Jumping the Gun.

Unfortunately the knowledge economy arguement in manufacturing doesn't
really hold. Product manufacturing facilities don't design as they go.
The knowledge of how to build an airplane is already decided and
defined before the first rivet is used. Many of the manufacturing
workers require very little knowledge of what, they are producing.
Many manufacturing facilities (example heat treatment plants, stamping
plants, plastic molding, etc) the worker doing the work doesn't even
know what the final product is today.

In another example, previous to Ford purchasing Austin Martin, Austin
Martin workers built every car by hand. After purchase, Ford
introduced Assemply line methods, and the quality of the product went
up. By decreasing the knowledge requirements of the workers, and
introducing workflow that isolated the worker from knowing too much,
they produced better products.

If you look at the history of industrialization, the major leaps in
productivity happened when introducing technology that limited the
knowledge requirements of the workers. This allowed the workers to
specialize further. In many cases, this specialization was to become
automaton that use muscle to do one thing very well, and no
intellectual stimulation.

Now getting back to the Mars problem. There is know way anyone will be
paying the shipping costs for the items to be shipped, so I believe
that a industrial base capable of making very small quantities of
everything. It won't be GM with all it suppliers build 1 million cars
every years with all the specialization that imparts. It will be Mikes
garage and soda shop that does everything from metal refining, casting
and heat treating for every part. In fact it is the condition that
Drucker was talking about. Small scale production of multiple items
where no one can really specialize on anything and specialization is
not a desirable thing.

Bill

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "victoriatangoman"
wrote: