Classical Economics: The Myth of the Solved Problem of Production
Traditional economics defines production as a technical process of maximizing the flow of goods. This approach programs a blindness to key questions: what are we producing and at what cost? This article analyzes why the problem of production is philosophical rather than merely technical. You will learn how the insights of E.F. Schumacher and Michał Kalecki help us understand contemporary crises—from environmental degradation to the challenges of artificial intelligence and uncertainty in the Polish labor market.
Natural Capital: The Error of Mistaking Resources for Income
Schumacher exposes economic accounting as a category error. We treat non-renewable resources as current income, when in fact they are capital. It is as if a homeowner were selling off their furniture to fund consumption while reporting a profit. The problem of production thus becomes a problem of a way of life that liquidates its natural and social foundations for the sake of growth.
Schumacher: Education Without a Metaphysical Foundation
Modern education suffers from a metaphysical disease. Instead of teaching a critical hierarchy of values, it has become a tool for distributing privileges and socializing individuals into the logic of the system. In India, the value of a degree once corresponded to 150 years of a peasant's labor, illustrating the structural objectification of those who remain outside the system.
The Legacy of the 19th Century: Six Ideas Constraining the Imagination
Our imagination is imprisoned by six nineteenth-century ideas: the belief in automatic progress, the absolutization of competition, materialism, relativism, positivism, and the conviction that only the measurable is significant. In this configuration, education ceases to foster autonomous thinking.
Kalecki: Full Employment Undermines Factory Discipline
Michał Kalecki argued that permanent full employment is politically unacceptable for business. Unemployment serves a disciplinary function; without it, the working class gains too much bargaining power. Business treats the lack of work as an integral element of the social order.
Intermediate Technology: A Lifeline for Local Labor Markets
The solution lies in intermediate technology—simple, inexpensive, and designed to generate jobs where people actually live. This is a third way between industrialism and stagnation, allowing for the utilization of human creativity instead of its systemic elimination.
Global Unemployment: The Crisis of Production Beyond the Center
The problem of production manifests in various ways: in Arab countries as a paradox of plenty regarding raw materials, in the US as a cult of "creative destruction" and debt, and in the EU as an attempt to reconcile the market with the Green Deal and social protections.
Artificial Intelligence: The End of Traditional Production Theory
AI represents the ultimate test for the economy. The IMF estimates that 60% of jobs in developed countries are at risk. The crucial choice is whether technology will be used for the augmentation (strengthening) of human labor or for ruthless automation and cost reduction.
GDP: A Metric Ignoring Real Social Costs
Despite the development of ecological economics, policy still regards GDP as the primary criterion for success. This ignores planetary boundaries and the social dignity of work, reducing complex problems to a supposed investment deficit or market rigidity.
Poland and India: Structural Traps of Self-Employment
In India, inequality is topographical (rural vs. urban). In Poland, it takes the form of self-employment, where the worker "buys" the right to work at the cost of forfeiting pension and health security. This is a modern version of luxury technology, the burden of which rests entirely on the individual.
The Labor Market: Privatization of Risk Burdens the Individual
The modern system performs a privatization of risk, shifting it from capital onto the shoulders of the worker. The self-employed individual becomes a "project" that must constantly invest in their own employability, losing their grounding in the social structure.
New Institutions: An Alternative to the Dictate of Profit
We need an institutional reconstruction that replaces the dictate of short-term profit with the criterion of well-being. Can we regain control over the production process before it consumes us? The time has come to revise our definitions of success before algorithms ultimately decide our utility.
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