Steven V Johnson wrote:
Insofar as developing new forms of employment to counter dwindling jobs within the manufacturing sector it seems to me that a more down-to-earth as well as economical approach would be to create jobs in the service, entertainment, and particularly within a growing number of higher skilled labor fields.
This is what many experts recommend. I cannot judge the wisdom of it, since I do not know enough about economics. I would only note that we seem to be approaching the limits of entertainment what with TIVOs, the Internet and the Amazon.com Kindle. A person can only watch so many movies per day.
This is similar to what Rifkin suggests in "The End of Work." He thinks we should make more public service type jobs such as teaching or community service. I would call this a modern WPA approach.
Hal Fox thought that cold fusion would bring about so many new technologies that overall it would expand employment, even though jobs would be lost in fossil fuels, wind energy and so on. I doubt it, but I really cannot judge. It would take a massive survey of the economy to get a handle on this. I did a back of the envelope look at in chapter 20 of my book. I read a few books, such as Rifkin, and K. Newman, and a bunch of stuff from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It was enough to convince me that I was in over my head and I am not qualified to write books about economic subjects. Or at most I should write 3 pages consisting mainly of indisputable stats from the Bur. Lab. Stats. showing that lots of people are employed in energy.
. . .I doubt capitalism alone has either the kahunas or vision to finance the educational resources necessary in order to grow a higher skilled labor force our nation desperately needs.
You cannot expect corporations to do this. They are in business to make money, not to provide employment. They employ the smallest number of people they can, and they invest the least amount in education and training they can. There is nothing immoral or untoward about this. Investing more than you need to in employees would be like paying more than you need to for factory equipment.
Periodically you see public relations campaigns in the mass media in which large corporations say "we are here to serve the public" and "we invest in our employees" and so on. If I were a stockholder I would be upset by that. They are here to make money. If they change their mission to "serving the public" or educating employees, the competition will soon drive them out of business. We do not want corporations making public policy or setting education standards. They are supposed to be amoral.
. . . Perhaps such rhetoric labels me nothing more than just another annoying bleeding heart liberal commie pinko socialist, particularly in the eyes of certain conservative republicans.
I am far from being a socialist or Marxist. When he was old, Marx himself said "I am not a Marxist." He meant in the modern sense that had grown up around his works. I have read other people's summaries of Marx. As far as I know most economists consider his work important, perspicuous, and an amazingly good prediction of the future in many ways. At a time when the economy was dominated by small corporations, he accurately predicted the emergence of amalgamated giant ones. He predicted the problem that we now call "becoming a commodity" that drove IBM out of the IBM-compatible PC business. One essential truth from his work is what I expressed above, that capitalism is amoral, and you cannot expect morality or public service to emerge from capitalist competition. This is akin to saying that you cannot expect morality or the purpose of life to emerge from software engineering, carpentry, physics, or evolutionary biology. These subjects have nothing to do with morality. They are valuable in their own right, but you cannot expect more from them then they can deliver.
- Jed
