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I would I wouldn't deny that the market has been in making decisions as between specialists technologists scientists with the power which they eventually come to command over there in that that the market is irrelevant they're certain you know can I have the great advantage of taking my position in the broad middle ground as against your implied suggestion that the market is still the exclusive influence and that the power relationships are not important. You see I don't understand you see as my basic problem here the great advantage of the moderate as against the extreme position is all I'm claiming that you're mad at me. Me I'm a lot I'd like to make
sense of. I mean let me come back to you know just on the one thing I want to just. For just a moment the best to hide out the day after that and still That's why I was invited up here so that he would have something that was a good thing. At one point which I don't think we perhaps disagree on much this is my historical point to say that the power of land ownership is related to concentration. I would embrace in concentration the problem of adding or subtracting at the margins and to have highly concentrated land ownership. Your thought your difficulty in adding or subtracting at the margin. Well we'll contribute to the strategic power that is
associated with the ownership of land. However I think it's fair to say eliminate that power and eliminate the prestige in the society that goes with it by a wide diffuse land ownership. For example I think the case of contemporary India is interesting in this regard. When one land in the western part of India was concentrated in the hands of the princes and the jacket arched examined it was no question of their power in the community following independence. These people were disestablished dispossessed and the land passed in general to the to the. Middle sized and small landowner but they are however continue to be the decisive economic power in that community that heavily agricultural community. Most of the national product is still made in agriculture and indeed also the decisive political power in the Congress party or the alternative varies but I think we agree by by most people.
Well certainly you can't simply by diffusing land ownership expect to see large scale transferences and partly because this works through a political process that are really rather complex the question would be after some long run for you know how does this going to work itself out I don't know enough about India and I was there when I was still our economy. I would still argue that an economy where most of our gross national product most of your production is made and in agriculture and in which your capital techniques are very simple but you're right you're decisive far will still continue to be with land after all as much as any other place for it to go out west just by the reassuring point on my side. That's right yeah certainly but I see it spread out far enough then the question is how much power does any one individual or group of individuals exercise. It may be that the rest of the landowners. But that doesn't say it's arresting in any sense really. But what the consumer wants it to be the power is with the landowners but if their motivation is simply to supply the consumer what he wants then ultimately that gives little or no power as such to the land on.
I would stress one other point. I wouldn't I wouldn't want to insist that the fact that the hundred largest corporations have not for years lost money and that the largest fire only had an accidental handful of the largest 500 due in any year to lose money. I wouldn't I wouldn't want to stress if that was entirely probative. I would say however that this fact in combination with the now enormous amount of our capital resources which come from corporate savings 75 percent last year does not meet your point that this control over and does meet my point that this control of the environment is now sufficient so that the likelihood that that large firms will lose money can be in some degree dismissed.
Louder. Well I'm not only louder but I am finished. I think I would only I would only want to say one thing Fessor Hines does almost as as good a job as the best in keeping the power of the ownership. Intact. As far as AT&T is concerned is and I commend is not that any individual telephone company holder has the slightest voting rights the late Billy Rose. Well as they largest owner of stock in the telephone company Professor Heinz is far too sensible a man to suggest that Delhi rose as a power and electronic communication. But but he does
almost mystic get back to an argument that somehow or other by their dislike of the management and the people selling the telephone stock the stock not being there for not having a good market performance that at some juncture a stock order by a process for which there are I'm sorry to say some extraordinary long gaps will get rid of the man he wants and that man he doesn't want and get in demand that he does want. Now I'm not opposed to mysticism and economics. I wanted you to understand that I think it adds interest to what is either life or hell of a dollop of fashion.
I would say that that this involves a degree of economic spiritualism which is a greater tribute to the portrayal of the sort of situation that it is to put it to the strict causal relationship in our culture and better use of our poor science we can still accept. I just take one second to run Professor mines and that I think there is a point to the issue which is this is a very streamlined 48 point nor are professional has met I think that is what happens as a tendency to personify. And we say well the boss doesn't control the company really pose as a control of the company. Therefore you know it must be somebody else and I think you have to raise a question not in terms of individuals but what roles have to be a baby and I go with Professor by saying that AT&T you
know all of this collegial nature and all the few responsibilities of a heterogeneous and varied management. I could not make certain decisions I would not have the power to make their own decisions because of this open for all they're not going to alter that part of it already but there are parameters I agree with that yeah. But that's isn't that the critical question of Apollo you know what I claim to mean but I want to stop somebody explain to us how the owners of TNT decided to throw out a manageable but generally good to see if they'd ever have to throw out the money. They're very ready have to throw the management because management is always going to agree is going to do all the things which are in the interest of the stockholders. The few instances where they don't they offer one out and this example I will say in the few in some of the few in which they don't they're thrown out I think the question you have to answer is just what thing is this kind of management that you have. Doing what things are they doing
which contradict the notion that the businesses are being operated in the interest of stockholders. The fact that the stockholders don't bother you to exert their pressure. They do it only by selling stock it is I don't think critical. Well I'm not sure quite sure which side you're on. Well I don't think he's serious. I think it's a tough one I think you're raising critical issues I don't think really that you settle for him and I don't think we can settle them in a Universal Fashion You know we have to ask ourselves or makes a decision to have 70 billion dollars in defense production. Who makes the decision to have a tremendous emphasis on passenger airliners. Who makes the decisions on anything else. You mention you think of that are the important ones like my family example you know who makes a decision as to where the people are going to work and live what kind of housing they're going to have
and I don't have ready answers I want to be overly glib and dogmatic and say well the simple is just like you know said 100 years ago the capitalists do it. But I'm not yet ready to buy the notion well the capitalists have nothing to do with the disease experts and technicians already make it and the guys who own the stock they're just the servants I supply the capital to use however the man I just see fit. I would like to address myself to Percivale first notion of the Legion and suggest that we can accept it if we understand that it is a reflection of the micro structure of the New York state but that on the map the structure of what we have is an organization somewhat lightly ganglia us against this notion of the Cui Jian is reminiscent of the prophecies of Peter Drucker and also revived by Marshall McLuhan before season and the simplicity and hierarchy and it may be true that on the horizontal or on the horizontal level hierarchy has
been fused or collapse but accompanied with that there is a push and expansion on the vertical level and the kind of influence or exercise of power is exercised in relation to one's relation to a wheel and I think that one professor gal Professor raised the classic notions just now its power or its money power. It may very well be that in the new industrial state neither are the real maximize use of power that one wants to do away with the extent to which one can be identified with the other to sadness. Power. Or the liability of money. But to maximize one's. Relation of influence on the process. By which decisions are made at the same time that one can minimize one's accountability I think that if if for instance a van of a Bush might be considered the typical
all of the time when knowledge might have been power and if Charles Wilson could be considered the exemplar of the time when money was power that Robert McNamara is perhaps the archetype the archetypal figure of the time when influence is power and I would allude to a paper presented by Professor Victor Thompson to the American Political Science Association in which he analyzed secretary matter in Morris Reyna secretary of defense. He saw the Secretary McNamara had thoroughly mastered the process the technical process by which he related to all the lower level decisions in the Pentagon at the same time he had mastered his relations with the White House. But that in the process of mastering all these relations he had lost any ability to initiate initiate policy whatsoever. And in that case he had he had a great exercise
of power and in the end a technical or formal sense but the process had in the census gave the White House and the secretary of defense and the lower levels of the Pentagon. And that that they were wrong in a sense influencing each other. But no one really exercised real power. And I think that just two weeks ago when we get all of the 88 unanimously and with great acclaim like Professor Galbraith our Chairman and after he was selected Leon tiresomely rose and noted that in all the time that we in the 88 had been had by resolution and perhaps by your resolution when attempting to influence the Johnson administration much of the process by which members of ADFA are elevated chairmanships and by strength of ships and so forth has come to power and committee which in
itself didn't seem to want to exercise a great deal of power in the organization and I suggest that perhaps the collegium is simply a kind of Emperor's New Clothes and a new industrial state or process which while history may come to decide might more aptly be termed participatory oligarchy. I mean yes I have the energy but I want to ask one question and I have this funny feeling that I have too. So let me ask sort of a question of the sub question a general question with a framework which I'd like to see answered and the general question is perhaps essentially what John has just referred to and what Professor Graner made reference to very briefly and I have another uneasy feeling when I note that neither Professor Kramer nor myself are economists and perhaps in that at
least in my case part of the difficulty with this question the question essentially is what is power in a positive kind of way. What I just have difficulty getting my thoughts on the concept of power and specifically I noted that several of the panel members made reference to the area and John made reference to the area of government. Now Professor Eisner said that the use the word seductive about the concept of the legal power in reference to the economic sphere. But when we made reference to government I know one called its inductive concept once again or spoke about the difficulties of the State Department and I believe it was Professor Reader said that or meant for one of them one of them never spoke of the difficulties that Kennedy had with the State Department. And yet I suspect that the same kind of collegial structure might be existing in government. In a governmental situation would you use the same kind of collegial model. Would you look at it in the same kind of what I take to be a positive way. And if so how do
how does the government structure with a collegial model be responded to the interests of the people outside of a model that is to say the people that vote for the government. I think specifically of going downtown to City Hall in Chicago and being confronted with the fact there are 13 city agencies that are concerned with in some way or another with planning for the future of the city either in terms of the Department of Urban Planning or they have 13 departments and going after an individual in this who has his desk with a picture of his wife and so over there on the desk and his pipe and everything in it and he's a civil service person and he has a certain kind of power. I think that's part of that's power and I don't know. Daley has over him of yes for daily. I just have difficulty with the whole problem of where did these decisions get made and what is the nature of power especially when the collegial type of structure is goes beyond the economic and business situation. Well this is the heart of this is this is not an easy thing to get hold of.
I would go back I think today talking about our right to ask that word like it always to be explained or defined I will go back to the definition I gave last night that I would want to think of it in relation to an organization like a business enterprise. One is thinking out simply in terms of how one sets the goals of this enterprise and the goals being given. Who has who takes the decisions on the methods by which those goals are pursued. This is a rather complicated maybe simplistic decision but it want to think that serves to establish a certain common ambit in the use of that term. As to your further question as to as to whether this this process works in large technically oriented organizations outside of the field of.
Business or corporate enterprise does it exist in the state as a guest in government. I would. I'm hesitant they say it does. This was the point of my earlier agreement with Professor Eisner. And it has the same tendency in this area to impose its goals on the larger society defend them as General Motors in the case that I was making with hard to read imposes its model not a modelled on the society. Yes yes it's a very good example of this I don't imagine that there is any widespread democratic and expressed demand for the SS tape. What is what is happening first is that the.
The value system which there are lines in the aircraft producers established in the larger society which is that any advance in technology is good. No more time in advance and technology than you can in fact. Oh man motherhood that must be accepted. Then there are some some siddur issues and national prestige they command because the French are going to have won the British so must wait and then out of the interaction General Dannatt Boeing and Lockheed the Air Force which comes into this with its technical orientation and indeed out of the interaction of the merging of organizations and FAA comes the whole process of development of refinement
within this framework which has no particular Democratic sanction. There will be a certain number of people who object to it in Congress. There's an organization and somebody was soliciting my membership at the other day and because of the American Association against the sonic boom. But but in the end this this product of this complex of public and private organizations with a value system that it has successfully brought will bring us this particular blessing no doubt about it. And my own as I said last night my own notion that as I as Press writer said earlier my own notion is one understands very little about the modern processes of government if one doesn't see the different
modern tendencies of decision making in this area rather than in terms of Bobby Baker patrolling Washington with the black back. God in his large minded way helping small industry in Connecticut I believe in all the cliches I like individuality. I think that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. So this may be to why it was made to some extent explain like my question which is that as you talk about the inner relationship between government and industry helping each other and power becoming fused within a collegial structure eventually the structure will grow following its own interests to a larger and larger thing in which all individuals are subsumed within that system. You get the corporate personality being extended into the. Personality of the person that works for that
corporation. You have things like interviewing the wife to get a job. The man lost his job interview is why they are trying to drive a certain kind of car all vice presidents of IBM are told by the brooks. You see this happen and its power because more and more diffuse within the system. And finally the system comes to hold all power. And once that happens then all now a powerless and you move into kind of a mass society a sort of in which things like the books of corn house are not altogether now in applique which you have everyone powerless in the system because it is all power is really no factor in you. I mean I begin to feel like you know gloom coming over me it's like Adam Smith's invisible hand is pushing the whole ball thing into a just a terrible mess. Mind you energy I think you're on duty depressed and I would like to see you Carolyn.
I would never. And. I think one of the interesting and exciting books in the last 10 15 years was whites are going to the organization man and it's very important but I think highlighted very much also very much too depressed about that. The thing that never that that he never explored is not the constraints on liberty but the failure of most people to use the liberty that they already have. They I I must confess that I find it very difficult to worry about the IBM executive asked by CLOSE IT folks they will get a hell of a good job at Remington Rand anytime he wants to go to work in sports here. This is his his particulars for his particular slavery is not imposed by organizations imposed by himself. And when you get
to the same position and IBM just keep that in mind. I just one thing is if you see me say one muchmore thing the other point that we must always bear in mind which is this is. Marvelously exemplified by the hundred year old history of this university. You know you're most of the people in this university the other. Twenty six thousand. Seven hundred two are here today. I'm going to spend their money. Many of them are rather narrow specialisms of the modern industrial society. They're going to spend their time. As experts in marketing. Research Technology our psychiatric testing or they're going to be specialists on white interviewing
undoubtedly going to be one of these days that profession is quite right. Are. Any won a wide variety of these very narrow a track. Vocations that I talked about last night and it isn't going to be terribly rewarding. We're going to be bored and many of them will get drunk on Saturday Night Out of frustration but a hundred years ago what they would have been doing on hundred years ago they would have been in a university a Tali would have been down in Carbondale in one of those mines and that's not a terrifically broad gauged that location if there are they would have been up and out on one of these cash card farms Champaign County growing corn with with horse power and following a horse. Day after day and that's not
intellectually the most broadening activity in the world. And every new item on trial so well. So in relative terms I don't I don't think we're even though we're consigning quite a few people to some quite narrow lines of work I don't think in historical terms the retrogression is quite as great as that as it's sometimes not to be. Personally I would rather do market research than work in a coal mine. All right. Yes you can make some very limited experience this is near and that you thank you for they say. I am the best skeptical about the assumption that all members of the West. I'm not I am. Not. I'm skeptical about the idea that the role of power accrues to the scientists and engineers. It seems
to me from my limited experience that the scientists and engineers simply have control over for rather than function purposes or who gets the reward. And that essentially there they are simply interpreted in the current level of technological know. And I see. Very little role for them in actual power and in turn that I would interpret power except in the realm of safety for the time I don't think they're taking much initiative in that. Well I would I would accept that as a dissenting opinion. I never worked for Westinghouse So you obviously have a great advantage over me I would ask for one caviar which maybe that you would permit me to suggest that that this power becomes less evident and less obvious as you get out of the organization and perhaps you are not at the very top.
You know one of the higher scientific Ushant where you think you have been listening to a discussion of a lecture by John Kenneth Galbraith entitled individual and organization in the industrial state. This lecture and discussion about a part of the University of Illinois Centennial symposium sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences on our next programme Constantino is Doxey Ottis prominent architect and city planner will speak on man in the city of the future. Man and the multitude is a feature presentation of the University of Illinois radio service. This program was distributed by a national educational radio. This is the national educational radio network.
Series
March of medicine
Episode
Gallery of wonders
Producing Organization
American Hospital Supply Corporation
Contributing Organization
University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/500-4m91d343
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Description
Episode Description
This program seeks to promote the medical profession by exploring the ever-improving nature of medical treatment.
Series Description
Dramatizations of great moments in medical history.
Date
1967-09-12
Topics
Economics
Politics and Government
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:30:03
Embed Code
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Credits
Host: Barnes, Paul
Producing Organization: American Hospital Supply Corporation
Speaker: Crane, Wendell
AAPB Contributor Holdings
University of Maryland
Identifier: 67-41-2 (National Association of Educational Broadcasters)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Duration: 00:29:45
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Citations
Chicago: “March of medicine; Gallery of wonders,” 1967-09-12, University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 28, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-4m91d343.
MLA: “March of medicine; Gallery of wonders.” 1967-09-12. University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 28, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-4m91d343>.
APA: March of medicine; Gallery of wonders. Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-4m91d343