I think there is a big discrepancy between promoting something (offering people to work under bad conditions) and forcing people to buy something (slavery) which seems to be what you are targeting.

Furthermore, once somebody has the standard of living of the middle class, no thing is essential anymore. No material thing can ever give human lasting happiness as it is our mind that becomes happy not the material thing. While there is definitely a need for some basics to function, no consumption can really make a meaningful improvement to net “happiness” or “well offness” of beings at our standard of living. While a thing might make this activity a bit more comfortable or that thing a bit faster the presence or absence of these won’t make a difference to a depressed or happy person. I’m not sure if this is coherent but I have to run now. To be continued…

Also, the concept of pareto or non-pareto trades isn’t broad enough, I think, because it’s impossible to describe a skill as being in surplus or not, for any individual. I have a skill that I exchange for things (that’s how I make a living) and I have essentially an infinite amount of it–or none of it–as I wish.

So the really good point here is that exchanging things that improve society IS always going to have the best sort of return, because the group will always be able to out-produce the individual (provided that the group is sane and well-coordinated) and can take anything given to it and multiply it several times, theoretically.

But in addition to the mechanical economic aspect, there’s also always the human aspect, which is easy to forget when looking at the broad view, but even in the broad view, when you break it down, it’s actually the *only* aspect.

-Max