What impresses me about this thread is so many people would like to work. They want jobs. They have a range of skills. AND there are so many jobs to be done. So much is wrong with the world that can be improved. People are willing to work to get things done. What is wrong here?
A lot of things. If you're American, next time you're in a supermarket/grocery store, ask yourself if everyone in the neighborhood REALLY buys everything in that store before it goes bad. You'll realize that the stores throw out about half of the food on their shelves. Why? Because it goes bad. How can they afford to do this? Huge prices. They'll make a profit regardless of whether they sell most of their products or not.
On top of that, a lot of people are just wasteful and stupid when it comes to a lot of things. They'll want to use styrofoam plates and cups because they "hate washing dishes." They'll buy expensive televisions when they're in debt because they're depressed and want more entertainment in their life. They'll buy crappy microwave TV dinners, sodas, ice cream, and chips and live off of them, and have constant digestion problems, lack of energy, and lack of motivation.
I've seen American families do this and still manage to have no idea why they're collapsing financially. Indeed I came from a family that behaved this way. I grew up with them. I had to eat these foods. I ended up skinny because I felt sick all the time and never ate. Any attempts to point out their terrible standards, or the terrible food they fed me, or the poor decisions they were making with their money would land me a few days or so of hard feelings. They didn't want to hear it, mister. After all, I didn't know what the fuck I was talking about, and they paid the bills.
Is there a theoretical match of jobs to needs? What are the steps to create the linkage? There must be a clear chain.
There is. The problem has never been on the part of the theorist or smart-guy, but rather, on the part of society for never following his plans correctly. Society doesn't seem to want to be uniformly educated, monied, and healthy. Too many of our philosophical values rely heavily on rejecting knowledge and truth for the sake of fleeting good feelings.
If we knew what the chain or chains were, then we could see where they are broken and know where to direct our energies to fix the situation.
The problem is a problem of lack of motivation mixed with lack of education mixed with a belligerence towards science in the masses.
It doesn't matter how much economists try to theorize what's wrong with the economy if they're not even gathering accurate data half the time. There's so many simple questions that can be asked of the research methods:
1. How can we predict the fluctuations of markets if so many businesses--big and small-- engage in corrupt practices that skew the forecasts?
2. How can we understand the ultimate nature of the interconnectivity between markets if certain important data and certain important markets are ignored simply because they're black markets:
* For example, Cannabis is a major cash crop in the United States. You'd just never know because it isn't taxed, the existence and exchange of so much of it goes unnoticed, and our government doesn't support enough proper research on it. Whether America is willing to admit it or not, many of the dollars of its proletarians goes towards purchasing this drug. Many small businesses are fronts for selling dro. It's just an example of one of many gaping holes in our economy. There are many other less-popular drugs people use, too. Each one of these drugs has an unregulated, largely-unresearched market, and a large audience of people who use them.
Or is the opposite true? Some peoples are so content they don't want jobs done. They don't care to create jobs. What is wrong with the distribution? What economistic theory knows the answers?
Theories are merely ideological instruments geared towards explaining a small section of reality. If people were more considerate and well-read, many of the problems would simply decrease in intensity.
What economist theory "knows the answers?"
I'd like to think all the different theories take different factors into account and that it's not a single theory or an ideology, but rather a human mind versed in many of them that "knows the answers."
The human minds with influence need to start treating different political and economic theories as just temporary tools for restoring equilibrium to society, to be used on different scales and in different durations, and not as permanent fix-alls. Making something into a law, with all its complicated documentation and bureaucratic nonsense, when it is only meant to be a temporary solution, undermines the flow of progress a lot.
