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I don't think that's a contradiction. If there's no more ways to create value, then what work are people going to help others find? If there is no work to be fo

I don't think that's a contradiction. If there's no more ways to create value, then what work are people going to help others find? If there is no work to be found, then those people aren't creating value, either. Why is it absurd? What's your opinion about people that have currently been displaced from their jobs/industry (eg the auto industry), or any other long-term unemployed? Are they just lazy people that haven't found any other ways to create value?

tmoertel 14y ago
Let’s be clear about what we’re discussing here. The author of the original article suggested that efficiency was a problem because it threatened employment. I believe this claim to be false because, as I’ve written in earlier comments, when improved efficiency allows fewer humans to produce the same value as before, the humans who are no longer needed to produce that “old” value are freed to create new value. This will always be so. To see why, imagine the opposite: that at some point in time there are displaced masses who are cut off from society because they cannot create new value. But don’t those masses need and want? Don’t those masses have the ability to do things for one another? Of course, they do. So, in this imaginary future, what’s preventing them from creating new value within their own cut-off society? It’s not efficiency. It’s people. It’s people who have written the game’s rules, perhaps unknowingly, to prevent the displaced masses from creating their own value. It’s the displaced masses, themselves, who demand that society turn back the clocks. And this future is easy to imagine, for this future is already here. Which brings me to your question about the auto industry and today’s long-term unemployed. Efficiency isn’t what’s keeping these people out of work. It’s people: politicians and union bosses who sing sweet lies, the unemployed themselves who believe the lies, and executives who drain value from companies for personal gain. These are real problems that keep people out of work. But efficiency isn’t among them. It’s an imaginary problem. (It does, however, make for a good distraction.)

tmoertel 14y ago

Let’s be clear about what we’re discussing here. The author of the original article suggested that efficiency was a problem because it threatened employment. I believe this claim to be false because, as I’ve written in earlier comments, when improved efficiency allows fewer humans to produce the same value as before, the humans who are no longer needed to produce that “old” value are freed to create new value. This will always be so. To see why, imagine the opposite: that at some point in time there are displaced masses who are cut off from society because they cannot create new value. But don’t those masses need and want? Don’t those masses have the ability to do things for one another? Of course, they do. So, in this imaginary future, what’s preventing them from creating new value within their own cut-off society? It’s not efficiency. It’s people. It’s people who have written the game’s rules, perhaps unknowingly, to prevent the displaced masses from creating their own value. It’s the displaced masses, themselves, who demand that society turn back the clocks. And this future is easy to imagine, for this future is already here. Which brings me to your question about the auto industry and today’s long-term unemployed. Efficiency isn’t what’s keeping these people out of work. It’s people: politicians and union bosses who sing sweet lies, the unemployed themselves who believe the lies, and executives who drain value from companies for personal gain. These are real problems that keep people out of work. But efficiency isn’t among them. It’s an imaginary problem. (It does, however, make for a good distraction.)