Well, someone (but I don't know who) sent me a copy of the Samson article.
Here are my reactions.
I find the "off-peopling" term "off putting." There is a name for moving
"mental" work from people to machines. That word is "automation" (which is
of course distinct from the word used to identify "muscle" work being moved
from people to machines; namely, "mechanization").
I do not find the distinction between "know-how" and "hyper-human" work very
useful. There is a great deal of work now being done by computers that was
once thought safe from automation (just ask those loan officers and
insurance underwriters). Remember, also, that work is defined by process
AND result or outcome. The work I moved from people to computers was moved
NOT as a result of having the computer do what the people did but as a
result of devising a process the computer could use to produce the desired
outcome (typically more accurately, more reliably, faster and less
expensively than having people do it). By way of example, the work of
Financial Aid Assistants (a now defunct job category) at Educational Testing
Service, was moved to the computer as a result of devising algorithms that
expressed the process for resolving edit errors associated with Financial
Aid Applications that had been suspended from computer processing. Ditto
for health claims examiners, lost and stolen travelers checks examiners,
loan officers and insurance underwriters. The computer doesn't and can
never do the work people do the same way people do. What can be done is to
devise a way for the computer to produce the same or better results. That's
automation and it's been on the radar screen for a long, long time now.
I appreciate Samson's optimism about the ability of people to find a safe
haven in "hyper-human" work and jobs but I'm a pessimist on that score. It
seems to me that unfettered capitalism has also loosed the bonds of greed
and the structure of business and industry is such that the rich get richer
and the poor get poorer, which we all know, but also that the middle class
is disappearing. A few are scrambling to higher ground but most I fear are
being shoved downward where they will join the ranks of the marginally
employed. This, I think, is part of a great leveling going on around the
globe. The standard of living in countries such as India and China seems to
me to be rising - but at the expense of the standard of living for many
people in countries such as the United States. ("Off shoring" is "off
putting" too.)
Samson muddies his story by interjecting outsourcing and off-shoring into
his off-peopling argument. Those are different phenomena.
I don't think his warnings to CEOs that they might be shooting themselves in
the foot with off-peopling, off-shoring and outsourcing will carry much
weight with that audience. They are above such matters. Recent history
suggest that many of them see themselves as above the law. In any event,
CEOs are members of the ruling class and you can be sure that they will look
after their own interests and those of their class.
Samson's article did remind me of Thorstein Veblen. Most people know Veblen
as the author of "The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899)." He also wrote
"The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904)." Something Veblen wrote in the
latter seems a good fit here:
"The motive of business is pecuniary gain, the method is essentially
purchase and sale. The aim and usual outcome is an accumulation of wealth"
(p.20).
Almost 30 years later, in "The Modern Corporation and Private Property,"
Adolph Berle Jr and Gardner Means would point out that the ability to
accumulate wealth had shifted from the business owner to the managers of
business enterprises as a consequence of the fragmentation of ownership in
the form of stockholders.
In a very real sense, then, we have come full circle. Veblen pointed out
that the stock company could be traced to early shipping companies.
However, shippers were speculators; they took advantage of conditions
instead of shaping them to their own ends. Today's stockholders, the
presumed "owners" of modern businesses, are once again speculators. By
contrast, the managers of modern stock companies are accumulating wealth in
the best of guaranteed fashions. They are simply awarding it to
themselves. They are shaping conditions to their own ends.
My conclusion regarding Samson's article, to respond to Edryce's original
query, is that it is "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
Regards,
Fred Nickols, CPT
Distance Consulting
"Assistance at a Distance"
nickols@att.net
www.nickols.us