Re: The Pentagon and Poverty

["Barry Brooks" <barrybrooks@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

  Paul Davidson wrote:

>then isn't it a terrible drain on resources to leave
>resources idle -- especially labor resources which simply cannot be carried
>over with little "user cost" of wastage till the next accounting period.

Should you go home and open cans to keep you can opener busy? The waste of spoiled food would be much worse than the imagined waste of a can opener waiting to be used again. Human labor is no different. Producing too much will reduce our wealth.  We can continue to waste scare natural resources to avoid the "waste" of idle labor, but that is not sustainable.

Some people believe that labor is scarce and natural resources are abundant, but really resources are increasingly limited and labor is increasingly surplus due to automation. Now that we have machines we don't need everyone's full labor, but the existence of surplus labor has been obscured because we have been able to waste enough to keep most workers busy, so far. Should we continue to waste scarce natural resources to keep all workers busy?

Culture Bound Attitudes Prevent Reform

Does life has any meaning other than being productive? For most workers "Employment" is not just a matter of economics. It's a matter of being a member of society, of individual satisfaction and identity, of being human.

Some of our values need to change to adjust to our new circumstances. The values we cling to were appropriate until recently. Now, we face great pressure to address the limits to growth. The greatest obstacle to building an efficient and durable world is our attitude toward work.

Social values are consistent with circumstances in societies that prosper. Before machines and resource scarcity more work would bring more wealth. Today we need full employment only because of wage dependence. The production of goods and services could be much more efficient if we didn't make the use of all human labor one of our goals.

No one has said that those who need to or want to can't work as much as they want. People can work, even if its just busy work that doesn't waste our scarce resources or pollute this little planet. What about all the unpaid work, like motherhood that could be done properly if people weren't too busy being wage slaves? If human dignity hinges on work why not give unpaid work its due respect? Must money be involved for work to be good?

If dividends are worth fighting for why is welfare so bad? Do we earn our livings, or do we just take the wealth of nature with an automated system? Should wages be the only source of income in an efficient and automated economy?

We have lost sight of the goal of economic activity. It is to provide goods and services. Any work that may be involved is just a means to an end.

We have let the means become the end.

The answer to our economic problems is to start thinking about what we want and how to get it. I don't think we want to squander our natural wealth just to avoid taxing the rich, but that's just what the consumer economy is all about.

To the mind of an economic-macho dependence is bad. No one is completely independent, but the virtues of what limited independence is really possible do not make dependence bad. For those fortunate few who refuse to accept the responsibility of helping the little people it is very easy to excuse greed and cruelty by claiming that helping people is bad for them. They believe that any help for the bungled and botched would only create more dependence. Redundant workers aren't just lazy, they are seen as the cause of all the world's problems. Of course the idle rich aren't lazy or dependent at all. This insane individualism doesn't just seek personal egotistical independence; it seeks to destroy the evils of cooperation and altruism everywhere. The insane war on dependence may protect the rich from taxes, but what will protect them from the travails of a collapsing world system which they are blind to? Macho-economics makes the reforms that could really protect the machos impossible.

Must we base our self-respect on being useful? We love children, but not because they are useful or because they make a profit. We even love the idle rich. We have plenty of other values to guide society without having an attitude based on the belief that he who doesn't work belongs on the street in a box. Dependence is not bad; it is unavoidable. The idea of being self-made has limited application in realistic thought. Do we earn our livings, or we we just take the wealth of nature with machines? Is unearned income good for the rich but bad for the poor?

We need some quick ethical evolution. It may be hard, but we can take a different attitude. After all, the stakes are sustainablity or disaster. Are we just going to fight for the dwindling space, water, air, and oil? There is another way. It would be much better to address these issues now. Physical laws will not change, but we must. We can change and we will, sooner or later.

Barry Brooks
http://home.earthlink.net/~durable/