it is ever
possible to do this, without spiriting away the initial problem that the
transformations of materials and energy are defined as monetized processes
in which their special natural quality is disguised. For with the category
of money, economics manages to banish time and space from its system, given
that the future is ‘discounted’ in the present and spatial distance is
levelled in arbitrage speculation. The ‘resource economics’ approach, based
on Hotelling’s classical rule, has not been lost for answers. Solow, for
example, compares (a) the currently discounted net proceeds from the
exploitation of a resource over the period between today and some future
date, with (b) the market rate of interest obtainable on money assets, and
assumes that the value of the resource also increases over time. But such a
market-centered comparison contains a number of implication that make it
rather questionable. First, it presupposes that the market rate of interest
defined the rate of exploitation of exhaustible resources and hence an
optimal path of resource use. As we have seen in the chapter on financial
instabilities, however, the market rate of interest offers no guarantee of
optimal allocation. Second, it assumes that between present and future
there will be economic growth of the same order as the rate of interest— and
in any case that new resources will be used. For growth could not take
place if the level of exploitation of the one resource involved in
decision-making were already fixed. This suggests that resources are, in
Hirsch’s words, essentially ‘positional goods’ whose individual use-value
depends upon the use-value properties of other resources. Yet if the
Hotelling rules are applied in such a way as to take account of the
interference between different resources, they are unable to yield any
unambiguous results. Third, the rules posit a (privately owned) isolation
of resources, and hence a splitting of complex ecosystems which simplifies
them into legally definable and economically tradeable property rights.
Fourth, if the decision-making calculus is built around the rate of
interest, the forward vision of economic actors will become increasingly
‘short-sighted’ the higher the interest rises. Fifth, it is necessary to
act as if future markets and the preferences of future individuals were
already known, so that the present generation lives ‘vicariously’ for those
to come. Here at the latest it becomes clear ‘that there is no way of
escaping an ethical choice, sometimes hidden away in the assumptions of the
model’.
Wheelwright, Steven.
C. Revolutionizing Product Development. New York: 1992. ISBN
0029055156, Pages 4 and 5
Rigorous
international competition, the explosion of market segments and niches, and
accelerating technological change have created a set of competitive
imperatives for the development of new products and processes in industries
as diverse as medical instruments and automobiles, textiles, and high-end
disk drives. Exhibit 1-1 identifies three of these imperatives -- speed,
efficiency, and quality – and suggest some of their implications. To
succeed, firms must be responsive to changing customer demands and the moves
of their competitors. This means that they must be fast. The ability to
identify opportunities, mount the requisite development effort, and bring to
market new products and processes quickly is critical to effective
competition. But firms also must bring new products and processes to market
efficiently. Because the number of new products and new process
technologies has increased while model lives and life cycles have shrunk,
firms must mount more development projects than has traditionally been the
case utilizing substantially fewer resources per project. In the U.S.
automobile market, for example, the growth of models and market segments
over the last twenty-five years has meant that an auto firm must mount close
to four times as many development projects simply to maintain its market
share position. But smaller volumes per model and shorter design lives mean
resource requirements must drop dramatically. Effective competition
requires highly efficient engineering, design, and development activities.
Being fast and
efficient is essential but not enough. The products and processes that a
firm introduces must also meet demands in the market for value, reliability,
and distinctive performance. Demanding customers and capable competitors
mean that the ante keeps going up –requirements of performance, reliability,
ease of use, and total value increase with each product introduction. When
competition is intense firms must attract and satisfy customers in a very
crowded market. More and more this means offering a product that is
distinctive; that not only satisfies, but also surprises and delights a
customer. Moreover, attention to the total product experience and thus to
total product quality is critical.
Brian Tokar, Earth for Sale. Boston:
South End Press, 1997. ISBN 0896085589
Page 195
“Market efficiency has been achieved by drawing
upon nature’s reserves as if they were limitless,” Altvater argues,
explaining that:
A “positive feedback mechanism” may thus be set
up between the economic system and nature. Interest-rate signals force the
production of a surplus through the overexploitation of natural resources.
The degraded natural basis of production and consumption then makes it more
difficult to achieve profits commensurate with the rate of interest. The
debt crisis has negative ecological effects, while the degradation of nature
intensifies the debt crisis.
Page 255
47. Elmar Altvater, The Future of the Market
(London and New York: Verso, 1993) p. 183 ff.
A California-based school of “socialist
ecologists” has also demonstrated the anti-ecological nature of capitalist
economics and capitalist society. Under the theoretical leadership of
political economist James O’Connor, they have shown that environmental
pollution and resource depletion are necessary consequences of capitalist
accumulation.
Their Marxist political orientation, however,
has restrained their full acceptance of an ecological
orientation that acknowledges the natural world
as more than an “external factor of production,” or human
society as capable of being organized around
anything but its economic activity. See, for example, James
O’Connor, “Capitalism, Nature, Socialism: A
Theoretical Introduction,” Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, no. 1,
fall 1988, pp. 11-38
Katherine Barkley and Steve Weissman, “The
Eco-Establishment,” Ramparts magazine, May 1970, vol. 8, no. 7, 50,
54
Like the original conservation movement it is
emulating, today’s big business conservation is not interested in preserving
the earth; it is rationally reorganizing for a more efficient rape of
resources ... and the production of an ever grosser national product.
Welsh, Jack,
General Electric’s CEO quoted in
Janet Lowe’s Jack Welsh Speaks Wiley, New York, 1998 ISBN 0471242721,
Page 108
“Productivity is the
belief that there is an infinite capacity to improve anything.”
Robert J. Samuelson, “Productivity’s False
Facade,” Newsweek, March 24, 2003. Page 46
It’s tempting to believe that
productivity—especially improved technology—will rescue the economy. The
grounds for skepticism start with history. In the Great Depression some
industries experienced rapid productivity gains, as economic historian
Michael A. Bernstein of the University of California, San Diego, has pointed
out. Food marketing was one. Small grocery stores gave way to new
supermarkets; there were 300 in 1935 and almost 5,000 by 1939. Refrigerator
sales boomed—from about 800,000 in 1930 to 2.3 million in 1937.
Electrification raised light-bulb sales sharply. But these and other gains
couldn’t overcome otherwise dismal economic conditions.
We also need to remember that economic
statistics are just numbers. Their significance depends on what causes them
to move. Productivity—the statistic—is simply a bit of arithmetic. Total
output is divided by the hours people work. If output rises faster than
work hours, productivity increases. This is what usually happens and it
suggests better technology, better management and better workers. It’s a
beneficial process that promotes economic expansion.
With lower costs, companies can increase wages
and profits.
Higher incomes then drive higher spending.
But productivity—the
statistic—also increases if work hours drop while output only sputters.
That’s what actually occurred in both 2001 and 2002. Americans in private
businesses (excluding government and nonprofit organizations) worked 187.61
billion hours in 2002, which was 2 percent less than in 2001. In turn,
employment hours in 2001 were 1.3 percent less than in 2000. There was more
unemployment; people with jobs worked slightly fewer hours. Since 1947,
there have been only 15 years when employment hours have dropped and only
three other instances of consecutive annual-declines in 1957 to '58, 1970 to
'71 and 1991 to '92).
Burroughs, Edgar Rice. The
Efficiency Experts. Missouri: 1966. Page 45
“What do you have to
know to be an efficiency expert?” asked the girl.
“From what I saw of
the bird I just mentioned the less one knows about anything the more
successful he should be as an efficiency expert, for he certainly didn’t
know anything. And yet the results from kicking everybody in the plant out
of his own particular rut eventually worked wonders for the organization.
If the man had had
any sense, tact or diplomacy nothing would have been accomplished.
From G.R. Searle,
The Quest for National Efficiency: a Study in British Politics and
Political Thought, 1899-1914, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1971,
Page139
Lord Roseberry was a
most wonderful man,
He had every species
of scheme on his shelf.
But ‘efficiency’
still formed the gist of his plan,
And ‘efficiency’
meant nothing else than himself.
Luther H. Gulick, M.D. The
Efficient Life New York, 1907, Page 8
The conditions for
efficiency in the case of the ordinary day labourer are not complex. His
work is that of a coarse machine, turning out, like a grain thresher, a
great amount of production relatively low in grade. His efficiency is but
little disturbed by constant feeding upon indigestible victuals, by frequent
carousals, by a dirty skin and bad air. Low-grade production does not need
a high-grade organism.
Tichi, Cecelia.
Shifting GearsTechnology, Literature, Culture in Modernist America.
University of North Carolina Press. 1987. ISBN 0807841676,
Page 9
For the intellectual
center of Taylorism was not the worker, but the mastermind. It was not the
rank and file but the engineer whose formulations would prevail and endure.
Shuman, Michael. Going
Local. New York: Free Press, 1998. ISBN 0684830124 Page 48
Efficiency,
economists argue, requires specialization. The narrower the range of tasks
an individual performs, the better he or she becomes at it. But, as any
person who has sweated on an assembly lone knows, a job reduced to the
turning of a screw does little to satisfy the soul or self-esteem. Real
people are not satisfied with the role of Chaplinesque automatons that
economists have assigned them, and they look for more from a job than just a
paycheck. They seek a challenge, pride, and respect. And, if given the
choice, many people will gladly choose a more exciting job with less
take-home pay....
Clifford Stoll,
Silicon Snake Oil, New York: 1995 ISBN 0385419937
Pages 74, 75
Past generations of
millwrights, blacksmiths, and machinists are almost gone. Theirs was a real
workplace, of forges, lathes, and anvils. Nothing virtual about a diesel
engine or hydraulic press. They built iron horses with muscles of steam,
skyscrapers with brick and rivet and lime. We’re fast replacing their hard
mechanical world with a gossamer network of fibers. Our is one of
artificial reality, software tools, and expert systems. There’s nothing to
touch; no inner workings to admire. The pendulum clock from sixty years ago
attracts more attention than today’s more accurate quartz watch. Makes me
wonder what history we’re leaving behind. Footprints across an artificial
reality are as evanescent as data on the Ethernet.
Today, gone is craft,
replaced by career. Instead of workers on our feet, we’ve become sedentary
professionals, entering data into computers. As the analog world of our
parents gives way to the digital universe of our children, I compare the
tools of these two environments. Handwriting is replaced by word
processing, mail by e-mail, accounting books by spreadsheets, rotary dials
by Touch-Tones, drafting by CAD. Efficient improvements, yes, but one thing
saddens me. I sense little love for this technology, and even less
appreciation for the wonders of this digital age. Once, kids read of Tom
Swift’s adventures in electric cars and high-speed aeroplanes. Today,
there’s a blase acceptance of instant global communications and
microelectronic wizardry. These are impressive accomplishments, deserving
of curiosity, awe, and praise. For all my ambivalence about the barrenness
of technoculture, I’m blown away by the devices themselves. Once, you
brought a six-transistor radio to the beach. Now, there’s a half million
transistors in every cellular phone.
Johann Kepler needed
six years to analyze the motion of Mars; my pocket calculator can do this in
a minute.
Yet despite the
footsore cliche of an information revolution, I rarely hear genuine esteem
for the internal workings of today’s technologies. Hardly anyone takes
apart a computer just to admire the designers’ work. Kids don’t disassemble
VCRs to figure out how they work—I wish they would! There are no Heathkits
to let you solder your own modem. Indeed, it’s a rare hobbyist that wires
his PC into an experiment. I guess today’s experimenters build things in
software, without ever touching a soldering iron. The hocus-pocus is inside
the program. It’s cleaner this way—nothing to burn or zap, and you don’t
need a voltmeter.
What happened to
home-brewed and breadboarded circuitry? Where’s the joy of mechanics and
electricity, the creation of real things? Who are the tinkerers with a lust
for electronics? We’ve become a nation of appliance operators, who take
pride in what we own, rather than what we build. Remind me, in an odd way
of my fortune cookie from The Great Wall Chinese Restaurant: “Work to
become, not to acquire.”
Stewart, Thomas
A. Intellectual Capital. New York: 1997. ISBN 0385482280,
Page 40
More and more people
spend their working day in the realm of information and ideas. Overall,
according to calculations by Stephen R. Barley, professor of industrial
engineering and industrial management at Stanford University, the share of
the American labor force whose jobs primarily involve working with things (farmworkers,
operators and laborers, craftspeople) or delivering nonprofessional services
(hotel and restaurant workers, distribution workers, retail clerks, domestic
servants, barbers and beauticians, health aides, etc.) will have fallen by
more than half by the turn of the century, from 83 percent in 1900 to an
estimated 41 percent; those who work chiefly with information (in sales,
managerial and administrative, professional and technical, or clerical
jobs), were 17 percent of the workforce in 1900 and will be 59 percent as
the new century dawns.
Stephen L. Talbott,
The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending The Machines In Our Midst;
Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly and Associates; 1995 ISBN 1565920856,
Pages 5 and 50
Where freedom once
required the fateful exercise of an enlightened, heart-warmed will, it is
now enough to play with clickable choices on a screen.... All the talk about
individual empowerment through electronically accessible information really
has more to do with the differential advantage for a few players early in
the game than it does with any fundamental social change. It’s rather like
the pyramid scheme: those who are quickest off the mark win big; the rest
must hope eventually to climb back to the break-even point in a game that is
now speeded up and very likely more demanding than it was before.... Every
new leap of technology simply cranks up the speed of the game another
notch. What improves my efficiency does the same for the millions of other
players.
Shenk, David.
Data smog : Surviving the Information Glut. San Francisco: Harper; ISBN:
0062515519 1997.
Page 23
I can vaguely recall
a phone conversation with a college girlfriend shortly after graduation,
which she complained about her office fax machine, yet another appliance
sweeping the nation. It wasn’t that her fax didn’t work, but rather that it
was working too well. Because it transmitted information across the country
and world so quickly, she said, it had actually altered the expectations of
work time, becoming a kind of taskmaster that insisted on faster and faster
work.
Page 30-1
In 1971 the average
American was targeted by at least 560 daily advertising messages. Twenty
years later, that number had risen sixfold, to 3,000 messages per day. In
the office, an average of 60 percent of each person’s time is now spent
processing documents. Paper consumption per capita in the United States
tripled from 1940 to 1980 (from 200 to 600 pounds), and tripled again from
1980 to 1990 (to 1,800 pounds). In the 1980s, third-class mail (used to send
publications) grew thirteen times faster than population growth. The typical
business manager is said to read 1 million words per week. As of 1990, more
than 30,000 telemarketing companies employed 18 million Americans, and
generated $400 billion in annual sales.
Page 35
Today, the vultures
still feed, occasioning a billion-dollar market for antacids like Tagamet
and Pepcid AC. For all of our abundance, ours is also an age of
unprecedented stress, strain, headaches, and digestive problems—so much so,
in fact, that tension has become one of our most vibrant industries. Three
out of four Americans complain of chronic stress. Two out of every three
visits to the family doctor are thought to be stress-related, and the three
top-selling prescription drugs are for ulcers, depression, and
hypertension.
Stress is also partly
to blame, psychologists say, for the startling 300 percent increase in
depression over the course of this century.
Page 86
Millions of recently
“downsized” Americans, rendered obsolete and jobless by technology, would
not contest Seawick’s assessment. Neither would U.S. Labor Secretary Robert
Reich, who has made worker-retraining a personal crusade, warning that in
today’s economy everyone can expect to change jobs an average of seven or
eight times in their lifetime. Job stability, Reich says, is a thing of the
past.
There is also a
social cost to upgrade mania that cannot be measured in dollars. The
blistering pace of life today, driven by technology and the business
imperative to improve efficiency, is something to behold. We often feel
life going by much, much faster than we wish, as we are carried forward from
meeting to meeting, call to call, errand to errand. We have less time to
ourselves, and are expected to improve our performance and output year after
year after year. If life were a cartoon, as it sometimes seems to be, we
would be the breathless Wile E. Coyote, forever chasing the Road Runner but
never concluding the chase (<beep beep>).
Page 94
(In this way,
technology brings with it yet another internal contradiction: As it speeds
up our world in the name of efficiency and productivity, it also constricts
rational thinking.)
Page 124
For the sake of this
did everything else become indifferent to me... This is our postmodern
refrain. Professional specialization and consumer nichification encroach
upon our common culture. Rather than a healthy swirl of communication among
citizens of different backgrounds and perspectives, we are left with a
hyper-efficient communications infrastructure that not only highlights
social distinctions; it fortifies them.
Page 125
Specialization makes
sleepwalkers of us all; the global village predicted by the seers of the
1960’s is being replaced by electronic cottages populated by isolated
dreamers. We do not know our neighbors. If we are financial experts, we
are speechless in the presence of research chemists; if we are scholars, we
cannot make out the grimaces of merchants. We are a nation of lonely
molecules.
From Earl Shorris,
A Nation of Salesmen
The Paper Chase
The paperless office is still a distant dream.
In the interim, we should be recycling more and developing alternatives to
wood-based paper.
By Jim Motavalli
While many futurists predicted that we?d be
enjoying the paperless office around this time, Americans are still at the
epicenter of a paper blizzard. Were you under the impression that the
electronic age would free us from all that? According to The Myth of the
Paperless Office, a company?s use of e-mail causes an average 40 percent
increase in paper consumption. The demand for ream after ream of white paper
is putting a huge strain not only on America?s forests, but the world?s. And
it?s forcing the environmental movement to consider the alternatives.
The U.S. currently gobbles up some 200 million
tons of wood products annually, with consumption increasing by four percent
every year. The pulp and paper industry is the biggest culprit. U.S. paper
producers alone consume one billion trees?or 12,430 square miles of
forests?every year, while producing 735 pounds of paper for every American.
The U.S. has less than five percent of the
world?s population, but consumes 30 percent of the world?s paper. Only five
percent of America?s virgin forests remain, while 70 percent of the fiber
consumed by the pulp and paper industry continues to be generated from
virgin wood. While logging controversies most often center around the
Pacific Northwest, most of the wood pulp used for paper in the U.S. actually
comes from southern forests, currently home to some of the greatest
biodiversity in the continental U.S. (see sidebar).
Worldwide, global consumption of wood products
has risen 64 percent since 1961. The industry expects that demand will
double by 2050, keeping pace with population growth. Recycling has helped,
but has not yet made an appreciable difference. ?Recycling has yet to dent
the world?s appetite for virgin-fiber pulp,? says the Worldwatch Institute.
In Indonesia, the pulp and paper industry is
destroying rainforest so quickly that it will run out of wood by 2007,
according to a report by Friends of the Earth. An area the size of Belgium
is wiped out annually. Only 10 percent of the trees cut down for paper in
Indonesia are farmed, although the industry had supposedly committed to
replanting its clear-cuts with fast-growing acacia trees.
Globally, pulp for paper and other uses is
taking an increasing share of all wood production, from 40 percent in 1998
to nearly 60 percent over the next 50 years. In the same time span, easily
accessible and inexpensive sources of wood are disappearing. Because of the
rapid consumption of virgin forests in places as far apart as Canada and
Southeast Asia, forest restoration has not been able to keep pace with the
demand for wood products.
Toxic Pollution and Waste
Loss of forests isn?t the only issue.
Deforestation has released an estimated 120 billion tons of carbon dioxide
(CO2), the major global warming gas, into the atmosphere. The pulp and paper
industry is the third-largest industrial polluter in both Canada and the
U.S., releasing more than 220 million pounds of toxic pollution into the
air, ground and water each year.
Much of that pollution is the byproduct of the
three million tons of chlorine used annually to bleach wood pulp white.
Chlorine bleaching is a major source of the potent carcinogen dioxin, which
is routinely discharged into rivers and streams with wastewater. As a
result, dioxin is now ubiquitous in our environment, found throughout the
world in air, water, soil and food. Every woman alive today carries some
trace of dioxin in her breast milk. Dioxin is considered one of the most
toxic substances ever produced, and has been known to cause cancer, liver
failure, miscarriage, birth defects and genetic damage in laboratory
animals.
The U.S. paper industry has been aware of the
dioxin problem since at least 1985, but has been very slow to act on
alternatives (see sidebar). In Europe, chlorine bleaching is being phased
out. That has only been proposed in the U.S., despite the fact that the
American Public Health Association strongly supports a phase-out. In Sweden,
pulp mills have to meet stringent standards, and were required to reduce
chlorine content by 90 percent as early as 1993. When they have to, American
companies such as Proctor and Gamble can go virtually chlorine-free: The
Pampers exported to Sweden, for example, are made without a
chlorine-bleaching process, unlike those wrapping U.S. babies.
Paper is also the dominant material in solid
waste. And in the United States, paper-producing companies are the
third-largest energy consumer, with a pace that keeps quickening.
It’s not surprising that, given all these
environmental negatives, the paper industry would wrap itself in a green
mantle. International Paper, for instance, issued a Sustainability Report in
2002 that cites its role as among the largest owners of sustainably managed
private forestland in the world. Its raw material is trees, the report says,
the world’s greatest renewable resource.? It participates in forest
certification programs and voluntary partnerships and strictly adheres to
environmental regulations. And according to the American Forest and Paper
Association, U.S. papermakers recycle enough paper every day to fill a
15-mile-long train of boxcars. Since 1990, the recovered paper would fill
200 football stadiums to a height of 100 feet.
While some of this is undoubtedly greenwashing,
Michael Klein, a spokesperson for the American Forest and Paper Association,
asserts that the industry is currently using all the recycled paper it can
get. ?I have a problem with activists who say we have to demand more
recycled content,? Klein says. ?Instead, they should demand that people
recycle more. One hundred percent of the paper and boxed fiberboard people
put on the curb is used. Paper activists point out, however, that a
significant amount of U.S.-generated recyclable paper is actually exported.
Nearly a quarter of the recovered paper in the U.S. is shipped to Mexico,
Canada, Asia and Europe rather than being recycled here, reports
Conservatree.
Tree-Free Paper: Great Expectations
There is vast potential for a “green” paper
industry, including recycled and natural fibers, that could not only spare
trees but also produce paper with minimal environmental impact overall, but
it needs an
infusion of both public interest and research
funding. It is presently, at best, a $20 million sales niche in a $230
billion U.S. industry, asserts the San Francisco-based Fiber Futures, which
lobbies for expanded use of agricultural residues and other tree-free
materials for paper. A plan by the Natural Resources Defense Council to open
a paper recycling plant in the Bronx, New York ended tragically because of
labor
opposition and last-minute political
maneuvering, which thwarted financing. Many small and medium-sized paper
mills that handled tree-free papers have closed because of industry
consolidation and the
economic downturn, sending many paper
manufacturers overseas for sources
Dear EarthTalk: What happened to the
"paperless office" that computers were supposed to create, and what is the
environmental impact of our paper usage?
-- Michelle Barnes,
Virginia Beach, VA
The paperless office
does appear to still be a distant dream. A recent University of
California-Berkeley study found that, worldwide, the amount of printed
matter generated between 1999 and 2002 not only did not decrease--it grew by
36 percent. The quantity of information we now store electronically is
growing in leaps and bounds. And while we're using less paper as a
percentage of total data output, we're still using more paper. "Contrary to
notions of paperless offices floated by futurists in the late 1980s and
early 1990s," the report said, "the consumption of office paper has gone up
substantially in recent years."
Not surprisingly, the
United States is the biggest paper consumer, accounting for 33 percent of
all printed material. U.S. paper producers alone consume one billion
trees--or 12,430 square miles of forests--every year, while producing 735
pounds of paper for every American. Only five percent of America's virgin
forests now remain, while 70 percent of the fiber consumed by the pulp and
paper industry continues to be generated from virgin wood.
Besides consuming trees
and habitat, processing paper generates tons of industrial pollutants. The
pulp and paper industry is the third-largest industrial polluter in both
Canada and the U.S., releasing more than 220 million pounds of toxic
pollution--including dioxin, a cancer-causing byproduct of the
chlorine-bleaching process--into the air, ground and water each year. Paper
is also the dominant material in solid waste. And in the U.S.,
paper-producing companies are the third-largest energy consumer.
In recent years,
advocates for ecologically sustainable paper, like the San Francisco-based
Conservatree, have grown more vocal in support of both increasing the use of
recycled paper and developing alternatives to wood-based paper. As a small
step, they have succeeded in persuading large paper retailers like Staples,
Kinko's and Office Depot to offer higher amounts of recycled content in the
paper they sell.
Alternatives to
tree-based paper include various kinds of agricultural wastes, like corn and
rice husks, a plant called kenaf, and hemp. One agricultural waste paper is
made from 100 percent bagasse fiber, left over from sugar cane production.
Kimberly-Clark uses bagasse in some of its paper towels and tissues. But
many consider kenaf, a relative of okra and cotton, and hemp, to be the most
promising alternatives, especially for office papers. Kenaf, which
originated in the East Indies and is now grown in the U.S., Thailand and
China, is making inroads as a wood-based paper substitute. The U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA) has deemed kenaf "the best option for
tree-free papermaking in the U.S."
Hemp is a very strong
fiber, making it excellent for paper processing, and it is easily bleached
without chlorine. Beginning in 1840, American-grown hemp was used to make
manila paper. Hemp cultivation has been illegal in the U.S. since the end of
World War II, because it is a relative of the plant grown for marijuana. But
the strain of hemp grown for paper does not contain enough quantities of
psychoactive chemicals for it to be used as a drug--and its cultivation is
encouraged in 29 countries around the world.
CONTACTS:
Conservatree, (415) 721-4230,
http://www.conservatree.com; Kimberly-Clark,
http://www.kimberly-clark.com; USDA Agricultural Research Center, (301)
504-5664,
http://www.usda.gov. From E-Magazine – week of 6/6/04
Tenner, Edward,
Why Things Bite Back : Technology and the Revenge of Unintended
Consequences New York: Vintage Books, 1996 ISBN
0679425632, Page 188
According to one
study by the economist Stephen Roach, investment in advanced technology in
the service sector grew by over 116 percent per worker between 1980 and
1989, while output increased by only 0.3 percent to 1985 and 2.2 percent to
1989. Two other economists, Daniel E. Sichel of the Brookings Institution
and Stephen D. Oliner of the Federal Reserve, have calculated the
contribution of computers and peripherals as no more than 0.2 percent of
real growth in business output between 1987 and 1993.
Architecture
Magazine December, 1999
Number of sheets of
paper each U.S. worker uses per year: 5,400.
Percentage of “stuff”
stored in workplaces never used or referred to: 30
Percentage of workers
who say they are chronically angry on the job: 25.
Average number of
people murdered in U.S. offices each week: 20
“Fax Inefficiency
Plagues Corporate America” Facilities Design & Management, July 1994,
Page 14
“Lack of awareness
concerning fax telephone costs continues to plague most U.S businesses,”
says Meredith Fischer, vice president marketing, Pitney Bowes Facsimile
Systems. “The majority of fax users don’t connect expanding department
telephone costs with increased fax traffic. Since they don’t get the bill,
it doesn’t register.” The study reports that more than 60% of fax
transmissions are sent long distance; less than 5% of respondents send fax
transmissions during the evening or night when it is most cost-efficient;
40% of the respondents do not bill back or do not know if they bill back
charges to a client, their department, or themselves; and fewer than 30% of
respondents have ever used time-saving fax features, such as multi-tasking,
sequential broadcasting, and relay broadcasting.
Bottom line
Insights
A 1993 Gallup study
reports fax volume has jumped 44% at Fortune 500 companies in the last year.
J.D. McClatchy,
The Vintage Book Of Contemporary World Poetry New York: 1996 ISBN
0679741151, Page 431, Translated from
the Chinese by Carolyn Kitzer
“Assembly Line”
Yes, I’m numb to my
own existence
As if, like the trees
and stars
perhaps just out of
habit
perhaps just out of
sorrow,
I’m unable to show
concern
For my own
manufactured fate.
London, Jack. The
People of the Abyss. Stylus Publishing. Chapter 17: Inefficiency, ISBN
0745314155, Page 2
Without going further
into the argument, this man on the Mile End Waste pointed the moral that
when two men were after the one job wages were bound to fall.
When there are more
men than there is work to be done, a sifting-out process must obtain. In
every branch of industry the less efficient are crowded out. Being crowded
out because of inefficiency, they cannot go up, but must descend, and
continue to descend, until they reach their proper level, a place in the
industrial fabric where they are efficient. It follows, therefore, and it
is inexorable, that the least efficient must descend to the very bottom,
which is the shambles wherein they perish miserably.
A glance at the
confirmed inefficients at the bottom demonstrates that they are, as a rule,
mental, physical, and moral wrecks. The exceptions to the rule are the late
arrivals, who are merely very inefficient, and upon whom the wrecking
process is just beginning to operate. All the forces here, it must be
remembered, are destructive. The good body (which is there because its
brain is not quick and capable) is speedily wrenched and twisted out of
shape; the clean mind (which is there because of its weak body) is speedily
fouled and contaminated. The mortality is excessive, but, even then, they
die far too lingering deaths.
Here, then, we have
the construction of the Abyss and the shambles. Throughout the whole
industrial fabric a constant elimination is going on. The inefficient are
weeded out and flung downward. Various things constitute inefficiency. The
engineer who is irregular or irresponsible will sink down until he finds his
place, say as a casual laborer, an occupation irregular in its very nature
and in which there is little or no responsibility. Those who are slow and
clumsy, who suffer from weakness of body or mind, or who lack nervous,
mental, and physical stamina, must sink down, sometimes rapidly, sometimes
step by step, to the bottom. Accident, by disabling an efficient worker,
will make him inefficient, and down he must go. And the worker who becomes
aged, with failing energy and numbing brain, must begin the frightful
descent which knows no stopping-place short of the bottom and death.
Ritzer, George.
The McDonaldization of Society: an Investigation into the Changing
Character of Contemporary Social Life. 1990. ISBN 0803990766,
Page 123
Although the forces
of McDonaldization trumpet their greater efficiency, they never tell us whom
the system is more efficient for. Most of the gains in efficiency go to
those who push rationalization. People need to ask: Efficient for whom? Is
it efficient for consumers to push their own food over the supermarket
scanner and then bag it themselves? Is it efficient for people to pump
their own gasoline? Is it efficient for them to push numerous combinations
of telephone numbers before they speak to a human voice? Most often, people
will find that such systems are not efficient for them.
Similarly, rational
systems impose a double standard on employees. Those at the top of an
organization impose rationalization on those who work at or near the bottom
of the system—the assembly-line worker, the counterperson at McDonald’s.
The owners, franchisees, top managers, want to control subordinates through
the imposition of rational systems. However, they want their own positions
to be as free of rational constraints—as non-rational— as possible. They
need to be free to be creative, but not their underlings.
Subordinates are to
follow blindly the rules, regulations, and other structures f the rational
system. Thus, the goal is to impose efficiency on subordinates hire those
in charge remain as creative (and often as inefficient) as possible.
"Sociology
Corner." McDonaldization website www.sciology.net/mconald/efficiency.html.
With the
salad bar, you are not limited by what the cook wants to put in the salad,
and ATMs allow you to do your banking any time you want, unhindered by
inefficient bank hours. However, keep in mind, that both of these serve to
reduce the level of human interaction. Consumers are forced to deal with
computers or salad bars and not people, training them to be better workers
for the McDonaldized society.
Bob Black, “The
Abolition of Work”
As Adam Smith noted
in Wealth of Nations, “The understandings of the greater part of men are
necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose life is
spent in performing a few simple operations... has no occasion to exert his
understanding... He generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is
possible for a human creature to become.”
Anonymous Swiss
folk tale
Once, long ago, deep
in the Black Forest, lived a monk. He was a cobbler and it was his job to
make and repair shoes for the neighboring monasteries. He knew all the feet
of all the monks in the land and sang all day long. Then one day it was
decreed that he should count all his costs for each and every shoe. He
counted all the nails, all the pieces of leather, all the threads, and
accounted for all his time. His joy left him and he sang no more.
Dewey, John.
Democracy and Education, Macmillan, 1916, Chapter Nine: “Natural
Development and Social Efficiency as Aims”
Translated into
specific aims, social efficiency indicates the importance of industrial
competency. Persons cannot live without means of subsistence; the ways in
which these means are employed and consumed have a profound influence upon
all the relationships of persons to one another. If an individual is not
able to earn his own living and that of the children dependent upon him, he
is a drag or parasite upon the activities of others. He misses for himself
one of the most educative experiences of life. If he is not trained in the
right use of the products of industry, there is grave danger that he may
deprave himself and injure others in his possession of wealth. No scheme of
education can afford to neglect such basic considerations. Yet in the name
of higher and more spiritual ideals, the arrangements for higher education
have often not only neglected them, but looked at them with scorn as beneath
the level of educative concern. With the change from an oligarchical to a
democratic society, it is natural that the significance of an education
which should have as a result ability to make one's way economically in the
world, and to manage economic resources usefully instead of for mere display
and luxury, should receive emphasis.
There is, however,
grave danger that in insisting upon this end, existing economic conditions
and standards will be accepted as final. A democratic criterion requires us
to develop capacity to the point of competency to choose and make its own
career. This principle is violated when the attempt is made to fit
individuals in advance for definite industrial callings, selected not on the
basis of trained original capacities, but on that of the wealth or social
status of parents. As a matter of fact, industry at the present time
undergoes rapid and abrupt changes through the evolution of new inventions.
New industries spring up, and old ones are revolutionized. Consequently an
attempt to train for too specific a mode of efficiency defeats its own
purpose.
Winner, Langdon.
The Whale and the Reactor Reactor : A Search for Limits in an Age
of High Technology . University of Chicago Press: 1988. ISBN
0226902110, Page 116
The point of many
applications of microelectronics, after all, is to eliminate social layers
that were previously needed to get things done. Computerized bank tellers,
for example, have largely done away with small, local branch banks, which
were not only ways of doing business, but places where people met, talked,
and socialized. The so-called electronic cottage industry similarly,
operates very well without the kinds of human interactions that once
characterized office work. Despite greater efficiency, productivity, and
convenience, innovations of this kind do away with the reasons people
formerly had for being together, working together, acting together. Many
practical activities once crucial to even a minimal sense of community life
are rendered obsolete. One consequence of these developments is to pare
away the kinds of face-to-face contact that once provided important buffers
between individuals and organized power. To an increasing extent, people
will become even more susceptible to the influence of employers, news media,
advertisers, and national political leaders. Where will we find new
institutions to balance and mediate such power?
Time
July 27 1998, “Milestones,” Page 19
40 Years it took
radio to gain 50 million domestic listeners.
13 Years it took
television and cable to gain 50 million domestic viewers.
4 Years it took
the World Wide Web to get 50 million domestic users.
Doors of
Perception Conference 4 - SPEED - Speaker Transcript - Stephen Kern: “The
Culture of Speed “ Updated 19-12-1996 www.doorsofperception.com/doors/revamped_frameset.html
But there were also
critics. In English the word ‘phoney’ came from early descriptions of
artificial sound of voice on the phone and by implication the artificiality
of what was said without the enrichment of face-to-face encounters.
Lewis Mumford,
The Pentagon of Power: The Myth of the Machine, New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1970, Page 297
The electronic media
have shown what a heavy price must be paid for even the simulation of
multi-dimensioned intercourse. In genuine communication every agent has its
own role to play: the visible gesture, the direct spoken word, the written
message, the painting, the printed book, the radio, the phonograph record,
the tape recorder, television. Instead of replacing these varied
multi-media by television, radio and the computer alone, a mature and
efficient technology would strive to keep them all in existence, each for
the performance of its appropriate function in the chosen situation. As
with the transportation system, which cannot dispense with the free-moving
and autonomous pedestrian without producing clotted urban congestion or
equally baffling suburban dispersion, so with an efficient communications
system. What is needed is a technology so varied, so many-sided, so
flexible, so responsive to human need, that it can serve every valid human
purpose. The only true multi-medium remains the human organism itself.
Collins, Jim.
“Talking To Your Hand, Or Is That Your Phone?” US Airways Attache
February 1998.Page 33-4
By the end of today,
30,000 new people will join the ranks of cellular phone owners; by this time
next year, the American army of users alone will have grown by close to ten
million. No electronic product has ever been accepted more quickly or
bought more eagerly: not the fax machine, not the color TV, not the VCR.
In high-school hallways and on city sidewalks, at poolside and in airport
restaurants, in commuter lanes and on remote mountain peaks, the cell phone
has become the symbol of the ‘90s. It wasn’t until the early 1980s that the
“cellular” technology was ready for prime time. By then, the Federal
Communications Commission had decided how the industry should be structured
and regulated. The FCC divided the country into 306 metropolitan and 428
rural “markets,” designated by counties, and issued licenses corresponding
with frequencies. In 1983, Washington, D.C., and Chicago became the first
U.S. cities to offer cellular service. Fifteen years after those original
two systems, the FCC has licensed more than 1,500 systems. Wireless phone
service is now available to 75 percent of U.S. population, across 80 percent
of the Lower 48 land mass.
“Study Predicts E-Commerce to
Double by End of 1998.” Survey Monitor Page 6
According to a survey
of 120,000 North American consumers conducted by Forrester Research, Inc.,
Cambridge, Mass., the number of households that shop and invest online—a
high-income, technology-optimistic elite—will double from 5 percent to 10
percent by the end of 1998. On-line connections and PC ownership will soon
broaden to include low-income households, generating the next of
e-commerce-ready consumers. Data is drawn from Forrester’s Technographics
‘98 Field Study of North American consumers, conducted with NPD Group in the
fall of 1997.
Noble, David F.
Forces of Production. New York: Knopf 1984. ISBN 0394512626,
Pages 231 and 342
Numerical control
technology appeared to offer management several prospects. First, it
promised greater control over production, while reducing dependence upon the
work force. By making possible the separation of conception from execution,
of programming from machine operation, Numerical Control appeared to allow
for the complete removal of decision-making and judgment from the shop
floor. Such “mental” parts of the production process could now be
monopolized by managers, engineers, and programmers, and concentrated in the
office. And once decisions had been made and performance and production
standards had been set, detailed orders would be sent to the floor, not only
to the people there, by means of planning sheets and the like, but also
directly to the machines....
Of course, formal
(written) justifications of capital expenditure may make elaborate
comparisons of productivity, capital costs, payback periods, etc., between,
for instance, alternative new machines. These justifications were used
frequently, according to most accounts, as the basis of decisions on choice
of technology in many of the case study firms. But it is probably safe to
say that in no instance could it be demonstrated that in practice the new
technology met the measured expectations of the production engineer practice
the new technology met the measured expectations of the production engineer
who ‘justified’ the technology, or of the machine
supplier who advertised it. Besides, measures of the actual economic
returns of new processes were invariably in the form of ‘two or three times
more output per man’, or ‘it paid for itself in about two years’, rather
than the pounds and pence, and hours and minutes, of the pre-implementation
assessment. In practice then, there was simply no accurate measure of
productivity gains or
of comparative improvements in efficiency.
Cohen, Nevin.
"Designing for a Digital Economy." Architecture December 1999,
Page 119
Although e-commerce
promises waste reduction, the truth is that, at least in the short term,
surges in consumption of certain resources can be expected. Ironically, one
such side-effect of online shopping has been an increase in gasoline
consumption. The average American household makes more than 500 trips to
the store by car each year. As consumers do more shopping online, some
trips may be avoided. But if they insist on overnight delivery to replicate
the instant gratification of in-person shopping, fuel consumption could
actually skyrocket. Patagonia, the outdoor-clothing company, found that if
it sent a product via overnight mail, transportation alone accounted for
over a quarter of the energy required to manufacture and deliver it.
Doors 4 - SPEED -
Speaker Transcript - Susan George: “When I was growing up...” Updated
22-11-1996
www.doorsofperception.com/doors/revamped_frameset.html
Financial capital is
pure speed and pure, immaterial profit. It makes instantaneous judgments on
the values of national policies. If it doesn’t like what it sees, it
leaves, at the speed of bytes, leaving catastrophic consequences in its
wake. In December 1994, billions of dollars were removed from Mexico in a
matter of hours. The peso collapsed, interest rates were put sky high, over
a million small businesses failed, unemployment is rampant, widespread
hunger and malnutrition have returned , crime rates are alarming and
kidnappings routine. It can happen in rich countries too. George Soros
made a billion dollars in a couple of days speculating against the British
pound and in July 1993 the French Central Bank lost the totality of its
reserves overnight in a desperate attempt to prop up the franc against the
onslaught of speculative capital. Like a supersonic fighter plane,
financial capital can accelerate from zero to Mach three in a matter of
seconds.
Shellenbarger,
Sue. “Work & Family.” Wall Street Journal 23 September 1998.
Page B1
Unscheduled absences
rose 25% in the past year to seven-year highs, says CCH Inc., a Riverwoods,
Ill., human-resource information concern, in a 401-company survey set for
release today. The increase is concentrated among the small and medium-size
companies that employ about 70% of all payroll workers. The findings echo
an Aon Consulting survey of 1,800 employees showing an 11% rise since 1995
in time lost from work, including unscheduled absences for all reasons and
time spent at work on personal matters.
The reasons would
horrify the Organization Man of old. For the first time since the annual CCH
survey began in 1991, “family issues” were cited as the No. 1 cause of
unexpected absences, accounting for 26%, compared with 22% for personal
illness. Personal need, “entitlement mentality” and stress together
accounted for 52%. Stress and personal matter were also the fastest-growing
causes of missed time in the Aon survey.
Maggie Jackson,
Associated Press. “Be honest: Did you cheat at work yesterday?” The
Philadelphia Daily News, Saturday, April 5, 1997
Study finds about
half of employees confess to illegal, unethical acts. Nearly half of workers
engaged in unethical or illegal acts, or both, in the last year, according
to a survey to be released Monday. The atmosphere at many workplaces may be
to blame, according to the Ethics Officer Association and the American
Society of Chartered Life Underwriters and Chartered Financial Consultants,
which conducted the survey of 1,324 workers. Faced with the demands of
overtime, balancing work and family and downsizing, workers said they felt
more stress than five years ago, as well as more pressure to act
unethically. “Daily pressures are extreme, and it’s those pressures that may
be driving unethical practices,” said John Driskill, vice president of the
society of underwriters and financial consultants.
Kuttner, Robert, Everything
For Sale, New York, 1996: ISBN 0394583922, Page 64
Market theory
conceives of economic relationships as purely instrumental. All
transactions are at arm’s length, and there is no room for sentimentality.
The theory construes long-term commitments as implicit contracts, since the
contract epitomizes the economic concept of a free, voluntary exchange by
calculating, rational individuals, where opportunism is convenient and
worth its nominal cost, the theory commends opportunism. In Law and
Economics School theory, there is even a doctrine of “efficient breach.” If
it is cost-effective for one party to a contract to break it, that party
should ignore the contract and pay the price. However, society pays a
heavier price if norms of commitment and trust are casually breached. It
saves incalculable time and money if we can assume that most people are
trustworthy most of the time; that every transaction does not require
endless haggling.
Marino, Sal. “Straight
Talk.” Industry Week December 7, 1998, Page 22
The survey was
conducted in June by the Lutheran Brotherhood, an organization that provides
financial services, insurance, and various other programs for its more than
1 million Lutheran members. The study was conducted among 1,000 working
American adults. The good news is that 76% of the respondents said they
never had been asked (or ordered) to do anything they considered unethical
pertaining to their work. The bad news is that 24% confessed that they have
been asked (or ordered) to do something they considered unethical. And the
really bad news is that 41% of those asked actually did the dastardly deed
that was requested o |