From: ml (mbtlehn@ix.netcom.com)
Date: Sat Jul 10 2004 - 05:24:07 BST
Arlo,
>Now, most
> production line workers follow a bike from beginning to
>completion. Harley was concerned about labor alienation,
>and realized that it was "good" to restructure. And it
>improved their products, better Quality through greater
> connectedness. Harley-Davidson, all-American,
>responding to a GASP! Marxist
Regarding the above and some earlier comments, when I studied
political philosophy in college I had a professor who loved to tell
a story about how Karl Marx repudiated his own writings in later
years. This was after he had made a fortune in the stock market
and his specific reason was that he pointed out how the workers
could avoid alienation by simply becoming stock holders in their
own companies. This insight and practice marks one of the turning
points that brought about the death of PURE CAPITALISM and showed
the way to the eventual free market hybrid system that we actually have now.
Nothing inherently Marxist in concept about BETTER METHODS.
----------------------------
>But I wonder then why when such
> actions are made fully public, no one in the corporation
>(or the people with the power to make the decision to act)
>does anything to rectify it?
Excuse the cliche...Follow the money! The company will
like politicians faced with the truth of kneeling interns,
lie, cover up, and deny. The company wants to save money
and the executives don't want to end up as Bubba's bitch
in a fine resort of correction. IMO
--------------------------------------------------------
>We need to argue vocally and strongly that there are
> other options, and modern capitalism is not
> the only system other than eastern bloc socialism.
I believe as I stated earlier that calling our system
capitalism is a bad intellectual trap. What it is, we ain't.
It may take five years to understand what we have today,
but some of the analyses of money (see Wired Magazine
for example) show the dynamism of money as a pretty
good approximation of Dynamic Quality in some
situations in business. (I am not kidding...)
Post dot-bomb companies with good plans and an
approach that looks suspiciously like a cross between
an old Apple commercial and something similar to DQ
are getting attention. (Not sure if you read BizPorn type
mags; it's educational.)
The problem is in the lithosaurus type companies like
Fortune 1000's or so. Thay are caught in non dynamic
mass markets...low quality. Maybe a good R&D dept,
but lots of SOM inertia. Many of their bureaucrats would
be right at home in an eastern bloc wreck.
[What kind of Harley?]
thanks--mel
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Jul 10 2004 - 05:44:03 BST