ABSTRACT
Granted that the job-market economy is likely to flourish, what is life in a job-market society likely to be like? There is no single answer to this question. In the first place, there probably is no such thing as a typical job-market society. The job market is a thoroughly economic institution. It manages such things as jobs and prices, and that is all. Jobs and prices are only a narrow slice of human experience, though certainly they are an important slice right now. We live in a world in which our more massive-and more troubled-economic institutions tend to push their way into all our affairs. Even the political and foreign affairs of nations are now so dominated by economics that political leaders often fail to see the noneconomic issues involved. One of the consequences, surely, of introducing an unprecedentedly simple way of dealing with jobs and prices will be to diminish the importance of economics in human affairs.
