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One possibility is to rethink the whole "people need a job to make a living" assumption. Linca challenged it in the comments to this diary. As long as I'm not able to articulate a coherent position around that, I'll stick to unemployment is the problem, capitalism or not capitalism.

tens of millions of people stand to see their lives ruined because the bureaucrats at the ECB don't understand introductory economics -- Dean Baker
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jan 31st, 2012 at 06:52:06 AM EST
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As long as only some people 'need a job to make a living' - while others need people to make a living for them - the problem won't go away.

It's not a simple issue, because our culture is based on economic Social Darwinism, and - apparently - it's important that some people get a lot while others work hard for very little.

My point is that if you stop at the 70s-socialist idea of 'jobs for all' you haven't tackled the underlying issues, and you still have a system that's politically and economically unstable.

If you want a stable system - note how close that is to a sustainable system - you have to build in feedback loops that distribute power and reward intelligent reality-based decision making.

Currently you have feedback loops that reward aggressive selfishness above all other social values.

This is not a good thing. It's not only not sustainable, it actually destroys collective intelligence.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Tue Jan 31st, 2012 at 07:00:01 AM EST
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