>>Marshall Brain describes an experience being repeated millions of time by the American people as a whole. An experience and leap in thinking that was the results of a visit to McDonald's. We argued over McDonalds on this very list, as this corporation revolutionized its instruments of production to stave off the impact of the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.
The value relations is being destroyed by the advance of the technological revolution and this is new in human history. As long as the industrial revolution grew the working class against the backdrop of agricultural relations, the industrial revolution had not peaked. The industrial revolution peaked in America at the front of the curve. This is due to our country being a pure capitalist country and other factors. << Yeah right, the guy goes and gets a corporate death burger meal and marvels about McD's. What is striking about McD's is just how low-tech it has been and just how slow it has been to incorporate new technology. I wonder what he would think if he actually had to work at a McDs for a even a week. And use it to pay his commuting fare and rent. A McD's here in Japan, which is a very lucrative market for McDs, a US-based corporation, requires about twice as many employees on the floor to serve customers than an American one. So their push has been to figure out a way to halve the number of employees without losing customers because of shitty service. I would bet where McD's is most high-tech is its financial branch (they have to play commodities and exchange rates in order to 'hedge' their potential for losses in a global market) and its logistics chains. Oh, and the high-tech mutant potatoes they produce out in Idaho. Most would agree: McD's food is mostly bad, but it is uniformly bad. You get more less the same bad food and the same bad eating experience at about the same price all over the world (with Japan's McD's probably having the best service because of the extra people). And that is the key to how McD's stays profitable (and this hasn't always been the case, back in the 1980s and early 1990s everyone who analyzed the industry was saying McD's couldn't innovate or grow its 'productivity' and that it was a boring company). CJ -- Japan Higher Education Outlook http://japanheo.blogspot.com/ ELT in Japan http://eltinjapan.blogspot.com/ We are Feral Cats http://wearechikineko.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
