So today reading the thread about the worker strike in Chicago got me thinking. What do we as a society do when the marginal value of a person becomes negative?
A few bullet pieces to clear up what I'm talking about:
By "value" I'm referring only to quantifiable values, primarily how much a person can produce by working. Also I would include less tangible but still quantifiable metric like parents caring for children, volunteer work, etc.
I do believe that as human being we have some higher moral/ethical value, but that is not what this thread is about.
By marginal value I mean the change in value for adding one additional person. So that would be the value produced by adding one additional person minus the associated costs of adding one additional person
For those with some math we can more easily write this as U(p) where U is the total output value of a particular society and p is the number of people in that society. I am asking about what it means and what we do when U'(p) < 0.
For generality we can assume that the average person p, is healthy, able bodied, and willing to work. Also we can assume she has some skills, but no specialized training or skills.
Now this person is a drain on society, through absolutely no fault of their own. They work hard, they don't consume excessively, etc. But there being alive brings down the society and actually makes it worse.
If you pay attention both Liberals and Conservatives offer different arguments, but both vehemently claim that the marginal value of a person is in fact positive. Despite circumstantial evidence it may not be now (and it's certainly reasonable to imagine it won't be in the future). Liberals argue that it only appears this way because the "rich" are grabbing all the value by exploiting the poor, while Conservatives argue that when people fail to find success or add value it's because they are "lazy" or otherwise brought it upon themselves and are undeserving.
What if they are both wrong and we reached a point where full employment (or something close) is simply not economically efficient, because production and value can be maximized with some much smaller percentage of the people in our society. Leaving many not just without jobs, but permanent drags to society.
Then what do we do? Create a massive unsustainable welfare state? Reduce the standard of living until it's cheaper to pay people sweatshops than keep machines running? Just let it happen and watch callously as starvation evens out the population again?
I have no idea, but I started thinking today and felt like sharing.
A few bullet pieces to clear up what I'm talking about:
By "value" I'm referring only to quantifiable values, primarily how much a person can produce by working. Also I would include less tangible but still quantifiable metric like parents caring for children, volunteer work, etc.
I do believe that as human being we have some higher moral/ethical value, but that is not what this thread is about.
By marginal value I mean the change in value for adding one additional person. So that would be the value produced by adding one additional person minus the associated costs of adding one additional person
For those with some math we can more easily write this as U(p) where U is the total output value of a particular society and p is the number of people in that society. I am asking about what it means and what we do when U'(p) < 0.
For generality we can assume that the average person p, is healthy, able bodied, and willing to work. Also we can assume she has some skills, but no specialized training or skills.
Now this person is a drain on society, through absolutely no fault of their own. They work hard, they don't consume excessively, etc. But there being alive brings down the society and actually makes it worse.
If you pay attention both Liberals and Conservatives offer different arguments, but both vehemently claim that the marginal value of a person is in fact positive. Despite circumstantial evidence it may not be now (and it's certainly reasonable to imagine it won't be in the future). Liberals argue that it only appears this way because the "rich" are grabbing all the value by exploiting the poor, while Conservatives argue that when people fail to find success or add value it's because they are "lazy" or otherwise brought it upon themselves and are undeserving.
What if they are both wrong and we reached a point where full employment (or something close) is simply not economically efficient, because production and value can be maximized with some much smaller percentage of the people in our society. Leaving many not just without jobs, but permanent drags to society.
Then what do we do? Create a massive unsustainable welfare state? Reduce the standard of living until it's cheaper to pay people sweatshops than keep machines running? Just let it happen and watch callously as starvation evens out the population again?
I have no idea, but I started thinking today and felt like sharing.
