Re:Secret gyms and the economics of prohibition
by baddox on Wednesday August 19, 2020 @01:45PM
(#24213433)
> Things you can't do without.
This gets tricky. Of course we know that when there's a fire, a firefighter is often imminently essential. But it's trickier to imagine a society where all "non-essential" jobs are banned indefinitely. You wouldn't die in a matter of minutes like in the fire example, but you'd also probably find such a society unrecognizable to the extent that you might reconsider what types of jobs are and aren't "essential." There'd be a lot of poverty, a lot of hunger, and yes, it would cause a lot of people to die.
This gets tricky. Of course we know that when there's a fire, a firefighter is often imminently essential. But it's trickier to imagine a society where all "non-essential" jobs are banned indefinitely. You wouldn't die in a matter of minutes like in the fire example, but you'd also probably find such a society unrecognizable to the extent that you might reconsider what types of jobs are and aren't "essential." There'd be a lot of poverty, a lot of hunger, and yes, it would cause a lot of people to die.