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Politics : Actual left/right wing discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (2626)	10/12/2006 11:24:18 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10087

From the talk area of that wikipedia entry This calls to mind another fallacy which probably needs to be written up, but I don't know of a common name for it. It's the fallacy that there's only so much work to be done. I.e., that somebody needs to break a window, so I'll have something to do. The reality is that if windows never broke--because they're made of super space plastic, for example--then the window installers would still have work building new houses. And even if many window installers went out of the window business, they'd still have plenty of work: some would work at the space-plastic plant; some would start installing the new computer-controlled automatic barber machines that are all the rage in 2050...the point is, human desire is infinite, so if we never have to worry about windows again we'll start thinking about new things which were undreamed of before, which are luxuries today, and will be called necessities (indeed, basic human rights) 50 years from now. Unions believe that fallacy when they insist, for example, that buildings continue to employ elevator operators after installing automatic elevators (and don't laugh--I've seen it!). --Len en.wikipedia.org