: "Douglas P. Wilson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[...]
> -- The first line on my home
>page says "Imagine a future world in which it is easy to find a good
>job." Perhaps it would have captured my intentions better if it had
>said "Imagine a future world in which it is easy FOR EVERYONE to find
>a good job."
>
>In a previous message I quoted J.A. Campbell, from a technical book on
>computing: "the central problem in computer science [is] minimizing or
>avoiding the effects of the combinatorial explosions of possible paths
>in a search space." Then I suggested that is also the central problem
>in in labour and employment, and throughout the rest of society,
>wherever matching occurs.
>
[...]
>I had a couple of responses from people who still think there is a
>shortage of jobs, which would make my plan unworkable. I disagree.
>Please let me spell out my plan in more detail.
>First, and most important, don't focus only on the unemployed. As I
>repeatedly say, unemployment is only the tip of the iceberg, the real
>problem is the mismatch between people and jobs. There's an old joke
>which goes:
>
>Q: "How many people work for your company?"
>A: "Oh, about 20 percent of them."
>That's hilariously true: most businesses have a few employees who
>really do their best, and a lot who just put in time. But I don't
>blame the ones who just do the minimum, or say they are just lazy,
>instead I blame the system which has led them to a job they are not
>really suited for. If these employees seem to have an attitude
>problem, it is probably because a job or workplace environment they
>hate has made them embittered and robbed them of motivation.
You have stated that the fundamental employment problem is the matching
of people to jobs, not the lack of work available, yet here you are
arguing against your own thesis, in that you imply that inefficiencies
in job matching mean five times as many people are working as need to
be in order to have our economy running as it does. This further
implies that if employment matching was optimized, we'd have five
times as much economic activity as we now have. As economic activity
is directly linked to generation of pollution, and depletion of non-
renewable resources, it is not at all clear that this is a desirable
outcome, particularly as no where near five times the current level
of economic activity would be required to provide North americans
(for example), with a secure and comfortable existence. It seems to
me what we really want is a society and economy structured in such a
way as to provide the maximum comfort for the population while exerting
the minimum footprint on the ecology. This means that economic activity
per unit population wants to be minimized, within these constraints.
The details of the definition of such a society then must be debated
in terms of what are the degrees of compromise we are prepared to
accept in the conflicting priorities of human freedom, dignity, comfort
and security versus sustainable ecological integrity.
On the other issue, I have no fear of mathematics, nor engineering,
in analysis of social issues. However, I will state categorically
that algorithm-based analysis is inadequate to the task, and most
likely actively deceptive. Nothing less than fullblown simulation
is able to yield a valid analysis, but this is something easily within
reach of current computing power. Systems engineering applied to
the whole problem of economic srtucture is fully mature and powerful
enough to handle the problem, and is long overdue to supplant the
voodoo algorithms of orthodox economic theory.
-Pete Vincent
