Sunday, August 16, 2009

Destroy all computers!

I have a proposal: Lets destroy all computers of the world! Why? Because this would create an enourmos amount of "jobs", where instead of a single computer hacking away trillions of numbers to find a solution, millions of persons would do the same, using pocket calculators and pieces of paper. Right?

No, wrong. Destroying computers will not create jobs. It will destroy the productivity of all those who work with computers, and by doing so diminishing their value as employees, so that their wages would have to come down (to almost zero).

Today, there are strong voices for "protecting" industries by subsidizing them. Agriculture is a prime example. Farmers are paid by the taxpayer and not the consumer so that their livelihood is not "jeopordized" by competetion from farmers in countries where farming actually pays off. In Iceland, the state pays farmers to grow sheep for a market of 300,000 people because this "protects" the domestic agriculture from sheep growers who work in much better climate. Computers are being destroyed in Iceland in the name of job-protection, so to speak.

What if one day someone would discover the "replicator", a machine which can create food and recycle matter with no effort? Then we would not need a single farmer to grow food. Farmers would go out of business and find other jobs, which actually fulfil consumer demand. Would the European Union allow this device?