[ExI] The Catholic Impact (was Re: Origin of ethics and morals)

[Stefano Vaj]

On 23 December 2011 09:41, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:

> Slavery economies have the problem that the leaders lack the incentive to
> innovate, the rigid structure makes entrepreneurship hard, and the human
> capital of the rest of the population is used very inefficiently (since it
> is hard to get creative output on command). This remains true even if the
> system is not direct slavery: rigid, protectionist systems where citizens
> have no opportunity to do things for themselves will also tend to stagnate.
>

I was in fact referring to a more trivial and immediate effect.

Let us say I am a textile entrepreneur, and my decisions are commanded only
by economic optimisation according the classical economic theory. If a
cheap, abundant offer of manpower is available, the rational decision to
increase production is emphatically not that of purchasing a loom, let
alone engage in risky R&D programmes aimed at developing one, but simply
that of putting more weavers at work.

Conversely, If weavers are expensive and scarce, the pressure to do the
opposite is high. And quite notably, when I equip my weavers with the loom,
they end up being individually more productive than they would be
otherwise, so allowing me to pay them a higher wage. And this of course
makes for a higher demand of textile products.

This is why I suspect that injections of wage or non-wage immigrant slaves,
as indesirable as they may be for entirely different reasons, do really
very little for wobbly economies, unless perhaps in the very short term.
Let us say, not much more than does heroin for the cure withdrawal symptoms.

-- 
Stefano Vaj
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