RE: MD Pirsig applied to business

quality is subsumed by quantity in business (which is nearly everything today) . this is economic rationalism. economic rationalism elevates productivity and efficiency above the quality of the product.  it becomes more important to produce a cheap, competitive product rather than a quality product. pirsig comments explicitly on this in ZAMM: the veneer of style that replaces real quality is ominpresent - cars, houses, appliances, furniture, food.....

so pirsig applied to business would mean elevating quality above knocking out heaps of identical crap. this means scrapping the economic imperative as the benchmark of life. this is obviously a political goal - economics is the equivalent of the latin liturgies in the middle ages, and lenin-marxism in the former USSR.

in my locality i am seeing changes in business already. we buy our fresh fruit and veges locally from the weekend markets - lower prices *and* higher quality (becuase the market is outside  the official economic system). the other notable change has been a blurring of wholesale and retail. in an increasing number of areas wholesale warehouses are popping up that sell at half price or less the same products you find in retail shops. although it is mostly the same rubbish they are selling this 'cutting out the middle man' may hasten business change also, given that the midle men are usually the big retail corporations. of course the danger is that the wholesale warehouses become the new behemoths.

so in a nutshell pirsig applied to business would mean that businesses would start to *care* about the products they knock out and not just the dollars they represent. a shift from the valuing of the abstract (money) to the real (crafted product). this can only happen if the economic imperative becomes less imperative