Toward an Extension and Revision

of the Concept of Waste

By HENRY W m n n t o p *

ABSTRACT. Conventionally, the concept of waste has been used largely

to indicate physical waste, which itself is of enormous magnitude.
Sometimes non-physical waste is included. But some forms, like the
waste of time, talents and career opportunities, are not ordinarily
thought of as waste, nor are such wastes as arise, for example, from
avoidable economic errors or managerial misjudgments. The concept
requires considerable extension and substantial revision if wastes are
to be prevented through management expertise and use of standard
methodologies in the management sciences. For the number of new
forms of non-physical waste, of which many examples are cited, is
legion.
I
INTRODUCTION
TRADITIONALLY THE CONCEPT of waste has been confined largely
though not wholly, of courseto what I shall call here physical waste.
This phrase is intended to include such categories as solid wastes from
manufacturing industries; agricultural wastes; animal wastes on farms
and cattle ranches; wastes from mining, whether of the underground
or surface type, together with the wastes that arise from the metal-
lurgical and chemical processing of mineral concentrates; consumer
wastes from garbage and sewage, together with wastes from urban
petswastes that are disposed of either through the sewage or the
garbage collection systems; and many other categories. Thus "solid
waste" is but one of the categoric of "physical waste."
In passing, it is important to note the magnitude of some of these
types of waste. According to Schwartz (1) it is estimated that by
1980 solid wastes from all sources will amount to S billion tons. In
1966 more than $16 billion worth of materials were used for packaging
of which 90 percent was intended to be thrown away as waste. It is
the enormity of this category of physical waste that has given war-
rant for the criticism that ours is "the throw-away society." In 1967
animal wastes amounted to 2 billion tons. In that year agricultural
crop wastes amounted to one-half billion tons, not including waste

* [Henry Winthrop, Fh.D., is, professor emeritus of interdisciplinary social

sdence. University of South Florida, Tampa, Ha. 33620.)
American Journal of Economics and Socialoiy, Vol. 39. Ko. 3 (July, 19eO).
0002-9246/80/030273-15*00.75/0
O 1980 American Toumai of Economics and Sodology. Inc.
274 American Journal oj Economics and Sociology

from logging operations. Anntial mineral wastes are expected to rise

to 2 billion tons by 1980. As ocean and later oil shale mining in-
creasingly become commercial enterprises, the annual volume of waste
from mining will rise to 4 billion tons. Also in 1967 total consumer
wastes, in the form of garbage and sewage, amounted to 128 million
tons.
Traditionally, to the conventional types of waste, above, have often
been added certain other types, usually physical, but occasionally non-
physical, A few of these ancillary forms of waste would include wastes
from relatively inefficient types of technology in both producers' goods
and consumer durables; the wastes created in consumption, which
Vance Packard has catalogued in The Wastemakers (2); the waste
of potential labor-time generated by unemployment; the waste of
energy that comes from badly designed industrial and residential con-
struction; waste from technologically inefficient irrigation systems and
poorly constructed dams; waste from improper wilderness manage-
ment; waste generated by incompetent procurement personnel in gov-
ernment, who purchase equipment and/or parts of equipment {e.g.
typewriters and filing cabinets) at contract prices well above the
market prices; waste that comes from cost plus government contracts
and cost overruns generated by corrupt or incompetent government
and industry bureaucrats; and waste catised by war and civil insur-
rections (3).
Some government employees of great integrity, concerned with the
wastes of taxpayers' money, have brought these types of waste to the
attention of federal officials and congressmen (4). Such wastes have
arisen either from the corrupt practices of bureaucrats in government
and industry or from the incompetence of their underlings. The
"whistleblowers," as the government employees who disclose the waste
have come to be called, have been treated very shabbily and subjected
to reprisals of various sorts. Often the whistleblowers have suffered
the loss of their career jobs (S). Currently efforts are being made by
members of Congress to protect such "whistlehlowers" (6).
There are forms of waste that we do not ordinarily think of as
waste at all. This is in part because they are so different in their
nature from physical waste and in part because we are acctistomed to
classifying them in other categories.
We can mention the following: I. the waste of time, as when time
has been expended on projects that are suddenly aborted, 2. talents
 Concept of Waste 275

that lie unused and which, nevertheless, could be devoted to supplying

goods and/or services needed by a community, 3. time spent on im-
proper solutions to urgent problems, 4. waste that results from an er-
roneous choice of a career by individuals, as a result of inability to
choose, a bad choice, improper professional guidance or no guidance
at all, and S. resources and energy expended on what Ruskin called
"illth," that is, commodities or services that are dysgenic and/or out
of kilter with a community's priorities.
To these can be added 6. wastes that are generated by avoidable
economic errors or mistaken judgments in the choice of opportunity
costs, 7. wastes that arise from the improper design of producers' goods
or consumer durable goods, in the sense of the phrase, "improper
design," as brought out by Papanek (7), 8. wastes that come from
not making consumer purchases via the guidelines of Consumer Re-
ports, 9. wastes that arise from the employment of capital-intensive
technology where labor-intensive technology should be used, as em-
phasized by Schumacher (8), 10. wastes that are generated in govern-
ment by the duplication of activities in several, different agencies and
U . wastes that are emphasized by Boyle and Harper (9), and that
arise from highly centralized community activites and large-scale tech-
nology, where decentralized activity would better accomplish the
human objectives involved and where what is now called intermediate
or appropriate technology would be more functional for certain types
of community activity than large-scale technology.
The concept of waste requires considerable extension, if not revi-
sion, precisely because many new forms of non-physical waste are
being generated in post-industrial society. These are almost invari-
ably the result of ever-increasing complexity in the way we are solving
our problems and the numerous innovations we are introducing into
the organization of work. The time is coming when the dollar value
of non-physical waste may begin to exceed the dollar value of physical
waste. The purpose of this paper then will be to examine a very
limited number of the aspects of non-physical waste on a very small
sample of types of such waste.
One important result of taking a fresh look at the theme of waste
is that we shall soon realize that the term "waste" is not unequivocal
in meaning. It has as many meanings as there are contexts of concern.
It would therefore be futile to try to find or fashion a monolithic defi-
nition of waste that can be found in some very general sense to be
276 American Journal of Economics and Sociology

overarchingly applicable to every context. This cannot be done. We

should not look for a common meaning to the term, in all the situations
in which we employ it. This would be a subtle form of the fallacy
of reification.

11
WASTE PREVENTION THROUGH MANAGEMENT EXPERTISE
MANY FORMS of non-physical waste occur in contexts where the em-
ployment of management skills can actually prevent such waste. These
wastes are generated largely through activities that depart from or
ignore well established guidelines in the management sciences for the
optimum solutions of recurring management problems. These wastes
are considerable in magnitude. In the innumerable applications of
such relatively new disciplines as operations research, systems theory,
cybernetics, linear programming, input-output analysis, queueing the-
ory, etc. (fields in which there is much overlap), we tend to focus our
attention upon the analytic skills developed for applicable problems.
If the best practical solution to a given managerial problem is achiev-
able by the application of an available methodology, but the manner
in which we actually sdve that same problem is a glaring departure
from it, then waste of some sort occurs.
For example, various types of scheduling problems are optimally
solved by different types of mathematical linear programming ap-
proaches. Usually different factors in any given scheduling problem
are to be maximized or minimized, as in industrial production sched-
ules, certain types of transportation problems, the scheduling of ware-
house operations, of employment in retail stores, of certain classes of
retail mechaodise stocks, of working capital, etc. (!0).
Failure to use the optimal solution to a scheduling problem will
often result in 1. less than maximum production of certain commodi-
ties per unit time; 2. excess costs in filling a given commodity order
or providing a given service; 3. excess depreciation of plant and
equipment per unit of revenue realized, and 4. excess direct and in-
direct burden per hour of warehouse operations, etc. All involve
waste of money, or of materials, time, power, energy, labor time,
human talents, etc. In principle, all t h e ^ types of waste are mea-
surable.
Today, in tens of thousands of factories, shipping firms, maritime
agencies for the distribution of cargo, farm operations, highway de-
 Concept of Waste 277

velopment, industrial construction, warehousing operations, employee

production schedules, etc., substantial departures from efficient solu-
tions are occurring regularly, at staggering cost.
A sample of the types of problems with which management must
cope in our time, effectively or wastefully, are problems in operations
research; problems in mathematical programming for better decision-
making; planning and controlling with Program Evaluation Review
Technique ( P E R T ) ; econometrics for management; marketing costs
and mathematical programming; simulation tools for better distribu-
tion; allocation and resource problems; methodologies for test market-
ing; statistically designed experiments to solve manufacturing prob-
lems of quality control; mathematics for production scheduling;
mathematical models in capital budgeting; etc. (11).
Similar problems occur in managerial and engineering economics:
the establishment of analytic models for problems in such areas as
the following: amortization; investment; cash flow; economic pro-
duction charts; economic balance analysis; economy of conversion
and yield; profitability analysis; replacement and the comparison of
alternatives; inventory analysis; expense and capital outlay; etc. ( U ) .
Management will incur waste whenin making use of standard
methodologies in the management sciencesmisjudgments are made
or errors occur that are separate from the methodologies themselves,
and these misjudgments or errors remain undiscovered untO striking
losses develop. Waste of a kind will also be incurred when correct
methodologies for batteries of problems faced daily by management,
are coupled with wrong priorities for the solution of these same prob-
lems or correct methodologies for problems are employed in a value-
obfuscated atmosphere in which no priorities, whatsoever, have been
attached to the many managerial problems that have to be solved in
the day-to-day working atmosphere of production.
The number of new forms of non-physicai waste is legion and this
suggests that the conventional notions of waste, when confined largely
to physical waste or to the forms of waste that were the foci of con-
cern in such works as Stuart P. Chase's The Tragedy Of Waste (13),
provide a very limited picture of the total problem-context in which
waste may occur. The generation of waste has been greatly increased
in our time, as a result of the many new forms of non-physical waste
that are made possible by the many new forms of decision-making that
must be faced by management. These are occurring in a society
278 American Journal of Economics and Sociology

where production processes are ever-changing and where the organi-

zation of large-scale work is subject to constant innovation, as we
adapt to new circumstances and new constraintsconstraints such as
those that may be placed upon material or labor resources or the
transfer of technology on the part of the modern multinational
corporation.

Ill
HIGH LEVEL, NON-INDUSTRIAL MANAGEMENT SKILLS
SOMETHING SHOULD BE SAID about the range of meaning which the
term, "management," carries in the present context. By and large the
focus of meaning consists of the various production contexts in the
organization of work. But there is another different and higher level
of management where errors, mistakes in judgment, improper methods
for data collection, incorrect methods of analysis, wrong priorities, etc.
may even produce disaster. I am thinking here of the enormous
variety of decision-making that takes place in what we now call
"think tanks"organizations such as Rand, the System Development
Corporation, the Hudson institute and Arthur D. Little, Inc. In
1969 the National Science Foundation reported that in 1967 there
were 11,355 Research and Development (R&D) companies in the
nation. A substantial proportion of these were sufficiently prestigious
intellectually to deserve the designation "think tank" (14).
The management type of decision-making which takes place in
"think tanks" is often hidden under the euphemism of development.
The intellectual skills of the managerial type needed for the "think
tanks" are often, in many respects, of a higher order than those used
for the organization of work in industry and in the complex decision-
making activities of industrial management. They are also most fre-
quently applied to problems that are quite different in structure and
nature from those faced by managers in industry. Nevertheless they
occasionally also have a clear potency for creating waste, if improperly
employed. More importantly, however, they are able to unearth
wastes of various sorts that are incurred in contexts that lie outside of
industrial milieus.
An example of the abuse of high-level managerial skills occurred
in the 60s when a report, produced by the Logistics Management In-
stitute (LMI) of the Pentagon, was promoted by Clark Clifford, then
 Concept of Waste 279

Secretary of Defense. Dickson tells us that this Report

concluded that 40 leading defense contractors, contrary to public
opinion, were not only not making large profits but were making less
of a profit on their work than 3,500 companies with little or no de-
fense work. It claimed that defense profits averaged at seven percent
while commercial profits were nine percent (15).
Critics attacked the LMI Report for trying to whitewash waste
in the form of excess profits. The high-level, managerial skills em-
ployed had been tarnished by errors of misjudgment on the part of
military intellectuals who had produced the Report. One critic, Sena-
tor Proxmire, pointed out the nature of some of these misjudgments.
The LMI Report, the Senator noted, had relied on unverified, volun-
tary mail responses from the contractors. The data used had there-
fore both questionable reliability and questionable validity. Another
sin of omission was that it did not take into account such tangibles
as large amounts of government-supplied capital and government-
owned equipment that had been put into the hands of private con-
tractors. In 1967 $14.7 billion worth of such government equipment
was in the hands of defense contractors. To make matters worse it
made use of unacceptable definitions of the term "profit," thus begging
the question at issue.
In the LMI Report we have an example of high-level, management
expertise faulted by misjudgments and procedures whichapart from
the fact that they are independent of the value and effectiveness of
standard and well-established managerial methodologies and therefore
do not, in any sense, call into question the analytic soundness of these
methodologieswere primarily intended to be self-serving and to cover
up the waste of taxpayers' money that had been irresponsibly in-
curred and covered up by 'excess profits.' When misjudgments and
sins of omission are poorly married to otherwise sound managerial
skills, the marriage, so to speak, is made in hell and the well-deserved
prestige of managerial expertise is improperly called into question
through guilt by association.
But the skills involved in high-level managerial expertise of the
type customarily employed in "think tanks" are usually used to un-
earth or prevent waste rather than to produce it for self-serving pur-
poses, as in the preceding example. Take one famous example:
In 1951 the Air Force asked Rand for advice in choosing locations
for new air bases to be established overseas in the 1956 to 1961 period.
280 American Journal of Economics and Sociology

The request was put into the hands of Albert Wohlstetter, who has
been described as a mathematician/economist. Wohlstetter did not
treat the request in the expected, straightforward manner. Instead
he chose to examine critically the assumptions that were inherent in
the original problem posed by the Air Force. Wohlstetter and his
staff translated the problem into the question of determining the
options that were open to the nation in positioning its strategic forces.
Wohlstetter concluded that adding such bases was not only too risky
because aircraft positioned overseas, closer to the Soviet Union, were
too vulnerable to surprise atomic attack on the ground. They were
also more costly, less of a deterrent and more of a problem for U.S.
international relations than a plan proposed by Wohktetter. He
recommended the building of more bases in the U.S. and only sup-
plementing them with small overseas installations for refueling air-
craft (16).
The impact of Wohktetter's report was tremendous. His recom-
mendations were carried out by the Air Force, and it signiiicantly
changed American strategic thought. It had a substantial influence
on certain aspects of American foreign policy. It altered in great
measure our defense policy, since it led to the doctrine of second strike
capacity. But it is the cost savings generated by the Wohlstetter
report that must be emphasized here. The Air Staff concluded that the
report had saved over a billion dollars in construction costs. By impli-
cation, it lays bare or unearths the waste of money, men and material
that had taken place in the years preceding the report, when the Air
Force had used less appropriate methods for its vital activities in con-
nection with our national defense. The Wohlstetter plan saved addi-
tional, very large amountsperhaps tens of millions of dollarsin
annual operating costs that would otherwise have been incurred.
AH these same types of cost wastes were also prevented abroad, to the
extent that other nations were able to inaugurate practically some of
the features of the Wohlstetter plan. It is in all these senses of cost
savings that we can say the analytic methods of the management
sciences can, and do, prevent waste.

tv
PROCESSES, SITUATIONS AND CONCEPTS RELATED TO WASTE
BUT WHICH MUST BE DISTINGUISHED FROM IT
MANV PROCESSES AND SITUATIONS related to waste must, at the same
time, be' distinguished from waste. These are often regarded as ex-
 Concept of Waste 281

pressions of waste by critics of their toleration who characteristically

lament the consequences to which they often lead. But the processes
and situations involved are not, in fact, truly examples of waste, though
some may eventually generate waste. It is therefore necessary to
learn how to distinguish them from authentic forms of waste.
Likewise, there are certain concepts and ideas that are often used
interchangeably with the different meanings conventionally attached
to the term, "waste," but which for a substantial number of reasons,
should be regarded as basically different (17).
A few examples of processes and situations that may generate waste
but which are not, themselves, examples of waste, are the following:
economic, technical or managerial misjudgments that may lead to
waste but are recognizable as having been misjudgments only by
hindsight; misjudgments in legislation and policy and planning anal-
ysis, which may create the destruction of various types of resources
both physical and non-physical in natureor which may lead to in-
efficient management; construction of various sorts which, when
started, were economically sound but which later, for different reasons,
began to give rise to various types of diseconomies; the choice of
wrong opportunity costs that were selected in relation to an antici-
pated future, hut where that future, when it finally arrived, revealed
in hindsight that the wrong opportunity costs that had been selected
in the past could have been intelligently avoided; given a context in
which a variety of governmental problems had to be solved, the selec-
tion of wrong priorities to solve thempriorities tbat led to the de-
struction or mismanagement of various types of resources and where,
of course, there were enough data on hand when the selection of priori-
ties was begun, to have avoided making the erroneous selection of
priorities; uneconomical results of activities that were generated by
ignorance and error on the part of decision-makers; and net energy
losses in production activities, where it was known in advance that
such production activities would yield net energy losses, but where
the form in which output energy is to be obtained is vita! and irre-
placeable for certain energy needs and industrial processes, so that no
other options were available to producers and consumers.
Still others include economic losses through types of inflation that
could have been either controlled or avoided; losses sustained through
poor land management or poor resource management; failures to ex-
ploit various types of resources when they are neededa. type of nagli-
282 American Journal of Economics and Sociology

gence which must be distinguished from resource management which is

carried out poorly; travesties in industrial production (or inefficiency
in any sector of the economy) in which less efficient technology is
used to achieve certain goals, rather than other more efficient tech-
nology that is actually available on the market for purchase or hire;
and failure to exploit new and more efficient technology currently
existing as potential capital stock in the files of the Patent Office (18).
A superb contribution toward understanding how experience, prop-
erly evaluated, can help in avoiding waste has been given by R. Buck-
minster Fuller. Fuller emphasizes the importance of what he calls
"rationalization" in the effort to avoid making gross and serious mis-
judgments whose undesirable consequences in various processes and
situations create personal setbacks and social tragedy for others.
By rationalization Fuller means "a constant, selective balancing of
relative values, gained from experience, for the purpose of harmonious,
inclusive recomposition and subsequent extension." Failure to exer-
cise the creative, intellectual aspects of rationalization leads to mis-
judgment.
Therefore, [says Fuller] it follows that strict adherence to rationaliza-
tion, within the limits of self-experience, will provide corrections to
performance obviating not only for one's self, but for othere, the pit-
falls that occasion self-hurt. By cultivating the ability to rationalize
in the absolute, one acquires the power of so ordering experience that
truths are clarified and susceptibility to self-hurt is diminished to the
point of negligibility. Through rationalization anyone may evolve
solutions for any situation that may arise, and by the attainment of
this ability through experience one obtains his license to be of service
to mankind (19).
Central among examples of types of concepts that likewise need to
be distinguished from the multiplicity of ideas that we generically
grace with the term waste are, perhaps, a variety of ideas that are
rightfully included in the notion of loss. Such as: losses of raw ma-
terials by rail or maritime shipment, as a result of Acts Of God, e.g.,
derailed train shipments, shipwrecks at sea, oil spills from tankers,
cargo jettisoned to avoid maritime accident, confiscation and subse-
quent destruction of banned materials such as drugs like cocaine,
heroin, marijuana, etc.; losses of foodstuffs in warehousing through
unavoidable spoilage; losses to insects and rodents of vegetables and
grains stored in bins and granaries, such as those used by the Federal
Surplus Commodity Corporation; losses from producers' goods that
 Concept of Waste 283

are scrapped prematurely in order to achieve more effective competi-

tion; losses of different types that occur from efforts to keep abreast
of technological advances in productivity; losses from prematurely
scrapping or abandoning consumer durable goods items, particularly
cars, and doubly so when such scrapping is dictated by planned prod-
uct obsolescence; losses of homes, and commercial and industrial prop-
erty, from floods, forest fires, hurricanes and tornados; annual losses
of goods and irreplaceable topsoil by poor agricultural drainage man-
agement or by failing to set up land barriers against dust storms;
losses that occur from goods that cannot be sold as a result of bad
timing in production for markets or as a result of changing seasonality
patterns; losses that occur as a result of changing fashions in com-
modity demand, such as sealpelts that are no longer wanted for
women's coats or collars or losses of sales that occur from sudden
changes in fashions, as when commodities made from alligator skins
or bird feathers no longer interest the former buying public; losses
in production goals or losses of labor-time that result from bottlenecks
produced by failure to modernize processes of industrial rationalization
and layout; and industrial losses that result from interferences with
production schedules, where such losses are generated by sudden and
unforeseeable overload demands on some of the links in the chain of
industrial production.
Still others are: losses to health that occur as a result of the manu-
facture of "illth" in food; losses of raw material resources that are
needed for essential goods but where the raw materials are deflected
into the production of foolish and unnecessary consumer items; losses
from department store thefts and warehouse inventory, both of which
could have been avoided under efficient management; losses that
result from the shoddy construction of residential homes; losses that
result from poor workmanship in the manufacture of various types of
consumer goods, particularly apparel; losses that result from con-
sumer functional neglect, such as the failure ever to use linen, silver-
ware or china that were purchased, stored away and then ignored;
losses that result from irrational purchases such as books never read,
children's toys never played with, adult tools never used, home repair
materials never called into play, etc.; losses that arise from failures to
prevent or reduce environmental imbalances and destruction of eco-
logical life cycles, during time frames in which the reversal of environ-
mental destructiveness and ecological upsets would still be possible;
284 American Journal of Economics and Sociology

and losses that are clearly the social costs of "progress" but where the
same progress could have been achieved through alternative approaches
that would not have generated the same social costs (20).
There are other numerous situationsnot classifiable as processes
or lossesthat are said to be waste when, in fact, they are examples of
human error, misjudgment or folly, wrong choices in priorities, lack
of wisdom and foresight in the choice of values, etc. These situations,
of course, may eventually lead to some kind of waste. Among situa-
tions not properly classifiable as processes or losses, we might include:
failure to act on futuristic predictions which, at the time they were
made, were expected to be reasonably reliable, and where such failure
to act has ushered in sequelae that have produced reductions in goods
and/or services that fall within either the public interest or large areas
of private interest; public actions that lead to unnecessary reductions
in the standard of living or the quality of life; public actions and
decisions that lead to benefit/cost ratios greater than one but where
other public actions and decisions in the same context and for the
same goals could have led to B/C ratios that would have been much
greater; setbacks suffered by communities in trying to deal with major
stressful problems, where the setbacks were the result of choosing
wrong or improper social indicators to monitor the expected alleviation
of the social problems in question; erroneous public solutions to prob-
lems of distributive justice, such as, for example, social security legis-
lation that failed to take into account changing population trends,
changing ratios of the active labor force personnel to retirees receiving
social security benefits, or increased social security taxes coupled with
higher tax brackets for social security recipients, so that both the dis-
posable income and the total purchasing power of such recipients have
been reduced; improper balances struck between activities regulated
by centralized decision-making and activities governed by decentralized
decision-making, where the public welfare is at stake; and the setbacks
to general welfare produced by the creation of dysgenic, social systems
or dysgenic, administrative procedures.
Finally, it should be noted that the losses in lives and property
produced by war are often regarded as one of the leadingif not the
majorsources of waste by man. Such losses are not, I believe, most
adequately treated by regarding them as waste. The need to charac-
terize our failure to beat swords into ploughshare should, I feel, be
looked at differently. The costs of war and other failures in conflict
 Concept of Waste 285

resolution should be treated as a failure in cooperation and a failure

to construct viabJe and satisfying moral relationships. In both these
cases of failure the aims and values of the hostile protagonists are
usually irrational, short-sighted and hound up with an immature sense
of national and cultural identity. The values underlying the aims of
war are best served when different group needswhether in tangible
or intangible goods^re recognized and when ambitions are redirected
to a joint effort upon the part of both conflicting groups involved to
satisfy in some measure the group pride brought into play, rather than
being allowed to remain focused on the establishment of the prestige
of only one of the two groups seeking dominance. I do not, of course,
intend these remarks to be a simplistic treatment of the complex prob-
lems of conflict resolution. They are stated here as only one possible,
directions^ sketch for avoiding the costs of war. The costs of war,
howeverand this is the pointshould not be treated as examples of
waste but rather as the sequelae to social habits that are inadequate in
dealing with group needs.
All of the preceding discussion of the present section and all the
examples provided in that discussion represent only a small fraction
of the many different situations that are often regarded as expressions
of waste. They are not, however, best treated as examples of waste
but rather as examples of situations that must be intellectually and
conceptually distinguished from waste even when, in many instances,
some of them may eventually lead to what can properly be regarded
as waste. All such situations, often closely related to waste, should
be recognized as calling for a more penetrating analysis so that theory
and research can clarify more fully what we really mean by waste and
thereby direct human preventive actionintended to eliminate or
reduce wastemore eificiently in the future.

1. Eugene S. Schwartz, OverskOl: Tke Decline oj Tecknolagy in Modern CivUi-

zation (New York: Ballantine Books, 1972) 336 pp. See particularly the section
entitied Waste and Waste and WasU (pp. 187-94) in Chapter 8, "Technological
Realism 3: Autos and Waste," pp. 174-94.
2. Vance Packard, The Wastemakers (New York: David McKay, 1960), 340 pp.
3. For some ideas o{ conventional notions of waste, see Stuart P. Chase, The
Tragedy Oj Waste (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 192S), 296 pp.
4. For an account of the treatment of "whistlehloweri," see a famous report:
Senator Patrick J. Leahy, et al.. The Whistleblowers: A Report on Federal Em-
ployees Wko Disclose Acts of Governmental Waste, Abuse, and Corruption. Pre-
pared for The Committe on Governmental Affairs, United States Senate, 9Sth
Congress, 2d Session, February 1978. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1978), 421 pp.
286 American Journal of Economics and Sociology

5. The extent to which inadequate government regulations some of which

generate wasterequire reiorm is well indicated in the well known report: Con-
gressman John E. Moss, el at., Federal Regidation and Regulatory Reform
Report by the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee
on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House of Representatives, Ninety-Fourth
Congress, Second Session, October 1976. (Washington, D.C: U.S Government
Printing Office, 1976), 549 pp.
6, A high]y informative volume on the situation is: Louis M. Kohlmeier Jr.,
Tke Regulators: Watchdog Agencies and the Public Interest (New York: Harper
& Row, 1969), 399 pp.
7. Victor Papanek, Design For the Real World: Human Ecology and Social
Change (New York: Bantam Books, 1973). 3?1 pp.
S. E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered
(New York: Harper & Row. 1973), 290 pp.
9. Godfrey Boyle and Peter Harper (eds.). Radical Technology (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1976), 304 pp.
10. Relatively untechnical discussions of problems of this type may be found
in many volumes devoted to one or another aspect of management decision-
making. A fairly full but still elementary, mathematical treatment of what has
come to he known as the transportation problemone special type of scheduling
problemhas been provided by Meisels, See: Kurt Meisels, A Primer of Linear
Programming (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1962), 103 pp.
11. Edward C. Bursk and John F. Chapman (eds.), New Decision-Making
Tools For Managers: Mathematical Programming as an Aid in tke Solving of
Business Problems (New York: Mentor Books, 1965), 413 pp.
12. The sample just given has been drawn from Herbert E. Schweyer, Ana-
lytic Models for Managerial and Engineering Economics (New York: Reinhold
Publishing Corp., 1964), 505 pp.
13. Op. cit.
14. For an extensive account of the characteristics of "think tanks" as con-
trasted with the characteristics of various types of R&D entities, see Paul Dickson,
Think Tanks (New York: Ballantine Books, 1972), 397 pp. See Chapter III,
Section 2. "Paper Prophets." pp. 26-35.
15. Ibid.
16. Wohlstetter's detailed report has, of course, several other important aspects
that have been glossed over here for the sake of simplicity; other types of waste
were also prevented. ,\s for the use of the phrase "Research and Development"
in connection with many "think tanks" like Rand, in actual fact the phrase is
a misnomer. Rand and certain other think tanks do not do any "developmental
work" in any of the proper senses of this term. Their raison d'etre is tisitally
strictly along the lines of theoretical and analytic research.
For the types of intellectual project undert^en by Rand, see the Rand publi-
cation entitled Selected Rand Abstracts (SRA). This is a quarterly guide to the
unclassified publications of The Rand Corporation. The abstracts are concise
and can be read for the purpose of sampling the types of report this think tank
produces. Some of these reports are clearly on themes which, either directly or
indirectly, have unearthed waste or helped to prevent it. A separate subject
index, provided by SRA, will lead the reader to Reports concerned with those
themes or topics which are of direct interest to him.
17. Likewise there is a cognitive dichotomy between certain concepts and ideas,
on the one hand, and the set of meanings usually attached to the term, "waste,"
on the other. Distinctions must be made within each of these dichotomies. In
one case we must learn to distinguish between waste and either certain processes
or situations or some of the consequences of these processes and situations. In
the other case we must learn to separate intellectually various notions of waste
from the meanings we attach to certain concepts and ideas that are somewhat
similar in their cognitive focus to the attributes we generally attach to the concept
of waste, itself.
IS. Any effort to cite literature relevant to each of the processes or situations
 Concept of Waste 287

referred to would prove too copious to be of any practical value and too detailed
to provide the general features of the processes and situations we are seeking to
emphasixe. However, a feeling at least for the types of managerial misjudgments
that are often tal^en to reflect wasteful practises and activities (to which, of
course, they do sometimes lead) but which, in fact, reflect more often had hahits
of judgment, a poor sense of priorities, or an irrational and obfuscated sense of
values, can be provided by certain writings. Let me mention three. One is the
excellent volume entitled Valve Systems and Social Process, by the versatile
British administrator and thinker, Geoffrey Vickeis, Value Systems and Social
Process (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1970), 221 pp.
This volume seeks to improve judgment by exatnising the essential features in-
volved in such processes as choosing, planning, controlling, revaluing, appreciat-
ing, learning and surviving. A second contribution is the deeply thoughtful vol-
ume by Yehezkel Dror, entitled Design For Policy Sciences (New York: American
Elsevier Publishing Company, 197J), 156 pp. Chapter 3 {"Particular Weak-
nesses of Management Sciences," pp. 12-16), is of particular relevance.
19. R. Buckminster Fuller, Nine Chains To The Moon (London and Amster-
dam: Fefier and Simons, 1970), fifth printing, 375 pp.
20. The previous paragraphs of the text have stressed the concept of "loss"
as only one of the central concepts that must be distinguished from the many
different meanings that we customarily attach to the term, "waste." Here again,
any effort to illustrate each type of such loss would demand too extensive and
detailed a set of examples. The term, "loss," is used in too many difierent senses.
But a general impression of what thinkers have in mind when they describe
losses in various types of contexts & always obtainable. Let us mention the
notion of loss as it is invoked otUy in an environmental or ecological context.
For such a context a few outstanding works have appeared which, in whole or
in part, give some substance to the notion of loss. Among the more technical
or scholarly works of environmentalists, in this context, see Paul R. Ehrlich and
Anne H. Ehrlich, Population Resources Environment: Issues In Human Ecology
(San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1972), 509 pp., and Robert Leo
Smith (ed.). The Ecology of J/on. An Ecosystem Approach. New York:
Harper & Row, 1972. 4S6 pp. Among the setni-popular volumes available are
Barry Commoner, Tke Closing Circle: Nature, Man & Technology (New York:
Bantam Books, 1974), 343 pp., and Gordon Rattray Taylor, The Doomsday
Book: Can the World Survive! (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, 1971),
320 pp.
For a context that ii preoccupied both with environment and resource man-
agement and their relationship and which will provide numerous ideas succinctly
related to potential losses, the reader will find richly rewarding a highly scholarly
and technical voiume by Kenneth Watt, Ecology and Resource Management:
A Quantitative Approach (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), 450 pp.

Integration of the Social and Behavioral Sciences

T H E NOTION tbat social processes, including economic ones, cannot
really be understood unless their interdisciplinary aspects are known
goes back beyond Aldoph Lowe's Economics and Sociology and the
classics of Auguste Comte, Henry George, Franz Oppenheimer and John
Dewey to the very beginnings of economics when the early memhers
of the classical school incorporated into their systems the psychological
and sociological beliefs of their time.
Usually the economists look to the practitioners of the other soda!
and behavioral sciences to enlighten them on how the other disciplines