Harry,
At 15:10 24/11/2009 -0800, you wrote:
One of the Classical Political Assumptions is:
"People seek to satisfy their desires with the least exertion."
Seems to fit the makeup of human beings.
Not in our modern economy. People at the top end, already working hard,
work even longer hours to raise their status and make themselves even more
visible.
People in the middle and those towards the bottom end, just like the
Luddites of old, resist labour-saving methods in order to justify and
retain the jobs that they have.
In hunter-gatherer times 100% of the people worked;
In agricultural times 90% of the people worked
In industrial times 80% of the people worked
In post-industrial times we are rapidly going through the 70%. 60%. 50%
markers and are approaching a situation not far off in which only about 30%
will be needed to keep the system going -- the rest (if they're lucky
enough to have a job) are only doing one another's laundry at present
because we have far more people than we need.
We don't much like exertion and try to reduce it as much as possible, so
the idea of expanding the total amount of workseems to be a no-no.
The other Classical Assumption is:
Peoples desires are unlimited.
(It was actually Man seeks . . .and Mans desires . . .but Ive
politically corrected it.)
With unlimited desires, it seems that if we all worked 24 hours a day we
could never satisfy unlimited desires. So finding things to do is no
problem. Yet, we have involuntary unemployment.
Perhaps, instead of trying to find work for people, we should concentrate
on why they can't find work when there is so much to be done.
Well, the Classical Political Economists knew why, something that seems to
be beyond the present generation of neo-Classicals.
Many of the adages of the Classical economists -- division of labour,
hidden hand, comparative advantage -- still apply in principle but they
were only the money-measured adaptations of the social services that people
always did for one another (that is, when they knew one another -- when
they knew that, on balance, all effort would be reciprocated in kind one
day). Say, Smith, Ricardo etc hadn't the slightest inkling of the
increasing automation and computerization coming along.
And we can have little idea of how it's all going to shake out. My own view
is that when cheap energy has gone for good and populations have declined
enormously (advanced countries' birth rates are already showing the trend)
then we'll be back to smaller communities and substantial use of solar
power again. The ultimate end of the fantastic explosion of modern research
into DNA will be the dawn of DNA-based production methods, and when
communities will be trading DNA formulae and not having to haul goods
halfway round the world.
Keith
Harry
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Henry George School of Los Angeles
Box 655 Tujunga CA 91043
Tel: 818 352-4141
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-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Sandwichman
Sent: Sunday, November 15, 2009 7:17 PM
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION
Subject: [Futurework] I like Ike. (sort of): Thomas Jefferson vs. Larry
Summers
http://econospeak.blogspot.com/2009/11/i-like-ike-sort-of.html
In a speech he never gave, Ike quoted Thomas Jefferson: "If we can
prevent government from wasting the labors of the people under the
pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy."
Compare with Summers: "It may be desirable to have a given amount of
work shared among more people. But that's not as desirable as
expanding the total amount of work."
--
Sandwichman
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_______________________________________________
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>,
<<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1906557020/>www.amazon.com/dp/1906557020<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1906557020/>/>,
<www.handlo.com> _______________________________________________
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