Recently I sent out a message called "more on the underlying
combinatorial reasons for unemployment", and the responses I received
seem so bizarre to me that I find it very hard to make a rejoinder.
Nobody addressed the title issue at all.
Jay Hanson said
> This particular planet -- Earth -- already has too many people working.
By how many, Jay? How much MORE unemployment do you want? 10%, 20%
maybe? We all know you think the earth is overpopulated, but putting
people out of work isn't going to solve that, unless they kill themselves
in despair.
Tom Walker said
> No combinatorial solution of the job matching problem can meet the a priori
> condition that it uphold the regime of compound interest ad infinitum.
I really can't for the life of me figure out what the one thing has to do
with the other.
Pete Vincent takes my notion of widespread job mismatch as implying
that if employment were optimized we would have more economic
activity, and then argues against it, because more economic activity
would lead to more pollution and depletion of resources.
I really don't get this at all. Take pollution -- I rather favour a
policy of zero-emission, whereby industries just don't pollute, but
the argument against that has always been economic -- it would be
"too expensive". I also favour complete recycling, whereby all waste
is recycled, but that again has been called "too expensive". And I
favour a massive conversion to the use of solar energy, either
directly through solar cells or indirectly through ethanol from
biomass, but both of those seem to be "too expensive".
Yes, I think we would have more economic activity and more wealth
if employment were optimized, but I see it as a means of affording
clean air, clean water, complete recycling, and drastically reducing
our use of fossil feuls.
There is so much in our society that we just don't seem to be able to
afford, like good healthcare for everyone and better schools. I'm
sure we can afford all of these things if more people are able to find
truly suitable jobs. Is this so terribly hard to understand?
dpw
Douglas P. Wilson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.island.net/~dpwilson/index.html
