“There is no way that at ANY point in the business cycle that productivity undermines our collective wealth.”
This statement may be correct if the discussion is kept sufficiently narrow, but it is close to being meaningless.
Productivity means to make more stuff, or get more stuff done, with less human labor. But what is being substituted for human labor? What effect does the substitution have on the community, on a family, on the ecosystem, on the lives of one’s children, on one’s relationship with God.
Once productivity is put in a larger context (of energy, community, continuity through the generations, earth, God,) then the statement that there is “no way productivity undermines collective wealth” is simply untrue.
Whether or not productivity adds to or subtracts from “collective wealth” depends on one’s vision of life, on how one wants to live, on how close are we to Hubbert’s Peak, and so and on.
Think of a mid-Western farmer working 1000 acres of land and an Amish farmer with 200 acres in a community of Amish farmers. Would you argue that it is ALWAYS better for the Amish farmer to adopt the vastly more productive methods of the mid-Western farmer?
Just to pose the question underscores the sterility and basic irrelevance of the concept of productivity. |
