[extropy-chat] economics of scarcity to economics of plenty

[Eugen Leitl]

On Sun, Oct 30, 2005 at 08:59:11PM -0800, spike wrote:

> Jack, why is full employment defined as success?  Is not
> the goal to have machines do our work, freeing us to do
> whatever we please?  That is what I would call economic

That assumes that whoever owns the machines pays for
your leisure. I'm not sure how this is supposed to work
without imposing lots of taxation, and I don't recall
you liking taxes. 

> success, even if everyone does not achieve it.

Current redistribution of wealth across the global
economy has resulted in effective reduction of wealth
in old industrialized countries *for the working class*
since the 1980s. Effectively, all these folks have to 
work more for less (of course, the growth in the rest 
of the world more than compensates for
that). At the same time wealth concentration continues
to occur, with total overall growth, but losses in the
bottom parts of the histogram.

Question is, what's going to happen when this equilibrates,
and the developing and developed meet somewhere in the middle?
And which technology will materialize (or fail to) to overthrow
this nice Malthusian projection?

(I haven't got the foggiest. I hope someone here can
comment).

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.leitl.org
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