One of the early tenets of Thoreau, and then Muir, and then the Sierra Club was that "Wildness is the preservation of the world". There is some special experience that comes from being in Nature that is essential to human nature and survival.
Today's NYT features a discussion on base jumping from Yosemite and other National Parks. The discussion reflects the growing emphasis on extreme sports. Once the province of the motorcycle daredevils and tightrope walkers, it has spread to a wider community of enthusiasts. All these activities seem understandable as personal challenges either for courage or skill, but are they part of the “wilderness experience”? Once there was no “wilderness”: people lived in nature’s world and survived as best they could. Gradually human culture developed methods of surviving more easily in the world around them, and a distinction developed between the “world of man” and “Nature”. Periodic floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, etc remind us that this distinction is temporary and artificial, but it is a useful fiction that helps people feel less anxious about their day to day survival.
Once people stop living daily in the world of predators, exposure to extreme climate, and the hunger of an inconsistent food supply, a yearning for the challenges of that life seems to return. For some this is simply a walk in a local park or on the beach. For others it may involve camping outdoors, or a backpacking trip into a “wilderness” area. These challenges all have in common the desire to test one’s ability to live in the wild for a limited period of time. NOLS and other adventure programs have all developed programs modeled on the Native American “vision quest” to give participants controlled experiences of this challenge. This has become a profitable way of giving people this challenge. For some, there seems to be a natural duality between living a protected urban life and going outside of this safe space periodically to enjoy the experience of Nature more directly.
What does this have to do with outdoor thrill seeking? Another group of people want to use an outdoor experience to prove something about themselves. The obvious examples are the explorers who went to arctic and antarctic to be the first to lay claim to being at these places. The records of their trips show no indication of a peaceful engagement with a harsh natural environment and everything about organizing an adventure to prove that the person can achieve some daunting accomplishment. Often they were not the "first" to reach this location, but the first "Europeans" to report about it. Nature is only the challenge in this version of the story, not a meaningful experience in its own right. This distinction is very clear in mountaineering. Some people arrange complex trips into the mountains, with extended training etc, because they want to have the experience of being in these dramatic landscapes. The trips are not rushed and achieving the summit is only part of the goal. For others, climbing mountains is simply a check box on the bucket list of personal aggrandizement: “I skydived”, “I bungee jumped”, “I climbed this or that peak in one day”, etc. This is the “wham, bam, thank you mam” version of experiencing Nature. The trip preparation is usually brief and focused on personal endurance, not the environment, and tour leaders organize and coordinate the complex details needed to guide the inexperienced climber to a (hopefully) successful outcome. Alpine skiers and snowboarders have also developed this pattern. From the days of the selective joy of skiing down isolated slopes in distant mountains, and staying over in modest quaint lodges, skiing has grown to a world wide billion dollar real estate business in which the skiing is degraded by the crowds and automation of lifts, so that the wild and natural part of the experience is effectively eliminated. Assuring snow conditions with “snow making” equipment is the ultimate denial of the natural experience! Faced with the reality of how they have deteriorated the environment by their activities, skiers rich enough now use helicopters to take them to more isolated places, gradually extending the exploitation of the natural world for their own personal thrills. I am not attacking skiing as an activity and I enjoyed it very much at one time in my life. But skiing is the most clear example of how people start out enjoying some outdoor activity in a relatively natural place and transform it into a commercial activity that obliterates the natural element. Skiers complain about the crowds and lift lines, and poor conditions due to weather and never stop to realize that it is they who have compromised the experience for themselves!
The National Park Service sits squarely in the center of this dilemma. The parks create a boundary around and protect areas of natural beauty and important national historical importance. The parks are the residual of what was, quite recently, a wild expansive natural environment in which humans struggled daily to survive. They are maintained by our taxes, and we as the landholders are entitled to visit them. Yet at the same time, if enough of us visit and stay, the places will be transformed and no longer provide the experience of that natural world! This is most clear in the South Rim of the Grand Canyon where millions of visitors ride up for the day, look out, create parking problems and crowding and then go off leaving their trash etc behind. The contrast to the less accessible North Rim is instructive, because the two sides of the Canyon feel so utterly different, one almost a theme park in places, while the other retains most of its natural beauty. The park service must find a way to restrict the use of these special places which maximizes their access to the public, while minimizing the impact on these treasures. This is not an easy task!
Two obvious principles come to mind:
1) The parks should accommodate the maximum number of visitors possible while arranging the visits to minimize the impact on the natural features of the parks. This involves structuring lodging, roads, trail access, and key vantage points so they are not overwhelmed. The differences between the north and south rims provide examples of both!
2) The parks should not encourage or permit any activities that exploit the parks for personal aggrandizement. Base jumping off the cliffs seems an obvious example. But more subtle are questions about rock climbing. There is a long history of rock climbing the sheer walls of Yosemite. Learning to climb the cliffs to appreciate the experience of these
challenging walls IS a valid experience that Yosemite provides to those
who will invest the time. But it also creates a culture of personal aggrandizement of some climbers. This has led to “free climbing”, i.e. climbing ascents without protective gear. Such ascents go beyond ordinary challenges of rock climbing, to prove the expertise of the individual climbers. Why is this a function of the park? Shouldn’t all users of the parks concentrate on experiencing and appreciating their beauty? Shouldn't every visitor have the opportunity to enjoy the available natural challenges of the place? Is proving how much risk you can take with your skill and athleticism is NOT about exploring the park, but about exploring yourself, and this can be achieved at less precious sites in other parts of the country. Similarly for base jumping, for acrobatic skiing, etc. There should be places for people who want to test their special skills and athleticism, but not in the National Parks.
Sunday, June 14, 2015
Is Wisconsin the future of US labor?
The situation in Wisconsin A major confrontation between the governor and labor leaders in the state has generally gone the governor’s way, as the legislature has passed several bills limiting the influence and power of organized labor. How is this possible and does this reflect a growing national trend? A subheading gives the following view:
‘It is only a question of who makes the money — the workers or the owners.’
But it is not that simple. The companies are competing in a world market where workers make much less than in the US, and in which outsourcing and offshoring production is increasingly important in the design of corporate functions.
The balance of workers and managers must be seen in the broader context of the changing nature of corporations, and the changing values of management. When managers actually managed the direct production of workers there was a mutual interdependence which still exists in some areas like the auto industry. Here the production of a complex product with requirements for consumer reliability demands effective worker performance and managers must find a way to ensure worker performance, including managing the complex robotic devices that assist the workers. But in most industries, the production responsibilities are outsourced and the managers are only responsible for seeing that the outsourced work is completed according to spec. With a world full of potential employees, foreign labor production companies are highly motivated to fulfill contracts effectively, (though in reality they don’t, and product reliability usually suffers). The consumer opts for the lowest price and then gets frustrated when the product is partially defective and has few options for remediation.
It is not so much an issue of upper management taking money from workers, but eliminating the direct role of workers in the company entirely! And this has spread to accounting, lawyers, designers, almost every facet of production but finance and marketing. Nike pioneered the model in which companies are effectively shells in which the managers coordinate a series of complex outsourced functions, pushing control of production costs, while designing marketing strategies to increase “brand enhancement” and therefore commanding higher prices for cheaper goods! From the corporate viewpoint this is a logical strategy and to the extent that marketing can convince consumers to buy products of marginal quality the company is successful. The irony of the black market in “knock off” designer labeled products exactly captures the situation: why should the consumer prefer the expensive “real brand” product to the “knock off” with false logo, when there is little difference in the actual product (and may be secretly produced by the same offshore company!). Workers and the quality of production have little role in such a business environment and therefore little leverage to command better share of the profits.
In the recent surge in unemployment, a trend has accelerated that had already begun: the solo worker with special skills who is contracted on a project basis for various technically skilled tasks. This is called the “Hollywood model” in recognition of how films have been independently contracted since the collapse of the studio system in the 50s. Networking, personal skills, reliability, and ability to work well in groups with others all contribute to the value of such employees. Lawyers and engineers have long experienced this sort of employment pattern and it has spread widely through the economy. This pattern of employment is more efficient of the use of time of skilled workers, and puts them on more personal demand to manage their finances and security independently. The role of the large corporation as a lifetime job and basis for retirement is rapidly disappearing for all but a tiny group who reach the highest levels of the organization. (In the discussions about pay differentials of senior executives, little is said about the differential from middle managers, but this is expanding also, and the pyramid to a secure upper level position has become steeper over time as well.)
Seen in this context, Walker is less of a creator of change, but rather someone who capitalized, for his own political agenda, changes already underway. It therefore seems likely that similar losses in the power of organized labor throughout the country will occur over the next administration, whoever it is. Behind the scenes, a process of self career marketing, and aggregating financial services for self employed persons are the tends most likely to be new directions in labor. And there will be a strong emphasis on entrepreneurial skills. All these changes have been underway for some time.
What is not so clear is how these changes impact on the career development process of the individuals. With less need for “middle managers” how do the future “producers = major executives” get trained? What education prepares people to be independent entrepreneurial agents, and do current universities with their giant enrollments and impersonal education foster these skills? To be continued…
‘It is only a question of who makes the money — the workers or the owners.’
But it is not that simple. The companies are competing in a world market where workers make much less than in the US, and in which outsourcing and offshoring production is increasingly important in the design of corporate functions.
The balance of workers and managers must be seen in the broader context of the changing nature of corporations, and the changing values of management. When managers actually managed the direct production of workers there was a mutual interdependence which still exists in some areas like the auto industry. Here the production of a complex product with requirements for consumer reliability demands effective worker performance and managers must find a way to ensure worker performance, including managing the complex robotic devices that assist the workers. But in most industries, the production responsibilities are outsourced and the managers are only responsible for seeing that the outsourced work is completed according to spec. With a world full of potential employees, foreign labor production companies are highly motivated to fulfill contracts effectively, (though in reality they don’t, and product reliability usually suffers). The consumer opts for the lowest price and then gets frustrated when the product is partially defective and has few options for remediation.
It is not so much an issue of upper management taking money from workers, but eliminating the direct role of workers in the company entirely! And this has spread to accounting, lawyers, designers, almost every facet of production but finance and marketing. Nike pioneered the model in which companies are effectively shells in which the managers coordinate a series of complex outsourced functions, pushing control of production costs, while designing marketing strategies to increase “brand enhancement” and therefore commanding higher prices for cheaper goods! From the corporate viewpoint this is a logical strategy and to the extent that marketing can convince consumers to buy products of marginal quality the company is successful. The irony of the black market in “knock off” designer labeled products exactly captures the situation: why should the consumer prefer the expensive “real brand” product to the “knock off” with false logo, when there is little difference in the actual product (and may be secretly produced by the same offshore company!). Workers and the quality of production have little role in such a business environment and therefore little leverage to command better share of the profits.
In the recent surge in unemployment, a trend has accelerated that had already begun: the solo worker with special skills who is contracted on a project basis for various technically skilled tasks. This is called the “Hollywood model” in recognition of how films have been independently contracted since the collapse of the studio system in the 50s. Networking, personal skills, reliability, and ability to work well in groups with others all contribute to the value of such employees. Lawyers and engineers have long experienced this sort of employment pattern and it has spread widely through the economy. This pattern of employment is more efficient of the use of time of skilled workers, and puts them on more personal demand to manage their finances and security independently. The role of the large corporation as a lifetime job and basis for retirement is rapidly disappearing for all but a tiny group who reach the highest levels of the organization. (In the discussions about pay differentials of senior executives, little is said about the differential from middle managers, but this is expanding also, and the pyramid to a secure upper level position has become steeper over time as well.)
Seen in this context, Walker is less of a creator of change, but rather someone who capitalized, for his own political agenda, changes already underway. It therefore seems likely that similar losses in the power of organized labor throughout the country will occur over the next administration, whoever it is. Behind the scenes, a process of self career marketing, and aggregating financial services for self employed persons are the tends most likely to be new directions in labor. And there will be a strong emphasis on entrepreneurial skills. All these changes have been underway for some time.
What is not so clear is how these changes impact on the career development process of the individuals. With less need for “middle managers” how do the future “producers = major executives” get trained? What education prepares people to be independent entrepreneurial agents, and do current universities with their giant enrollments and impersonal education foster these skills? To be continued…
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