Employment vs Staked Claims on a "Material" World

Now that the Walmart effect is also "forcing prices down" in India, Tim Worstall reminds us how this process is ultimately for the good. However, in "The Benefit of Killing Jobs" he asks:

But who should we be supporting here? Clearly, our innate prejudices are in favor of the small operator, that struggling family business, as opposed to some monster of late stage capitalism. We could further believe that a thriving community of sturdy independents is more valuable to us than some mere reduction in the prices of diapers or milk. 

But that's not the point here, nor is it what makes us richer. Economics advance is about using less labor to do any one task. This is why we obsess over productivity. It's not so that we can gain more from the same amount of labor either. It's so that some labor is freed up to go and do something else, which is the important matter.

Nevertheless, too many of our productivity gains continue to break down, at the level of total factor productivity. As some individuals continue to lose jobs, others are increasingly tempted to enhance their income through the revenue gains of more recent productivity advances. Carried too far, it's a process which could eventually undermine our structural mechanisms for societal coordination.

When local jobs are lost, this often translates into diminishing local service capacity as well. Much of the obsessing over productivity accomplishes little, when price makers (many of whom function beyond the Solow growth model) reduce aggregate productivity gains which could have contributed to a higher standard of living. Chris Dillow also responds to Tim Worstall's article, and he sums up:

...technical progress and destroying jobs are not sufficient to achieve good economic growth, even where markets are functioning well.

While I agree with Dillow insofar as this sentiment is concerned, how does it relate to his broader perspective, re future employment potential? For example, in what context do we express concern about "losers", if the world has supposedly experienced "enough" material growth? Who still gets a "living" wage, if growth ceases in its tracks and other revenue has already been claimed? In his post, Dillow references Daniel Cohen, the recent author of "The Infinite Desire for Growth", where materialism is questioned in the Amazon review for the book:

a future less dependent on material gain might be considered and how, in a culture of competition, individual desires might be better attuned to the greater needs of society.

What exactly is being implied, by pining for a "less material world"? Who is actually getting a chance to compete for life's wants and needs? Indeed, all is not quite as it appears in this regard. Materialism, like so much present day conceptualization, suffers from a moralistic framing which makes it difficult to approach the issue rationally.

After all, many forms of valuable knowledge are also essentially being hoarded, so that citizens lack the ability to compete in terms of skills production and presentation. How is knowledge hoarding any different from material hoarding, especially if material hoarding proceeds are used to compensate knowledge hoarders? Individuals whose time value seems off the charts in relation to others, are still being compensated via the revenue potential of countless material things. One of the best examples I've come across, is the extreme volume of sales necessary in a hospital thrift store, before sufficient revenue is collected to pay for a mere fraction of human capital value in hospital procedures.

For that matter, material hoarding can be likened to the "lesser" challenges of our natural inclinations for personal arbitrage. Alas, much of what we bring home, can seem more valuable than the extent to which our time may be perceived by others. Yet when we are confident regarding our time value in the workplace, our discretionary time is more often spent in the pursuit of collecting the memories of experiential product. But what about those whose time value has been prejudged and deemed not necessary for 21st century intellectual challenges? Will we further suggest that their junk collecting challenges should be tossed as well, in a less material world?

Is it possible to be a little less hypocritical? When anyone demeans an "infinite" desire for growth, is this imaginary cap expected to extend to the growth possibilities of the human spirit? Why not promote a world that actually needs less materialism to pay its intellectual bills? And above all, let's not assume society should determine the nature of desire and the greater good of all concerned, on specific one size fits all terms. Instead of attempting to hand out consolation prizes to the excluded, find ways to include them, through value in use means. It's one thing to take advantage of a material world for one's own extensive value in exchange benefits, but altogether another, to assume that is the only kind of world that is feasible.