THE FUTURE OF MONEY Bernard A. Lietaer - library.uniteddiversity ...

that his factory workers could buy it, he put in motion a virtuous
cycle between more can, more workers, more cars, more workers.
Jobless growth may very well turn this virtuous cycle into a vicious
one, operating in the other direction. Every time people are laid off,
or are forced to reduce their income, they are going to drop out of the
market for at least some of these great new widgets that the
corporations keep producing. Even if each corporation is better off at
each step, the total market pie is shrinking, so cumulatively we may
suddenly find everyone worse off, even the corporation itself.
The fact that this is a global game further complicates the picture.
Plants that are being built in the Third World use technologies, which
are just as effective as those applied in the First World. And a decade
of 'structural adjustment' policies implemented by the International
Monetary Fund have stripped away many of their skimpy social
safety nets as well.
Keynes’s foresight
John Maynard Keynes, in his Essay on Persuasion, predicted over
sixty years ago with remarkable foresight that a time would come
when the production problem would be solved, but that the
transition was likely to be a painful one:
If the economic problem [the struggle for subsistence] is solved,
mankind will be deprived of its traditional purpose. [. . .] Thus for the
first time since his creation man will be faced by his real, his
permanent problem [...] There is no country and no people, I think,
who can look forward to the age of leisure and abundance without a
dread. It is a fearful problem for the ordinary person, with no special
talents to occupy himself, especially if he no longer has roots to the
soil or in custom or in the beloved conventions of a traditional
society.