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It's not nearly every unproductive person's fault that they're unproductive. There's a lot of useful work to be done and a lot of people capable of doing it who are not currently aligned. It's often a matter of inefficiency in capital allocation, i.e. lack of funding for certain useful work because it's not easy or practical (without intervention, like from the government) to earn a profit doing it. There's also limitations on our ability to coordinate work, regardless of funding.

Profitability is a mediocre proxy for the usefulness of work, and so we have only a mediocre ability to allocate labor usefully in our profit driven economy. Some of the best investments of money and labor in terms of profitability are even things I would call counterproductive.



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