KFL%MX.LCS.MIT.EDU@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU (12/16/86)
From: Dave Berry <mcvax!cstvax.ed.ac.uk!db@seismo.CSS.GOV>
this is an article from the latest issue of the Edinburgh
Computing & Soical Responsibility newsletter.
...
What are the options for future employment? The key seems to lie
in the redistribution of the gains we make because of the higher
efficiency. This redistribution can be done in 4 ways:
- Letting market forces do it.
- Using public investment.
- Reducing the size of the active population.
- Shorter working times.
The first option does not work (as described above).
I have read this three times, and I still don't see how this
conclusion can be drawn from what was said in the article. Also,
whose higher efficiency are we talking about and who is to do the
redistributing? Are the two the same? If not, by what right does
the redistributor redistribute the gains of someone else's higher
efficiency?
The second option seems to involve redistribution through
taxation, and using the tax to create jobs.
Robbing Peter to pay Paul.
However, even the most extensive of the Labour Parties
shopping lists does not reach over 3/4 of a million jobs, while
we're looking for something like 3-4 million. Reducing the size of
the active population seems to involve morally unacceptable
actions like sending foreign labour home, or not letting women
enter the labour market.
Agreed. Government should not even have the power to exclude women
from the workplace.
The last option seems to be the most promising. But it does
introduce the conflict between the employed and the unemployed.
Some short term solutions for this problem could be
- a personal benefit for every person, working or
non-working.
Who pays for this? And what right does government have to limit the
workweek? Should people be thrown in jail for working too hard?
- an employment allowance for companies, based on the number
of employees (and not on their labour costs).
Who pays for this?
In the longer term, the solution seems to be to try and organize
our economy on a different ground than the profit-optimization
which is the main basis for our current economic system.
Another conclusion out of the void. What is the alternative to
profit optimization? And who is to do the organization? Who owns
the economy?
And who says that unemployment is a problem? Poverty is a problem.
It often correlates with unemployment, but socialist countries manage
to combine zero unemployment with almost universal poverty. It should
be evident even to socialists and the feeble-minded that if people who
worked are taxed to pay people who don't work, that the net amount of
wealth has not increased. Poverty is conserved. In fact, since those
who work will be less inclined to as hard, since they will receive
fewer rewards for their diligence, and since those who are unemployed
will be less inclined to seek work, since they are being paid anyway,
the level of poverty will obviously increase.
Unemployment can be an opportunity. I am looking forward to being
unemployed someday, so I can devote my time to activities that pay
poorly if at all. With increasing productivity and automation we may
be in transition from a society of workers to a society of investors.
...Keith
-------