Thanks, that’s an interesting point. There are also different kinds of uses with a pencil … all with different strengths and weaknesses vis a vis hand-eye craft.

How does this apply? Deneen is “against” Taylorism. This means we as a society should ‘re-examine it’ and read books like Crawford’s and see movies like MAC. It also means Deneen will NOT APPROVE OF YOU if you implement Taylorism in a company you own. I will in many if not most cases join him in this DISAPPROVAL. But would Deneen and I be ready to call for LAWS, local or federal, that would prohibit Taylorism? Or make it more difficult? Now I assume we both have no problem with laws that limit work hours, demand safety regulations, etc. We are willing to mess around with, i.e., give democratic majorities control over, the “right to contract”; that is, we do not think there can be a natural right of contract that allows anything voluntary under the sun to occur within a corporation.(Nor do we think such a right is implied by the 14th via the due process clause.) Absolute individual rights to contract are not a good way to negociate/determine the bounds of the individual’s real right to liberty.
Now, if a two-hundred-person company somewhere decides that, due to some unusual opportunity or crisis, it has to temporarily shift production into a basically Taylorist mode, note that any law on the books against Taylorist practices would prevent that. And note that enforcing any law against Taylorism would insert either local or federal government officials into the company books and onto the company floor on a regular basis. I can hear the govt. agent now: “Uh, Mr. Manager, I notice that Joe here is spending 85% of his work time on one simple task, and that’s not allowed acc. to section 17C of…”

So probably, most conceivable laws against Taylorism would be impossibly harmful. And since some humans would always have good reasons for employing Taylorism, and many others, not-so-good reasons, this means that FPR preaching against it can only limit it so much. Not that you stop such preaching, but your expectations do change. Thus, it really might be the case that while many in FPR are officially “against” Taylorism, most will find they cannot be SERIOUSLY against it, since they cannot see how to prohibit it without ruining necessary liberties. Moreover, since they will surely understand that many businesses that would like to do without it might feel obliged by the bottom-line to utilize it, even their moral disapproval of it might have to be adjusted.

And as with Taylorism, so with many other things.

Crafting code and words are work, difficult work, but they are the work of the mind, for the mind. That work does not exercise the body in the same way that a landscaper or factory work might. Again, I know that such work IS work and IS tiring, but the feel of it is different. (Not better or worse, just different.)

I also wonder if the difference for me lies in the visual changes that I have made to the world at the end of the day. At work, I type emails and replace parts and solve technical problems. But at the end of the day, there is no visual indication that my work has changed or improved my world. Sometimes it is exactly the opposite; my work is to keep things running in the same manner as they were yesterday, with (perhaps) the only change being that things are done more quickly.

If I mow my lawn or build a fence or help to build a house, it results in an observable change in my environment that is good for the soul. I can see my work and feel it in my body. Rest is deserved as much as it is needed.

This is true. One of the great problems with Enron is that it was Taylorism run amok. Here you had a company filled with highly paid, highly skilled traders, analysts, quant PhDs, and yet none of them had a coherent understanding as to how the whole entity worked. It took short-sellers with a big picture view, who were maligned as charlatans by Enron and the mainstream media, to show us just how diabolically fraudulent the enterprise was. Meanwhile the brilliant traders, analysts, and quant PhDs, all with top pedigrees, had their 401k’s maxed out, losing big time on Enron stock. Even the white collar, intellectual elites, are still mere cogs in the machine.

Just kidding – I look forward to reading your post.