At the FEE site, Professor Van Colt presents the essay “‘Creating Jobs’ Will Hurt the Economy”
Excerpts:
“Gaining jobs” to achieve a given objective is synonymous with worsening your situation, not improving it.
The value of work is easy to grasp at the most domestic level: your own home.
Being a homeowner isn’t easy. Among other things, you always seem to have more chores to do than time to do them. The chores are not ends in themselves. Rather, they are means to an end — in this case, making a home and yard more livable or aesthetically pleasing.
Opting to do a chore yourself — “insourcing” in current parlance — isn’t costless. You lose the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of your other labors. For example, you could tackle different chores, spend more time with your family, or work extra hours in the marketplace, increasing your income. Hiring someone else to do the chore — that is, “outsourcing” — isn’t costless, either. It means you can’t buy other things. Costs represent sacrificed alternatives.