The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation, and Other EssaysVeblen, Thorstein
Philosophy
The Place of Science in Modern Civilisation, and Other Essays
Veblen, Thorstein
Economics; Science
The owner of the material equipment, the capitalist-employer, is, in the
typical case, not possessed of any appreciable fraction of the
immaterial equipment necessarily drawn on in the construction and
subsequent use of the material equipment owned (controlled) by him. His
knowledge and training, so far as it enters into the question, is a
knowledge of business, not of industry.[9] The slight technological
proficiency which he has or needs for his business ends is of a general
character, wholly superficial and impracticable in point of workmanlike
efficiency; nor is it turned to account in actual workmanship. He
therefore "needs in his business" the service of persons who have a
competent working mastery of this immaterial technological equipment,
and it is with such persons that his bargains for hire are made. By and
large, the measure of their serviceability for his ends is the measure
of their technological competency. No workman not possessed of some
fractional mastery of the technological requirements is
employed,--imbeciles are useless in proportion to their imbecility; and
even unskilled and "unintelligent" workmen, so called, are of relatively
little use, although they may be possessed of a proficiency in the
commonplace industrial details such as would bulk large in absolute
magnitude. The "common laborer" is, in fact, a highly trained and widely
proficient workman when contrasted with the conceivable human blank
supposed to have drawn on the community for nothing but his physique.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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