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Yes, your last sentence alluded to that. But your whole post was still engaging a strawman. But pointing out a limit in the amount a single person can consume
by winstonewert 10y ago
Yes, your last sentence alluded to that. But your whole post was still engaging a strawman.
But pointing out a limit in the amount a single person can consume doesn't change the essential situation. It simply means that instead of reallocating worker time to different production, people's time is reallocated to consumption.
If those who have jobs have enough money to hit the limit on what they can (or choose to) consume, they will cease working, leaving those jobs to others.
- phkahler 10y ago>> It simply means that instead of reallocating worker time to different production, people's time is reallocated to consumption. Well, people out of work can't really allocate their time to consumption. This is the basis for an argument that we need a shorter work week and a need to enforce it (high Europe, screw you US tech industry). When we are efficient enough to provide everything people want to consume in their 24 hour day and have leftover people without work, we need to make them work less so it will require more people to do all the work. I think there are limits to that as well. These problem all lie on a path to a possible utopia where the machines take care of the people and we're free to do whatever we want. I'm not sure how you get there from here or what that would even look like.
- winstonewert 10y agoYou have pretty much agreed to my point. Its not a matter of running out of work, its a matter of reallocating the work. However, I do not think we will have to force people to work less. If someone has hit the limit of what they want to consume, why are they still working? If there is really nothing more that money can buy, why would they be trying to earn more money?