Hey, Carrol, remember that an unfalsifiable hypothesis cannot qualify as science, you don't have to be very Popperian to believe that. ;-> This has been going on in auto for decades, and no question that assembly work is far more intellectually demanding than it was in the 1930s or 1950s. I have been on many auto factories, old and new. The new ones look and operate like laboratories. Now it is true that as computers get cheaper auto mechanics may get to the point where they just have semi-skilled workers pulling and replacing electronic components. We'll see. Didn't happen in auto assembly.
--- On Tue, 6/10/08, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] People today just don't have the work ethic they usedto!
> To: andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com, lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Tuesday, June 10, 2008, 1:19 PM
> andie nachgeborenen wrote:
> >
> > Au contraire, computerization is increasing the
> intellectual demands of the jobs of auto mechanics, auto
> workers, etc. My friends and comrades who work the line
> have all had to learn computer systems, programming,
> electronic repair, etc.; my auto mechanic says it's
> hard to find good people because a good mechanic needs to
> know computers now, not just mechanical systems.
>
> O.K. The trend has then not reached its full development. I
> believe
> computerization _usually_ at first proceeds as you have
> described it
> here, but then moves (more or less steadily) towards the
> condition I
> falsely assumed auto mechanics had reached. But in any case
> I believe we
> are in agreement that though the proportion varies, there
> is no
> occupation, probably in the nature of things cannot be an
> occupation,
> that makes no intellectual demands whatever on the worker,
> reducing her
> to (simply) a "cog." "Cog in the
> machine" in reference to persons is a
> useful metaphor but never empirically correct.
>
> Jan works on WebSphere (sp?) at State Farm. Don't ask
> me what that is,
> it's merely vital to almost every employee and agent at
> State Farm that
> it operate properly. And it continuallly fails to operate
> properly and
> thus requires highly skilled baby sitting. That level of
> skill IS
> however, after only a few years, detectably decreasing. I
> don't know how
> far it has to decrease before we can speak of the job as
> (roughly)
> "deskilled."
>
> Carrol
>
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