Thanks, Ed, for taking the time to read my paper. I'll adress your points in
reverse order because it seems to me that you presented them in escalating
order of importance.
First, regarding my "implicit assumption" of the homogeneity of labour. What
I assume is a reconfigurable division of labour. I also explicitly state
that the current use of labour cannot be assumed to be optimal -- that
unemployment is a reliable indicator of such sub-optimality. Without those
two elements, we would no longer be talking about an "economy". We would be
talking about, say, a "status culture of production" in which the division
of labour is, for the most part, traditional and "unemployment" would be a
caste designation rather than a result of transactions on a labour market.
The "indispensible" employee is an example of an inefficient (uneconomic)
use of labour, not an rationale for long hours. To say that in "a knowledge
based economy, expertise resides with the individual" is to give a
distinctively feudal or caste-system definition to the "knowledge-based
economy". In other words, the claim lies somewhere between empty slogan and
oxymoron. By definition, if the *economy* is knowledge-based, then expertise
_cannot_ reside with the individual.
Hours versus methods:
It's not simply the reduction of hours that brings about the greater
intensity of labour. This occurs through the "introduction of new technology
and improved methods of undertaking work" in response to the shorter hours.
I said as much in my paper. The reduction of hours is a catalyst for the
introduction of improved methods and it makes the greater intensity of
labour humanly bearable (at both an individual and social scale).
Downsizing versus reduction of work time:
My comparison between 7 and 8 hours referred to the length of the work day.
That's what the paper is about. To say that an efficient firm would have
already gotten rid of their eighth employee is to miss the point that the
intensity of [a person's] work is limited by the longer hours. Downsizing
may seem to offer the same benefit ON PAPER but it's only on paper.
Eliminating inefficient firms:
Driving less efficient (in use of labour resources) firms out of business is
not a problem for my analysis. If those firms are less efficient, they are
wasting labour that could be more efficiently put to use by other firms and
they are usurping market share that they haven't "won" competitively. Good
riddance to parasitic capital.
regards,
Tom Walker
