How Taylorism spawned rock and roll

I don't know if it's some kind of anniversary of something to do with Toscanini, or a re-release of an album, or a new bio, but for some reason Arturo T has got into everything I've been reading lately.

It's Arturo this and Arturo that and Arturo and his mistress and his wife and his sordid saga all over the place.

Check out that orchestra that the maestro is conducting. There's gotta be at least a hundred people in the NBC Symphony Orchestra all trying to hit the same note at the same time in Beethoven's 9th.

You can't just blow a note and then riff off on a ten minute solo and pretend you meant to do it.

This is a very inefficient method of delivering music to the consumer.

A hundred musicians and they all have to hit the same note at the same time?

Fast forward fifty years...

Rock and roll is here to stay!

Now you've got four guys on stage instead of 100.

When somebody screws up they turn it into a ten minute solo and pretend they meant to do it.

The fans love it!

That's efficiency!

The trouble with efficiency

I don't know the man. He could be a decent tax-paying God-fearing regular guy, for all I know.

But Ed Burkhardt has grown rich by riding our "efficiency" craze to absurd  extremes.

There's 60 cars in a train and a crew of 5?

Let's go for a couple more cars and a couple fewer crew.

That's more efficient.

The shareholders and the business press applaud.

Hey, wouldn't it be more efficient if we sacked another worker and added another few cars to the train?

Oh ya! Now we're talking EFFICIENCY!!!

The shareholders augment their positions and the business press wet their pants.

Next thing you know, there's one tired guy at the end of a shift responsible for an 80 car train of highly volatile cargo.

That's absurd!

You know how it ends.