Daniel Rocha <danieldi...@gmail.com> wrote: How will economy improve if people are simply not buying? And it will be > much more costly. I am thinking about 90% of unemployment. >
Come, come. Why stop at 90%? Think 100% unemployment. Now imagine billions of robotic machines using cold fusion energy to churn out food in food factories, iron from ore in the earth, precious metals from asteroids, self-driving automobiles in unlimited quantities, consumer goods enough to give every person on earth a U.S. standard of living, and enough generators to produce 50,000 GWe (10 times more than we now use). Does anyone doubt this would be physically possible? Even with today's technology plus cold fusion, we could accomplish this, while at the same time we could eliminate nearly all pollution and reduce the amount of space needed for farms and factories by a factor of 100 or more. All of this was predicted by Winston Churchill in 1932, and in detail by Arthur Clarke and others in the 1960s. What you and others seem to be saying is that even though we could accomplish this, we cannot devise a new economic system that would allow it. Building these machines factories would inevitably result in economic catastrophe on the scale of 1929 from unemployment. Or it would result in communist style slavery or gross inefficiency. We can invent the machines, but we cannot reinvent our society or our economy in a way that would make good use of the machines. They would end up causing more misery, suffering and dislocation. So I guess we better not make those machines . . . I say that's nonsense!. People are capable of reinventing technology, society, government, economics, and all other institutions. We have done this time after time. There are no permanent solutions. What works well in one era may not work in the next, so it must be reformed or replaced. But we can always do this. We can be as creative with economics as we are with technology. People say that economics follow iron rules that cannot be defied. Supply and demand, for example. When you introduce a minimum wage, this distorts the system, resulting in less economic efficiency. I say yes it does, but so what? We do not demand maximum efficiency in any other system. Economic laws are like the laws of material strength in building materials. The strength of lumber limits the maximum span of a wooden beam. A house must be designed and built within the limits or it will collapse. However, a house can be less than 100% optimal. It can have frivolous decorations that add weight and contribute nothing to structural strength. It can have more joists than needed, or large windows that weaken the walls. Within the engineering limits of materials we can build completely different kinds of houses, ranging from modern American ones, to Victorian houses, to traditional Japanese houses. The same principle applies to an economy. We can have vastly different kinds of economies. None will be 100% optimal, but they will serve different purposes. Some will work with free human labor, others with slave labor, and still others will work with robot labor. Eventually, we need to make the economy mostly dependent on robot labor, with the output from the labor divvied up to every person on earth. Everyone should get enough to live comfortably. If a small number of wealthy people get far more than enough, that will not matter, as long as they do not cause harm. - Jed
