[p2p-research] Fwd: More on the Supply and Demand Curve
Paul D. Fernhout
pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com
Thu Jul 2 19:12:37 CEST 2009
Stan Rhodes wrote:
> Paul, a quick reply: the assertion that "a specific key assumption of
> macroeconomics [is] (infinite demand for consumer goods and services)" is
> incorrect. You may find it a worthwhile exercise to challenge your
> assumptions using the existing literature out there. Also, no one really
> practices what's known as "classical economics" anymore, although it's not
> always easy to know what good economists DO practice, because it often
> defies easy labeling.
OK.
> Demand curves are for a specific commodity, and are created using data
> (known as a demand schedule). They do not assume infinite anything.
OK.
Any specific pointers to stuff on finite demand as it relates to employment
from a macroeconomic perspective would be appreciated.
> Aggregate demand and aggregate supply models also depend on data, with many
> factors affecting the aggregate demand curve (consumer confidence, money
> supply, wealth, etc). Again, nothing infinite applies.
OK. Then why is the curve typically drawn not touching the X axis?
> I realize you were not intentionally creating a strawman, but wanting to
> think through economic issues.
Thanks. Yes, I really want to understand this, and contribute to our
collective understanding of it. If I am wrong, I am wrong. But I'd like to
see exactly where and how I am wrong, so I can learn from that. :-)
> Macroeconomics tries to use aggregate
> indicators to model economies, but the complexity presents an incredible
> challenge. We're in the midst of coalescing economic theory right now, as
> behavioral and experimental economics smash into previous syntheses like the
> "New-Keynesian" school.
OK.
> Empirical economists seem to know that macro is generally a big fuzzy area.
> While many people profess a particular belief in a particular policy, when
> gently pressed on the empirical basis for models, they seem to admit a lot
> of simplifications and assumptions. Those with reasonable approaches that
> admit these flaws don't receive much public exposure.
OK. I can believe that.
But it may be useful to press those assumptions, to bring them out in the
open, and show when they are wrong, and how alternatives like peer
production (or a basic income or a gift economy or something else) may make
more sense given different assumptions. And it is doing a lot of that. I'm
just trying to press on this one point.
Maybe I won't succeed at that. But someone else might.
But it seems to me that much of any economic research will be handwaved away
as meaningless unless we can point to exactly what conventional assumptions
are problematical when made by economists promoting other approaches (like
globalization or increasing competition or lowering wages or busting unions
and so on).
Alternatively, irrefutable widespread success on the ground will obviously
will have more impact that theory (usually how theories change :-), but that
may be hard to achieve when the ideologically driven hierarchy is fighting
against the change (so, this is not so much like an astrophysics theory,
although even then, unorthodox astronomers get denied telescope time).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halton_Arp
Still, it is the belief in the conventional assumptions and theory and
related ideology that justifies so many repressive scarcity oriented
policies at the government level. For example, organic farmers have trouble
thriving in a market dominated by conventional agriculture that is receiving
all sorts of government subsidies, and those subsidies to conventional
agriculture are driven by all sorts of economic assumptions which various
interest groups then use to sway the politics. By itself, theory is not
enough, of course. But a plausible theory or plausible assumption can be the
gathering point for the political push for change.
> I've never read Marshall Brain's book, but if he presents conclusions from
> some thought-experiment, the assumptions in that experiment should be judged
> independently.
He says stuff like this (from 2003):
http://www.marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
"""
The "Jobless Recovery" that we are currently experiencing in the U.S. is big
news. See for example The Mystery of the 'jobless recovery': "Consider these
facts: Employment growth at the moment is the lowest for any recovery since
the government started keeping such statistics in 1939. The labor force
shrank in July as discouraged workers stopped seeking employment. The number
of people employed has fallen by more than 1 million since the "recovery"
began in the fall of 2001." [ref] The Washington Post notes that we are now
witnessing, "the longest hiring downturn since the Depression". [ref] The
article also notes, "The vast majority of the 2.7 million job losses since
the 2001 recession began were the result of permanent changes in the U.S.
economy and are not coming back." There is no mystery -- the jobless
recovery is exactly what you would expect in a robotic nation. When
automation and robots eliminate jobs, they are gone for good. The economy
then has to invent new jobs. But it is much harder to do that now because
robots can quickly fill the new jobs that get invented. See the FAQ for
additional information.
"""
> The "automation means unemployment" theory has no empirical
> support.
See the above example as the beginning of a refutation. :-)
Certainly history up to the last decade or so often supports your point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment
Still, in the USA, some people say we are now at 15% to 20% unemployment by
1970s standards. With no end in sight for rising unemployment. The economy
may come back, but maybe not the jobs, as a "jobless recovery".
If about 2% of workers farm, and about 12% of workers manufacture, where is
the room for growth in those types of jobs?
All we have left for job growth is services. (Unless everyone takes reduced
work-weeks, which is unlikely in the USA given the way benefits are structured.)
And *anything* that can be done from a desk or over the phone or through the
internet can be off-shored now. And soon, it may be done more and more by a
computer-based artificial intelligence. The fact that a lot of people in
India speak English and are willing to work for low wages by US standards
has been holding back some investment in AI in the USA, same as how illegal
immigrants (often Mexicans) working for low wages has held back agricultural
automation in the USA. But that is all changing, as computers are slowly
starting to produce better results even cheaper that paying people below
minimum wage.
In my opinion, and that of many other technologists who look at what
robotics can do even just now, over the next two to three decades, there is
no future for most US American jobs -- except maybe for some hands-on jobs
that are the most difficult to automate like home-health care aids (and
which often pay poorly), for some security functions that relate to humans
being in charge of machines, and maybe a few other niche areas.
Try it. Name ten jobs that aren't easy to automate, and then we can think
about how we could automate them or redesign the system so they were not
needed. I'll suggest no one here could name ten paying jobs that are not
conceivably automatable or could not be designed around in the near future,
at least as far as replacing 90% of the current workers in that field.
For example, even most home health care aids could be replaced if people had
a basic income and so could help neighbors and relatives more. Or most home
care aids could be replaced by improved technology in various ways, whether
better diapers or advanced robots:
"Nursebot Says Sit Up and Eat Your Nice Jell-O "
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-06/machines-heal?page=
Japan is pushing the envelope on these health care robots in part through
xenophobia; the USA instead brings in foreigners as cheap health care
workers. In either case, there is pressure to keep those wages down. In
fact, if the wages for many things in the USA like agricultural labor or
meat packing had not been kept down by illegal immigration, those jobs might
have been automated long ago.
Can anyone explain and cite references as to why the obvious statement that
automation (and improved design) destroys jobs at this point in our society
is not true? Yes, people can point to earlier cases where it was not true,
but I am talking about the last decade or two, where we can clearly see
saturation of demand and diminishing returns on increasing consumption, at
least in the USA.
I'd suggest the case is more like that the USA is bulging at the seams from
too many material goods and services. Is the USA like an obese Mr. Creosote
about to blow up, as shown graphically in Monty Python's "The Meaning of
Life"? :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Creosote
Warning: this is an incredible gross video clip of Mr. Creosote, even if it
may be an accurate assessment of the implications of the US economic
system's logic of ever expanding production and consumption: :-)
"Mr Creosote (Monty Python)"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlK62rjQWLk
If anyone can cite sources as to why rising productivity through automation
and improved design does not *eventually* destroy jobs and lead to mass
unemployment in a global market, then we will probably be talking about
infinite demand again. :-) Which is my point. It's basic mathematics. If
productivity continues to rise, then there is less need for workers if
demand is fixed (assuming a fixed population size). Only if you create
demand for some new thing that does not replace some old thing will there be
more jobs. But human attention is limited.
As I wrote this I see Michel's post mentioning Roberto Verzola making a
related point in January, which I can wonder if I saw back then and stuck in
my unconscious mind somewhere:
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/roberto-verzola-finite-demand-makes-relative-abundance-possible/2009/01/31
In reality, psychologically healthy people stop eating long before they
explode like Mr. Creosote did. But, the argument that increasing
productivity does not destroy jobs assumes we will all be Mr. Creosotes in
some or all sectors of our lives forever -- and without exploding. Even if
it is conventional wisdom, and even if the facts have seemingly upheld it so
far taken across the entire economy even as agriculture and manufacturing
have imploded, it would seem like an economic argument that goes against
basic common sense would need some significant obvious easily verifiable
justification?
Related google search:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=automation+destroys+jobs
Example search result:
"Automation a bigger deal than offshoring?"
http://news.cnet.com/Automation-a-bigger-deal-than-offshoring/2100-1022_3-5611742.html
"""
"Offpeopling" may be the latest turn of phrase to describe job trends, and
it's the focus of a blog launched Friday. Consultant Richard Samson argues
that the replacement of human workers by technology is a bigger deal than
the much-publicized offshore trend. And he's turned to the increasingly
popular Web log, or blog, medium to share his views. Dubbed "Automatic
Abundance," the blog is slated to provide alerts on topics such as tasks
that are shifting to machines, income opportunities that are relatively safe
from automation and emerging business ideas consistent with the trend. "It's
happening every day, right before our eyes, but few notice," Samson said in
a statement Friday. "A child born today will find very few of today's jobs
in the want ads when graduating from college. Most work tasks done now by
people will be done by smart technology within 20 or 30 years."
"""
Looks like the blog mentioned there has not been kept up to date:
http://www.eranova.com/aa.html
But Marshall Brain's has:
http://roboticnation.blogspot.com/
and at the top of it right now is a robot grape vine pruner:
http://roboticnation.blogspot.com/2009/04/autonomous-grape-vine-pruner.html
Just think about the implications of that video. You see a vision system
using stereo imaging to create a 3D model of arbitrary plant structures and
deciding where to prune the vines. That is a real system working in a real
field on real plants (even if it is still a new system, and may have issues).
Let's look at the history.
Job destruction has happened in US agriculture, over the past 200 years,
going from about 80% of the workforce to 2% of the workforce (plus
industrial support, which may be another 2%?).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_United_States
And that is even with now feeding most of the grain and soybean output to
cattle and other animals, where it is wastefully transformed to animal
protein at anywhere from a three-to-one to ten-to-one ratio. Otherwise US
farmers by a recent estimate could feed over two billion people just by
themselves. If meat consumption had not risen (along with a lot of ill
health effects), we would need practically no farmers needed in the USA
(less than 1%). As well as a lot less doctors. :-) Or, about two million
farmers in the USA and elsewhere could be feeding seven billion vegetarians.
So, obviously, food production is not an issue in today's society from a
work point-of-view -- only food delivery and transformation and politics are
problematical. And agricultural work for most of those vegetarian calories
more and more means sitting in an air conditioned tractor listening to music
while the tractor drives itself:
"Cutting Alfalfa on GPS"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-yR-XQ6GGs
"Tractor Tunes™ UTV Stereo System "
http://www.cabelas.com/prod-1/0056139523288a.shtml
Even Africa could feed the world by this standard:
"Africa alone could feed the world "
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227143.100-africa-alone-could-feed-the-world.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
All those starving African children? Just a tragic result of the politics of
a scarcity-focused word view, enforced using post-scarcity weapons
technology, including promulgating mainstream economics through
universities. People have long known you can grind up rock for fertilizer:
http://remineralize.org/joomla/
Granted, for food production to be sustainable, it would need to be done
differently, but that really is not that much more labor intensive than
twice what we do now or so. Sustainable agriculture is just less profitable
in the short term, for the extra effort required to rebuild the soil or
doing more knowledge intensive organic production or return sewage to the
soil in an organic way (like the Chinese have done for 40 centuries). But,
why should we not do agriculture in a more sustainable way if most people
like to be around growing plants and most people were otherwise unemployed?
There are a lot more people now who want to farm than can (because of the
high price of buying a farm, and the undesirability of working for someone
else for low wages competing against illegal immigrants and farm automation).
Job destruction has happened in US manufacturing over the past 50 years,
going (in round numbers) from about 30% of the workforce to about 10%
(granted, some of that was offshoring, otherwise it would be, guessing,
15%). From a 2001 report (manufacturing is even lower now, and the figure of
19% there is for more than manufacturing):
http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/cm20030124ar02p1.htm
"Over the course of the 20th century, the composition of the labor force
shifted from industries dominated by primary production occupations, such as
farmers and foresters, to those dominated by professional, technical, and
service workers. At the turn of the century, about 38 percent of the labor
force worked on farms. By the end of the century, that figure was less than
3 percent. Likewise, the percent who worked in goods-producing industries,
such as mining, manufacturing, and construction, decreased from 31 to 19
percent of the workforce. Service industries were the growth sector during
the 20th century, jumping from 31 percent of all workers in 1900 to 78
percent in 1999."
Even there, the fact that unemployment did not decrease more is mostly due
to a huge increase in the number of consumer goods the average family has
stared in houses twice the size of the 1950s, along with multiple large
personal vehicle (cars, boats, snowmobiles), as well as massive exports to
other countries as they rebuilt after WWII or they rebuilt (or built) after
Colonialism. Still, digital fabrication is getting so cheap, it is becoming
the next big hobby, with digital sewing machines, RepRap, CNC routers, and
so on. And hand tools of all sorts are very cheap -- things with remarkable
blades and long life motors and great balance, even cordless tools.
Ironically, the executives who only push paper around in corporations go
home on weekend and putter about with tools in their workshops and gardens.
So, two examples of historic job destruction. Granted, service jobs have
replaced those job losses. But what is the future of the service sector in
the age of the internet? Service jobs are a place where peer-production
shines -- either in a free information commons or in doing reciprocal
physical things like cutting each other's hair, or doing other services that
can be more easily bartered as they entail little per-transaction material
costs.
The text below was written around 1991 by Juliet B. Schor:
http://users.ipfw.edu/ruflethe/american.html
"Since 1948, productivity has failed to rise in only five years. The level
of productivity of the U.S. worker has more than doubled. In other words,
we could now produce our 1948 standard of living (measured in terms of
marketed goods and services) in less than half the time it took in that
year. We actually could have chosen the four-hour day. Or a working year of
six months. Or, every worker in the United Stares could now be taking every
other year off from work-with pay. Incredible as it may sound, this is just
the simple arithmetic of productivity growth in operation. But between 1948
and the present we did not use any of the productivity dividend to reduce
hours. In the first two decades after 1948, productivity grew rapidly, at
about 3 percent a year. During that period worktime did not fall
appreciably. Annual hours per labor force participant fell only slightly.
And on a per-capita (rather than a labor force) basis, they even rose a bit.
Since then, productivity growth has been lower, but still positive,
averaging just over 1 percent a year. Yet hours have risen steadily for two
decades. In 1990, the average American owns and consumes more than twice as
much as he or she did in 1948, but also has less free time. How did this
happen?"
Industrial productivity has probably almost doubled again since 1991 between
automation and improved designs, suggesting people could live a 1948
standard of living on a two-hour work day for just the able-bodied adult
males in the society. Granted, parenting and housekeeping still takes a lot
of work, stuff not usually considered in economic figuring, but even that
can be rethought, and sadly has, with TV and school and video games and the
internet replacing a lot of parenting by parents and socialization by
neighbors.
Why have we not seen massive unemployment then in manufacturing beyond the
workforce dropping by about one half during that time period? Part of the
reason is that advertisement, exports, and rising expectations have all
propped up demand. But each have reached the point of diminishing returns,
or even collapse, as people begin to embrace voluntary simplicity and a more
conscious lifestyle, or simply just find they have enough stuff, and the
bigger problem is getting rid of it.
http://www.freecycle.org/
Economics professor Richard Wolff explains another aspect of that here, that
real wages have not risen since the 1970s, with instead the money going to
corporate profits which are then loaned to workers instead of given as pay:
http://www.capitalismhitsthefan.com/
So, we've seen a rising debt burden and rising work hours to keep this
economy going this long, and consumption is still falling behind production,
thus the economic contraction now as capitalism hits the fan.
We have reached the end of what is reasonably possible on using advertising
and other social pressures to increase consumption (even as it may still set
preferences between two alternatives or shape attention in other ways). We
are at the point where, for those with jobs, consuming more stuff has gone
beyond the point of diminishing returns, where it has negative benefit, like
with Mr. Creosote, displacing healthy human relationships and exercise and
experiences in nature and "free time".
In the USA, as a society, we have become like Mr. Creosote, ready to explode
from all the abundance of material stuff which we have consumed instead of
having healthier social peer interactions. And for those without jobs, they
often have too much stress from that situation to enjoy their free time, and
they are stigmatized or have no access to social networks that often revolve
around work or school.
Our economy and society is now collapsing under the social problem of all
this. But at the same time, mainstream economists are oblivious to this
problem it seems, just suggesting it will all fix itself and get back to the
way it was with some new jobs, maybe with a little government stimulus to
bridge the gap until the good times (for economists) come back. Granted, we
have let our physical infrastructure go in the USA, and there is a need for
producing more green energy, but even all that won't really change much of
this in the long term. If the US was not spending so much on war and school
and prisons, all to destroy abundance in practice whatever their stated
goal, we might have seen this social crisis even sooner.
Many of the happiest countries have much less material goods than the USA,
equivalent in overall consumer goods more to a 1940s US lifestyle.
http://www.thehappinessshow.com/HappiestCountries.htm
So, it would seem the USA has long passed the point of diminishing returns.
Or from:
http://travel.yahoo.com/p-interests-27761674
"According to a 2005 editorial, published in the British Medical Journal and
written by Dr. Tony Delamothe, research done in Mexico, Ghana, Sweden, the
U.S. and the U.K. shows that individuals typically get richer during their
lifetimes, but not happier. It is family, social and community networks that
bring joy to one's life, according to Delamothe."
So, as the rest of the world increases production and wealth, and the US
gradually exports less (already we see that with the failure of the US
automotive industry), and other countries like China also eventually export
less, we will see the entire notion of industrial jobs change. Some graphics
on the global situation and predictions of rising global abundance:
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_on_poverty.html
OK, so agricultural jobs are gone. Manufacturing jobs are going. What does
that leave? Service jobs. But informational jobs want to be peer production
in a free commons. What is really left as "jobs"? Almost all the new
"service" jobs in the USA don't pay well, have poor working conditions, and
have no benefits (stuff like waitressing), and the ones that are better tend
to be working for government involved in what Jane Jacobs called
"transactions of decline".
http://www.zompist.com/jacobs.html
Here is a list I put together last year. Consider who could pay for goods
and services based on job income in thirty years, if robotics continues to
develop just at the current rate over the last thirty years.
Check out clerks?
"Your supermarket cashier may not know a kiwano from a tamarillo, but
Veggie Vision does."
http://domino.watson.ibm.com/comm/wwwr_thinkresearch.nsf/pages/machine399.html
Cab drivers?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge
Heart Surgeons?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuitive_Surgical
Airline pilots?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot
Nurses?
"Robot nurse escorts and schmoozes the elderly"
http://www.thematuremarket.com/SeniorStrategic/Robot_nurse_escorts_schmoozesthe_elderly-5260-5.html
Entertainer?
"AKIBA ROBOT FESTIVAL 2006: Actroid Female Robot"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbFFs4DHWys
Athlete?
http://www.robocup.org/
Migrant agricultural labor?
"AgBo Agricultural Robot"
http://www.used-robots.com/articles.php?tag=1790
http://abe.illinois.edu/faculty/T_Grift/publications
Librarian?
http://www.google.com/
Artist?
"robot artist draws portraits"
http://technabob.com/blog/2007/12/28/robot-artist-draws-who-it-sees/
Designer?
"Evolutionary Design by Computers"
http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/P.Bentley/evdes.html
Miner?
"Could Robots Replace Humans in Mines?"
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12637032
Writer? (Well, these need a little work. :-)
"SCIgen - An Automatic CS Paper Generator"
http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/
"General Writing / Plot / Story Generators"
http://www.eqretrofit.com/zmc/writing.html
If conventional economics continues to hold sway, there will be a massive
push to continued automation because it will eventually be cheaper, as the
prices of computing falls. But, there is already a problem from a jobs
perspective. We're already shutting down automotive companies in part from
having too many good cars in the USA. How many cars does a family need?
You'd be right to point out many of these automation attempts are works in
progress. But it is pretty clear that for most jobs, it is not a matter of
whether automation can do it, but *when* automation will be cheaper than
people (or whether it will be socially acceptable). And even before the
automation fully replaces people, it will let one person produce even more
and even faster, as they either use a machine to amplify their abilities or
supervise multiple machines doing most of the work. Thus, for example, we
are seeing many US manufacturing firms grow without adding staff. For
example, they might implement a Kiva system:
"Warehouse Robots at Work"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWsMdN7HMuA
One comment: "We have these where I work. I love them! They are amazing, oh,
and we didn't lay people off either, it just boosted our efficiency. They
really are neat to work with"
But how many very efficient mail order company fulfillment houses do we
need? So, eventually, this means job loss in the less-efficient
non-automated firms, which just go out of business destroying all the
company's jobs. Plus, once you put in a Kiva system, why not start thinking
about automating picking stuff out of bins and sticking it in shipping
boxes? It's only a matter of time. It would save on air conditioning costs
and then the facility could run twenty four hours a day.
If there are infinite jobs to produce infinite goods, this is not an issue,
because infinity makes all things possible. There would be a job for every
able-bodied person who wanted one if there was infinite demand (although
many jobs might still entail boredom and the low wages of competing with
machines in a race to the bottom). But if there are finite jobs producing
finite goods, then automation (of both goods production and services) will
mean widespread job loss eventually, once other trends, like rising global
expectations supporting US exports, play out. And this also has implications
for peer production, because peer production will need to compete against
heavily automated production requiring a lot of capital up-front.
But, to be clear, I feel job loss is a good thing for our society -- as long
as we make social changes to accommodate it (basic income, gift economy,
peer production). I'm not against automation in that sense (although I might
ask, how do we want to automate to have a secure and democratic and joyful
society? Automation can produce alienation.)
"Automation"
http://www.history.com/encyclopedia.do?articleId=201866
For example, increasing abundance would mean our society can restructure
jobs into more enjoyable forms as play or to be done at home as hobbies
(aspects of peer production relate to this).
> Unemployment is not positively correlated with automation at all.
Obviously, we can see a direct microeconomic correlation. You put in a robot
welder, you don't need a human welder, and presumably, maintaining the robot
takes a lot less effort than a human doing welding, otherwise it would be
more expensive and not used.
The issue is, is there a macroeconomic correlation of automation and
unemployment?
Please, if you could show that in the last ten years, it would be
persuasive. But, I'd suggest, if you can, there will be other factors like
globalization and wage disparities and rising expectations in other
countries that make this true.
For an economy like the USA, looking just within the borders, I'd suggest
this is just not true.
Even with exports, consider:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobless_recovery
"""
The Current Population Survey [1] aggregate data is provided below to
examine the United States long term employment creation by decade. [2]
Population growth [3] is displayed for relevance to evaluate Employment
Growth. [4]
1950's
Population Growth = 11,516,000
Employment Growth = 7,215,000 (62.65%)
1960's
Population Growth = 19,449,000
Employment Growth = 13,862,000 (71.27%)
1970's
Population Growth = 30,811,000
Employment Growth = 21,224,000 (68.88%)
1980's
Population Growth = 20,865,000
Employment Growth = 17,685,000 (84.76%)
1990's
Population Growth = 21,667,000
Employment Growth = 16,998,000 (78.45%)
2000's (to Mar. 2009)
Population Growth = 26,254,000
Employment Growth = 5,137,000 (19.57%)
"""
These figures suggest that we have reached the saturation point for goods
and services in the USA, and so increasing productivity is seriously
affecting employment. Granted, one has to consider trade issues. But the USA
is still one of the top two exporters of goods. So, manufactured goods like
toys from China can't explain all this difference (though it explains some).
By older standards of unemployment (like from the 1970s), the USA is now at
15% to 20% unemployment:
http://minnesotabudgetbites.org/2009/05/29/u-s-unemployment-at-16-according-to-wider-measure/
"The U-6 unemployment measure counts the unemployed, underemployed and
marginally attached workers. This more comprehensive measure puts national
unemployment at 15.8% – significantly higher than the official unemployment
rate."
> When people are free to work on other projects because of automation, they
> work where automation isn't possible or economical.
Such as where? Being an airline pilot? Being a heart surgeon? Being a
warehouse forklift operator? Being a waitress? Being a home health care aid?
As I suggest above, all those can be automated and are being automated or
being redesigned out of existence.
And the remaining "knowledge worker" jobs want to be peer production in open
commons for the most efficiency. Otherwise, we are just creating artificial
scarcities of information to prop up an obsolete scarcity-based economic model.
> There are many ways to
> crack this nut, so you may want to consider attempting to disprove Brain's
> claims, and see if such attempts bring additional insight. I don't mean
> Devil's Advocate, but true investigative skepticism, rooted in uncommitted
> curiosity.
These are the facts, as I see it.
* US unemployment is approaching 15% to 20% by 1970s measurements.
* US health as a society is already failing from too much stuff (even as
many in the USA still have too little, like no access to health care).
* Other countries like Greece are having riots related to youth
unemployment, since older people hang onto jobs better than the young can
get them (given the kind of things young people can do are often more easily
automated).
* The trends point towards increasing automation and better design and thus
increasing unemployment (short of war to destroy abundance).
* The economists you see in the mainstream media deny or spin all this.
You can't have abundance if demand is infinite, because abundance means
having more than you need or even want. So, whether demand is finite (or at
least grows more slowly than productivity) is a central issue in thinking
about peer production, a basic income, a gift economy, or any other
alternative. If you agree that demand is finite (even if large), then mass
unemployment follows logically from rising productivity eventually -- we are
only then discussing when demand saturation happens for most things. I'd
suggest, in the USA, we are long past the point of diminishing returns for
most people, and the world is rapidly catching up.
--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
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