I can understand giving them jobs, no matter how menial the work is, but isn't that just another form of welfare? I guess you could call it feel good welfare since you require them to actualy do some work for the money no matter how menial it is. Seems like it is a misallocation of labor. And it points up the fact that as a society becomes more productive and hence the living standard goes up, education becomes ever more important.
So as productivity increases, you need to come up with more and more junk and gadgets to make or find more worth while things for people to do. Interesting to note that it takes two parents working these days to make ends meet. Of course look at the standard of living compared to 20-30 yrs ago. The decision was made, even if not consciously to increase the standard of living by working harder. Eventually prodcutivity will catch up and we'll be able to maintain the standard of living while working less. Eventually you will see the idea of a 40 hour work week give away. Isn't that the idea, the "dream" behind nano technology. One day there will be these little invisible machines that magically do all the work. We just sit around an reap the rewards.
Here's a wild idea. What if long, long ago somebody already invented "nano technology" and it's now a days known as bacteria and viruses. It was working just peachy keen until one day something went wrong or maybe while everybody was sitting there with their feet up on the desk they forgot the part about to maintain such a society at such a high standard of living, you also have to maintain a very high level of education. Or maybe your "barbaric" neighbors decided to use them against you. Oops.
But that brings up another interesting point on what is truely valuable in a society. Richard Russell (I thought I would tie this back into the stock markets) might have one believe it is gold. After all it maintains it's "value" and is the one "true" money, whatever that means. Of course if you are on a desert isle and you have a pile of gold and the one other person on the isle a pile of food, something tells me you're going to starve to death before you get any food for that gold.
It would seem to indicate that what is truely valuable in a society is knowledge. What throws people off though is that the knowledge that is valuable is CONSTANTLY CHANGING. What was very, very valuable knowledge 200 yrs ago could be worthless today. It could be so worthless it has become forgotten. So Zeev like Edison is in the right business, the knowledge or invention biz. Interesting tidbit. Edison never really got rich off of his inventions. He was always spending his money on new ideas, and the business side of things rarely worked. He finally made his millions in the cement business. He had spent a small fortune and many years trying to get an iron ore biz going in NJ and never really could get it to be profitable. Since he had all this plant and equipment laying around useless, he converted it, and then got the government contracts for all the cement that was needed for the roads all the cars his bud Henry was making.
Shish, I'm starting to feel like Bullwinke. Any minute smoke is going to start coming out of my ears. <vbg>
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