Hi
Thomas Lunde wrote:
> I went to the URL you posted and I must admit that the testimonials were
> awesome. However when I tried to follow some of the suggestions in red, my
> browser went nowhere - so I'm left with testimonials not content.
Yeah, so I noticed, too. Figured it must be an oversight on someone's part.
I pointed out the problem in an email to Jeff Gates and he has responded to
assure me that it'd be remedied soon.
Thomas, again:
> My thought was that every time a machine/robot/innovation replaces human
> labour, that labour is still factored into the product price and that
> savings to the producer is not passed on to the customer in the form of
> lower prices or too the shareholder in terms of increased profits, but is
> put into a general pool to pay all those whose work is eliminated by the
> technology. If one of our goals is to become more efficient, even to the
> point where nobody or only a very small number of people are going to work,
> we have to have someway of taking revenue out of the goods and service
> sector and redistributing it back into the demand side of the economy.
I wonder where the incentive then is to innovate. It seems to me that I once
read somewhere that government might impose a "technology tax" with the aim
you suggest. But, here again, there are implications pertaining to competition
in a global economy. It'd probably be an issue for MAI proponents.
But, if I may challenge my own scenario, there is evidence that, while
automation causes structural unemployment, the total employed seems to remain
pretty stable. Technology may generate as many "jobs" as it displaces. (Jobs
in quotation marks because this mode of employment is fading as it is replaced
by sets of skills marketed by individuals.)
A guaranteed or basic income, however provided, probably should be viewed as a
temporary measure as we "transition" from the Industrial Age to something
else. Just as our present factory-style education system emerged to train and
condition a workforce, so a more durable solution to our economic needs may be
an entrepreneurially-oriented system which will provide students with the
ability to recognize and seize all-too-ephemeral opportunities as they present
themselves. If the appearance of calculus somehow foreshadowed the Industrial
Age, chaos theory may anticipate a key feature of the emerging era.
A final thought, if jobs can change and disappear so, too, can the whole
notion of shareholders. It may be another example of quantitative change
giving rise to qualitative change: Massive numbers of electronically-networked
individuals and institutions dealing in a variety of financials products and
consumer products may discover that money or its surrogate has become an
unnecessary (and unduly complicating) intermediary in achieving goals. (Don't
dare ask me about this probe, but interpretations are welcome!) Some issues
(as *figure*), and the rich-poor gap may be one of them, simply cease to be
relevant as the whole *ground* changes.
Bob
___________________________________________________________________
http://www.geog.uwo.ca/mcdaniel1.html
