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Pretty much the whole of human activity is spent on managing scarce resources in one way or another. Most things that have reduced this "burden" have been to th

Pretty much the whole of human activity is spent on managing scarce resources in one way or another. Most things that have reduced this "burden" have been to the betterment of society (on the whole, of course there have been local winners and losers) so there is no reason to believe that some new form of scarcity reductions will not also follow this trend. I think the major flaw most people make in this area is assuming that the current situation is the optimal and any disruption is inherently bad -- e.g. gold has always been scarce so it must always be scarce. Bastiat talks about this phenomenon with his "that which is seen and that which is unseen" theory one could argue. --edit-- Bastiat link -- http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html

da_chicken 9y ago
Yep. Metallic aluminum used to be so difficult to extract (in spite of being the third most common element in the Earth's crust) that it was a precious metal. Then we discovered the Hall/Heroult and Bayer methods of extracting aluminum, and it became one of the most important metals of the 20th century leading to advanced aviation and a thousand other uses. Steel used to be comparatively scarce, expensive to produce, and variable in quality. Once we discovered the Bessemer process, we had the [edit: Second] Industrial Revolution.
- jcranmer 9y ago
  Strictly speaking, the Bessemer process was developed in the 1850s, and the traditional dates for the Industrial Revolution is ~1750-1850.
  - da_chicken 9y ago
    True enough. I was thinking of the Second Industrial Revolution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Industrial_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Industrial_Revolution). I just didn't phrase myself that well.
tritium 9y ago
Totally true, but it’s really, really important to stay alert and watch disruptive economic shifts like a hawk. The first thing keep in mind when radical improvements arrive is that spectacular new things have been dropped at our feet before, and killed a massive shitload of people. Not everybody wins when things get generally better. Some people lose, and when the individual tales of losers are closely examined, sometimes they have lost through incredibly bitter narratives no less. Some cavemen were probably left crippled only to die a miserable caveman death by trying to mount horses, some people were gored by non-collapsible steering columns in early car accidents, some people were smeared across mountain tops by early planes without hazard avoidance instrumentation. Things get better, but indivuals still pay for it.
- Nomentatus 9y ago
  Next you'll be saying that computer viruses could exist, or that bitcoin's blockchain could suck up way too much energy.
- walterstucco 9y ago
  People were dying before being people
senectus1 9y ago
You could easily put AI in this space... the resource it's going to disrupt is information. but We''l adapt around it, our lives will change and we'll move on.

da_chicken 9y ago

Yep. Metallic aluminum used to be so difficult to extract (in spite of being the third most common element in the Earth's crust) that it was a precious metal. Then we discovered the Hall/Heroult and Bayer methods of extracting aluminum, and it became one of the most important metals of the 20th century leading to advanced aviation and a thousand other uses. Steel used to be comparatively scarce, expensive to produce, and variable in quality. Once we discovered the Bessemer process, we had the [edit: Second] Industrial Revolution.

jcranmer 9y ago
Strictly speaking, the Bessemer process was developed in the 1850s, and the traditional dates for the Industrial Revolution is ~1750-1850.
- da_chicken 9y ago
  True enough. I was thinking of the Second Industrial Revolution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Industrial_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Industrial_Revolution). I just didn't phrase myself that well.

tritium 9y ago

Totally true, but it’s really, really important to stay alert and watch disruptive economic shifts like a hawk. The first thing keep in mind when radical improvements arrive is that spectacular new things have been dropped at our feet before, and killed a massive shitload of people. Not everybody wins when things get generally better. Some people lose, and when the individual tales of losers are closely examined, sometimes they have lost through incredibly bitter narratives no less. Some cavemen were probably left crippled only to die a miserable caveman death by trying to mount horses, some people were gored by non-collapsible steering columns in early car accidents, some people were smeared across mountain tops by early planes without hazard avoidance instrumentation. Things get better, but indivuals still pay for it.

Nomentatus 9y ago
Next you'll be saying that computer viruses could exist, or that bitcoin's blockchain could suck up way too much energy.
walterstucco 9y ago
People were dying before being people

senectus1 9y ago

You could easily put AI in this space... the resource it's going to disrupt is information. but We''l adapt around it, our lives will change and we'll move on.