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Saturday, September 5, 2015
David F. Ruccio — Productive vs. unproductive labor
Adam Smith on productive vs. unproductive labor.
Occasional Links & Commentary Productive vs. unproductive labor David F. Ruccio | Professor of Economics University of Notre Dame Notre Dame
Mining (extraction) is considered productive. But Britain itself was bigger on coal. The Europeans used colonies for natural resources, and that's what neo-imperialism and neocolonialism is still about.
The economic reason for the exploration that colonized the Americas as initially gold and silver, to a degree, but it was really about discovering a new passage to India. A lot of the gold and silver was flowing to India at the time in payment for spices and other exotica that Europe desired to import.
In fact, natural resource extraction was the real reason that the US regarded the war in Vietnam in the national interest. Southeast Asia is resource-rich, and it's not only a matter of maintaining access but also denying adversaries access.
I'm sure Smith looked at gold and silver mining as "productive"...
ReplyDeleteMining (extraction) is considered productive. But Britain itself was bigger on coal. The Europeans used colonies for natural resources, and that's what neo-imperialism and neocolonialism is still about.
ReplyDeleteThe economic reason for the exploration that colonized the Americas as initially gold and silver, to a degree, but it was really about discovering a new passage to India. A lot of the gold and silver was flowing to India at the time in payment for spices and other exotica that Europe desired to import.
In fact, natural resource extraction was the real reason that the US regarded the war in Vietnam in the national interest. Southeast Asia is resource-rich, and it's not only a matter of maintaining access but also denying adversaries access.