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-----Mensaje original-----
De: TAHIR WOOD <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Para: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Fecha: mi�rcoles, 06 de septiembre de 2000 17:42
Asunto: Re: [CrashList] Go ahead regardless?
>Barry, I was very interested to read your post below,
>because it is challenging, but also because it is in a way
>diametrically opposed to what I have been emphasising
>(basically "each according to his/her work). I don't have
>much time to respond right now, but I do hope that you will
>continue the engagement nevertheless.
>
>I think many people on this list would agree that there is a
>labour surplus, but without necessarily agreeing with the
>conclusions that you derive from this. For example, I find
>it hard to regard as a 'solution' your radical separation of
>production from distribution. The idea of dividing humanity
>into a group of producers and a large unproductive group
>while relying on technology to keep up a high level of
>productivity seems a rather contrived and unbalanced
>solution to me. Instead of focusing on the productive and
>creative powers of humanity as part of the solution, it
>reckons that a small group of productive and creative
>individuals will design the life support for the majority
>who will then play no further role in the production
>process. They will simply be the recipients of a certain
>distributed product. What will be the politics of this sort
>of society? In such a radical division of humanity what
>sorts of consciousness will define the doers and the
>receivers? Will it be egalitarian in any way? This is hard
>to imagine.
>
>Sentences such as the following seem curiously to take
>certain historical phenomena as given, whereas there surely
>is some basis for questioning them: " when we create nearly
>full employment our powerful technology and out large supply
>of workers will always consume far too many resources for
>such hyper-activity to be sustainable." Is technology then
>some external force which impinges on humanity in a one-way
>determinism, as your formulation suggests to me, or is it
>something that we can create and control?
>
>Obviously you do not subscribe to the labour theory of
>value. What sort of economic theory supports statements such
>as the following: "Our present views rarely include any
>awareness that wealth comes from nature and inheritance more
>than from any work we do."
>
>But above all for me the stress that you put on unearned
>income is most bizarre, even while your critique of growth
>can and should be accepted. Also I think that your approach
>of starting from the labour surplus and then not adopting a
>position on population is strange, because if you are
>assuming a static population, against the current and
>empirically observable pattern - in other words stasis is
>something to be achieved - then why would you not try to
>achieve negative population growth, which would seem to be a
>more direct and more coherent way of addressing your problem
>of economic growth and labour surplus, no? If you are
>putting so much stress on highly productive technology,
>which is somehow taken as an extra-human given, why don't
>you look at the technology of reproduction? In both cases
>they are matters of human choice and agency. Neither the
>population level nor the level of productivity is an
>external fact of nature - they are effects of human
>relations and actions.
>
>Tahir
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>>>> "Barry Brooks" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 09/06 6:11 AM >>>
>
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> We need to find what kind of economy can provide people's
>needs without making too much pollution and without running
>out of resources rapidly. Our present consumer economy has
>many nice features, yet it is basically at odds with
>resource stewardship.
> Labor has been surplus relative to local natural
>resources for a long time. In today's crowded world
>migration can no longer provide an escape from depleted
>local resources, and imported resources are no longer
>abundant and cheap. Even though we face a growing shortage
>of resources we still pretend that labor shortage is
>limiting production. Our fear of labor shortage is
>obsolete. Since the dawn of the industrial age it has been
>necessary to constantly find ways to increase consumption in
>order maintain full employment.
> The left and the right agree that jobs are the only
>acceptable way to dole out money to the masses. Yet, when
>we create nearly full employment our powerful technology and
>out large supply of workers will always consume far too many
>resources for such hyper-activity to be sustainable. Only in
>our dreams is there no conflict between expanding the
>economy to make jobs and contracting the economy to conserve
>resources.
> Our present views rarely include any awareness that
>wealth comes from nature and inheritance more than from any
>work we do. To make our system work under present conditions
>we must admit that human labor is no longer scarce because
>machines with computer control can replace most paid labor,
>even in services. We should expect to shift our dependence
>from wages toward unearned income as automation replaces
>more human labor. Our system already has unearned income,
>but for now it is only for a few. Changing that is the key
>to becoming sustainable. Unearned income can end our
>dependence on jobs and growth.
> Whether our goal is to preserve the present pecking order
>or to help improve the lives of the poor, we must have a
>sustainable system for anything to really matter to anyone.
>Excess growth is the cause of our high consumption, and high
>consumption is the reason our economic system is not
>sustainable. Growth is the common problem of all classes!
> True conservation cuts consumption and that cuts
>production and that cuts real paying jobs and profits. No
>one supports a sustainable economy. Without true
>conservation we can continue to squander scarce resources to
>exercise all our surplus labor. Without conservation we can
>have our giant SUVs. That is our plan, left or right.
> There are four basic ways, I can think of, to conserve
>resources: increased efficiency, increased durability,
>recycling and by doing less. Durability allows doing less
>without having less. Efficiency allows using less in what we
>are doing. We can make deep cuts in consumption without
>sacrifice by designing new products to maximize their life
>time, efficiency and reparability.
> Durability will make it possible to stop the waste and
>pollution that are making our economy unsustainable.
>Because durability has been neglected we have a lot to gain
>when we starting using durability to conserve.
> Conservation of perishables using recycling and
>efficiency are already our goals, but the use of durability
>to conserve has had little notice. Yet, a stable population
>could use a general increase in durability to cut its
>resource consumption to very low levels while maintaining
>high living standards.
> If we could somehow accept unearned income for all
>classes then we could adjust the dole to stabilize wages.
>(No more tight money.) This will provide a mechanism
>allowing us to match the labor force to the real need for
>labor, instead of making jobs to match the labor force,
>regardless of the consequences.
>
>Barry Brooks
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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