Sandwichman, I marked this then was overcome with computer problems and the holiday season. Please excuse the delay. Just one point concerning your dismissal of "aphorisms". Classical Political Economy begins with two assumptions - as do all sciences begin with assumptions. Bertrand Russell sagely suggested that two assumptions are better than sixteen. I suppose the more assumptions you have, the greater risk of error. The two major assumptions of all sciences may be; "There is an order in the universe." "The mind of Man can discover that order." The two assumptions of Political Economy are: "Man's desires are unlimited." "Man seeks to satisfy his desires with the least exertion." Arthur asked where these assumptions came from. I replied "observation". The first tells us why Man acts, the second describes why we advance. To deny the assumptions, all one need do is come up with exceptions - one exception. Interestingly, the first suggests there can be no such thing as unemployment. Yet, most of contemporary economic discussion seems to assume that unemployment is inevitable and we must find work for people. Yet, the second suggests that we don't want work (we want the results). Therefore, the present policies to find "work" for people are peculiar, to say the least. It also explains why so much of the welfare state is shot through and through with essentially criminal activity. (One of the Republican points in the new Congress is that $100 billion in criminal extravagance could be recovered from Medicare alone.) Anyway, those two assumptions begin the study of Political Economy (which has little to do with politics, by the way). Don't dismiss them. They are very useful. Harry ****************************** Henry George School of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 (818) 352-4141 ****************************** From: Sandwichman [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Friday, December 24, 2010 9:36 AM To: Keith Hudson; RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Cc: Arthur Cordell; [email protected] Subject: Re: [Futurework] A Robot Stole My Job Economics can provide useful tools for thinking about issues but those tools can also be misused and transformed into ready-made answers that enable us to avoid thinking about issues. One of the tell-tale danger signs that this is happening is when an analytical perspective gets reduced to an aphorism and the aphorism becomes an article of faith. "People's desires are insatiable." "Automation creates more jobs than it destroys." "The amount of work is not fixed."
People's desires are indeed "insatiable" but not necessarily for things produced and traded in the market. To a certain extent, material goods can be substituted for spiritual desires. For example, war can be substituted for piety. But those substitutions are often pathological. There is indeed a limit to how much we can poison ourselves. Death. Automation creates more jobs... perhaps. but to paraphrase H.L. Mencken "which jobs? and in what order?" It is instructive to trace the origins of the aphorisms. The "creates more jobs than it destroys" cliche appears to originate in the 1930s. The first sighting I can locate states, "science creates many times more jobs than it destroys." It's in the proceedings of the annual convention of the Association of Life Insurance Presidents. The full statement reads, "The mere fact that all European countries now support four times the population that they had, or could in any way have supported in 1800, is proof enough that in the long run science creates many times more jobs than it destroys.." Uhmmm. Raise your hands all those who believe that quadrupling the population is still a good ides. See what I mean? Context counts. The amount of work is not fixed? Is that a theoretical truth or an empirical one? U.S employment in September 2010 was 200,000 less than it was in December 1999. Does that mean the fact is a fallacy? Bill McBride at Calculated Risk says its a "lump of labor fallacy" to think that older people remaining in the workforce past retirement take jobs that might otherwise employ young, unemployed people. What's the history of the fallacy claim? I have commented in an open letter to Bill McBride in "Older Workers and the PHONY Lump of Labor Fallacy <http://ecologicalheadstand.blogspot.com/2010/12/older-workers-and-phony-lum p-of-labor.html> " at Ecological Headstand. On Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 11:54 PM, Keith Hudson <[email protected]> wrote: But we're already fast entering a different situation. The cost of energy (as a proportion of personal expenditure) is now rising remorselessly, there have been no uniquely new consumer goods for the past 30 years or so, and automation is now biting into mass employment (and thus also forcing down average real wages for the past 30 years). We (in the West) are now becoming as securely locked into our present urbanized way of life with all its limitations as all well-developed agricultural cultures were locked into theirs in Eurasia and Central America. -- Sandwichman
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