Jerry Monaco asked:
> Question: Let us say that the government in Germany employed
> people directly ... from social work to make work .. giving every
> teacher a paid teacher's assistant, building extra schools so that
> elementary schools had only 10 kids per class room, crossing guards
> instead of stop lights, employing people to build and plant roof
> gardens, ... no one doubt that unemployment would go down ... but
> as far as DeLong is concerned this would not say anything about the
> efficiency or inefficiency of "the market." There would be a
> decline in "labor flexibility" and thus all of this social work-
> make work and rooftop gardening would be by definition inefficient?
>
> Somebody explain to me how this works? Perhaps my question isn't
> even coherent?
On the mistaken assumptions about "rational choice" underpinning this idea of "efficiency", it's not possible without self-contradiction to reach the conclusion that anything that's the outcome of "choice" is "inefficient". Individuals who are "rational" in the assumed sense could not rationally choose to do something that created "inefficiency", i.e. a situation where some could be made "better off" without making anyone else "worse off". If the German government does what you suggest, it's not possible, on the assumption that all social phenomena in Germany (including constitutional arrangements, property rights, the extent and nature of reliance on markets etc.) are the product of "rational choice" to conclude without self-contradiction that the outcome would be "inefficient".
A more rational way of evaluating the "efficiency" of economic arrangements - including "flexible labour markets" - is to examine their consistency with meeting the requirements of a "good" life. For example, do they facilitate and make use of the greatest possible development of individual "capabilities", and do they, in this and other ways, provide individuals with the maximum amount of "free time" which, as Marx points out, is "wealth itself, partly for the enjoyment of the product, partly for free activity which - unlike labour - is not determined by a compelling extraneous purpose which must be fulfilled". <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus- value/ch21.htm>
Ted