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    1001 Sex Positions
    1001 Sex Positions
    1001 Sex Positions
    Ebook97 pages1 hour

    1001 Sex Positions

    By Donald R. Miklich

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    This essay is a non-economists’ (there’s not a bit of math in it) inquiry into the US employment losses which have been happening for about a half century. Businesses have been reducing workers and their pay in order to increase shareholder profits. Many ways have been used to do this, but more and more computers and robotics are replacing workers. Well informed economists fear that in a decade or two such automation may eliminate almost half of US jobs!
    The worker reduction practice has been justified by economic theory which claims (though with dubious supporting evidence) that it maximizes productivity. This book argues that, even if this claim is correct, the practice damages the economy and the nation. Our economy is already massively productive, abundantly supplying our needs and desires. As the book title implies, no one needs nor wants such totally superfluous things as 1001 sex positions. Therefore, for the highly productive US economy to focus on more productivity is neither useful nor reasonable. The enormous US economy can provide a sufficiency for everyone, but only if everyone has a means of purchasing what is produced. To do this Americans need and want jobs and income. By diminishing workers’ incomes, and especially by diminishing the number of workers, this profits/productivity emphasis reduces consumer demand, thereby damaging the economy.
    Ultimately, and paradoxically, sacrificing jobs and incomes to increase productivity is self-defeating. Ultimately, job losses must diminish productivity simply because the workers who make things are also the consumers who buy them, and without jobs and income there will be no one to buy whatever is produced. Poorer workers weakens demand; fewer jobs destroys it. Continuing to place profits and productivity above workers threatens the possibility of an economic collapse worse than the 1930’s Great Depression. Yet no business dare not follow the jobs reductions practice since they might be driven out of business by competitors who do follow it. The economy therefore seems to be on the brink of a disaster.
    Some economists and others have suggested that, to prevent this, the government should give every citizen a minimal income; no questions asked; no work required. This essay gives several reasons why this suggestion is a bad idea. Instead it offers an idea for a program which will sustain jobs and worker income. If this idea can be developed and implemented it could help preserve the economy from the damage which the emphasis on profits and productivity has caused.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDonald R. Miklich
    Release dateFeb 9, 2017
    ISBN9781370138357
    1001 Sex Positions

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      Book preview

      1001 Sex Positions - Donald R. Miklich

      1001 Sex Positions

      An essay on political economy

      Donald R. Miklich, Ph.D.

      Published at Smashwords

      Copyright 2017 Donald R. Miklich

      Table of Contents

      Unlimited Needs and Wants

      Fallacy of the Unlimited Desires Axiom

      Is the US Economy at a Satisfaction Plateau?

      Income Inequality

      The Unemployment Crisis

      A Possible Solution

      A Better Idea

      The Hard Part

      Appendix

      References

      Unlimited Needs and Wants

      More than sixty years ago, when I was a horny virgin teenager, I saw a collection of pornographic pictures. I don't remember how they came into my hands. They weren't mine, of that I'm sure, so they must have been lent to me by some other horny teenage boy. They were not bound, but were a set of several separate drawings of a couple copulating. I can't remember any of the pictures, but I do remember that every one depicted the couple in a different position. Exactly how many drawings (and sexual positions) were in the set is something I also do not remember. However, there were quite a few, two dozen or more.

      While I don't remember these drawings, I do remember that to my great disappointment they were not erotically arousing. They were not because even a horny teenager could see it was all hype. The different positions were contrived, trivial and silly. A few were utterly preposterous. These ridiculous drawings made it obvious that there aren't two dozen or more different sexual positions. Really there fundamentally is only one. Clearly, the unlimited variety of sexual delights I had been expecting to be my adult lot were not to be.

      Looking back across the decades I am pleased to report that my teenage disappointment itself was disappointed. A happy marriage, it turns out, is quite fulfilling and satisfying with only one sexual position.

      And that's the point I want to make. No one really wants, and certainly no one needs 1001 sex positions. Such abundance is superfluous nonsense because human needs and desires are not unlimited. In fact they are quite modest.

      I first realized this a bit more than a decade later when I was a graduate student studying social psychology. One of my earliest courses was a seminar on motivation, and the professor began by enumerating human needs. I was quite surprised at how few there are. My undergraduate studies were in history and the social sciences, including economics. And the latter discipline, I had been taught, consists of theories built by logical deduction from presumably self-evident axioms or assumptions. (An explanation of the problems and uncertainties of this methodology is provided in the Appendix.) I was further taught that there are two fundamental self-evident assumptions: First, there are only limited amounts of goods and services available, and Second, humans have unlimited needs and desires for those limited goods and services. But the list of human needs is actually quite small: Air, water, food, and a benign environment in which to live, or sufficient clothing and shelter to make a hostile one survivable.

      Some of my motivation seminar classmates, persuaded no doubt by a titillating addiction to Freudian mythology, thought sex should be added to the human needs list. I disagreed, arguing that while survival of the human species requires sex, individual people don't need it. Nobody dies from being horny. (Unless, perhaps, a viewer of my boyhood pornography choked to death from laughing at some of the absurdly contorted positions.) However, even if we accede to the Freudians and add sex, the list of human needs is quite short.

      While I recall being taught that economic theory is based on an axiom of unlimited human desires, I now find this assumption so implausible I wonder if I'm suffering a memory lapse. Have I confused ideas studied sixty years ago but seldom considered since? Or did I not correctly understand at the time? Certainly I am not wrong about economic theory being a rational, deductive construct rather than an empirically based one. Abstract, usually mathematical models, build on what economists themselves concede are often totally unrealistic assumptions, are the pride of the profession (Rodrik, 2015; Schlefer, 2012). But could I be wrong about the unlimited wants axiom? Perhaps, but I doubt it, for I can not understand why economists could have come to some of the conclusions they do unless they so assumed, at least implicitly. Therefore, this essay is written as if my recollection is correct. It is important to emphasize, however, even if economists never so assumed, this essay is correct to point out that in fact human desires are not unlimited, and that this fact has vital, far-reaching implications for economics.

      [This is an essay, an op-ed piece, not an economics history. Treat it as such, and get your economics history elsewhere, from an appropriate scholarly source. I suggest you start with the excellent work The Assumptions Economists Make by Jonathan Schlefer (2012). I recommend it at least partly defensively because Schlefer clearly documents how economic theorists themselves are often as confused about their assumptions as I.]

      My surprise at the small number of human needs is not something I can be proud of, for a little thought should have told me this is exactly what is to be expected. After all, protohumans and even biologically modern ones existed for millennia before the development of technology. In that primitive circumstance it would have been impossible ever to satisfy unlimited needs. If our ancestors had had any such, they could not have survived to sire us.

      But of course, when economists speak of unlimited desires they include much more than biological needs. However, even a list of unnecessary desiderata is finite, far short of unlimited. Consider: One becomes happy and content when one's needs and wants are satisfied, and in a modern economy wealth is the means of doing this. Contrary to economists' unlimited premise, wealth’s relationship with happiness has repeatedly been shown to have a plateau effect. At zero wealth there understandably is very little satisfaction. As it increases, so too does satisfaction. However, a point is reached where further wealth produces no greater happiness. Satisfaction plateaus. In fact, in a couple of the reports I have seen it actually declined a bit with further wealth increases. Not significantly, to be sure, and one can only speculate why. But plainly, beyond the plateau point greater wealth did not increase satisfaction.

      I won't bother to dig out and present any of these studies. In part because I'm lazy, but mainly because if you doubt them you can easily check it out for yourself. Just Google something like What is the relationship between wealth and happiness? and you will find an abundance of research on this question. I certainly haven't read it all, or even much of it. But a glance at the summaries shows they all come to the same conclusion: viz., humans have a finite set of needs and wants which can be, and sometimes are fully satisfied.

      But there's an even more fundamental reason why I do not dig out and present any of these studies. There is something inescapably present in every modern American's life which to me proves beyond any possible doubt that human desires are not unlimited: Advertising.

      Advertising does two things. It informs people of the availability of goods and services, and it motivates them to buy. American advertising does only the bare minimum of

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