No problem, Tom. Your posts are always richer than mine and thus
welcome.
Gene
On May 8, 2008, at 7:18 PM, Sandwichman wrote:
Hey, wait a minute! My reply to Doug was redundant. Gene had already
raised the points I was trying to make. Doug's quote from Gene was out
of context and thus his "reply" to that decontextualized snippet was
gratuitous. Sorry, Gene.
On 5/8/08, Sandwichman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 5/8/08, Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On May 7, 2008, at 11:02 PM, Eugene Coyle wrote:
Technological progress destroys, doesn't create jobs.
It can destroy jobs or create them. Railroads, cars, telephones,
airplanes,
and computers all created far more jobs than they destroyed.
This is about half right. Some tech progress creates the potential
for
new markets for new commodities. But demand for those new commodities
is not intrinsic, it has to be learned and often massively subsidized
with public works spending (e.g., on paved roads, airports). It is
the
effective demand for the new products that creates jobs, not the
technology itself.
Also, the debate about technology creating/destroying jobs is
distorted by reification of what technology is. Technology consists
of
both the skills and the tools -- things and social contexts. The
social is primary. You can have tech progress by finding new ways to
use existing tools but you can't have it by using new tools in the
old
way.
The most elemental technologies of capitalism consisted of imposing
new social arrangements -- increasing the hours of work to accomodate
factory production and then limiting the hours of work to accomodate
expanded reproduction and intensification of the work process.
Ultimately technology is about saving time (wealth is disposable
time... "and nothing more!"). The things Doug mentioned, railroads,
cars, telephones, airplanes, and computers are all supposed to save
their customers time. Whether or not they actually do so is a
question
that needs to be asked but rarely is.
When technologies actually create jobs does that mean they are
"make-work" projects? If so, do proponents of technological progress
thereby commit the make-work (closely allied to the lump-of-labor)
fallacy?
--
Sandwichman
--
Sandwichman
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