The interest of society is not to increase employment - the interest of society is to increase prosperity.

Rounding up all the unemployed people, and forcing them, at gunpoint, to dig ditches and fill them will certainly increase employment, but will not do anything worthwhile for society. (I guess the ones that survive might end up in better shape.)

Having them fix potholes or educate children will increase employment, as well as prosperity. (Setting aside the obvious moral problems of the means by which this took place.)

Rounding them up and putting them into workhouses, where they build things for the benefit of a few well-connected individuals is how we have traditionally done this. It combines the worst of both worlds.

What people forget is that jobs are the means, not the end.

I agree with your point on increasing employment, but I disagree as to the "interest of society".

There is no one interest of society. Even defining prosperity is relative to who is talking. Having the wealthy subsidize the prosperity of the poor is not very prosperous for them.

It's true that society has no particular interest. An ascetic might take issue with increased social prosperity, as would, for entirely different reasons, a workhouse owner.

Capitalism is pretty much defined by placing a dollar value on production and seeking to maximise returns. The inevitable outcome is increasing profits by reducing the costs of production.

There is no “perhaps” about it. There are no policies that will stop a capitalist economy behaving like a capitalist economy.

There’s no rule in capitalism about who wins: the consumer decides who wins when she purchases a producer’s product, picked from the store shelf. The producers of the products we purchase are those who survive, because their income is our expenditures (and their expenditures on wages/salaries is our income).

You could argue that we choose wrong when we go shopping, but ultimately we decide which businesses have an income and which don’t.

I think you're missing the point a bit. It's not about our choice as consumers so much as it is the inevitable end of capitalism as a way of distributing property.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_history#Cap...

What choice do you have when there is only one provider?