Can we promote the economy with immoral and wasteful behaviour?

Question

For example, is there any point in teaching people not to drop litter- if no-one dropped any litter, street sweepers would all be out of work. Is it reasonable to argue that creating problems is fine because people can make money solving the problem?

Answer 1

In economics faculties, there's an old paradox about smashing a window (you can compare this to littering and so forth). Once smashed, you've lost it, but you can stimulate the economy by employing joiners/glaziers...you get the idea.

Is it better for the economy that the window be smashed or that it remains intact?

The paradox has been solved: it may cause such stimulation that a smashing is better for the economy, BUT it's not the best sort of stimulation that could have occurred. An example of a better stimulus would be paying someone to build an extra window, rather than replace one that was already there. You've got the same joiner/glazier stimulation, without having lost a window.

Answer 2

Once upon a time, people were seriously concerned about the growth of the new fangled motor cars, because it would put the stable owners and the buggy whip makers out of business. It did do that - but it also opened up whole new jobs and industries.

It also raised its own new set of problems. Which people continue to try to solve. There will always be problems - one year it's too much rain, the next it's not enough rain.

But your example is not exactly your question. Immoral and wasteful behavior (and there are some who might suggest that being wasteful IS immoral, given the number of people in the world who have so little) will certainly promote the economy.

What it will not do is promote the country, or the ideals the country says it believes in. Until the day comes when our actions match our speech-making, we will have problems no one will be able to solve. And the state of the economy will be the least of them.

Answer 3

A nation or society becomes wealthy by creating new wealth. Digging a hole and then immediately filling it does create employment and redistribution of wealth, but it does not create any new wealth.

Just like any real world activity, redistribution process by itself is not 100% efficient. That means, ever time you redistribute some wealth, a portion of it gets destroyed. So, over the time, all the wealth will be eliminated.

On the other hand, if a hole is dug and a cable for telecommunications is put there before closing that hole, it will create new wealth that did not exist before. This new wealth is usually much higher than the amount that got destroyed during the redistribution process (for digging, placing cable and filling up). Now the society will end up becoming rich on the whole.

Thats how the real world economies seem to work !!!!

Answer 4

Don't worry, people who are expected to clean up other people's messes will not be out of work anytime soon. For one thing, you never will persuade EVERYONE to stop littering, or stop doing anything, or start doing anything. People are just too independent for that.

No, it won't improve the economy to create problems. All you do is give the bureaucrats an excuse to create another make-work project, another administrative law program, another set of regulations that do not help and which costs plenty of taxpayers' money to enforce. That does not stimulate the economy.

Productivity stimulates the economy. Creative energy. Meeting the needs of customers and clients. Courage and daring in risk capital. Things like that.

Answer 5

We have to nag so SOME people listen. If everybody littered it would be too much for street sweepers. Get the idea? You're right that SOME problems make solutions. Just like everything else too much of something is a bad thing.

Answer 6

not economy is 100% efficient people smoke, people drive without taillights at night and get rear ended. Government does stupid things to the economy, Ones stupidity is another ones game. Need Body shop to repair damaged cars for idiots like to hit poles in parking lots, and then you have street sweepers because people liter, or go mud up thier trucks. Then the doctors are kepy busy because soda pop makes people overweight, and then you gotta perscribe and sell insulin. Political correctiness, and a lack of indivivual respondiblity is human nature. Thier will always be the human being will pass the buck of accountbility anyways.

Answer 7

Those people hired to fix problems would simply find other work if the problem is not there. That would free up the resources of a community even more.

Now this is a good question. How many government agencies are out there still exist just to give some people something to do?

Answer 8

Well they haven't done much of a job of getting the trolley out the river. I swear it's been there since the late 80's when we still had a coal mine down the road.

Answer 9

We obviously can but at everyone else's expense. To be responsible creates better jobs and a better place to live.

Answer 10

sometimes, solving a problem can create another.