Marketizing inherently unquantifiable services requires added bureaucracy

Evidence

This is in part a consequence of the inherent resistance of certain processes and services to marketization. (The supposed marketization of education, for instance, rests on a confused and underdeveloped analogy: are students the consumers of the service or its product?) The idealized market was supposed to deliver ‘friction free’ exchanges, in which the desires of consumers would be met directly, without the need for intervention or mediation by regulatory agencies. Yet the drive to assess the performance of workers and to measure forms of labor which, by their nature, are resistant to quantification, has inevitably required additional layers of management and bureaucracy. What we have is not a direct comparison of workers’ performance or output, but a comparison between the audited representation of that performance and output. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 91

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Marketisation imposed on public services breeds bureaucracy geared to producing appearances — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2211; Neoliberal marketisation imposed its own new bureaucracy — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1724; Auditing fuses public relations with bureaucracy for promotional aims — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 102 (+2 more)

Related

• Marketisation imposed on public services breeds bureaucracy geared to producing appearances (similarity 0.86)
• Neoliberal marketisation imposed its own new bureaucracy (similarity 0.84)
• Auditing is a fusion of public relations and bureaucracy (similarity 0.81)
• Auditing fuses public relations with bureaucracy for promotional aims (similarity 0.80)
• Neoliberalism expanded bureaucracy rather than eliminating it (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Marketisation imposed on public services breeds bureaucracy geared to producing appearances #corroborates (0.92) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 2211
• Neoliberal marketisation imposed its own new bureaucracy #corroborates (0.88) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1724
• Neoliberalism decentralized bureaucracy instead of abolishing it #qualifies (0.78) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 43
• Auditing fuses public relations with bureaucracy for promotional aims #expands (0.75) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 102
• Markets require abstract standardized assets that may not physically exist yet. #corroborates (0.72)