The Shibboleth of Productivity: The Exhaustion of Industrial-Age Strategies in Post-Industrial Society

Abstract

The universal demand currently to resolve America's economic decline by increasing productivity fatally misconstrues the actual challenge posed by post-industrial society. Automation, rationalization, and technological advances suggest a crisis not of productivity, but of distribution, a false, unnecessary perpetuation of widespread deprivation required only by the scarcity model underpinning market economics. While enforced by vested interests for personal gain, this pseudo-crisis is ironically acceeded to by the Left, which-together with most others-betrays a deep foreboding about the prospect of a post-work society. The path to a post-market economy and society can only be found by forging a popular post-work culture and economic structure rooted in effective post-scarcity incentives. This paper offers a framework for both.