<P> A willingness to recognise that manual labour can involve skill and intelligence can take a variety of forms, depending on how it handles multifaceted questions of dignity and (in) equality . </P> <Ul> <Li> In its healthier forms, it recognises the dignity and intelligence of blue - collar workers (that is, that those workers as a group have just as much potential for dignity and intelligence, despite the fact that any individual workers may or may not display such traits), and it recognises their civil (and civic) equality with white - collar workers . Yet it simultaneously leaves room in society for meritocracy, allowing both upward and downward social mobility (as a sustainable meritocracy requires). <Ul> <Li> An example of such systems is provided by well - run instances of professional sports teams, because there is a perennial meritocratic turnover of players, coaches, and staff, both within the sport and as input and output through its boundaries, whereby all participants have dignity even though all of the required talents may not exist in each individual . (For example, the talents of the physical therapists, statisticians, elderly coaches, and young adult players are not equal, but they are complementary from a systems engineering perspective .) </Li> </Ul> </Li> <Li> In its more pathological forms, it may only admit that there can be a science of manual labour, but not acknowledge or allow adequate social mobility (both upward and downward) between the blue - collar and white - collar classes . On the other hand, and equally pathologically, it may willfully deny the natural differences between individuals, allowing no hope for meritocratic justice, which is not only dispiriting to talented and hard - working people, but also highly injurious to macroeconomic performance . <Ul> <Li> An example of the first pathology is that the earliest forms of applying science to the practical processes of industry and commerce fell victim to an incomplete understanding, as exemplified by Frederick Winslow Taylor's version of the "science of shoveling". Taylor correctly recognised that the physical (athletic) talents for shoveling (on one hand) and the mental talents for analyzing and synthesizing best shoveling techniques and workflows (on the other) often would not coexist in the same person . Some people would have only the first; others, only the second . Therefore, (speaking metaphorically), players usually should not be their own coaches . Unfortunately, Taylor stepped from that valid realisation to envisioning a system of business administration that might easily have failed to filter people into the right roles based on their individual talents (or lack thereof). Taylor's versions of scientific management, had they succeeded in persisting, may well have eventually left some smart people stranded in an underclass (crassly equated with draft animals, which was fashionable at the time) at the same time that it let some incompetent but silver spooned people remain in positions of middle or senior management . Whether Taylor was capable of predicting and preventing that problem is unclear, but it is clear that not all of his imitators and admirers were thus capable . </Li> <Li> An example of the second pathology are 20th - century variants of communism, such as Leninism and Stalinism . </Li> </Ul> </Li> <Li> Somewhere between the extremes of health and pathology mentioned above are the realities in most developed economies today, where various themes and tendencies are in constant competition, and people disagree on which ones predominate and what actions should be taken (if any) to try to even the balance or reduce the pathologies . </Li> </Ul> <Li> In its healthier forms, it recognises the dignity and intelligence of blue - collar workers (that is, that those workers as a group have just as much potential for dignity and intelligence, despite the fact that any individual workers may or may not display such traits), and it recognises their civil (and civic) equality with white - collar workers . Yet it simultaneously leaves room in society for meritocracy, allowing both upward and downward social mobility (as a sustainable meritocracy requires). <Ul> <Li> An example of such systems is provided by well - run instances of professional sports teams, because there is a perennial meritocratic turnover of players, coaches, and staff, both within the sport and as input and output through its boundaries, whereby all participants have dignity even though all of the required talents may not exist in each individual . (For example, the talents of the physical therapists, statisticians, elderly coaches, and young adult players are not equal, but they are complementary from a systems engineering perspective .) </Li> </Ul> </Li> <Ul> <Li> An example of such systems is provided by well - run instances of professional sports teams, because there is a perennial meritocratic turnover of players, coaches, and staff, both within the sport and as input and output through its boundaries, whereby all participants have dignity even though all of the required talents may not exist in each individual . (For example, the talents of the physical therapists, statisticians, elderly coaches, and young adult players are not equal, but they are complementary from a systems engineering perspective .) </Li> </Ul>

What types of workers are typically paid a wage and perform manual labor