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Agreed-- most of the assumptions we've been working on are no longer true, and we're not adjusting to these changes very well. I've been interested lately in s
by bufordsharkley 10y ago
Agreed-- most of the assumptions we've been working on are no longer true, and we're not adjusting to these changes very well.
I've been interested lately in some very old economists who, insofar as they remained extremely general, have become more and more prescient. Henry George's writings on the post-scarcity "fools' paradise"[0] are more relevant than ever.
We see this today, as the return to scarce natural resources (such as land) and IP is far outstripping the increases to the return of labor.
[0] http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/George/grgPP15.html#III.V.13 http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/George/grgPP15.html#...
- foobarian 10y agoIf production ends up centralized not through some communist revolution, but merely by advancing technology, do we still end up with an essentially centralized economy? It's hard to even call it an economy, it's more a distribution schedule driven from the bottom by a fear of a bloody uprising.
- bufordsharkley 10y agoI don't think production needs to be centralized for this to happen-- it's a variant on Ricardo's Iron Law of Wages/Iron Law of Rent. The theory being that workers tend towards being paid the bare minimum that they'll put up with being alive and procreating. Now if technology means that it's trivial to give everyone plenty, this may not be "bad," but it wouldn't be exactly egalitarian.