We severely undervalue social value for material value, and we're suffering horribly for it.
This is how it's always been. So that doesn't hold water.
I think the problem is, and you touched on this in your original comment, is that some people don't get a chance to "sell their time/energy".
The unemployment numbers being quoted everywhere are a joke. Those numbers exclude discouraged workers who exit the economy and those people are the likeliest to off themselves.
Albeit, I hate using the phrase "retired" here. Retired for most simply means the equivalent of someone being born into wealth retiring at age 0.
Anyway, there are around 75 million kids, so real figures are something like 40% unemployed. But a lot of people are working under the table, no longer in classical employment, etc.
Though hopefully the kids are also doing something as well besides just factory public schooling. Figure 1 in 4 is 14-18 and they might have some part time job, albeit unlikely.
There is a fundamental shift to consider, though. A hundred years ago regardless of employment figures most people were farming and by farming that meant the whole family worked together to eat and provide shelter for themselves, and raise enough money to buy that which they cannot provide to themselves.
I suspect this isn't a choice but a result of labor saturating the traditional market.
See the graph here:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/02/the...
Male participation in the wage economy peaked right before the recession of 1958. We have now seen 57 years of decline. Women's participation in the economy peaked in the late 90s. How many decades of decline would you need to see before you feel you seeing a crisis?
I think capitalism became very good at optimizing for profit and it pushes aside faster than ever anything that stays in it's path (and now that's more and more people).
>We severely undervalue social value for material value
Unfortunately the market has spoken: material value.
Society is what we make of it. We still have a choice.
Also, kudos to everyone up the chain in this subthread; this is the discourse I expect when coming to HN.
The extent that the market is a free market is much debated.
Contrast this to people of affluence I've known who've stopped even having a reflection in the mirror. Their identity just disappeared.
I don't think there's wide agreement on just what constitutes social value once you get down to the detail level.