7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑Thu Jun 06, 2019 4:30 am
Well, not all consumers are created equal, so one easy observation is that it is generally the case that increasing the amount of money available to women of child-bearing age will create net new economic activity.
For example, a lot of money is currently being "wasted" in the ecological-economical system of the U.S. in the attempt to maintain the skin-sac boundary integrity of old wealthy humans for a few extra years, so if this money was transferred to young healthy fertile human females, then the known successful mechanism of simple reproduction would be much more likely to increase the total surface area of human skin-sac boundary, thereby increasing net new economic activity.
In general if we assume Money = Available Energy, then consider the three core effects of increased energy availability:
1) Growth of individual body mass
2) Maintenance of skin-sac boundary
3) Sexual reproduction
Then common sense analysis will reveal that your average Scrooge McDuck is likely "spending too much money" on 2 and also often 1, especially when placed in direct comparison with the likes of Penelope Pureheart, IF that which we wish to maximize is net new economic activity.
That's a way of looking at it. The alternate is to look at how many such women and children, and their fathers, are thriving by working for yacht builders, luxury car manufacturers, landscaping companies, gourmet cuisine providers, cosmetic companies, spas, etc. (even rare book dealers). You know the drill. Looking at the world's population, seizing money to pay women to have babies is sort of like seizing money to pay the sun to come up in the morning. It'll happen regardless of the financial backing, and for the most part the present system in this country steers enough money through voluntary interaction so that people can rear their children, and there are already gov't programs in place at many levels to offset shortfalls (granted their effectiveness is often arguable).
If we want to reduce ourselves to units of biomass then sure, turning the breeding knob up to 10 (heck we might be able to get it to 11 or 12 via technology and compulsory participation) is clearly the way to go. Maybe we could apply the principles of husbandry and create superior biomass? However, that sort of stuff isn't anything I, for one, want as a world for my descendants. I don't disagree that luxury consumption on the surface might be suboptimal/inefficient on a macro scale, but it's hard to know all the downstream impacts (beyond the huge number of people who make a living doing something other than providing bare subsistence items and services for themselves or others) and what the long-term cost of heavy-handed socialist manipulation would be. Go back in time to various points and houses, toilets, phones, autos, televisions, air conditioning, etc., were all luxury consumption items.
There's something appealing about a world full of Hobbits in The Shire, I admit.