Sister blog of Physicists of the Caribbean in which I babble about non-astronomy stuff, because everyone needs a hobby

Monday 23 April 2018

Does everyone need a job ?

Related :
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2015/06/the-time-machine-again-ii.html
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2015/06/the-time-machine-again-iii.html

He gives an example of how our desire to have everybody work full time hurts us. He asks us to imagine that two large factories make pins. These two plants produce all the pins the world needs and employ many people. However, one day an invention comes along that doubles production rates. Russell suggests that:

"In a sensible world, everybody concerned in the manufacturing of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?"

http://bigthink.com/scotty-hendricks/does-everyone-really-need-a-job-why-we-should-question-full-employment

1 comment:

  1. What is the percentage of unemployed people we already have? What is the surplus? What will happen if energy becomes free? How about free transactions?

    ReplyDelete

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