mck@ratex.UUCP (Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan) (02/10/85)
As far as jargon is concerned, Baba, actually I'm sorry that I have to
resort to jargon, but the alternative is entries of incredible length. All
of my jargon is quite meaningful, and if you get a copy of, say, *The
Penguin Dictionary of Economics* (which can be found in many libraries or
bought at a fairly cheap price) you can readily decipher it. Or you can
post a request for an explanation of a particular term, and I'll be glad to
give it to you (unless it's very complex, in which case I'll tell you where
to find a clear explanation).
Now, I'm sorry about the jargon, but it is meaningful jargon which
communicates honestly. On the other hand, you seem to think that a tone of
mockery (or, as Janet called it, a rhetorical sneer) is a sufficient
argument.
There is no doubt that technology makes some jobs economically
unfeasible; but at the same time it also creates other jobs, and, contrary
to what some believe, the new jobs created are not all jobs requiring
expensive training and unusual talent. For example, the computer
industry, which is the epitome of high-tech, has created thousands of jobs
for basically unskilled workers. The worker who loses in the advance of
technology is the Luddite, the worker who had special skills which earned
him a comfortable living, who never thought to train for the future, who
thought that he had an inalienable right to the job that he had (what the
Randians call 'the Divine Right to Stagnation'), and who discovers that
technology has made his skills obsolete. The Luddite won't admit that he's
really annskilled worker (just as one who spends all his time mastering the
kazoo is an unskilled worker), and insist either that his old job be resurrected
(the original Luddites were textile workers who tried to get their old jobs
back by destroying the machines that had replaced them) or that the rest of
us (which is what is meant by 'society') pay for retraining which will
give them jobs which pay as well -- or that the rest of us just give them
money for doing nothing.
The idea that technology was wiping out jobs has been thoroughly
dealt with many times (but, as Henry Hazlitt noted, a myth is like a blob
of mecury -- you hit it and it just splits into more blobs). Back in the
forties, when it was the Liberal fad to frighten the worker with the
menace of technology, the leading refutation was *The Bogey of Economic
Maturity* by George Terborgh; when the fad came back into vogue in the
sixties, Terborgh dealt with the new myths in *The Automation Hysteria*.
If you can't find either of those, I can direct you to other works.
Or maybe you'll just refer to John Campbell, and think yourself a
great wit for having done so.
Back later,
Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan
Please ignore the previous disclaimer.