One cannot “openly” pursue one's needs and desires in a market where other people are permitted to use coercion.

If you think advertising is coercive, there is no point in talking. We mean utterly different things by “coercion.”

One cannot “openly” pursue one's needs and desires in a market where other people are permitted to use coercion.

If you think advertising is coercive, there is no point in talking. We mean utterly different things by “coercion.”

The use of coercively extracted money (taxes) has the same effect as the use of slave labor.

For example, is there a point at which for practical purposes we've reached maximum consumption capacity? Or a point at which marginal human labor is simply less efficient than marginal processes cooked up by autonomous servant machines on our behalf?

It does not seem obvious to me that comparative advantage and division of labor will always provide sufficient opportunities. What if machines are so efficient that there is very little value to unskilled labor which is consequently in low demand. What if the only really valuable labor requires skills that are beyond human capacity (some would say we are already testing this line, with many of the people paid lots of money and prestige to wrestle with complicated problems being soundly and iredeemably out of their depth)?

I'm not suggesting you should answer this random list of what-ifs, which I've deliberately cast in sci fi terms to get “out of the box” a little. But I'm interested in what developments or existing problems throw a wrench in the idea that free trade and increased productivity *always* produce positive outcomes for those traders whao are free and increasingly productive.

I'm also inclined to take Seekingexports point seriously. Unfunded consumption is not an unmarred good thing. And how do you fund consumption? Would it have to be trade? We needn't expect to export tires when it is so much cheaper to import them from China. But we must be able to export *something*. Trade deficits being measured in dollars, not in numbers of tires, it seems valid to be concerned about how to correct long-term trade deficits. Perhaps a trade deficit is a fairly real-world indicator of low comparative advantage.

I've thought about the future as well but I see a different trend, in fact – the opposite. I see a future where less work, not more, is required for humans to exist comfortably. As productivity increases we see the cost of essential goods decreasing. I believe that the trend shows that it is less expensive for people to exist today than it was in the past. (Note: In real wages, not nominal wages) What portion of a full work week did it use to cost for a man to live? At one point in time it took 100% of your available work hours to scavenge and hunt, and since those hunter/gatherer days we see where it requires less and less of our available work hours in order to get by – and more and more goes into 'luxuries' (things like air conditioning, large dwellings, fine clothing, expensive exotic foods, etc.) and leisure. I think this is still the trend in effect.

If I'm interpreting your questions right, are you asking if we will always have jobs? Do comparative advantage & division of labor not show you that we will always have work available for people to specialize in? Also, opportunity cost comes into effect.

The reason the doctor doesn't wash his car (even though in college he worked as a car washer and became an expert) but instead hires someone else — who is not as good at carwashing as he — to wash the car, is because his opportunity cost makes his time so much more valuable if spent in surgery. This doctor's opportunity cost then makes the carwasher's time/labor more valuable as well, up until marginal benefits = marginal cost.

Hopefully I answered your question Josh, if not please rephrase and I'll be happy to take another crack at it.

My concern is that I don't fully understand the evidence that “we'll find things to do”. History isn't evidence.

To put the problem another way, so long as resources and goods remain scarce, people must be able to exchange something for them (unless we return to distribution by force or fiat). That something must have value. With the exception of arbitrage or rent-seeking, it's hard to acquire things which have value by means other than labor. It is easy to imagine a level of productivity such that the labor of most individuals is of insufficient value in any feasible quantity to cover the cost of even basic goods.

Is such imagining false? Is there an inflection point where, given certain variables, high levels of productivity drive quality of life downwards for many people or for everyone? Surely there is literature dealing with this subject, and I'm not familiar with it.