Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site dciem.UUCP
Path: utzoo!dciem!mmt
From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Martin Taylor's Leisure-Subsidy Plan
Message-ID: <1396@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 14-Feb-85 17:59:35 EST
Article-I.D.: dciem.1396
Posted: Thu Feb 14 17:59:35 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 14-Feb-85 19:13:05 EST
References: 
Reply-To: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada
Lines: 27
Summary: 


>     Given Martin Taylor's leisure-subsidy plan, the economically
>efficacious thing for the worker to do is train for a profession which he
>can expect to soon become obsolete.  Wonderful.
>
>                                        Back later,
>                                        Daniel Kian Mc Kiernan

It might be so.  Is that so bad, if we all benefit from that choice?
Also, there is a flaw in asserting that people normally choose the
"economically efficacious" thing to do.  That's a matter of psychology
rather than mathematics, and people choose what to do for a lot of
reasons. I suspect that most people would choose a job that made them
feel wanted and useful to one that paid substantially more.

On a more theoretical note, this exchange illuminates what I think to
be a serious problem with McK's style of argument.  The assumptions
are clean, the arguments mathematical and possibly correct; but they
don't apply to the nasty real complex world as closely as he would
have us believe.  Logic works well within its realm, but when carried
too far from its foundational assumptions, it can lead to grandly
fallacious results.
-- 

Martin Taylor
{allegra,linus,ihnp4,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt
{uw-beaver,qucis,watmath}!utcsrgv!dciem!mmt