In an egalitarian economy, its members may freely choose to make and exchange luxuries. But in an inegalitarian economy, members with an surplus of income over need may use this excess to buy luxuries, and at the same time those with a corresponding income deficit must work to make and sell such luxuries in order to make up the deficit.

In this circumstance, the production and sale of luxuries becomes a matter of necessity rather than free choice. It becomes necessary for them to make luxuries in order to acquire necessities. And when this happens, social idleness falls as idle time is converted luxury production.

This happens when some necessities sell at relatively high prices. This is very likely to happen in periods of economic growth - i.e. increasing social idleness - as new tools are initially sold at high prices before competition acts to reduce their price, and restore social equality. But where producers of such tools maintain a monopoly on their production, or form cartels and trusts to maintain high prices, these tools continue to be sold at high prices, and the obligatory production of luxuries becomes near permanent. The gains in idleness achieved from new tools actually appear as increasing rates of production of luxuries. However man new and useful tools appear, everyone works just as hard as before, but now they are increasingly engaged in producing luxuries.

The principal feature of these "dragon" economies is that real social idleness either does not rise, or actually falls, and the production of luxuries is obligatory - people make and sell luxurues such as art and sculpture so that they can buy necessties like food and shelter.

The Perils of a Dragon Economy

The modern global economy is a dragon economy. A stroll down any high street will demonstrate that most things on sale are luxuries. There a shops selling music, shops selling art, shops selling books (mostly fiction), shops selling antiques, shops selling liquor or tobacco or newspapers, shops selling TVs and hi-fis, shops selling fashion clothes, shops selling delicacy foods, shops selling coffee, shops selling greetings cards, shops selling holidays, shops selling flowers - in short, shops selling goods or services which do not increase idleness, but which are desired for their own sake. And all of these people are selling these luxuries goods primarily so that they can earn the money to buy necessities such as food, clothing, shelter, medicine.

One immediate effect is that a great deal of unnecessary extra work is being done. In a nominally 90% idle economy, real idleness may be 20%, and so 70% of all work is devoted to the forced production of luxuries. And all of this converts not only into keeping everyone busy, but also in increased waste and pollution, resource depletion, and energy expenditure.

The motor of the economy, instead of slowing as idleness increases, actually runs faster. Life becomes more hectic. People find themselves becoming busier and busier, rather than idler and idler. More and more goods are produced. Stress-induced disorders multiply, work-related illnesses increase. Tempers flare easily. As the prospect of a life of leisure recedes, people become cynical. And as society increasingly becomes a rat-race, social cohesion fails. Crime and destitution increases.

This is not, as is usually thought, an economy driven by greed: it is an economy driven by necessity. It is a society in hich inequity puts money into the hands of some, and obliges the rest to dream up ever more elaborate amusements to get them to spend it on.

In such an economy, the pressure is on everyone not to produce more and more useful tools, but more and more amusing toys. In such a market, tastes are fickle. Fads and fashions come and go. What sells like hot cakes one day can't be moved the next. It becomes a matter of necessity to control or define fashion. But nothing sells better than luxuries that are actually addictive. The tedium of work itself creates a demand for compensatory escapist excitement or oblivion. Drugs that offer such escape provide a shortcut to the peace and pleasure that the economy cannot any more deliver. Drug dealers respond to a real demand.

Nobody benefits, not even the cash rich. Society bcomes divided into winners and losers, but the "winners" inevitably live surrounded by abject poverty, and in dread of becoming poor themselves.

Falling idleness pushes society towards a destruction which includes both rich and poor.