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

[Mirco Romanato]

Il 23/12/2011 14:37, Stefano Vaj ha scritto:
> On 23 December 2011 09:41, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se
> <mailto: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.

You are not "allowed" to pay them more if they are more productive. In
the long run (and often in the medium and short) you MUST pay them more
because you MUST keep them working for you and not leaving and working
for someone else paying more than you.

This is a "minor" problem that you can make away with slavery. But the
slaves (and the forced low paid workers) usually are not very productive
because there is no advantage in working more than the minimum.

Free men, instead, have an incentive to work more than the minimum
because more they work more they earn. When they work for themselves
they are able to save, invest and consume more (in this order) and this
create a demand for more goodies produced by others and more innovations.

> This is why I suspect that injections of wage or non-wage immigrant
> slaves, as undesirable 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.

And on this we agree. There are government statistics (Denmark for sure,
maybe UK) that show the costs of immigrants for the government are
greater than the profits. They are a net taxpayer's loss.
But, in many ways, they are a source of profits (and votes) for the
bureaucrats and the politicos and their friends and allies. If they
won't there would not be a political will to let them in and let them
stay in.

Mirco