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Just last week, the new United States director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, told Congress that instability caused by the global economic crisis had become the biggest security threat facing the United States, outpacing terrorism.
PeakOil is You
THE Unemployment Thread pt 2 (merged)
Re: Rise In Jobless Poses Threat To Stability Worldwide
by ReverseEngineer » Sun 15 Feb 2009, 01:28:12
Basically, "Rise in Joblessness" is Newzspeak for being left hung out to dry in a society in which the distribution of resources to the masses is dependent on money distributed out through "work", wherein work is really just producing lots of goods people don't really need. The excess production of goods and services people don't really need is an artifact of the Capitalist system.
About ALL the things the Japanese and Chinese produce in their factories, from the Plasma TVs to the Wiis to even my precious Laptop aren't really necessary for survival. Really, if you just honed it down to the food production apparatus, maybe 1% of people need to be employed to feed EVERYBODY, and that would be including all the folks moving the food around thru the transportation system.
So the question is, if you don't really need people to work for the most part to produce enough food for them to eat (and as long as you aren't producing all the other flotsam and jetsam of the Oil age, what we have left will produce food for quite some time to come), HOW do you distribute out said food to the people if they don't have to WORK for it, and in fact CAN'T work for it because there are no JOBS anybody wants to pay them to do?
Resolve this question, and you will go a long way toward resolving the problem of Joblessness and the Social Unrest it will be causing here in the near future. Its not the Joblessness, its the lack of money to buy food that is the problem.
Reverse Engineer
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ReverseEngineer - Intermediate Crude
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Re: Rise In Jobless Poses Threat To Stability Worldwide
by Fredrik » Sun 15 Feb 2009, 07:43:03
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ReverseEngineer', 'S')o the question is, if you don't really need people to work for the most part to produce enough food for them to eat (and as long as you aren't producing all the other flotsam and jetsam of the Oil age, what we have left will produce food for quite some time to come), HOW do you distribute out said food to the people if they don't have to WORK for it, and in fact CAN'T work for it because there are no JOBS anybody wants to pay them to do?
The government must intervene and set up an alternative system where jobless people are assigned other tasks. Refuse to work at your assigned task, and you'll get no food stamp. That's the only viable option I can come up with - and I'm no socialist.
It would be easier if we could start reforming the current system immediately with a broad social consensus, without having to go through stuff like revolutions, civil wars, anarchy etc.
"Only scarcity and effort make life worth living."
"A fundamental, devastating error is to set up a political system based on [individual] desires." -Pentti Linkola
"A fundamental, devastating error is to set up a political system based on [individual] desires." -Pentti Linkola
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Re: Rise In Jobless Poses Threat To Stability Worldwide
by gt1370a » Sun 15 Feb 2009, 11:12:51
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ReverseEngineer', 'T')he excess production of goods and services people don't really need is an artifact of the Capitalist system.
About ALL the things the Japanese and Chinese produce in their factories, from the Plasma TVs to the Wiis to even my precious Laptop aren't really necessary for survival. Really, if you just honed it down to the food production apparatus, maybe 1% of people need to be employed to feed EVERYBODY, and that would be including all the folks moving the food around thru the transportation system.
About ALL the things the Japanese and Chinese produce in their factories, from the Plasma TVs to the Wiis to even my precious Laptop aren't really necessary for survival. Really, if you just honed it down to the food production apparatus, maybe 1% of people need to be employed to feed EVERYBODY, and that would be including all the folks moving the food around thru the transportation system.
How do you figure that's an outgrowth of capitalism?
I find your selection of "excess" goods interesting. I would argue that those things do have added value in that they improve standard of living, albeit going from a 720p plasma TV to a 1080p isn't much of an improvement - anyway, my point is that what I would consider "excess" would be all the bs accountants, admins, techs, etc. who have to run around pushing paperwork to comply with government regulations like tax requirements. It seems to me that most of the truly "excess" jobs have been created by the government, with the express purpose of increasing employment and tax revenue.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')o the question is, if you don't really need people to work for the most part to produce enough food for them to eat (and as long as you aren't producing all the other flotsam and jetsam of the Oil age, what we have left will produce food for quite some time to come), HOW do you distribute out said food to the people if they don't have to WORK for it, and in fact CAN'T work for it because there are no JOBS anybody wants to pay them to do?
The solution will be more of the same. The government will create more useless jobs, which will further reduce real productivity. Taken to the extreme, we could follow the East German model, where anyone who was unemployed was paid to put on a uniform and march by the Berlin wall. Of course you see how well that turned out, East Germany no longer exists as it failed and was taken over by its capitalist counterpart. But anyway, how many millions could be employed by building and patrolling walls along the canadian and mexican borders? How many "jobs" could be created by outlawing overtime, going to a 30-hour work week, banning the use of machinery to replace manual labor, etc. Hell, we could pay people to ride stationary bikes hooked to the electric grid. The problem is, none of that improves productivity or standard of living. But it does solve the government problem of "unemployment" or your problem of coming up with a mechanism to allocate food.
The other alternative would be the Chinese model - "do this or we will shoot you in the head."
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gt1370a - Coal
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