From: vagans@eanna.net   
      
   On Tue, 11 Nov 2003, j3r wrote:   
      
   >   
   >   
   > In  Sourcerer    
   wrote:   
   > > Ten years ago, in that thread, they thought the unemployment problem   
   > > was limited to people with 'low skill' levels, but now it is everybody.   
      
      
      
   > The problem is, as long as we're stuck on this ball of rock, there   
   > will never be an end to scarcity. (Finite land/air/water and all   
   > that. The French are actually doing surprisingly well, with their   
   > high unemployment and happy, under-stressed people. I suspect that   
   > this is mostly because of the ultra-stressed people who work and   
   > spend like Americans. Really, though, humanity is not ready for a   
   > world where working is something you do when you feel like it. Where   
   > there is scarcity, thee will be an unrelenting pressure driving down   
   > short-term costs. Thus first-worlders will find 3rd worlders doing   
   > their jobs, and 3rd worlders will find machines doing their jobs.   
   > It'll end when there is no 1st or 3rd world, and thus nowhere   
   > cheaper to send the jobs.   
      
   Is it "scarcity" or "finite"? They are not identical. Scarcity is a   
   political and technological problem. That natural resources are finite   
   is just the dealt hand.   
      
   Capitalism requires money. Money is easy enough for the state to create.   
   The problem is getting it into circulation. A bigger problem is   
   maintaining the velocity of its circulation. Post-industrial capitalism   
   manages this thru hyper-consumption, by turning workers into consumers   
   ('middle class working families'). During the early period of 'the   
   consumer society', wages were the way money was got into circulation.   
   But that wasn't enough, so the consumer credit system was created to   
   supplement it. Now, that is not enough, because servicing debt takes   
   more and more of their paychecks and that money has nowhere to go except   
   into speculation, ie industrial capitalism becomes finance capitalism.   
      
   But paychecks are still required for getting credit. Finance capitalism   
   adjusts to this by inhibiting the propagation of technologies, so that   
   1st world people remain employed, and they propagate older technologies   
   to the 3rd world where industrial capitalism prospers (China and Russia,   
   these days).   
      
   What we have just begun to see is the transfer of service and   
   information employment to the 3rd world (former 3rd world, really). The   
   problem for the 1st world consumer is that there is nothing to replace   
   their vanishing jobs, as there was in the transition to a service and   
   then an information economy. There's no employment the workforce can be   
   'retrained' for.   
      
   "...humanity is not ready for a world where working is something you do   
   when you feel like it".   
      
   If so, 1st world states will have to devise a colossal 'make work'   
   program employing several hundred million of its citizens in order to   
   sustain post-industrial capitalism, in essence paying us to consume.   
      
   The "intellectual property" scam, and L. Bob Rifish protocols such as   
   covenants not to compete and non-disclosure agreements are evidence of a   
   will to inhibit technological development, or to hold it very closely   
   which amounts to the same thing.   
      
   --   
     (__)  Sourcerer   
    /(<>)\ O|O|O|O||O||O When all is debt   
     \../  |OO|||O|||O|O All is usury   
      ||   OO|||OO||O||O   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)