Sorry, I'm a bit tired about this argument.
My argument makes perfect sense, but you are only looking at one side of the equation. When a business closes, it's very easy to see that 5-10 people are now out of work. What requires more insight and understanding to comprehend is that the business closed because consumers have demonstrated that they would rather spend their resources elsewhere. Take my example of X and Y above, for instance. If X is allowed to become obsolete, let's say 10,000 people lose their jobs. But Y is 50% the price of X, freeing up vastly more resources from the public to now spend money in other areas of the economy, where there will now be new, unmet demand. Labor is regarded as a relative unspecific resource, which basically means that just because Bob worked for a book store doesn't mean Bob's only employment opportunity is in a book store. Bob can learn things, Bob has other skills, Bob will do okay. Yes, it may be inconvenient for Bob (I have been in Bob's shoes a few times, myself). But this is *how* we advance the economy. If we disallow these shifts in preferences, society is, by definition, worse off.
You are completely mistaken here on every argument you make.
The most important one is: Bob is a high skilled labourer who has specialized in "Books". As unlikely at is that a software engineer becomes a manager equally unlikely it is a Book shop employee becomes a manager, a software engineer or a simple baker. It does not mean he can not "learn new things". It only means: there is simply no opportunity matching his actual skills, and our (european) society focuses on putting people back into "similar" jobs. Not into *new* ones. E.g. new jobs right now we get in germany basically only in the wind and in the solar industry. How should a book worm find a job there? What particular would he do? Making photocopies? Sorry, such low level *jobs* don't exist in Europe.
I heard in other posts here, that in the US people working in book stores have no clue about books and are low payed minimal wage workers. Here they are specialists.
You neglect the fact that for every shift in the economy, there is also a shift in demand for jobs. No, there is not. That might be in the US, but the EU does not work that way. On top of that you mix up cause and effect. There are new jobs created, hence people switch. By losing a job in one part of the economy there is not suddenly a new job in another part.
People losing jobs like that, good payed as well, are usually unemployed for years, a decade or for ever, depending how old they are.
All because you have the ideology that things should stay how they are and because you lack the understanding of scarcity and what it means.
What argument is that?
a) I have no such ideology
I want that the new one exists without destroying the old one. And that they can easy. There is no need to *remove* the old from the economy and it makes no sense anyway.
b) we don't live in a economy of scarcity ... we don't do that since roughy 100 years. We live in a economy where the mighty ones power down the weak ones, see our dependency on oil and the lack of development in alternative energies. That is true for everything, until they fuck completely up like General Motors or Crysler. Or how can it be that a burger costs a dollar? Ever looked into the production and supply and delivery chain of that? It is basically impossible to have a burger that cheap ... but somehow they can do it. And you believe that this is *progress*? How that?
And you believe that people like the "burger mafia" or more precisely the "food mafia" may stump over every branch of the economy?
Sorry, we resist. It is our right, it is in our might, so what are you concerned about? That we are *stupid* ... well you bring up economy every post. Basically never saying "competition" you should consider that our different ideas about economy and law do *compete*. And the future will show which of ours will have more *happy* citizens. Obviously the real welfare states like the Scandinavians run really very well ...
