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Can someone clarify? I'm not sure what end goal the article is driving at. Are we aiming for more free time? If that's the case, then I fail to see how autom

Can someone clarify? I'm not sure what end goal the article is driving at. Are we aiming for more free time? If that's the case, then I fail to see how automation helps. Companies have incentives to hire as few employees as possible -- it cuts down on administrative overhead, like the necessity of sending out a check to each employee. The result will be as many full-time employees as possible. The workers displaced by automation then move on to make other goods (perhaps napkins) or provide other services, with the same incentives to work full-time, and nobody has any more free time. The end result is just more goods to purchase, which the author seems to have disdain for.

gilgoomesh 13y ago
The article is poorly written. The article starts by talking about pointless consumer spending (convincing people to buy things they don't need). This is a net loss to society. However, the article doesn't make any kind of distinction between pointless consumer spending and wise consumer spending and instead runs off on a totally unrelated tangent about automation (which certainly helps but isn't related to the macroeconomic effects of consumption). The article totally ignores the fact that "wise" consumer spending is a significant benefit to everyone – i.e. when consumers are buying things they need or where the benefit of the purchase exceeds the effort input to earning the money. It also helps progress the economy when consumers are buying products that are new and innovative and make technology or business model improvements.