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The parable of the spoons

Our friend the late Milton Friedman once told us a story of being in India in the 1960s and watching thousands of workers build a canal with shovels. Milton asked the lead engineer, Why don’t you have tractors to help build this canal? The engineer replied: “You don’t understand, Mr. Friedman, this canal is a jobs program to provide work for as many men as possible.” Milton responded with his classic wit, “Oh, I see. I thought you were trying to build a canal. If you really want to create jobs, then by all means give these men spoons, not shovels.”
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So why is this funny? It's funny because it forces us to realize that focusing on the worker is wrong. It's production that matters, not employment. If creating more work by not using tractors is good, then creating more work by giving the men spoons is even better. We could even take it a step farther by exchanging their spoons for popsicle sticks.

The purpose of economic activity is to create value, not to create jobs. Labor is a cost, not a benefit.

This is why the political left's policies always fail - they focus on what's best for the worker, instead of production, and production is what's best for society at large.

From this article written last week about the dock worker's strike:

"We got to keep fighting automation and semi-automation," ILA’s leader, Harold Daggett, told a group of workers during the strike outside the Maher terminal in Elizabeth, New Jersey, as they held signs reading "Machines don't feed families" and "Fight automation, save jobs."
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This is the inane "pro worker" position. Labor is a cost, and society is made worse off when this cost is increased. A great example is the US healthcare system. It's an industry full of state-backed labor cartels, which is reflected in the price we pay for healthcare. Nobody would consider the US healthcare system to be a success, but it is a success - for the workers.
 
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aociswundumho said:
This is why the political left's policies always fail - they focus on what's best for the worker, instead of production, and production is what's best for society at large.
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Society would be a lot easier to manage if it weren't for all the people.
 
NatMorton said:
It would seem you're in need of reading both Friedman and Hayek.
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Ah yes, the savants who gave us the neoliberal capitalist model which turned the hegemonic world-conquering US post-war economy into a rat race controlled and directed by international finance and investment capital. The economic model based on infinite GDP growth has given us things all Americans love: deindustrialization & the service economy, consumerism, infinite immigration, welfare capitalism, etc. Perhaps the most ironic part is that, despite conservative rhetoric about Marxism, this form of capitalism has easily been the number one contributor to the decay of the social fabric and undermining of traditional value systems. It has no space for aesthetics, tradition, or the folk -- it has already atomized and commodified those things (ostensibly in the most "efficient" way possible) to increase margins for rich guys who often don't even live here full time.

I very much doubt you could explain how the dogma of free market capitalism compliments your conservative worldview in any way that's actually coherent. I think most conservatives who embrace this line of thinking probably watched Milton Friedman or Ben Shapiro dunk on retarded college kids and immediately took a side, regardless of the broader implications it has for the rest of their ideology and worldview.
 
Mr Person said:
Or that your posts are full of shit, but y'know...both sides n'stuff or something...
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You're in the wrong forum, again. You'll need to defend your arguments if you hang around here, and we know that's not anything you enjoy doing.
 
Gozaburo said:
Ah yes, the savants who gave us the neoliberal capitalist model which turned the hegemonic world-conquering US post-war economy into a rat race controlled and directed by international finance and investment capital. The economic model based on infinite GDP growth has given us things all Americans love: deindustrialization & the service economy, consumerism, infinite immigration, welfare capitalism, etc. Perhaps the most ironic part is that, despite conservative rhetoric about Marxism, this form of capitalism has easily been the number one contributor to the decay of the social fabric and undermining of traditional value systems. It has no space for aesthetics, tradition, or the folk -- it has already atomized and commodified those things (ostensibly in the most "efficient" way possible) to increase margins for rich guys who often don't even live here full time.

I very much doubt you could explain how the dogma of free market capitalism compliments your conservative worldview in any way that's actually coherent. I think most conservatives who embrace this line of thinking probably watched Milton Friedman or Ben Shapiro dunk on retarded college kids and immediately took a side, regardless of the broader implications it has for the rest of their ideology and worldview.
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My, what a turgid lump of nonsense.

No two institutions in the history of man of done more to improve the human condition than have, in combination, democracy and capitalism, and it's not even close.
 
NatMorton said:
My, what a turgid lump of nonsense.

No two institutions in the history of man of done more to improve the human condition than have, in combination, democracy and capitalism, and it's not even close.
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Actually I think the vast leaps in technology and improvement of the human condition can be attributed almost entirely to the industrial revolution and resultant exponential technological innovation. It has far, far less to do necessarily with systems of government or economic policy.

This is what I mean. You're so dogmatically committed to abstract principles and ideology that you regurgitate mind numbingly stupid stuff without even applying an ounce of critical thinking.
 
aociswundumho said:
So why is this funny? It's funny because it forces us to realize that focusing on the worker is wrong. It's production that matters, not employment. If creating more work by not using tractors is good, then creating more work by giving the men spoons is even better. We could even take it a step farther by exchanging their spoons for popsicle sticks.

The purpose of economic activity is to create value, not to create jobs. Labor is a cost, not a benefit.

This is why the political left's policies always fail - they focus on what's best for the worker, instead of production, and production is what's best for society at large.

From this article written last week about the dock worker's strike:



This is the inane "pro worker" position. Labor is a cost, and society is made worse off when this cost is increased. A great example is the US healthcare system. It's an industry full of state-backed labor cartels, which is reflected in the price we pay for healthcare. Nobody would consider the US healthcare system to be a success, but it is a success - for the workers.
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🤦‍♂️

How ironic. The current healthcare system that puts an insurance middleman between you and your doctor is precisely a "jobs program". In a sane world, those many millions of jobs necessitated by insurance companies would not exist. It's inefficient, and drives up costs. It is exactly "the inane "pro worker" position" you're speaking against, and it costs every single one of us.
 
aociswundumho said:
So why is this funny? It's funny because it forces us to realize that focusing on the worker is wrong. It's production that matters, not employment. If creating more work by not using tractors is good, then creating more work by giving the men spoons is even better. We could even take it a step farther by exchanging their spoons for popsicle sticks.

The purpose of economic activity is to create value, not to create jobs. Labor is a cost, not a benefit.

This is why the political left's policies always fail - they focus on what's best for the worker, instead of production, and production is what's best for society at large.

From this article written last week about the dock worker's strike:



This is the inane "pro worker" position. Labor is a cost, and society is made worse off when this cost is increased. A great example is the US healthcare system. It's an industry full of state-backed labor cartels, which is reflected in the price we pay for healthcare. Nobody would consider the US healthcare system to be a success, but it is a success - for the workers.
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Those workers can either use those shovels to dig a canal and earn a living and eat or they can use them on the canal owners head because they are starving and the canal owner has money and food.
 
brianpatrick said:
Those workers can either use those shovels to dig a canal and earn a living and eat or they can use them on the canal owners head because they are starving and the canal owner has money and food.
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Which is what the Cura Annonae was created to prevent. Give them panem et circenses instead of shovels and let the tractors do the work.
 
AConcernedCitizen said:
Which is what the Cura Annonae was created to prevent. Give them panem et circenses instead of shovels and let the tractors do the work.
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Yes the other alternative. This is possible with technology, it just doesn’t work with people who don’t like the idea of “freeloaders.”
 
brianpatrick said:
Yes the other alternative. This is possible with technology, it just doesn’t work with people who don’t like the idea of “freeloaders.”
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Aversion to the idea of "freeloaders" and the cultural moral obligation to "pull your weight" and for everyone to work a full time job is what leads to the use of shovels instead of trackers, and folks protesting automation.

If there is inherent value in "working hard" then building canals with spoons is a good solution, since it achieves the end goal of permitting more people to "work hard."

If efficient tools are going to be used to produce more work with less labour for the benefit of society, then society needs a system for the proceeds of the work done by the tools to be distributed throughout that society.
 
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