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The modern age opened; I think, with the accumulation of capital which began in the sixteenth century. I believe-for reasons with which I must not encumber the present argument-that this was initially due to the rise of prices, and the profits to which that led, which resulted from the treasure of gold and silver which Spain brought from the New World into the Old.
Materials stolen from the New World for the benefit of the Old. One could argue that the Noble Europeans put the gold and silver to better use than the Heathen Savages ever did, or one could view this as a more aggressive yeast making, at least for a moment, outsized use of the contents of a petri dish.
And from now on we need not expect so great an increase of population.
Yeah, about that. And some want to goose the population growth even more!
Now it is true that the needs of human beings may seem to be insatiable. But they fall into two classes —those needs which are absolute in the sense that we feel them whatever the situation of our fellow human beings may be, and those which are relative in the sense that we feel them only if their satisfaction lifts us above, makes us feel superior to, our fellows. Needs of the second class, those which satisfy the desire for superiority, may indeed be insatiable; for the higher the general level, the higher still are they. But this is not so true of the absolute needs-a point may soon be reached, much sooner perhaps than we are all of us aware of, when these needs are satisfied in the sense that we prefer to devote our further energies to non-economic purposes.
The definition of economic here seems to be "anything required for subsistence" and non-economic thus "everything else" which is a bit at odds with our present so-called economy which dabbles in much tomfoolery besides the bare necessities. Also one might have a notion that "non-economic" purposes are indeed part of the economy—the production of beer, for example. Or, let them eat cake!
Thus for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem-how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.
There seem to be some wars on, among other problems, so we're not so much on the "wise" nor "agreeable" nor "well" front. And how about that uneven distribution of resources? Also science seems to have gotten itself a bum rap, possibly on account of science saying things that some folks do not want to hear.
Three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week may put off the problem for a great while. For three hours a day is quite enough to satisfy the old Adam in most of us!
"A 69-hour workweek? That's no way to live, young South Koreans say" (2023), among other such reactions to oligarchical excesses, and Iron Lady Thatcherism has hardly completed its present run.
There are changes in other spheres too which we must expect to come. When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues.
Probably not this decade.
But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight.
Probably not this century?