[p2p-research] introducing samuel bowles

[Kevin Carson]

> Insights into Economic Inequality and Job Creation from Samuel Bowles

> Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Mamading Ceesay.

> One key claim of Bowles is that the higher the level of inequality present in an economy, the more inefficient it is and the less income it produces. There are a number of reasons that this is the case. One reason is that in highly unequal societies, the highest ranking members of society have to expend more time, energy and resources making sure those below them behave by amongst other things the employment of what Bowles and his colleague Arjun Jayadev call guard labor. Think supervisors, traffic wardens, police officers and prison guards, which by the way aren't the best paying jobs around anyway.
>

David M. Gordon, in Fat and Mean, found a very high correlation
between economic inequality (specifically between the pay of top
management and typical line workers inside the corporation), and the
proportion of employees in supervisory/managerial positions.  The
stagnation of worker pay and the shift of most compensation to those
at the top (the shrinking carrot) create increased agency and
incentive problems that make the stick more necessary for disciplining
the labor force.  Economic inequality within the corporation
inevitably leads to internal authoritarianism, as what Oliver
Williamson calls "compunctory compliance" and petty sabotage by
increasingly disgruntled workers make it essential to keep them under
constant surveillance.

All the resources devoted to enforcing artificial scarcity (RIAA
surveillance costs and legal staff, the performance problems from
Vista's DRM, etc.) would also seem to fall under the heading of guard
labor.  Johan Soderberg compared Western corporate capitalism's need
to control access to the means of digital reproduction to the old
Soviet Nomenklatura's control of access to photocopiers.

Also the enforcement of entry barriers of other kinds against
competition from low-overhead micro-producers (zoning laws, business
licensing, arbitrary safety standards, etc.).

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
The Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html