A dual dilemma
My wife and I have been having this discussion. The apparel industry, being among the oldest industries known, has no standards. Literally, there are few or no standards: no licensing, no written standards, etc. Anyone who wants to set up shop can do so. The result is lots and lots of waste as people who made their money elsewhere decide to get into the business and go broke slowly, wasting lots of time, capital, material, and energy in the process. What few standards there are were actually developed by the US military.
The military, because it is the single largest buyer and because theywant need uniformity of product, finally started writing specifications and demanding them in the bidding process. I wrote a lengthy post on the military origins of quality control, so this doesn't surprise me in the least. Nor would it surprise Michel Foucault.
The temptation is to look at it and say, "but without the military, standards would have developed anyhow, albeit much slower" or "but people were sewing before the military developed those standards, so what purpose do the standards serve?" Perhaps, but the fact is that the military standards exist and do make for a more efficient industry. The standards are for things like seam types and seam allowances. Even if you the customer or even the designer don't know about them, machine builders do, so you can buy machines that, for example, automatically create the seam in your jeans in a single step. The result is that clothing is much less expensive than it would otherwise be.
And contra Kirkpatrick Sale, manufactured clothing is typically of far higher quality than homemade [1] for exactly the same reasons that a Boeing airplane is better than one you could design and make yourself; it is engineered by specialists for manufacture and then manufactured with machines that are designed for the purpose. For example, presser foot pressure in an industrial machine is higher than that in a home machine (professional machines are also less expensive and more rugged), and the greater pressure means the pieces of cloth are held closer together and the stitches are therefore tighter and stronger.
The challenge for the libertarian is to explain how the industry would be better without the military (and remember that the retort for most of your proposals is going to be, "then why didn't that happen historically?"). The challenge for the left anti-libertarian [2] is to justify military spending on the basis that something good like this might come out of it in light of the fact that it would be more efficient to simply spend money on this kind of outcome directly and with the a similar retort.
Personally, supporting this outcome strikes me as a little too much like the "Support NASA spending because of spinoff developments like teflon" type of argument. First, NASA didn't really develop teflon. Second, if these things are important, then perhaps we ought to spend money on them directly rather than wasting billions of dollars on a program in the hope of a serendipitous spinoff. It seems a little wasteful to build an organization designed specifically to kill people and break things -- an organization that has been used for that purpose by all three post-Cold War presidents -- just so we can have cheaper clothing.
If something good falls from the sky, don't throw it back, but don't become a Cargo Cultist, either.
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[1] Higher quality than homemade is, not necessarily higher quality than homemade could be.
[2] There is no challenge for the right-anti-libertarian. Getting cheap clothes from a powerful military? What's the problem?
The military, because it is the single largest buyer and because they
The temptation is to look at it and say, "but without the military, standards would have developed anyhow, albeit much slower" or "but people were sewing before the military developed those standards, so what purpose do the standards serve?" Perhaps, but the fact is that the military standards exist and do make for a more efficient industry. The standards are for things like seam types and seam allowances. Even if you the customer or even the designer don't know about them, machine builders do, so you can buy machines that, for example, automatically create the seam in your jeans in a single step. The result is that clothing is much less expensive than it would otherwise be.
And contra Kirkpatrick Sale, manufactured clothing is typically of far higher quality than homemade [1] for exactly the same reasons that a Boeing airplane is better than one you could design and make yourself; it is engineered by specialists for manufacture and then manufactured with machines that are designed for the purpose. For example, presser foot pressure in an industrial machine is higher than that in a home machine (professional machines are also less expensive and more rugged), and the greater pressure means the pieces of cloth are held closer together and the stitches are therefore tighter and stronger.
The challenge for the libertarian is to explain how the industry would be better without the military (and remember that the retort for most of your proposals is going to be, "then why didn't that happen historically?"). The challenge for the left anti-libertarian [2] is to justify military spending on the basis that something good like this might come out of it in light of the fact that it would be more efficient to simply spend money on this kind of outcome directly and with the a similar retort.
Personally, supporting this outcome strikes me as a little too much like the "Support NASA spending because of spinoff developments like teflon" type of argument. First, NASA didn't really develop teflon. Second, if these things are important, then perhaps we ought to spend money on them directly rather than wasting billions of dollars on a program in the hope of a serendipitous spinoff. It seems a little wasteful to build an organization designed specifically to kill people and break things -- an organization that has been used for that purpose by all three post-Cold War presidents -- just so we can have cheaper clothing.
If something good falls from the sky, don't throw it back, but don't become a Cargo Cultist, either.
-------------------------
[1] Higher quality than homemade is, not necessarily higher quality than homemade could be.
[2] There is no challenge for the right-anti-libertarian. Getting cheap clothes from a powerful military? What's the problem?
Labels: state-capitalism
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