This may be late and off-topic, but it would be interesting to see
whether it is possible (it may have already been done, I don't know) to
produce a variant of the current international GDP accounting system
where, as Mr Milne bluntly and correctly puts it, manufactured things
are assets and human potential is a liability. I suppose the problem is
that noone is going to believe that a nation or society producing
excellent evocative poetry is more advanced than one capable of chemical
or nuclear warfare. Attempting to cross the public street outside, in a
practical manner, I find my path obstructed by large numbers of
manufactured but hardly used objects, mostly shiny BMWs, whilst the
public facilities available crumble. However, if the good denizens of
London believe they must have an uptodate German-manufactured automobile
to establish their seriousness in the job market, that is what they will
believe. Would it be possible for the futurework list to cooperate to
provide an alternative GDP function, allowing these poor harassed
commuters who take the subway to work, as the road infrastructure is too
poor to allow the use of their expensive machine, to become rich by some
variant of the Roman public virtue argument? I know I dream, but you
never know.
Mark Measday
Victor Milne wrote:
> I am inclined to agree with Thomas in the interchange below. I don't
> have any figures. However, I think this is what happens in the
> introduction of a new technology such as railways and the internal
> combustion engine: The technology is genuinely labor-saving, and so
> everyone wants to have it or has to have it to stay abreast of
> business competitors. There is thus a large amount of work created to
> fill the demand for the new technology. Moreover, with a very broad
> technology it takes a while to discover all the uses; i.e., to create
> demands that were not there before. Ultimately the technology is
> mature. Virtually every potential user has acquired it. When you are
> only replacing old wornout units rather than selling to new markets,
> the workforce producing this technology has to be scaled back. It is
> then that we discover that relative to the population level the
> once-new technology has destroyed more jobs than it has created. I
> think too that computer technology is like none other that went before
> because of the very generality and breadth of its application. It is
> displacing people at throughout the employment spectrum. A lot of
> middle managers fell to its onslaught some time ago because it so
> increased productivity in data gathering and organization and
> interpretation. Bank tellers are vanishing, and supermarket cashiers
> will soon join them--how many hundreds of thousands, or millions, of
> people are employed in these jobs just in North America? What jobs
> will be created for these people in the brave new world of increased
> employment through technology that traditional economists believe in?
> Name one new job brought in by computer technology that a displaced
> welder or cashier could transfer to. If you can name such a job, then
> estimate its numbers relative to the vanished jobs. And computers are
> not the end of the new technologies. In a recent talk Rifkin said he
> believes that the 21st century will be the era of biotechnology. In
> his book he does hint without giving any details that the number of
> workers in food production may be slashed still further, and food
> production will move to a factory setting. To fill in some possible
> details (some may think I've read too much science fiction) I have no
> difficulty in envisioning factories as highly automated as oil
> refineries (i.e., very few employees relative to an immense output) in
> which genetically engineered yeasts are grown and processed to produce
> passable imitations of virtually any food you can imagine--steak, corn
> on the cob, potatoes. Of course there would remain work worth doing
> such as nursing and educating children. The question is who is willing
> to fund it? As was pointed out in a paper on the CCPA website, under
> our present distorted system of accounting, the production and sale of
> a golf ball is counted as an addition to the GNP (recorded on the plus
> side of the ledger) while the education of a child is counted as a
> rather large reduction in the GNP (recorded on the minus side of the
> ledger). Until this is changed, there will be not be many worthwhile
> jobs for people to find. Victor Milne FIGHT THE BASTARDS! An
> anti-neoconservative website
> at http://www3.sympatico.ca/pat-vic/pat-vic/ LONESOME ACRES RIDING
> STABLE
> at http://www3.sympatico.ca/pat-vic/
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ed Weick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: Futurework <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: November 22, 1998 4:25 PM
> Subject: Re: The end of work?
>
> Ed Wrote:
>
> Thomas Lunde:
>
> Your thesis of growth from original idea
> to larger employment is well buttressed
> by several historical examples.
> However, the computer has the potential
> in speed and computing power to
> seriously eliminate things that we
> humans do.
>
> Weick:
>
> I don't think so. Though I don't have
> numbers on this, I would be willing to
> bet that the microchip has created far
> more work than it has displaced. A
> whole complex multinational industry has
> been created around it. Granted,
> however, that most of the people who
> were displaced would not have picked up
> the newly created jobs.
>
> While it is true that the rate of
> unemployment in the industrial world is
> now higher than it was before the
> computer, I would suggest that this is
> not because of the computer. It is
> probably due to factors such as slowed
> growth after the destruction of world
> war II was repaired and the decline in
> some of the more traditional sectors of
> the economy, such as mining, agriculture
> and fishing. Other probable factors are
> rigidities in the wage structure in the
> case of Europe, the end of the Cold War,
> migrations from poor parts of the world
> where unemployment is usually not
> measured to wealthy parts whre it is
> measured, etc.
>
> Thomas:
>
> And so your exponential growth idea can
> just as easily be applied to an
> invention that negates our usefulness in
> the production of things and eliminates
> the need for our participation in the
> creation of things.
>
> Weick:
>
> I wasn't refering to "exponential
> growth". What I was talking about was
> surges of growth following a major
> innovation - the idea first formulated
> by Schumpeter. While blowing away some
> industries, it creates whole new ones.
> Even the new industries grow old and are
> in turn displaced by something new. The
> growth process is not exponential. It's
> jerky and uneven. Fast at times, slow
> at others, and at times even negative.
> While the general trend for the past two
> hundred years has been upward, it could
> hardly be characterized as being
> exponentially upward.
>
> <snip>
>
--
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