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> Society is built from people producing economic output. That's a very idealistic image. People producing economic output are a not that large fraction of soc
by scotty79 3y ago
> Society is built from people producing economic output.
That's a very idealistic image. People producing economic output are a not that large fraction of society.
There are a lot of people in the society who are useless or harmful from the point of view of economic output. Military, advertising, retirees, children and full-time learners, significant fraction of bureaucrats and political class, successful rent seekers. They are all part of society. I don't have the numbers but I think, altogether they are majority.
- rmbyrro 3y agoIsn't that a cynical view of society?
- scotty79 3y agoDoesn't mean it's wrong. Besides, it only sounds bad if you care about economic output and give it a moral value.
- mping 3y agoIt's woefully short sighted, as it misses the long-term prospect of economic output, as most classes of people you mentioned provide some economic benefit in one way or another. Cynicism should be precise, in my opinion.
- scotty79 3y agoYou can swing to the opposite end of the spectrum and argue that everybody is economically useful indirectly to the point that any meaningful definition of economic utility is gone. I think emotional opposition to what I wrote comes mainly from the fact that people tend to give moral valuation to economic usefulness. If you are not useful, you are bad. And since they don't want to think about large amount of people as bad, cognitive dissonance arises and forces them to extend the definition of economic utility till they feel comfortable again. Till they narrowed down the amount of bad people to fit their comfortable world view. I think much healthier way is to say that economic utility and morality are orthogonal and it's perfectly fine that retirees or learners don't have economical utility without any additional justifications. This approach allows making moral judgements more freely and accurately. In this framework, being economically useful can't be used to cover immoral behavior and lack of usefulness can't be used to stigmatize perfectly harmless people or even those useful in other ways.
- mrkeen 3y ago'Economic output' might be too specific a term for an outsider like me to wield accurately. Elder care, child care, education, health, etc. are all services that benefit society. I don't mean to complain about people who need those services. The military and politicians have their roles too (though I bristle at 'policital class').
- scotty79 3y agoI didn't mention care. Care is beneficial. But saying that the reason for care is economically beneficial gets very close to broken window fallacy.