Keynes had something to say about this in the context of "solving the economic problem" in his 1930 essay "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren." Maybe more explicit than Eisenstein lets on?
On Dec 28, 2012, at 8:44 PM, just camel <[email protected]> wrote: > The result is also that we _require_ to create new and irrelevant jobs > because of our socioeconomic framework that requires exponential growth > instead of liberating people from work. > > "On the collective level, not consuming the cake means choosing growth over > leisure. More efficient production technology allows us either to work less > or to work just as hard and produce more stuff. Our economic system requires > and embodies the latter choice. But despite today’s association of > “Keynesian” economics with fiscal stimulus, Keynes himself never saw stimulus > as a permanent solution. As a society, we have been artificially stimulating > demand now for seventy years, through military spending, highway > construction, and subsidies for accelerating extraction, construction, > consumption, and imperialism. Attempting to uphold economic growth and keep > the marginal efficiency of capital ahead of interest, we have trapped > ourselves in a pattern of more and more production, whether we need it or > not. Adapting to this trap, economic theory, with its assumption of infinite > wants, says we will always “need it,” always need to produce more and more, > if not in one industry then in another. I have described this process > differently: as a depletion of first one realm and then another of natural, > social, cultural, and spiritual capital. Keynes did not state it so > explicitly, living as he did in the ideological context of Ascent, but he > clearly intuited it. His use of the past tense in the above passage suggests, > at least to me, that one day it would be time to eat the cake: to choose less > work over more stuff." -- Charles Eisenstein / > http://sacred-economics.com/read-online/ > > On 01/08/2013 11:36 AM, Matt Mahoney wrote: >> Over the last couple of centuries a lot of human labor has already >> been automated. The result has been economic growth, more career >> choices, and better working and living conditions > > > > ------------------------------------------- > AGI > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/583254-41e776f2 > Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
