00100	A SURVEY OF AMERICAN RACKETS
00200	
00300	
00400		When we consider how to increase productivity, we immediately
00500	face the fact that large numbers of people make their living
00600	from unproductive activity.  These situations continue for the
00700	following reasons: (1) The unproductive activity is often
00800	mixed with a productive one, and the two are not easy to disentangle.
00900	(2) Union contracts. (3) Tradition. (4) Laws requiring the
01000	useless activities.  We shall call such activities rackets
01100	in order to establish a pejorative atmosphere.
01200	
01300		The most widely discussed such rackets are those maintained
01400	by blue collar workers with the help of union strength.  Classical
01500	and much fought over examples include locomotive firemen on diesel
01600	trains, standby musicians and stagehands, linotype operators who
01700	reset already set up ads and who have become comletely redundant
01800	with automation, airline flight engineers, and the beneficiaries
01900	of makework rules in the building trades.  However, each of these
02000	rackets has been fought over by the employers, and progress is
02100	gradually made in reducing them.  At least it seems to me that
02200	progress is being made, but I don't no what percent of manual
02300	work can be regarded as unnecessary or how this has changed with
02400	time.  A real survey would be worthwhile.  To be fair, it should
02500	be mentioned that not all claims of featherbedding are true,
02600	because a speedup beyond a "normal" working pace can be
02700	represented as a campaign to eliminate featherbedding.
02800	However, just because there is a concentrated interest opposed
02900	to employee featherbedding - namely the employers - this is
03000	not where we should expect the worst abuses.
03100	
03200		The worst featherbedding rackets are in the professions
03300	and by business itself.  There the adverse interest is diffuse -
03400	i.e. the general public - and rarely has the knowledge to know
03500	that it is being taken.  The most publicized example is the
03600	undertaking racket where advantage is taken of a rare occasion
03700	of great strain to sell unnecessary services.  Sometimes the law
03800	is used to help sell the services as in the California law
03900	that prevented (and maybe still prevents) a person from having
04000	posession of the ashes of a cremated relative - they had to
04100	remain in the posession of an undertaker or cemetery who would
04200	charge for it; the rationalization was public health.  However,
04300	undertaking is not a high prestige profession in the modern
04400	world, and its rackets are have been repeatedly attacked by
04500	publicity, and the politics of consumerism has probably already
04600	reduced the problem and may eventually reduce it to negligible
04700	proportions.
04800	
04900		Some of the worst rackets are in the law profession.
05000	Since the legislators are mostly lawyers, there is little
05100	any other segment of society can do to reduce or even fully
05200	understand the abuses.  Probably there should be a non-lawyer
05300	watchdog commission on the practice of law with the power at
05400	least to make widely publicized recommendations.  Some examples
05500	of legal rackets include restraint of trade by the prohibition
05600	of advertising and bar association schedules of minimum fees
05700	(When a professional says the word "ethics", he usually means
05800	an illegal combination in restraint of trade),