Does the Centre for Independent Studies’ Peter Saunders want you to believe something he thinks isn’t true?

Peter Saunders says that "we should endeavour to make the meritocratic principle work". At the same time, however, he argues that we should roll back government involvement in the economy and increase the scope of the private sector. Does Saunders really believe that markets identify and reward merit? Is the work of nurses, child care workers and stay at home mothers really so much less worthwhile than the work of bank executives and people who market cigarettes to the third world?

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I’m back jetlagged from Japan, about which I may have the strength to post a little in the future.

For now a thought – a big generalisation with only the sketchiest of evidence. Please don’t take it too seriously – or think that I have. It just occured to me as the hours and the kilometres whizzed by. Others may well have suggested it also.

Maybe commenters can provide further examples or counter-examples.

My hypothesis: That the Americans are not good at big bureaucratic firms, whereas the Japanese are and perhaps the Europeans are too.

My evidence (better to call it the phenomena that provoked the idea – its not a lot of evidence): Toyota is beating the pants off the American Big Three car makers. Boeing’s not doing that much better against Airbus. In the latter case subsidies make things murky, but Airbus appears to be beating Boeing technically.

My hypothesis as to the reason for this phenomenon if it’s true: The degeneration of corporate culture into naked pillage from the top is unlikely to engender the kind of morale that is conducive to high productivity and innovative dynamism within a large mature corporation. On the other hand it may be neutral or positively beneficial in other kinds of organisations – for instance software producers where work can be much more easily broken down.

Jacques Barzun is one of the great pioneering figures in cultural studies and he is also a most illuminating commentator on the problems of education at all levels. In 1973 he delivered some lectures at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D. C. and they were published in The Use and Abuse of Art. He comes as a lover of art, and a lover of progressive, avant garde art moreover, on the evidence of his earlier book The Energies of Art. However he sees a need to challenge art, or Art, on account of the diverse and contradictory theories and interests that are promoted under its banner.
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Toby Fattore, of the New South Wales Commission for Children and Young People has written an insightful and nuanced review of a book of international readings on child labour. Some of the more strident commentators on this topic are unfortunately still in the grip of the moral panic generated by the Saddler Committee report on the conditions in the English cotton mills circa 1830. Actually it was not a report on the cotton mills at all, except in its title, and Engles (of Marx and Engles) who knew something about cotton mills wrote that it was a travesty of real situation. Bill Hutt described how the falsehoods in the first report of the Saddler Committee were picked up and repeated uncritically by subsequent writers and so have become part of the accepted folklore about the industrial revolution.

Fattore wrote “Child Labor provides fifteen national case studies from four continents. By examining child labour in its historical, social, political and economic contexts, the book makes a wide-ranging contribution to our understanding of working children. The case studies demonstrate the diversity of child labour in rich and poor countries alike, and the variety of tasks and skills involved in the work that children do. The editors focus on exploitative and hazardous work including the worst forms of child labour. In adopting this focus, the book belongs to a body of research that implicitly understands work as harmful to child development. On this view, work for children should (ultimately) be abolished.”
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In an article for Policy, Peter Saunders of the Centre for Independent Studies compares life to a game of Monopoly. But over at Tug Boat Potemkin, Gummo Trotsky is unconvinced.

The aim of Monopoly is to drive your opponents into bankruptcy. For decades arrogant older brothers have been cut down to size by their little brothers and sisters. Everyone remembers the tantrums, sulking and exultant smirking. But play the game again the next day and the tables may turn.

Saunders thinks that Monopoly is a good metaphor for society. On his view a ‘fair go’ is about having rules which apply to everyone. Playing the game fairly means not bending the rules because you feel sorry for someone or cheating because you think your opponent doesn’t deserve to win. It’s an odd metaphor for society. Monopoly is all about winners and losers. But for most political philosophers society is about mutual benefit.

Saunders argues that there are three competing principles for the ‘fair go’ in social life. One is the classical liberal idea — society is fair when everyone plays by the same rules. The second is the meritocratic principle — fairness is about people getting what they deserve. The third is the egalitarian principle — equal shares for all. Saunders argues that most Australians think of fairness in terms of reward for hard work and talent while social policy intellectuals think of fairness in terms of equal shares.

Gummo Trotsky thinks that Saunders is oversimplifying. He writes:

Saunders’ three "logically incompatible" definitions of fairness might be accepted as partial definitions of what we mean by fairness in social settings a little more complex than your typical game of Monopoly.

Gummo is right.
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