--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> Minor point: it's not about the production of a
> physical object -
> services can be "productive" in this view. The
> transportation of
> vehicular components can be productive. The
> transportation of people
> to visit grandma isn't.
>
[WS:] But what the operational criteria to distinuguish between productive and unproductive services? Is transporting people TO work productive? How about transporting them FROM work? And how about transporting them to a hospital if they are injured at work, or to a factory-owned holiday facility to give them some rest from work, and thus make them more productive in the future? And how about transporting components of tanks, rifles, or for that matter, marble statues to adorn the mansion of some rich capitalist schmuck? Is that a productive or unproductive labor.
The SNA rule - for market rather than own consupmtion - provides such an operational rule, but it inlcudes transportation for a fee, regardless of who is being transported and for what purpose.
A more intersting approach to this problem is the Genuine Progress Indicator http://www.rprogress.org/sustainability_indicators/genuine_progress_indicator.htm which adds the value of certan non-market (under the standard SNA approcah) activiti8es (such as volunteering), and subtracts the value of transaction costs (such as pollution, crime or resource depletion). This approach provides good operational rules to identify what is productive and what is not. That is to say, it provides empirical criteria to distinguish betwen productive and unproductive transactions.
Wojtek
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