In Christopher Leonard’s Kochland, there’s a lengthy chapter about how about fifteen years ago, a Portland, Ore. paper-products warehouse union was ripped apart by Koch-led changes to how employees were tracked. They, like Amazon and other hyperscaled warehouses, implemented systems wherein all employees would have their forklift routes tracked and compared to the most efficient paths; their bathroom breaks and non-essential coworker interactions would be counted to the second; and their time-missed logs would be aggressively pitted against their coworkers’. It made their workers’ lives miserable and ultimately created a schism between the people who wanted to keep their decent wages and those who wanted to push back and demand more humane working conditions. Guess who won!
The systems that management implemented were mere tools for a particular outcome: to maximize shareholder, i.e. Charles and David Koch, value. Why do you think baseball teams implement their systems? To make the game boring? Less fun to watch? Less fun to play? No, it’s very clearly to win games and sell their range of products for more money. Championships mean higher ticket prices. They mean better TV deals. They mean millions in merchandising revenue. An easier sell to local governments when asking for tax dollars. It’s not that complicated.
