Rob Schaap wrote: >For what it's worth, Tom, I think your essay on neo-classical assumptions, >measures and prescriptions as the miserable multiplication of misery >(iatrogenic) is bloody wonderful. - snip, snip - >Thanks, Tom! And thank you, Rob. I hope your kind words will encourage others on pen-l to have a look at http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/satanic.htm and, if they find the narrative there interesting, to recommend it to others. For my part, I have been systematically notifying the economics faculties of the English speaking world of the URL of my -- dare I say irritant? -- essay. I've started with MIT, Harvard, Chicago, Stanford, Princeton, Cambridge and LSE. Here is one reply from a Stanford recipient: "Please discontinue sending me rubbish." In a more serious vein, here is another reply I received that is sincere, amiable and yet eerily impervious to the implication of the peculiar narrative that I recounted in my essay: >Dear Mr. Walker, > >I think there is indeed a misunderstanding about the lump-of-labor >fallacy. > >A perfect statement of the fallacious argument is in the "Iowa City >Declaration" I found in your "Timework" website: > >> Increased labor productivity, unless accompanied by shorter hours, >> tends to displace workers from employment in productive enterprise. >> The result is higher unemployment or increasing employment in low-wage >> occupations. > >This is perhaps better called "the lump-of-output fallacy" because it >assumes that that there is only so much to produce and that if >productivity increases, total hours worked decrease. But there is an >obvious alternative: production may increase and total hours stay >unchanged (and, of course, anything in beetween). What actually happens >is an empirical matter, to be judged on a case by case basis. > >I remember reading somewhere (I think it was in a book by Prof. >Pasinetti) that the social function of technological progress is to >create unemployment. It is the function of economic progress to put >those unemployed factors of production to work and produce those goods >that we were too poor to afford before. Of course, one of these "luxury" >goods could (and in many case should) be leisure. > >I fully agree with you that it would be wise for society (especially US >society; the EU is in better shape on this regard - though in much worse >shape about unemployment) to move towards fewer working hours. I believe >that in many cases there would be efficiency losses in having fewer >working hours per week, but I do not believe that fewer working hours >per year would be a technical problem. > >Alas, this problem seems unlikely to be solved - paradoxically, for the >same reasons why the opposite problem of motivating couch potatoes to do >something useful with their lives will be unsolved. It is just too hard >to change people's preferences - though, on the other front, Madison >Avenue seems pretty good at that. > >Sincerely, [Name withheld] regards, Tom Walker http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm
