Last time around, I closed with the assertion that a world of machines churning out products would essentially have no “economy,” because machines are indifferent.  There’s no entity to value what they’re doing.  It’s not an economy; it’s a process.

Put a collection of machines in the woods and watch them sit there.  Put a collection of people in the woods and watch civilization blossom.  To the objection that highly advanced machines — “universal constructors” — could theoretically build a civilization from scratch, perhaps even with some sort of creativity, I’d suggest that somebody would have to set the machines in motion, programming them with initial purpose.  The value, in other words, comes from the developers.

There’s a point, in this line of as-yet imaginary “what ifs,” at which it would become difficult to make the distinction between mankind and machines. At that point, however, we must step away from logic and into theology.

Suffice it for now to say that at the definitional core of economics are beings (human beings) able to unlock their own economic potential, or to decide not to do so.

That principle is central to the evil of slavery.  Even where, in history, slaves have been treated as well as paid servants might expect to be, we rightly recoil from the notion that they were no better than work animals or machines.  They had no choice whether to work or what to do for work.

(If one were inclined to branch into an uncomfortable topic, it would be possible to begin making the case that there’s ultimately no separation between “fiscal” and “social” issues.  My reasoning, above, applies at the biological level.  A random cell placed in a womb will “sit there.”  An embryo in the same environment will become a human being unless prevented from doing so.)

To return to the topic with which this series began, the irony is that those who proclaim the compassion of welfare, minimum wage, and such inevitably wind up conceiving of human beings in the same way as slave owners.