Can you guess the political orientation of the author of these words?

[Boojatta]

Each rung of authority interferes in the efforts of those who know more about what they’re doing; each rung of authority receives only information filtered from below based on what it wants to hear; and each rung of authority is accountable only to those higher up the chain of command who are even more unaccountable and out of touch with reality. The hierarchy, in short, is a textbook illustration of the zero-sum situation that results from substituting power for market relations.

The obvious solution, the worker cooperative, would—by uniting knowledge with authority and reward with effort—slice through the overwhelming majority of the hierarchical corporation’s knowledge and agency problems, like a sword through the Gordian knot. The distributed knowledge of those engaged in production would be applied directly to the production process on their own authority, without the intervention of suggestion boxes and “quality improvement committees.” The problem of socially engineering the wages and benefits system so as to “encourage people to work” would disappear; the elimination of privilege and unearned income, and the receipt by labor of its full product, would tie reward directly to effort.

But this solution is ruled out by the system’s structural starting assumptions: concentrated wealth and absentee ownership. So the hierarchical corporation is adopted as a sort of Rube Goldberg expedient, the most rational means available given fundamentally irrational presuppositions.

Please go by the words quoted above, without doing any other research on the author.

[Jackpine Radical]

1. Deming?

[tabatha]

2. progressive

[damntexdem]

3. The orientation label doesn't matter.

The commentary is accurate.

[Boojatta]

6. The orientation label might matter.

For example, if you saw the label, then you might decide on that basis alone that the commentary isn't worth reading.

[tomreedtoon]

4. Easy. It's Satan.

Satan always uses this kind of heavy verbiage to hide his basic message: you're damned, all of you. In case you didn't know, Satan writes all the articles for The Economist, The Wall Street Journal and every economics book ever written.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

5. A communist,

I would think, from what is said about the "receipt by labor of its full product..."

[bkozumplik]

7. socialist

Its hard to say though without more to read about where he/she's going with it.

[Boojatta]

8. Kick

[westerebus]

9. Conservative. n/t

[bhikkhu]

10. Maybe its out of context, but the snip is just stupid.

It takes "concentrated wealth and absentee ownership" as the irrational starting point of a system which then requires the flawed structure of a hierachical corporation.

You could just as easily say that any worker cooperative, given time and human nature, results in a condition of concentrated wealth and absentee ownership. Looking at history, that's just what happens often enough and is one very organic by-product of the development of complex societies. So I would say its the statement of a social engineer with little depth or understanding, or perhaps intelligent enough but with a "money and power" driven agenda to be served by obfustication.



(edited for sp.)

[pokercat999]

11. The first line at least, matches my limited corporate and

military experience. I have much more experience with small business where there are very limited "rungs" of authority and reaching the person at the top is an everyday occurrence. Of course you still have to have the guts to tell them the truth as you perceive it, even if it's not what they want to hear.

My guess is by the very nature of your question is that the author is someone totally unexpected like a RW economist or big business guru or maybe someone like Henry Ford.