| Subject: | [socialcredit] productive capacity | | Date: | Monday, August 8, 2005 17:23:05 (EDT) | | From: | Triumphofthepast <Triumphofthepast @...com>
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In the same sense in which Douglas quotes H. L. Gantt that American industry was 5% efficient, yes, productive capacity means more. It means the EASE with which we can produce stuff, and the easier we can produce stuff, the more we can be gainfully disemployed.
Take 1. Since Douglas asks us to imagine that costs have been incurred for maximum possible production of ultimate (consumer) products but not that these products have actually been produced, he must mean costs of capital goods and services that will go into future consumer products.
Take 2. Since Douglas asks us to imagine that costs have been incurred for maximum possible production of ultimate (consumer) products but not that these products have actually been produced, he must mean that part of those costs have been wasted. If an economy is 5% efficient, then "maximum possible production" is 100%, actual production 5%, waste 95%. You don't charge people for waste.
But Take 2 runs into trouble because the waste is, any way you look at it, a dead loss to society. It violates the integrity of money as an order system to leave money in people's hands when there is nothing to order with it. Therefore,
Take 3. Since Douglas asks us to imagine that costs have been incurred for maximum possible production of ultimate (consumer) products, he must mean that these products have actually been produced. Then if only a quarter of them are consumed, the consumer should only have paid a quarter of the costs and have 3/4 of the money left over to spend at his leisure. It would constitute a signal to production to SLOW UP and allow that leisure to operate.
Michael
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productive capacit
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