RE: That paper

["Mowery, R. Neal (RNM) " <RNM@y12.doe.gov>]

	I loved John Dowd's post.  He wrote:

> At Ed Baker's urging I re-read the 'attack on TQM' paper from the barely
> intelligible author in Texas.  His tortured text did not make it easy, but
> I
> persevered.  
> 
I really appreciate John's wading through the article. After surveying the
article, I decided that the likelihood of there being a pony in that pile
was quite low, and I admire John's (and Ed's) perserverence.

A couple of points...  John wrote:

	>Increasingly in the corporate world, what George Soros has called
'Market
> Fundamentalism' has come to dominate the value discussion and, indeed has
> been given the status of an ethical norm (markets are, of course,
> amoral).<
> 
	I agree...  I would also point out that democracy (or a
representative republic) is amoral in the sense that it only reflects the
degree of morality that 51% of the electorate (or representative body)
chooses to emphasize.  Similarly, the market is only as moral as its
customers choose to emphasize.  

John continued:

	>To what extent are the
> improvements that can derive from the use of TQM desirable if they are
> used
> to advance the cause of 'market fundamentalism'...(i.e. the idea that the
> 'market' can decide what societal values should be supported or ignored)?
> Should the value of art be left to the vagaries of supply and demand?
> Should the decisions about the availability of certain kinds of medical
> care
> be considered only on the basis of some price/performance curve?  Might it
> be economically beneficial to practice some limited forms of euthanasia?
> And so on....<
> 
It is nearly always economically beneficial to burn down a competitor's
factory.  But morality, bolstered by the force of law, keeps that from
happening.  Bad things can happen in a marketplace, and sometimes bad things
do happen.  But in John's example of medical care, note that market forces
encourage supplers to develop drugs with wide applications rather than
narrow applications.  Implicit in that idea is that the most people will be
helped by the market decision rather than by some other decision-making
method.  Further, due to the potentially higher profits per unit, drugs that
save lives (like clot-busters for heart attacks) would be more profitable
(and more desirable to develop, produce and market) than drugs that cure,
say, acne.  When combined, we see that drugs that cure the most serious
illnesses of the largest number of people tend to get the most resources in
a market economy.

So the profit motive frequently works in society's favor.  But even when it
doesn't, there is more to market forces than profit.  There is also demand,
which can be enhanced by product or service attributes, including attributes
that are supportive of the type of society the customer prefers... whether
than society be pro-environment, religious, conforming, nationalistic...
Market forces can ultimately be a great moderator to excess rather than a
conduit to excess.  And quality improvements used to support a market
economy still makes sense to me, especially when the customer uses his
buying power to voice his preferences.  There is a difference between free
markets and anarchy.

Neal



* Neal Mowery - Statistician  
* Lockheed Martin Energy Systems, Inc.
* Y-12 Plant, Oak Ridge, Tennessee
* (865) 574-0796  rnm@y12.doe.gov