From: ope-admin@ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu
Date: Sun Jun 04 2006 - 13:36:42 EDT
An intervention from an archives reader follows. / In solidarity, Jerry ---------------------------- Original Message ------------------- From: "Barry Brooks" <durable@earthlink.net> Date: Sun, June 4, 2006 2:50 am ----------------------------------------------------------------- Adopting the common-sense meaning of "consumption" to mean the end of an item's useful life, rather that meaning "use," will eliminate one source of fuzzy economic thinking. Our wealth is approximately all that we ever bought minus all that we ever consumed. Wealth is an amount, while income is a rate. They are connected by durability. (See Herman Daly, "Steady-state Economics) One example: cars produced at 100 per year that last 5 years would finally create and maintain a fleet of 500 cars. That same fleet could be supported by producing only 10 cars per year that last 50 years. At one limit we would have zero cars on the road, while producing a million per year if they had a life span to 10 seconds. The blur of meaning between use and consumption has surely retarded understanding of the importance of durability. Extended durability and population stability (decline) will make inheritance the main source of wealth, someday. This kind of system would have a very high efficiency as defined below. Surplus labor combined with wage dependence means that we must increase consumption, beyond just filling real needs, to make jobs. The proper goal of an economy it to increase wealth; not consumption. We should match the labor to the needed jobs, instead of matching the jobs to labor, as we do now. We can't begin serious conservation so long as people are dependent on wages. We can't do or respect important unpaid work so long as work is just about money. If dividends are good why is welfare bad? Economic efficiency should be use-value/consumption, but we define it as actual-consumption/possible- consumption. The consumer economy is very efficient in its ability to waste and pollute. One can find implied solutions to "impossible" problems in these considerations. Barry
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