Re:What If There Just Aren’t Enough Jobs to Go Around?
by Falkon1313 on Friday July 22, 2016 @03:53AM
(#12142281)
>jobs are the cost of satisfying human economic desires. we want to minimise costs
That's an excellent perspective. There's a major barrier though.
Even if we produce enough that everyone could satisfy their desires and then some with a cost of only 34 minutes work per week (<2% of a 40 hour work week - parallel to the fact that less than 2% of the population now works in agriculture to produce more than twice enough to feed everyone), we would still demand that everyone must work at least a bare minimum of 40 hours or else they don't deserve to live. That's our culture.
But there would be no demand for that work. So what would the people do? And more importantly, why do we demand that they do it? That becomes a philosophical question, not an economic one.
That's an excellent perspective. There's a major barrier though.
Even if we produce enough that everyone could satisfy their desires and then some with a cost of only 34 minutes work per week (<2% of a 40 hour work week - parallel to the fact that less than 2% of the population now works in agriculture to produce more than twice enough to feed everyone), we would still demand that everyone must work at least a bare minimum of 40 hours or else they don't deserve to live. That's our culture.
But there would be no demand for that work. So what would the people do? And more importantly, why do we demand that they do it? That becomes a philosophical question, not an economic one.