Originally Posted by smooth

It doesn't serve our interests to create examples and counter-examples to illustrate how it could or could not work. I was giving you a glib example of the argument in Rifkin's book of how it does work in the European model. I'm not opposed to you pointing out what you think are problems, but how can you know whether he addressed those issues without reading his complete argument?

My post was intended to encourage you to read Jeremy Rifkin's book wherein he outlines the historical evidence for what I typed, not argue the hypotheticals you are now raising. I mean, maybe I could go point for point, but why? He already did it

I should point out, however, that even in your example it doesn't "pay to be average." In your second example, worker B works almost two-thirds less time than worker A and makes only half as much. If you increased his hours to 6 (still less than 8, which worker A does), he makes as much as worker A. But the Eurpean model is that worker B prefers to take a pay cut and only work a fraction of the time.

That was the premise of me and Rifkin's argument: that people would prefer to make a wage that allows them to have more time out of the factory, rather than the goal itself being making more money.

So yes, I would prefer to work 3 hours and earn $50 bucks than work 8 hours and earn $100.

And I wouldn't even need to double my output to do that: a 50% increase in productivity is not working twice as hard--that would be a 100% increase in productivity.