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I’ve been meaning to get around to reading Paul Krugman’s article in the New York Times Magazine, and yet I am sorry to say that it is — in my opinion — not very insightful… but this is perhaps also not very surprising, because Professor Krugman’s opinion has not budged an inch over the past several years.

I wish to focus on one point, though, and single it out as what I see as the primary “fly in the ointment”. Professor Krugman writes:

as Bernanke pointed out in a recent speech, employment looks bad across the board: “The fact that labor demand appears weak in most industries and locations is suggestive of a general shortfall of aggregate demand rather than a worsening mismatch of skills and jobs.” As a result, he declared, the data “do not support the view that structural factors are a major cause of the increase in unemployment during the most recent recession.”

This is simply wrong — and even Professor Krugman has pointed out how it might be wrong. Why he seems to be pretending to be oblivious to this fallacy, well I have no idea what his motivations are.

Technological shifts can change the entire global economy — for example:

• fire;

• the wheel;

• the printing press;

• power generation using fossil fuels;

• electricity;

• radio;

• the Internet;

and many other technological shifts have changed the entire global economy. Granted: globalization has steadily increased over time — and many of these technological shifts have also been quite influential in increasing globalization.

Indeed, perhaps the Internet has been one of the most powerful of these technological shifts with respect to the globalization of work. Today, employment has become an outdated business model. In my opinion, civilizations that are unable to adapt to a world without employment contracts will be increasingly left behind. It is no longer necessary for one person to “employ” another person in order to get jobs done. On the contrary, for civilizations to have thriving and successful economies, it is becoming increasingly important for people to be able to “freely” self-organize, to network and collaborate.

In my opinion, when Professor Krugman declares that unemployment is a problem, he is indeed living in the past, and therefore he is simply barking up the wrong tree.