WORK LESS Institute of Technology

LEISURE AS A FACTOR OF PRODUCTION

Table of Contents

I. The butt-on-a-slide model
The canonical labor supply model is typically graphed to look like a minimalist line sketch of a butt on a slide. So I’ll call it the butt-on-a-slide model to afford it the disrespect it deserves.

II. Nemo contra deum nisi deus ipse
You can’t replace something with nothing. You can’t substitute a nullity for a theory. Except, it seems, in economics.

III. The marginal utility of evasion
By treating leisure as a "normal good" rather than as a factor of production, the canonical labor supply model opposes a theory not with another theory but with an evasion of what the earlier theory says.

IV. Life is excessively complicated
To the extent that Chapman’s analysis is "complicated" or an "amalgam," that might more constructively be laid to the nature of the problem Chapman was analyzing rather than any fault of his own.

V. Queensland's summary of Sandwichman's synopsis of Chapman's theory
The Sandwichman OWNS S.J. Chapman. I'm not happy about that but if you do a Google search on S.J. Chapman and Hours of Labour all you get (with the few exceptions I'll mention) is me droning on unrequitedly about the damn thing for six or seven years.

VI. Sandwichman's synopsis of Chapman's theory
The fastidious critic might object that a summary of a synopsis, followed by a synopsis, followed by a fragment of the original text (which is itself a summary of the "more technical parts" of the argument) is "repetitive." Not at all.

VII. Chapman's footnote
And now... drumroll... the moment you've all been waiting for: Sir Sydney Chapman's technical footnote itself!

EPILOGUE Economists! Wash your hands!
There hasn't yet been a "macroeconomics of fatigue and unrest" but perhaps there should be one.

REFERENCES

Posted by sandwichman at February 5, 2006 08:45 AM