BRYAN CAPLAN
May 7, 2013
Keynesian Bets: What's Out There
May 6, 2013
Keynesian Bets Bleg
May 6, 2013
The Pyramid of Macroeconomic Insight and Virtue
May 2, 2013
A Natalist Provision
May 1, 2013
I Was a Teenage Misanthrope
DAVID HENDERSON
May 5, 2013
John Thacker on Vaccinations and the Sequester
May 3, 2013
Chef Rudy's Virtues Project
May 2, 2013
My take on Reinhart and Rogoff
May 1, 2013
Medicare Kills a Program
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Technically, there may always be comparative advantage, but there are significant costs and risks in dealing with human beings, so cost cannot approach zero, even if wages do.
Still available from Liberty Fund:
The Logic of Liberty by Michael Polanyi
These kinds of ideas raise again:
What are the functions of governments?
Is "Economics" a "science?" If so, what makes it so? Or, are we simply viewing human conduct from a particular perspective?
Even in Medicine, which is the Art of applying "science," we have objective norms for investigations, research, and testing conclusions and conjectures. Where is that to be found in the field of "Economics?"
Besides, there is no government money; there are only levies (taxes) that reduce the funds left to those who produce or serve.
I have a business in a young country. Everyone has a job. The US Politicians would be happy to see busy voters and lack of unemployment.
the employees are mostly useless. they show up and stand around to eat food. In a few hours most employees are gone. Eventually they straddle back in. After a while you quit asking for the stories.
The idea is all about full employment. Everyone has a job. No one asks how a government minister with a $30,000 paycheck can live in a $300,000 home.
Busy people can be happy even if the money means nothing. Only time will tell when they get impatient for something better.
The whole 'humans will be obsolete' thing strikes me as absurd. I think it comes from the lump-of-labor fallacy, where jobs are resources. Jobs become exogenous demand, so machines' productivity crowds out humans.
Of course, if you consider people as resources, it's inconceivable that they will go bidless, becoming useless resources. So, no, humans will never be superfluous.
As for the tiny wages argument, if machines are doing all the other jobs, then productivity rises so high that even underpaid humans live incomparably rich. Sound optimistic? Ask the humans out-competed by the superior productivity of farm-horses.