[vixin]

'With industrial society, on the other hand, we work as much as possible because it is labor that gives us money. '.

Labor doesn't give us money. Creation of value in goods or sevices (as perceived by others) which may or may be accompanied by proportionate labor provides us with money. Marx, a clever man, nevertheless made this fundamental mistake.

[grondilu]

Exactly. That's basically the one thing the author fails to acknowledge. Money doesn't magically appears from labor. It results as a voluntary exchange between a worker and a employer. There's no "capitalistic system", unless you consider "economic freedom" to be a "system".

This also shows that labor still is connected to needs, despite what the author claims. Somebody wants something done, finds someone willing to do it for money, and they make a deal. Nothing new under the sun, except our society is much richer in needs of various forms which might explain why the author has the feeling our "pace of lives" is much more intense than "that of our grandparents".

Overall, this article is full of communist FUD : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt

[panarky]

"Economic freedom" is a loaded term that carries a lot of unexamined ideological baggage. It presumes without evidence that unconstrained markets allocate resources better than regulated markets. It's a strongly held belief that is impervious to experience.

Since "free" is better than "unfree", naturally economic freedom must be better than any alternative, right? But word games like this don't shine much light on what actually works in the real world.

What happens when free-market ideology meets the real world? Let's compare the labor markets in Germany and California.

The German minimum wage is about $10.78 at current exchange rates, 20% higher than California's recently increased minimum of $9.00. Germany has far greater and more intrusive regulation. German taxes are much higher. In almost every way, California has greater economic freedom than Germany.

What are the results of California's relatively greater economic freedom? California's economy produces a few more billionaires than Germany does, which benefits a small number of people. But the vast majority of Californians are worse off than Germans.

The unemployment rate in California is much higher than in Germany. More Californians want jobs but can't find them, or are working part-time when they want full-time work. Millions of Californians don't have health insurance or retirement security. More Californians than Germans are homeless, living in their cars, or in abandoned buildings, or on the streets, or in shelters. More Germans get at least four weeks of paid vacation per year than Californians.

Where is the empirical evidence that "economic freedom" delivers better results for more people than other systems? On the contrary, free-market ideology seems to create extremely good outcomes for the few at the expense of the many.

[notahacker]

>There's no "capitalistic system", unless you consider "economic freedom" to be a "system".

"Economic freedom" is merely an emotive label applied to certain aspects of the current system, which is defined as much by people being unable to use underutilized economic resources without contracting with other parties as it is by there being relatively few restrictions on the nature of contracts and associations that might be made. An economic system in which people didn't have to contract with "owners" in order to use their surplus land or equipment or fork their codebase is arguably more "free" (though in many respects likely to be less productive). Trivially and infinitely replicable software is substituting for elements of expensive physical capital as much as for human labour, and the necessity and defensibility of IP is a concept subject to rather more challenge that the concept of working for a living.

I'd agree with you that the author is well wide of the mark on the assumption the useful services we can provide other humans are being automated away. That argument, along with labour-based theories of surplus value, and the idea of self-sufficient communities feels dated rather than futuristic now.

[guard-of-terra]

"Money doesn't magically appears from labor"

Tell that to job creation programmes. Our society is built on assertion that they do.

[zo1]

Well, creating jobs means that money get's given to those that get those newly created jobs. Now, I agree with the OP's assertion that it's kinda ridiculous to claim that labor automagically creates money. But the end result in this case is that money spent on "job-creation" is money that is given (or if you want to go further, redistributed) to those that got the jobs.

I think that we've somehow, as a society, been convinced in thinking that state-intervention needs to "create" jobs because industry won't do it by itself. That's the assertion we need to fix/educate about, not the one that job creation means more money, as you claim.

[fennecfoxen]

No, not all (or even most, or even much) of our society is built on that assumption in this day and age, thank God. The era of the New Deal and Soviet Russia, maybe.

[ThomPete]

Creation of value doesn't even give us money anymore. Money are now days created to keep the system stable. There are far more money in the system than there have been value created.

When a bank for instance in Denmark lends you 300.000USD it actually ads 300.000 to the economy out of no where.

We live in a world where there is no direct correlation between the value of goods or services and the creation of money.

[gusfoo]

> When a bank for instance in Denmark lends you 300.000USD it actually ads 300.000 to the economy out of no where.

No - it does not. You have completely misunderstood how money works. There are two entries in the ledger, not one. The credit of 30K and the liability of 30K which together cancel out. The only surplus comes from interest and fees.

[fennecfoxen]

No, he's actually right. Banks create money and it's totally a well-known recognized widely-accepted economic phenomenon, and it is trivial to look up the logic -- use Google.

The thing to criticize him on is the idea that the money is "not related" to the economy. If you borrow $300,000 USD, it's precisely because you plan to use that money to make a difference in the economy. Moreover, broad statistics are available on price stability, tracking the value of money against a value of a basket of goods like the "consumer price index". Most years the value of the dollar is stable to within 2%. If you actually want crazy uncorrelated money-creation in USD you'll have to go back to the 1980s.

[ThomPete]

Yeah I might have overstreched on that claim. What I meant to say is that it's increasingly uncorrelated.

[zo1]

He's referring to Fractional Reserve Banking, have a look at the wiki page for more info:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_reserve_banking

[ThomPete]

Sorry but I am not wrong at all. That is exactly how the system works.

[fennecfoxen]

> There are far more money in the system than there have been value created.

Poppycock of the highest order. The US economy generates about $16.8 trillion a year. Its wealth is estimated at ~$120 trillion. M2 is about $11 trillion.

[ThomPete]

What is that proving?

[namenotrequired]

Adam Smith did too, to an extent. He realised that wealth is not money but value, but did argue for labour as starting point of value.

[zo1]

Which I can understand, because it's only in recent years where labor and value have gotten quite obviously disconnected. To the point such that we've got quite a lot of data points to assert that the theory doesn't hold true anymore.