[UK-AL]

Ok then. Lets follow your idea to a logical conclusion, lets ban companies closing down and merging with other companies to protect jobs and labour.

So now you have unused companies that are not provided any useful service. They are mainly there for jobs for jobs sake. There will be lots of smaller companies with lots of duplicated resources, which could have otherwise have merged and shared resources.

At what point does this become silly?

You might as well pay people to dig giant holes.

If you were able merge two companies, fire people, and get rid of unused assets and still serve the same amount of customers. That means there was massive waste, and the merge resolved that.

[dagw]

No the logical conclusion of my argument is that we as a society have to start accepting that a large number of people will live a large part of their lives without being "productive" and find ways to deal with that.

Also we have to accept that what is long term best for "The Economy" isn't necessarily short term best for all the people in the economy.

I'm not against growth, I'm just against ignoring and refusing to pay the very real human costs of growth.

[UK-AL]

"No the logical conclusion of my argument is that we as a society have to start accepting that a large number of people will live a large part of their lives without being "productive" and find ways to deal with that."

I actually think we are far from that, because human wants are virtually unlimited, so there will always be jobs required for humans in arts/entertainment/engineering. Things that will always require a human judgement.

But lets assume we are? The best way to force action is for it actually happen. If we just create non-jobs to cover it up, politicians will put off doing something about it for a long time.