"
Roberto Calvo Macias, a Spanish author and thinker, once wrote that it
is impossible to design a coherent philosophy of economics not founded
on our mortality. The Grim Reaper permeates estate laws, retirement
plans, annuities, life insurance and much more besides.
The industrial revolution taught us that humans are interchangeable by
breaking the process of production down to minute - and easily learned
- functional units. Only the most basic skills were required. This led
to great alienation. Motion pictures of the period ("Metropolis",
"Modern Times") portray the industrial worker as a nut in a machine,
driven to the verge of insanity by the numbing repetitiveness of his
work.
As technology evolved, training periods have lengthened, and human
capital came to outweigh the physical or monetary kinds. This led to an
ongoing revolution in economic relations. Ironically, dehumanizing
totalitarian regimes, such as fascism and communism, were the first to
grasp the emerging prominence of scarce and expensive human capital
among other means of production. What makes humans a scarce natural
resource is their mortality.
Though aware of their finitude, most people behave as though they are
going to live forever.
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