THE THIRD WAVE
ventional Sector B terms is, in fact, tremendously efficient when we look at the whole economy and not just part of it.
To make sense, “efficiency” must refer to secondary, not merely first order, effects, and to both sectors of the economy, not just one.
What about concepts like “income,” “welfare,” “poverty,” or “unemployment”? If a person lives half-in and half-out of the market system, which products, tangible or intangible, are to be regarded as part of his or her income? How meaningful are income figures at all hi a society in which presuming may account for much of what the average person has?
How do we define welfare hi such a system? Should welfare recipients work? If so, should all this work necessarily be in Sector B? Or should welfare recipients be encouraged to presume?
What is the real meaning of unemployment? Is a laid-off auto worker who puts a new roof on his house, or overhauls his car, unemployed in the same sense as one who sits idly at home watching football on television? The rise of the pro-sumer forces us to question our entire way of looking at the twin problems of unemployment, on the one hand, and bureaucratic waste and featherbedding, on the other.
Second Wave societies have attempted to cope with unemployment, for example, by resisting technology, closing off immigration, creating labor exchanges, increasing exports, decreasing imports, setting up public works programs, cutting back on work hours, attempting to increase labor mobility, deporting whole populations, and even waging war to stimulate the economy. Yet the problem becomes more complex and difficult every day.
Can it be that the problems of labor supply—both gluts and shortages—can never be satisfactorily solved within the framework of a Second Wave society, whether capitalist or socialist? By looking at the economy as a whole, rather than focusing exclusively on one part of it, can we frame the problem in a new way that helps us solve it?
If production occurs in both sectors, if people are busy producing goods and services for themselves in one sector and for others in a different sector, how does this affect the argument over a guaranteed minimum income for all? Typically, in Second Wave societies income has been inextricably linked to work for the exchange economy. But are not pro-sumers also “working,” even if they are not part of the market or are only partially in it? Should not a man or woman who stays home and rears a child, thereby contributing to the productivity of Sector B through his or her efforts in Sector A, receive some income, even if he or she does not hold down a paid job in Sector B?
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