Becoming Artisans, Is that a Way to National Economic Hopefulness? ─ Probably Not

24 October 2010

Thomas Friedman thinks that labor economist Lawrence Katz is right ─ think artisanship

Everyone today, he says, needs to think of himself as an “artisan” — the term used before mass manufacturing to apply to people who made things or provided services with a distinctive touch in which they took personal pride. Everyone today has to be an artisan and bring something extra to their jobs.

We’re in the age of “extra,” and everyone has to figure out what extra they can add to their work to justify being paid more than a computer, a Chinese worker or a day laborer.

Maybe so ─ on a personal scale

The Katz-Friedman concept of artisanship is not a new one in regard to niche-ing oneself in today’s economy. It is helpful.

Not convinced on a national scale

On a national/global competition scale, I find artisanship a questionable economic tactic. The term “artisan” does not inspire social or economic movements. Artisans make leather sandals in Berkeley.

Artisan transformation, on the scale one ordinarily would perceive it to be implemented, is not a substitute for retrieving some of the core-strength large-scale manufacturing and production jobs we abandoned to China.

Admittedly, skilled workers in industrial fields today can think of themselves as uniquely skilled artisans in portions of the industrial process by bringing exceptional value to their tasks. But there is no reason why workers in the 1940s and 50s could not have characterized themselves the same way.

And we still have the problem of successfully transitioning to new skills, as industries go extinct.

Parasitic industries are not the backbone of global power

I also doubt transformative solutions that see America retaining its economic superiority by concentrating on uniquely-executed details of essentially secondary industries.

For example, we have to have a mass-manufactured iPod, before we can hire someone to “artisan” it.

The fundamental problem with artisanship is the burden of individualized advertising

Conceptually, on the national scale, Friedman’s argument is arguably flawed because American artisans would individually need to advertise their unique skills and excellence in order to justify the pay premium they seek.

The clamor would be too enormous for our bandwidth, and our patience, to handle. Jobs would still go to one-sourced mediocrity abroad, simply as a matter of economic efficiency.

Sensible corporations would rather have “mediocre and cheap” far away, than have to waste gobs of time trying to sort and organize enough American “artisans” in order to get the large-scale projects they have in mind off the ground.

Entrepreneurship combined with innovation?

Entrepreneurship and innovation appear to me to be the critically necessary predecessors to the artisanship Katz and Friedman address.

Entrepreneurs recognize societal needs and strive to meet them.

Innovators create needs.

Put those together, and we might get somewhere.

Provided that we have the domestic workers skilled and moldable enough to make whatever it is that the entrepreneurial innovators have thought up.

The essential problem remains ─ we need innovation, entrepreneurship, and enough already skilled, affordable workers

America needs the industry, before it can categorize the worker-skills the industry needs.

Entrepreneurs must be able to count on finding enough skilled workers here to make their business plan work. The individualized “artisan” concept does not lend itself to getting the numbers of people generally required.

We are back to economic square one. If the foreign workers can do what we do, as well as we can, for a lot less money (absent American governmental intervention), that is where industry is going to go.

Thinking American “artisanship” is not going to fix the global competitiveness problem.

PeteFree.com

Becoming Artisans, Is that a Way to National Economic Hopefulness? ─ Probably Not