At 09:23 22/10/03 -0400, you wrote:
I believe that after WW2 the US adopted a full employment act. Coming out of the depression of the 30s and wishing to guaranty jobs, it became part of national policy. I don't have the citation.
It was more about keeping the political situation stable (this during the time of cold war) and less about creating a consumer economy. The net effect, though, is as Barry says to delay "...the need to reassess the role of human labor in an automated economy. "
It is always about jobs, jobs, jobs and rarely about how to deal with the condition of widespread automation.
arthur
I take the point about "after WWII". However, I was a bit nbothered about the "conspiracy" aspect of what Barry is writing -- "they're" not that clever. The basic problem though is that, as our industrial system becomes more automated, the skill disparity between the necessary high-skill service occupations at the top (researchers, designers, etc) and the (equally necessary) low-skill service occupations at the bottom (street cleaners, etc) is growing will leave a yawning gap of joblessness in the middle at some stage (much of it is disguised at present by being just about containable)-- that is, the hour-glass economy which I've frequently suggested over the years. I think enough evidence has been appearing since I've been writing on FW. So far, all this has been containable by a mass production system (with cheaper and cheaper goods) even though the middle-skill people are now barely able to afford the full gamut of consumer goods that they feel that they *ought* to buy and are deeply in debt (only affordable now by very low interest rates) but, at the other end, the high-skill people are working longer hours, carrying more responsibility and having more stressful lives. They are no longer the consumption-initiators for powerful new products that stimulate the whole economy but mainly spend their excess income on status fashions and embellishments. This can't continue and I think the system is probably close to collapse. How it will collapse I don't know -- there are so many instabilities and potential choke points. My guess is that it will take the form of Europe following Japan into decades-long deflation. America will only be able to escape the same fate temporarily by conjoining its economy with China -- where there are still vast consumer markets able to be filled with the existing range of goods. Together, they will mop up most of the last remining cheap oil and gas. I am beginning to think very seriously that the rest of the world is going to suffer very badly. Hopefully, the US-China complex will also bring about the next energy technology which, if I am right, will be of a dispersed nature ( see my "An utterly different post-industrial society") , able to be taken up world-wide (it will be knoweldge-intensive, not capital intensive) and will hopefully give us a new chance of creating a society that is both high-tech *and* human-scale.
Keith
-----Original Message----- From: Keith Hudson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2003 1:09 AM To: Barry Brooks Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Futurework] The consumer economy terrifies me.
Barry,
The consumer society terrifies me, too, but I believe you are wrong where you write:
At 16:04 21/10/2003 -0500, you wrote:Some wealthy people, with the ambition and means to rule, cleverly created the consumer economy to provide jobs after world war two, thus delaying the need to reassess the role of human labor in an automated economy.Not so, I think. We have been in a consumer society ever since early man started long-distance trading in pigments and ochres for personal adornment 75,000+ years ago -- an imaginative use of possessions in order to exhibit status ranking. The latter is behaviour that is deeply predisposed in the genes of all primate species. This imaginative ability to impute status in almost everything we buy (except food, clothing and basic shelter) is a product of our frontal lobes -- something that other primates have little of. "Some wealthy people" (as you put it) take advantage of this but they are not the cause; it's ever-present in all of us.
The only thing that will check the consumer society is sheer exhaustion of time and/or effort and/or space, and I believe that some societies are already close to this despite the efforts of governments, business and opinion-moulders to promote consumer spending (e.g. in Japan, Germany). Promotion has been much more successful in America and the UK, even to the extent of most consumers being deeply in debt and at the mercy of the slightest rise in interest rates. Here it is likely that their economies will not stagnate but collapse catastrophically. Anytime soon, I suggest.
Keith Hudson
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>, <www.handlo.com>, <www.property-portraits.co.uk>
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