Autopilot by Andrew Smart

Author:Andrew Smart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Bisac Code 1: SCI089000 / SEL035000
ISBN: eBook ISBN| 9781939293114
Publisher: OR Books
Published: 2013-01-05T16:00:00+00:00

6

REVOLUTION OR SUICIDE

“This is why Foxconn workers are free to jump from buildings but not to ‘make trouble.’”

—Foxconn worker

“Specialization is for insects.”

—Bart Kosko, professor, USC; author of Noise

Soviet farm collectivization in the 1930s and the agricultural development of the American colonies were attempts to impose structure onto groups of humans from the top down for the benefit of those in power. A small cadre of powerful people in each society desired either symbolic or economic power, and so they implemented a system of authoritarian order on the society in order to achieve their goals.

People did not willingly participate in these projects—they had to be threatened with severe punishments and constantly monitored to make sure they kept working.

Nature frequently resists being managed. “Scientific forestry,” for instance, was invented in the 18th century in Germany as an attempt to gain control over the unruly natural forests. State bureaucrats desired more yields from certain trees, which they could not reliably get from old growth forests. And they needed to precisely measure and quantify the output of the forest.

Anthropologist James C. Scott describes the rise of scientific forestry in his influential book Seeing Like a State. The scientific foresters replaced the complex ecosystems in the natural forests with simplified “scientific” forests for maximizing yields of certain types of timber. They planted the forests to resemble an Excel spreadsheet: row upon row of neatly-ordered trees all of the same type. A monoculture. In the first generation, this all worked marvelously well: yields were up, the timber was easy to harvest, and the bureaucrats could efficiently count the trees in order to make predictions about the future.

Inevitably, the forests revolted. Within one generation, yields for some trees were down thirty percent. The perplexed Germans invented a word for what happened: Waldsterben (forest death). This was when the nutrient cycle of the soil was altered beyond the point of repair by the monoculture trees. In the worst cases, the entire forest died. The reason “scientific forestry” failed was due to total scientific ignorance of how forests work.

Forests, too, are self-organizing systems. Their health is maintained by an extremely complex interaction between diverse types of soil, animals, insects (such as ants), plants, fungus, trees, and weather. By disrupting this exquisitely balanced and harmonious system through uniformity and attempting to make the forest “productive,” scientific forestry caused the forest ecosystem to collapse. Surely the principles of “scientific forestry” were consigned to history’s ash heap? Consider Apple. Surely Apple, the most valuable company in the world, the maker of the coolest digital devices known to humanity, eschews the antiquated principles of German scientific forestry?

You have likely heard of the abysmal working conditions at the Chinese factories that produce nearly all our electronics. Your passing concern might have been assuaged by the recent announcements that the factories are attempting to make work at these places more worker-friendly. Apple’s products are manufactured by a Taiwanese company in China called Foxconn. Foxconn proudly employs what are called “scientific management” techniques for its millions of workers.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.