With due respect to Keynes and the benefits of demand stimulation, it would seem that we should move beyond trying to use all available labor and begin to focus on how to employ only the needed labor. Does anyone believe that growing consumption can be sustained? Our present consumer economy uses most labor, but its high consumption rates are at odds with resource stewardship. The high rates of resource consumption needed by the consumer economy not only hasten the trend toward resource scarcity, high consumption rates also increase the pollution which lies behind global warming. The consumer economy is not sustainable, but it is necessary to prevent automation from causing unemployment in a world of wage dependence.
Any activity involves some resource consumption. We all need to consume food, fuel and other perishable goods. The provision of consumption goods is the proper goal of any economic system, but the consumption of durable items is not a proper goal for a sustainable economy. Only a consumer economy, with the goal of increasing consumption by any means, seeks to consume potentially durable items prematurely, as if waste could really increase wealth.
Advocates of the consumer economy must deny the limits to growth, or pretend that increased consumption is consistent with resource conservation, or admit that they don't care about stewardship. No one wants a destructive economic system, yet most people have supported the consumer economy and its use of demand stimulation to create jobs. Belief in the existence of an infinite supply of cheap resources made the consumer economy seem desirable, but today we know that because the consumer economy needs waste to function it will hasten resource scarcity, and it will leave us unprepared and living in a world of scarcity. Support for the consumer economy is falling for good reason.
Since the media made everyone aware of world oil depletion problems, the assumption that we don't need to worry about resource scarcity has been shaken out of most people. Now that we are worried about resource scarcity one question is "What can we do to prevent resource scarcity?" Which is part of the larger question, "What must we do to have a sustainable society?" Most people desire a sustainable society, we know we need a sustainable society, and our engineers already know how to build one. The conflict between increasing consumption to make jobs and reducing consumption to conserve can't be solved. It will be impossible to build a sustainable economy if we fail to reassess the role of human labor in an automated economy.
Some wealthy people, with the ambition and means to rule, cleverly created the consumer economy to provide jobs after world war two, thus delaying the need to reassess the role of human labor in an automated economy. Those people can create a sustainable economy whenever they become justifiably terrified by the consumer economy's inability to reduce consumption rates. Our wealthy rulers must create an new economy that will provide people's needs without making too much pollution and without running out of resources rapidly if they hope to avoid leading us into an age of growing scarcity. They are already so worried about resource depletion that they are willing to use aggression to grab all the known oil resources, but their fear of war is small compared to their fear of reassessing role of human labor in an automated economy. It's interesting how people so often are afraid of the wrong things. Finding more oil, and grabbing more oil, will only delay the need for economic reform at the high cost of increasing world conflict. It would be much better to address the main cause of unsustainablity now, rather than seeking more delay and finding comfort in denial. That cause is needless wage dependence in an economy that already provides unearned income, but only for a tiny minority.
Barry Brooks