Author : Colleen A. Dunlavy
Release : 2024-08-15
Genre : History
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Book Rating : 722/5 ( reviews)

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Small, Medium, Large - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Small, Medium, Large write by Colleen A. Dunlavy. This book was released on 2024-08-15. Small, Medium, Large available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. We live in a world of seemingly limitless consumer choice. Yet, as every shopper knows without thinking about it, many everyday goods – from beds to batteries to printer paper – are available in a finite number of “standard sizes.” What makes these sizes “standard” is an agreement among competing firms to make or sell products with the same limited dimensions. But how did firms – often hotly competing firms – reach such collective agreements? In exploring this question, Colleen Dunlavy puts the history of mass production and distribution in an entirely new light. She reveals that, despite the widely publicized model offered by Henry Ford, mass production techniques did not naturally diffuse throughout the U.S. economy. On the contrary, formidable market forces blocked their diffusion. It was only under the cover of collectively agreed-upon, industrywide standard sizes – orchestrated by the federal government – that competing firms were able to break free of market forces and transition to mass production and distribution. Without government promotion of standard sizes, the twentieth-century American variety of capitalism would have looked markedly less “Fordist.” Small, Medium, Large will make all of us think differently about the everyday consumer choices we take for granted.