A Most Unusual Economics Class: First Day

I am taking a macroeconomics class in order to fulfill a prerequisite for my Masters in Business Education degree.

Little did I suspect what a delightful cherry taking a macroeconomics class at a large Texas community college could be. The names, locations, and events have been slightly fictionalized.

"Paying full price for a textbook, sheeyit....", our professor intoned in his Texas country black accent, before informing us that buying the required textbook was unnecessary, any economics book would do, "this shit hasn't changed since the eighteenth century."

A graduate of Texas Lutheran and the University of Texas at San Antonio, our professor owned his arrogance, "you'd be arrogant if you was smart too."

We received the assignment for the final almost immediately. He requested that we watch a total of ten free documentaries one can find online, and write a report of four pages. I suspect libertarian sympathies, due to a combination of what looks like conspiratorially minded recommended movies and a pro free market bias.

He also appeared to be socially intelligent, in that a discussion class with about thirty people does not usually work, however the vibe was relaxed enough that a discussion did happen. I found particularly poignant his response to the statement, "I never use the automatic tellers at Kroger because they take away jobs."

Pause,

Response: "Who here wants to be a checker at Kroger? Show of hands?"

Needless to say, no hands raised, we're awfully charitable about ensuring people stay in jobs we would never want to do personally.

Another student also raised the excellent point that those machines represent jobs as well, manufacturing, maintenance, and so forth.

It set me thinking, the point of labor is to add value to other human beings, if the job adds no value it is, pardon the term, masturbatory. It is infertile, with no more meaning than digging a hole and filling it in.

We must avoid the Luddite deviancy, we think we are preserving human dignity while we are in process of destroying it.

It puts me in mind of a film I saw listed on Netflix, where a group of workers take over a factory in Argentina in the hopes of reopening it and "restoring their dignity". If the factory wasn't making money, it is because it was not providing what consumers needed. If no one needs what you are making, forcing them to give you money for it is identical to the definition of thievery, providing no value and yet receiving value yourself.

No one in their right mind is immune to empathy for the suffering of someone out of work, but are we doing them any favor by depriving their lives of meaning? A rejoinder is that it is better them having them starve. But is anyone truly starving in America? And why not just feed them instead of demanding they perform meaningless work for their wages?