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From: wmartin@brl-vgr.ARPA (Will Martin )
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Unemployment Statistics
Message-ID: <3229@brl-vgr.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 4-Apr-84 11:21:03 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-vgr.3229
Posted: Wed Apr  4 11:21:03 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 5-Apr-84 00:56:52 EST
References: <117@wuphys.UUCP>
Organization: Ballistics Research Lab
Lines: 68

Regarding the continuing discussion on unemployment:

For many years I have been hearing and reading much about unemployment,
but nowhere have I read or heard what seems perfectly obvious to me --

a) Unemployment means that there are fewer jobs available than there
are people available to perform these jobs, and

b) Given a continued rising population, and technology developing
BOTH new job opportunities AND more efficient ways of performing
previous jobs,

There MUST come a time when the maximum number of possible jobs is less 
than the number of people to fit into these jobs, because, even though
new technology creates new jobs and new fields for jobs to develop
in, it is at the same time creating labor-saving techniques (automation,
robotics, whatever) that are decreasing the jobs available in the
previously-existing industries.  The TOTAL number of jobs will peak
at some point and then start a steadily-downward trend. (New developments
might cause short-term increases as new technologies and industries
begin, but the efficiency-optimization techniques that have been applied
to older industries will inevitably be applied to these, thus reducing
those jobs also.)

So with more and more people living longer, unemployment is inevitable.

Possible solutions:

a) Fewer people. 

b) Make-work jobs -- industries somehow prohibited from making themselves
efficient. This could only work if it was done world-wide, otherwise you
have the import-protection garbage and foreign undercutting we have seen
in many areas.

c) Redefine work, careers, labor, etc. -- people are changed to expect
not a 40-hour week and a 35-year-plus working life, but working one day
a week or a 5-year career, or some other method of spreading the jobs
among the population. Problems -- productivity related to pay, who pays
for all these "workers", general standard of living; can technology
provide all the goodies we all expect without us working to earn them?

d) Change the nature of work -- the rise of services instead of production.
Everybody takes in each others' washing. Can a society survive on this
basis? [The personnel on ship "B" of the Golgafrinchum (sp?) Ark Fleet, 
if you recall the Hitchhiker's Guide...] You are my butler Monday, Wednesday,
& Friday -- I'm yours Tuesday, Thursday, & Saturday. Sunday we wash our
own backs... This just doesn't make it, intuitively...

Of these possible solutions, I vote for "a", and I've done my part --
I've been sterilized and I have no children.  If I can do it, so can
everyone. Think of all the "problems" we now have that will vanish --
school issues (public vs. private, prayer, etc.) -- no school children!;
crime (most of it is committed by the young); environment -- fewer
people means less load on the ecosystem; energy -- plenty to go around
among fewer people; and so forth.

Objections to this all devolve down to religious issues -- "be fruitful
and multiply" commandments, or a belief in that there is some value in
continuing the human race ("manifest destiny" or "mankind's future 
among the stars", etc.). Obviously, I don't believe this. [Sometimes
I wonder why I enjoy science fiction so much if I don't believe in the
desirability of the future existence of the human race -- oh, well,
I can choose to be inconsistent...]

This ought to start some sort of flamage, I suppose. Have fun!

Will