At 20:53 04/08/2010 -0700, Sandwichman wrote:
"It is sometimes argued that _____1_____ is necessary to cushion the
impact of the loss of jobs due to _____2_____. Claims that _____2_____
will reduce job opportunities are based on the false premise that
society has only a fixed number of things to be done or a limited
variety of products to be made and workers in excess of those required
to meet these needs will be idle.
"Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. People's
_____3_____ are unlimited; it is only our capacity to _____4_____ that
is limited by our ability to ____5______."
1. __________
2. __________
3. __________
4. __________
5. __________
I'll defer filling in the blanks, if you don't mind.
It is a fallacy that the "lump of labour" doesn't exist in modern society,
particularly in advanced countries and growing particularly fast since
about the 1970s. Today in the UK only about half the population (at the
most) is needed to keep the economy going by daily work, the remainder
being either retired, incapacitated, in education, idly rich,
professionally parasitic or unemployed.
All of those categories except the last have been bearable (that is,
haven't caused revolutions) as they've grown throughout the course of the
industrial-consumer revolution. What is not bearable in any society that
wishes to call itself civilized (with a reasonable chance of ongoing
stability) is the growing number of those young who are not educated enough
to be able to enter the increasingly specialized job sectors and thus force
job-sharing on those who earn a decent income. At every level -- trade
union, managerial, professional, elite -- jobs which have good incomes are
protected by every possible sort of sanction and guile. We are no better
today than the trade guild set-ups of medieval society.
It has been a too-easy get-out by some economists and pretty well all
politicians and senior civil servants to say that as one type of job
disappears another will take its place -- the industrial society will
smoothly morph into a "service" society. The modern nation-state -- since
it took over the printing of money with little restraint a century ago --
and thus promoted itself to be the ultimate controller of its economy --
simply hasn't been able to educate its young people any better than
previously. In England, for example, one third of its 11 year-olds in state
schools (93% of the population) have the reading and writing ability of
what is expected of a 7-year old. Thus, as adults, these individuals will
probably never be able to read newspapers or government forms adequately,
never mind being able to read books or written material which could
otherwise help to give them tradable skills in this new "service" society.
However, the potential for most people to spread themselves into most
specializations and share their skills and incomes is enormous. Modern
genetics show very clearly that there are no particular genes for
intelligence, just as there are no particular genes for good looks or good
health. All three attributes are correlated and are a product of a minimal
level of harmful gene variants, most of them recessive. This being so, most
new-born children have the potential, not necessarily to be geniuses, but
certainly to become as skilful as is necessary for most well-paid
specializations.
Now that we are beginning to acquire knowledge of optimum brain development
it is monstrous that the present quasi-monopolistic imposition of the
nation-state on education continues any longer. Until parent-choice in
education is allowed -- just as much as they are allowed to choose most
goods and services -- then any discussion about the nature of jobs, today
or tomorrow, is academic. Of course, many parents will be bad choosers
initially, just as they are with any new product or service, and it will
take at least two or three generations for the cycle of sufficient
motivation (by parents) and high skill learning (by children) to go full
circle.
Because the bulk of our children are permanently deprived of the
opportunity of being the pathfinders into whatever job society will emerge
as the present one stalls and declines, then any other discussion about
jobs, or the nature of jobs, or the nature of non-job activities is largely
redundant.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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