{"id":4195,"date":"2003-05-07T11:22:08","date_gmt":"2003-05-07T11:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4195"},"modified":"2003-05-07T11:22:08","modified_gmt":"2003-05-07T11:22:08","slug":"public-work-in-the-private-sector","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=4195","title":{"rendered":"public work in the private sector"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I spoke a few weeks ago<\/a> at Berkeley, Philip<\/p>\n

Selznick<\/a> made an interesting point about the value of commercial<\/p>\n

firms that are not profit-maximizers<\/b>. As he noted, the genteel old<\/p>\n

publishing houses needed to cover their costs, and probably wanted to<\/p>\n

make a comfortable profit, but they were at least as committed to producing<\/p>\n

public goods in the form of high-quality literature. By contrast, a publicly<\/p>\n

traded firm must maximize profits, so if it generates public goods, they<\/p>\n

come as unintentional collateral benefits (at best). My friend Harry<\/p>\n

Boyte<\/a> has promoted a whole philosophy of "public work,"<\/p>\n

which prizes the ability of every citizen to generate public goods, often<\/p>\n

in collaboration with others. One hallmark of public work, it seems to<\/p>\n

me, is an intentional<\/i> focus on public benefits. That is what is<\/p>\n

missing in profit-maximizing firms, but it’s very evident in certain less<\/p>\n

economically efficient private enterprises. Boyte’s schema is useful,<\/p>\n

in part, because it allows us to reshuffle the traditional categories<\/p>\n

of state\/market\/civil society. Public work can take place in any of these<\/p>\n

sectors, or it can be absent or suppressed in any of them. For example,<\/p>\n

if a state apparatus becomes heavily bureaucratic and rigid, then civil<\/p>\n

servants will stop performing public work. Likewise, if traditional publishing<\/p>\n

houses are bought by international conglomerates that relentlessly aim<\/p>\n

at efficiency, then their editors must cease to do public work. (Obviously,<\/p>\n

I owe an argument here about why public work is valuable. In brief, I<\/p>\n

think there are objective benefits to the community and subjective or<\/p>\n

psychological benefits to public workers.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I spoke a few weeks ago at Berkeley, Philip Selznick made an interesting point about the value of commercial firms that are not profit-maximizers. As he noted, the genteel old publishing houses needed to cover their costs, and probably wanted to make a comfortable profit, but they were at least as committed to producing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-revitalizing-the-left"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}