Small interesting pieces of the book moloch
"Planning exists because [the market] process has ceased to be reliable. Technology, with its companion commitment of time and capital, means that the needs of the consumer must be anticipated—by months or years…. [I]n addition to deciding what the consumer will want and will pay, the firm must make every feasible step to see that what it decides to produce is wanted by the consumer at a remunerative price…. It must exercise control
over what is sold…. It must replace the market with planning
…The need to control consumer behavior is a requirement of planning. Planning, in turn, is made necessary by extensive use of advanced technology and capital and by the relative scale and complexity of organization. These produce goods efficiently; the result is a very large volume of production. As a further consequence, goods that are related only to elementary physical sensation–that merely prevent hunger, protect against cold, provide shelter, suppress pain–have come to comprise a small and diminishing part of all production. Most goods serve needs that are discovered to the individual not by the palpable discomfort that accompanies deprivation, but by some psychic response to their possession…"
"In Sloanist management accounting, inventory is counted as an asset “with the same liquidity as cash.” Regardless of whether a current output is needed to fill an order, the producing department sends it to inventory and is credited for it. Under the practice of “overhead absorption,” all production costs are fully incorporated into the price of goods “sold” to inventory, at which point they count as an asset on the balance sheet.
In other words, by the Sloanist accounting principles predominant in American industry, the expenditure of money on inputs is by definition the creation of value."
"if firms could respond to local conditions, they would not need to control them. If they must control markets, then it is a reflection of their lack of ability to be adequately responsive"
"…Consumer needs, if they are to be supplied efficiently, call increasingly for organizations that are more flexibly arranged and in more direct contact with those customers. The essence of planning, under conditions of iincreasing uncertainty, is to seek better ways for those who have the needs to influence or control the productive apparatus more e
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