This blog post has been certified by the DACHU.(R)

Increasing professionalization of everything? Then here is something to cheer you up (even as it made ME realize, and will perhaps have the same effect on you, how many of us are basically ordinary schmoes: but not ALL of us).

I know of a guy who is a cardiac surgeon, so after an extended apprenticeship he has some serious discretionary income to go with a certain kind of driven personality, plus he's basically a decent, generous human being.

So he has a woodshop like you can't believe -- lasers, chisels handmade by elves, professional cabinetmaker power tools, with which he builds wooden boats.

Every winter, it's his weekend project to build a new boat from scratch, from really fine woods like white oak and angelique and Alaskan yellow cedar and Sitka spruce, generally a 15-20' daysailer. He launches it in the spring, and sails it all summer.

Then when it gets cold, he donates the boat to a very efficient, effective local charity. They sell it.

And he starts building another one.

An amateur.

Go on vacation. Don't take wheeled luggage. Don't arrange hotels beforehand.

Depending on where you go, you'll see whatever level of corruption/professionalism/charm/filth/beauty/etc that you like. Take a trip to the 19th century if you like.

Might put those ideas in focus a little better.

Somewhat related, James Fallows wrote a piece long ago, The case against credentialism.

huh?

Huh?

You obviously weren't including the federal government over the past, oh, seven years in that statement.

I won't mention examples closer to where I live and work -- it might get me in trouble. My aim is to retire with no more battles.

Well, one way to think about what you may be saying, and which certainly seems to be what Seeing Like a State, and its reviews, are addressing, is this: what is the best way to organize human activity (or indeed other kinds of activity)? Top down? Bottom up? A combination of both?

Top down typically implies decisions based on a theory and the ideas of a small number of "experts". Bottom up typically implies decisions arising out of innumerable choices of the many individuals involved in or affected by the issue or activity in question. A combination of both may involve decisions made at the top that are subject to a feedback loop based on choices of those below, or perhaps the causality may go in the other direction.

Generally, I'd guess that the third alternative is best in most circumstances, insofar as it can make sense to apply it. It's hard not to believe that expertise and theory can be extremely helpful in guiding decisions; it's hard not to believe that experts and theory don't have limitations and blindnesses only those at the lower levels can correct.

These kinds of points are found just about everywhere in human activity. It's why we have representative democracy, rather than pure democracy. It's an issue that's playing out today in the tension between the mostly top down media, and the mostly bottom up blogosphere.

I always find it really pretty fascinating to contemplate.

That post reads like it was written by Lewis Carroll.

Another example of the tension between top-down and bottom up: how do you run a corporation? In the US, it's mostly top down. In Japan, it's far more bottom up, as there is greater opportunity for the lower rungs to correct and improve upon manufacturing and other processes.

If I'm understanding you correctly you might mean the mania to demand credentials for every blessed job even jobs that realistically only need a smart person with a high school diploma. I have a BA in History and lots of odd and ends of experience at a not for profit yet after 20 plus years of working, none of that counts for squat to many employers so "I'm not a good fit" for mid level financial or database work despite my protestations to the contrary.

The beauty of those of us with non standard work histories and educations is that we attack jobs from different directions than cookie cutter MBAs and often get more "stuff done" as a result!

I'd argue that even the economies of industrialized democracies embody, crucially, both bottom up and top down features.

Bottom up, of course, corresponds to the decisions the consumers make day-to-day in choosing consumer goods. Top down, on the other hand, you have building roads, providing for education, funding long-term basic research, etc.

Some things can be left entirely to individual decisions in the aggregate, but others cannot be.

One of my longtime discontents with modern life has been the accelerating professionalization of everything. This is not quite the same thing as homogenization or corporatization, though it's obviously related, and I blame it for sucking much of the life out of marketing, media, retailing, political campaigning, product design, etc. etc.
+++++

Well, I think you are onto something. The James Scott book I think had very little to do with what you are trying to articulate, though. I think I skim read the two links discussing it faster than anything I've skimmed, ever. Yawn.

I think when you say "over-professionalization" you are really meaning "over-specialization". I agree with you that it has lots of problems. The biggest trouble with it is you have an entire populace that experiences day-to-day life through a bazillion different filtering and distorting lenses. I think you are yearning for an increased sense of *common experience* among the citizenry that's been lost in this information age. It may just be nostalgia, but I don't think so. Smart people with generalist educations might not be as slick, but they might be more human and creative. I don't know why, but Spalding Gray captured some of this when he talked about Hollywood and "trend spotters". I like his comment: "The only drug in Hollywood now is Diet Coke."

He's right of course. If you want authentic dog and rat meat meals at a reasonable, you have to go to China, neglecting for the moment the cost of air fare to China.

I wrote a resume once for a friend of mine who had been the drummer for a punk band for 20 years, while he was getting his master's in urban studies. He asked me to write the resume cuz it was driving him nuts how he'd go for interviews, and they'd take one look at the NAME of the band, and that would be that.

He'd try to explain that he wasn't just the drummer, he was also the business manager, he booked the gigs, kept track of the money, made sure the van got basic maintenance, etc.

It was a fun resume to write.

Maybe he should have just changed the name of the band -- if only for the resume.

This may be related to the feeling I have of the over-process-ization of evertyhing (and its result, the over-complication). Everything is huge freakin' process. Try getting a teaching credential these days...there is over-specialization (high school or middle school? What level of math? English? Sure, but not drama...that requires a specialization) and the process is a nightmare...and it differs from state to state, so if you move you have to figure it all out again.

Argghh...maybe it's just me but I get frustrated with the complications of daily life! Need to go home and have a beer!

Kenji: Actually, that's the best part. He eventually found a guy who was reading through the functional resume that I did for him, with all the "proven management ability", and "profit-maximizing performance" or whatever buzzfuzz I had put into it, and then got to the short list of jobs the guy had had, and said: Wait! You were THEIR drummer????

And with that a corporate career was born.

(cue wistful music, ending with a punk smash)

*

oh i see the treatment didn't work, mhr. you're still an angry, shrill, depressed human being. i wouldn't give up, however. science is creating miracles every day, and maybe, just maybe, they'll come up with a cure for that chip on your shoulder.

Here is something far more interesting than those boring book reviews - Warren Buffett is complaining his taxes are too low again! Buffett found that he was paying a tax rate of only 17.7% on his income of $46 million, while his secretary, who makes $60,000 a year, paid over 30%!

Doesn’t this illustrate perfectly what a fucked-up, upside-down world Bush and his rich cronies have created??

God bless Warren Buffett!

Yep, and he also favors a progressive consumption tax, instead of an income tax. God bless Warren Buffett!

Oh, and let us in the interim drop his secretary's tax rate to match Warren's.r

"Somewhat related, James Fallows wrote a piece long ago, The case against credentialism."

I made it to the part of Fallows' article where he asks who will take risks if everyone pursues the educational path to success.

Except that getting a PhD in engineering (for example) requires 4-6 years. Of 50-60 hours weeks. And considerable salary forgone. And your chance of leaving without a PhD is 1 in 3.

So how is getting a PhD not taking a risk?

What does "professional" mean nowadays? Is a "professional" merely someone who gets paid? The fellow behind the counter at my local Kwik-E-Mart is a "professional" store clerk, by that definition.

Not long ago the definition was a bit more rigorous. A "profession" was a distinct kind of occupation -- one whose practitioners owed allegiance to certain principles, not just to their employers.

Kevin's lament may have more to do with the watering-down of definitions in this linguistically degenerate age, than with any recent proliferation of principled specialties.

-- TP

Adam: I made it to the part of Fallows' article where he asks who will take risks if everyone pursues the educational path to success. ...

I don't think Fallows would argue much with you today (I know many of those who aren't in the "1 in 3" crowd:). However, in 1985 the world looked a bit different. That said, the creeping credential ism Fallows warned of was prescient.

Today we seem to have certifications for many more (*cough*) disciplines, bringing with them an increasing trend towards conformity, and "bootcamps" that will feed people the accepted norm and, providing you can regurgitate it, provide certifications in short order.

Your remarks about professionalism put me in mind of Ivan Illich's book "Disabling Professions," which, if I remember rightly, was about how we are disempowered by professionals who arrogate the valuable knowledge to themselves and make the rest of us dependent on them for things we'd be better off doing for ourselves.

Not sure this is related to your complaint, but I noticed when reading a 1980 booklet about Burnham Beeches, a nature preserve near London, that the whole thing was poorly written, with terrible grammar, passive sentences, etc.

Since I'd noticed the same lack of grammatical standards in other older publications, I wondered if the ease of editing brought about by desktop publishing has improved the professionalism of such publications.

If so, then that's a good thing.

"Oh, and let us in the interim drop his secretary's tax rate to match Warren's."
--Will Allen

Why? You want to pass along even more debt to our children and grandchildren, you irresponsible criminal?

Better start paying for the government (including the war machine) that your political party built!

I expect that Buffet is slightly understating his secretary's compensation, referring only to her salary.

I thought "a profession" denoted work that required both acquired skill and a body of knowledge, distinct from a craft or mere labor. A doctor or a lawyer was a professional; a carpenter or a blacksmith was a craftsman; a ditchdigger or longshoreman was a laborer.

The distinction was at least partly the white collar/blue collar line, and whether you worked with your hands (like a smith), or your mind (like a lawyer). Of course surgeons work with their hands -- and I just saw at Jamestown that the "chirugeon" who came here in 1607, doubtless the first European doctor on these shores, was listed among the carpenters. ("Are you done with that chisel, mate?")

Anybody whose ever tried to learn an old-fashioned craft, like woodworking or shaping things with a hammer, realizes pretty quickly that these require both acquired skill and a body of knowledge. (I met a smith once who warned me not to hammer certain grade of iron if it was orange: "because it splatters". Good to know, that.)

One part of the breakdown in the distinction between what were considered 'professions' and other jobs, isn't just that crafts have largely been eroded by IT-driven industrialization, as well as how class consciousness has been diluted by first organizing plumbers, etc., into unions and then the breaking of unions in non-government jobs like construction. Upward mobility melds a lot.

Journalism is probably the most hypocritical of all -- a craft pretending to be a profession.

It's also that in the olden days, markets weren't expected to apply to "professional" work. You paid what a lawyer or doctor charged, and it was understood that, out of a sense of noblesse oblige, if you couldn't pay, they wouldn't charge. (It was sorta left out of the myth that mostly, you simply wouldn't get the help you needed if you couldn't pay for it.) The thing is, you didn't SHOP professional work for price. But now lawyers advertise and doctors are largely paid by third parties, like HMOs and Medicare.

The application of market economics (maybe I should say the "exposure") to what had been considered professions strips the mystique away -- but we've surely lost something valuable when we regard everything as economic.

Me, I think there are a handful of jobs that EVERYBODY should do, for money that they NEED, at some point in their lives: construction. Fast food. Waiting tables.

And every journalist oughta cover a fire, a municipal election, and write an obituary.

Deflator, make me budget king, and I'd have Federal expenditures slashed by at least 50% by lunchtime.

Kevin, my friend;
You live in Irvine.
You've got a right to sing the beiges.

It's just the normal evolution of more complex structures. For awhile, the lone cell was the top of the heap. There're still plenty of those around, but multi-celled organism are now tops.

You're just feeling the pain of a free ranging paramecium being corralled into a liver cell.