Problems of Ethico-Cultural Understanding of the Thought Experiment
We are not used to seeing unemployment benefits as one side of an exchange, in which the unemployed offer their right to work. Not at all! We want them desperately to apply for jobs and find one as soon as possible. If a Eunian opts for unemployment, he is free to apply but, if he is selected, he is not allowed to enter his job before he has bought the required Labour Rights. Without Labour Rights, jobs are forbidden to you. They are occupied by Labour Right-owners. They paid the prevailing market equilibrium price for them. In Eu, there's no discussion of whether people ought to work. No morals, politics, ethics. Jobs are like cars and concerts. Opting for employment is matter of taste and your own preferred way to enjoy life.
Of course, as a Eunian, I would be delighted if my preferences were not shared by many: if I like to work, I will tell everybody how nice it is to be unemployed. This is because I sell leisure, and I am interested in a good price. If I am lazy, I sell work, and hear me talking! I would stress the educational value of work, and all other pro-work arguments I have picked up in bars and streets. Whatever I want and say, I am not likely to start moralizing. (unless I find myself trying to agree on a Labour Right transaction with someone sensitive to moralizing, but I would guess few Eunians are).
In Eu, unemployment benefits are the compensation for the sacrifice of Labour Rights. Everybody is free to supply or demand Labour Rights, and because of that, an equilibrium price arises which is such that exactly 4 million able-bodied adult citizens opt for a job, and exactly 1 million, for the coming year, opt for living without a job. All parties agree, and no Eunian has the dignity problems we know. In our own world, we have four types of able-bodied adult citizens.
Table: The four Market Partiesvoluntary |
involuntary |
|
| employed | A |
B |
| unemployed | D |
C |
In A, you have a job, and you are satisfied with it in the sense that you would not want to exchange your situation with some unemployed person. In B you have a job, but you actually would prefer to be a member of D. In C people are unemployed and dissatisfied. In C, you dream of being in A. In D, you are unemployed, but you're OK, you wouldn't want to exchange your situation with some employed person.
In Eu, all these preferences would, in a free market, be reflected in prices for which Labour Rights are bought and sold. We don't do so. We moralize. We establish politics out of it. We want to make a collective compromise: we make complicated criteria for deciding which inactive able-bodied adult citizens may receive a benefit, for determining the rate of the benefit, for deciding who's going to pay for it, and how much. To Eunians, we look like communists deliberately organizing market failures for the sake of nineteenth century morals.
Eunians would nod their heads hearing our discussions on Man's Labour Needs and Duties and it associate them with our attempt to allocate a scarce good, i.e. jobs, not by market economic means, but by central directionist regulations. What we settle by our political compromises between the various visions on labour of liberals, social democrats, christians and what have you, is, in Eu, settled on a free market, as we are accustomed to do ourselves with all other scarce goods.
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