Wednesday, November 05, 2003
(12:36 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Tips for the jobless economy
It's approaching Thanksgiving time, and all the elementary school kids are getting ready to study the Native Americans again. This year, however, I think that they should take it a little more seriously -- not out of an exaggerated respect for Native Americans themselves, but because the techniques they used to survive in our harsh North American climate may be of great practical use in the future. That's why I've checked out an illustrated children's book on Native American culture from the Bourbonnais Public Library and am committing it to memory. Let me explain my rationale:
During this so-called "jobless recovery," companies are learning a valuable lesson: labor is expensive, and they should try to use as little of it as possible. Those companies that need labor and can't afford decadent Americans can look overseas; those who can't afford Chinese people can hire robots. Marx's infamous declining rate of profit will put us all out of work, and eventually it will even put the robots out of work. Until the robot wars begin, however, we unemployed humans are going to need some method of survival other than relying on the welfare state, which is not "sustainable."
That's where reviving a hunter-gatherer society comes in. Although the buffalo is extinct, it's well-known that there's a deer overpopulation problem. As of right now, most human use of deer consists of weekend amusement and car demolition, and a lot of perfectly good meat is going to waste, not to mention all the cool stuff we could make out of the skins and bones. If the government would just give a bow and arrow and a light jacket to every unemployed person in the union and turn them loose in Northern Michigan, a lot of our nation's problems would be solved.
