I finished my classical sociological theory paper today and turned it in. Like usual, I decided to include the content of my paper in today’s blog post.

My Homework for Your Reading Pleasure

Like all other classical sociological theory papers, this was an open-topic paper about a particular theorist; this time, the theorist was Weber. My previous papers had some intriguing and unique arguments (in case you don’t remember them or never saw them, my first topic was about a robot apocalypse and my second topic was about the harmfulness of the freedom of religion), but the class’ paper grader didn’t seem to like my unconventional papers as much as I thought he would, so I decided to stick with a less-interesting topic and go with the Occupy movement this time.

I titled this paper "The Problems of Extreme Rationalization."

For the past handful of months, people all across the world have come together with the slogan “We are the 99%.” In a series of “Occupy” movements, those who consider themselves to be members of the lower 99% income-wise have been protesting against the upper 1% for being the cause of the current economic and social inequality. In addition, due to the extreme power the 1% holds, they are able to influence the rest of the world in ways that always benefit them. If the 1% succeeds at a particular task, they benefit and profit off of it; if they fail or err, they have enough power to distribute the repercussions so the rest of the world suffers on their behalf.

According to the theories of Max Weber and his thoughts on the process of rationalization, the situation in which we are right now was inevitable as long as we continued to advance our society. As our society became more complex, rationalization became more and more prevalent until it became extreme. Today, we can look at the things about which the protesters are protesting, and they can all be identified as consequences of rationalization that emerge as a side effect of the progression of complexity of our society. Thus, we can argue that the 99% is completely justified in their protesting, and this protesting was essentially predicted by Weber. We can also apply Weber’s theories and conclude that the Occupy movement by the 99% is a step in the right direction to resolving the problems of extreme rationalization.

To begin, we must identify what rationalization is. As a society develops, it finds ways to improve its further development by using its advancements and investing them to increase the rate of future development. One important method of making sure the rate at which future development occurs as quickly as possible is to eliminate instances where things are being done inefficiently. For example, imagine the scenario where we have one block of raw material that can be processed to produce fifteen smaller blocks of product and five smaller blocks of waste. At the current rate, we have a 75% yield from the block of raw material. If we rationalize this process, we would say that there is no reason we should be wasting so much of our raw material by being unable to utilize it and discarding it as waste. Thus, through the process of rationalization, we identify ways in which we can optimize this process – produce more units of product and fewer units of waste. If rationalization is successful, we will be able to increase our ratio of products to waste, and we may end up producing nineteen blocks of product and only one block of waste, increasing our rate of yield to 90%.

Rationalization does not always have to apply to optimizing the use of possessions, but can also apply to optimizing the spending of money. For example, imagine the scenario from before where we have one block of raw material that needs to be processed. Currently, the processing plant has extremely skilled and knowledgeable workers who get paid $20 per hour. However, the owner of the processing plant realizes that the amount of skill these workers have is unnecessary. The process of extracting products from raw materials in this case is very easy. Thus, the owner of the processing plant will use the process of rationalization to say that (s)he is spending too much money because (s)he is paying for a level of skill that (s)he is not using. As a result, the owner will start using workers with a lower level of intelligence who require fewer wages – only $10 per hour. By rationalizing, the owner is only spending 50% of what was spent before, and is still getting the same amount and type of work done. If the owner were to take the process of rationalization even further, (s)he could develop machines that do the extraction automatically, and only pay $1 per hour for electricity.

Going back to the Occupy movements, if we take a look at what the protesters are protesting about, we will see that they are all a result of the process of rationalization taken too far. Weber says that when rationalization becomes extreme rationalization as a result of the continuing increase in complexity of society, rationalization can become irrational, which causes more problems than it does solutions.

One of the primary themes of the Occupy movements is inequality; the lower 99% is claiming that they do not have their proper share of resources and power. This resulted from rationalization because of the widening gap between those who get more out of rationalization and those who get less out of rationalization. Although everyone in a society naturally rationalizes as the society becomes more complex, some are able to do it more efficiently than others. For example, particular large corporations are in a good position to rationalize more efficiently and optimally than regular workers.

For a regular laborer, rationalization may come in the form of attempting to find a better job. The laborer might currently work as a janitor and not make much money, but after rationalizing, the laborer will find an alternative job that pays more for the same amount of work done. If the laborer normally works eight hours a day for $8 an hour but finds a new job that pays $10 an hour, (s)he has increased his/her income by $2 an hour (25%) and makes an additional $16 per day. On the other hand, for a company owner, this process happens on a much greater scale. If the owner currently pays 100 workers $10 an hour but replaces all 100 workers with new workers who only require $8 per hour, the owner has increased his/her savings by $2 an hour and saves an additional $16 per day. However, because the owner has 100 workers, this value is multiplied by 100, meaning the owner actually saves $1,600 a day. Because of drastic differences like this created as a byproduct of someone’s current status (laborer or production facility owner), the difference between the two increases drastically. If the owner were to invest the $1,600 into further optimizing his/her savings and is able to find workers who will do the same amount of work for only $6 an hour, the owner’s savings will start increasing in an exponential function, and the difference between the top and bottom of society in terms of wealth will also increase exponentially.

Another theme of the Occupy movement is the lack of jobs. Continuing off the previous example (and as mentioned earlier), it is easy to see how extreme rationalization can lead to the reduction of available jobs. Once a production facility owner realizes that using machines rather than humans is a better option, (s)he will invest his/her savings into producing machines that will benefit him/her in the long run. Once these machines are developed, they will take the jobs of the people. Not only are machines favored over humans because of their low cost to run, but they also provide consistency and reliability. One part of rationalization is ensuring control over the processes and making sure that a desirable result comes out every time a particular task is done. In the case of machines, once machines are programmed to complete a particular task, they can generally repeat the task without failing or making errors. However, humans are always more prone to making mistakes than machines. If a particular worker (either a machine or a human) has low consistency and a high chance of failing, the production corporation can take a loss. Thus, through the logic of rationalization, the corporation will always prefer to go with the machine rather than the human, reducing the chances that there will be jobs available for humans.

One last relevant theme of the Occupy movements that we will cover is corporate greed and exploitation. The people forming the 99% are declaring that corporation owners in the top 1% are taking advantage of the people in the lower 99%, and are using their power in malicious, immoral, and unethical manners. They believe that because people are struggling in the declining economy, corporations are taking advantage of the situation and profiting even more on the people’s misery. They believe that corporations are not taking an understanding and empathetic approach to rationalization, and instead are ignorant to the suffering and pain of the people composing the lower 99%.

A specific example of exploitation comes from McDonaldization, a theory developed and explained by George Ritzer in his book The McDonaldization of Society (1993). Conventional restaurants have waiters and waitresses who assist the customers by taking their orders, bringing their food to their table, and cleaning up after they are done eating. However, through the process of rationalization, restaurant owners have noticed that one way they can optimize the amount of profit they can make is to reduce the number of waiters to reduce the amount of money being spent on wages. This idea was taken to the extreme in the scenario of fast food restaurants, and waiters and waitresses were completely eliminated. However, the intriguing thing is that fast food restaurants are still functioning fine and are just as successful as traditional, conventional restaurants. The reasoning behind this is that instead of having waiters providing the service, the customers are serving themselves. Instead of ordering via the help of a waiter, customers order directly at the front desk. Instead of having the food delivered to their table, the customer must pick the food up his or herself at the front desk. Instead of leaving their garbage behind so a waiter can clean it up for them, they must pick everything up and deposit all waste in a garbage container by themselves. The restaurant owners have effectively created a scenario where customers must play the role of the waiter without ever getting compensated monetarily in a manner in which normally employed waiters do.

So what is the solution to these problems? The direct solutions to the examples provided above are to reverse the process. For example, to reduce the level of inequality, corporations should focus more of their efforts on helping their customers with their product rather than only on making a larger profit. To increase the number of available jobs, corporations should start using more people rather than replacing all their production processes with machines. To decrease exploitation, corporations should take a more humane and empathetic approach to what they do, and take into consideration the feelings and circumstances of others in the world. However, these steps seem like things corporations would never do, and they are in direct conflict with the primary goal of the corporations. Thus, we must find a way to make this process easy or happen naturally, similar to how these problems were originally created in a natural manner. The simplest way to reverse problems is to reverse the process that caused the problems.

Weber states that irrationality arising from rationalization is a natural process that comes along with complexity. Thus, in order to repair the problems, we must find a good balance between the complexity of society and the equality of the people. The fact that there are protests happening across the world is a strong indicator that we have already rationalized too much and have crossed the point of balance. However, on the other hand, if we reverse this process too much and eliminate too much of the complexity of the society, we will be taken back to a more primitive state where we are being wasteful and inefficient with our tasks. Thus, in order to find the balance, we must take into consideration the needs of both the people and the corporation. In our current society, the corporations are benefiting too much; on the other hand, if we look at primitive societies on this gradient, the people are benefiting too much. Once we find the middle of this scale, we will reach a point where we can maximize overall happiness on both ends, resolve the problems caused by extreme rationalization, and bring an end to the worldwide protests.