People are fundamental to the economy. Now there is a very shallow deception in economics, where capital is equated to money, and people pretend that there isn't a huge difference between specific infrastructure and specific factories versus a huge pile of cash. The financial people encourage this thinking. I've even noticed people will insist you can't invest in a country if you don't have access to its currency, which doesn't make any sense. Obviously, it is convenient to have access to local currency, but you can put actual capital goods on ships and bring them to a foreign country if necessary. Otherwise America (and it's currency) wouldn't exist.
A similar deception is happening with people. There is no economy without people. Steve Keen points out the current system has, as a large component, entrepreneurs replacing labor with capital- again, with the help of financiers. So they'll borrow money to pay for automation and get rid of laborers, but the laborers are also consumers, so this eventually cause a drop consumers being able to buy anything.
But people, it's worth remembering, play all the roles, not just labor. A robot worker, robot boss, and robot banker do not make an economy.
So, even when couples want to have children, there will be a certain level of non-procreative sex, just by accident if nothing else. You just can't manage a 100% procreative environment, and, even if you could, I quite suspect the relationship would dry up and blow a way.
Thus we can see why, especially during good times, people will generally be more tolerant of non-procreative sex, and perhaps not make distinctions. But at a certain point, distinctions will be made, and people will notice the vast amount of assets being aimed toward non-procreative sex as essentially wasteful.
And they will be right.
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