5 ms·

Factories do not scale as well as service because they need are limited by natural resources. Service can literally be created out of thin air. For example, an

by gutnor 10y ago

Factories do not scale as well as service because they need are limited by natural resources. Service can literally be created out of thin air. For example, an AI could create an infinite number of movies or books or insurance contract. A factory making widget will be limited by availability of raw material. They both share the same limitation at the end of the day. At the end, the human being is relatively static. You can sell widget and services that free more of his time, and then you can sell widget and services that occupy that free time, maybe at a stretch you can sell him something to free the time occupied by other stuff he bought, but there is a limit at 24 hours attention span per human.

macspoofing 10y ago
>Service can literally be created out of thin air. Not really. It's built on manufacturing base. You need to 'service' something.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  Lots of service are personal services (the thing you are servicing is the customer), and categories of personal service expand and contract with, essentially, fashion. Service can literally be created out of thin air.
  - jdietrich 10y ago
    Personal trainers, nail artists, psychotherapists, tour guides, social media consultants, maids, window cleaners, YouTubers, Mariachi bands, pet groomers, translators, golf instructors...
    - Houshalter 10y ago
      And who is going to pay for those services? All those services are for the rich upper classes that can afford them. Your servant can't afford her own servant.
    - Turing_Machine 10y ago
      This is actually directed at the sibling comment from Houshalter: I'm pretty sure that people who aren't members of the "rich upper classes" do make use of most of those services. To take just one as an example, nail salons are actually more common in the poorer parts of town in most cities I've been in.
  - Noos 10y ago
    They reach saturation in a local area quickly and tend to burn out quickly. They also tend these days to not even be year-round work. Fireworks booths, Halloween shops, frozen yogurt franchises, "escape game" franchises, "curves" gyms targeted towards women, edible fruit arranged like flowers...a lot of service jobs have very short shelf lives, and can really only have one or two in a town.
akiselev 10y ago
Until we get that Holy Grail of general AI, services are the exact opposite of scalable. Even then, most services will need to be replaced by AI and hardware, which will depend of manufacturing scalability. A single factory can be big enough to mass produce enough widgets for every person in the world but that can't be done with lawyers, restaurants, barbershops, retail stores, or driving instructors until we have advanced robotics, AI, teleportation, virtual reality, etc. at which point it's just software and manufacturing. Just look at how the manufacturing sector output has grown over the decades despite a static labor pool while the service sector employment expands linearly with its size. More importantly, manufactured goods can be exported much more easily to a growing global consumer base than services (other than software) that are almost always limited locally or regionally.

by gutnor 10y ago

macspoofing 10y ago

>Service can literally be created out of thin air. Not really. It's built on manufacturing base. You need to 'service' something.

dragonwriter 10y ago
Lots of service are personal services (the thing you are servicing is the customer), and categories of personal service expand and contract with, essentially, fashion. Service can literally be created out of thin air.
- jdietrich 10y ago
  Personal trainers, nail artists, psychotherapists, tour guides, social media consultants, maids, window cleaners, YouTubers, Mariachi bands, pet groomers, translators, golf instructors...
  - Houshalter 10y ago
    And who is going to pay for those services? All those services are for the rich upper classes that can afford them. Your servant can't afford her own servant.
  - Turing_Machine 10y ago
    This is actually directed at the sibling comment from Houshalter: I'm pretty sure that people who aren't members of the "rich upper classes" do make use of most of those services. To take just one as an example, nail salons are actually more common in the poorer parts of town in most cities I've been in.
- Noos 10y ago
  They reach saturation in a local area quickly and tend to burn out quickly. They also tend these days to not even be year-round work. Fireworks booths, Halloween shops, frozen yogurt franchises, "escape game" franchises, "curves" gyms targeted towards women, edible fruit arranged like flowers...a lot of service jobs have very short shelf lives, and can really only have one or two in a town.

akiselev 10y ago

Until we get that Holy Grail of general AI, services are the exact opposite of scalable. Even then, most services will need to be replaced by AI and hardware, which will depend of manufacturing scalability. A single factory can be big enough to mass produce enough widgets for every person in the world but that can't be done with lawyers, restaurants, barbershops, retail stores, or driving instructors until we have advanced robotics, AI, teleportation, virtual reality, etc. at which point it's just software and manufacturing. Just look at how the manufacturing sector output has grown over the decades despite a static labor pool while the service sector employment expands linearly with its size. More importantly, manufactured goods can be exported much more easily to a growing global consumer base than services (other than software) that are almost always limited locally or regionally.