4 ms·

Are you suggesting that scientific evidence for product shrinkage or for an increase in the money supply can't be found, and so my arguments have to be anecdota

• pm90 7y ago
  > increase in the money supply There is scientific evidence for this, yes. > scientific evidence for product shrinkage No. The term "product shrinkage" itself is undefined, or poorly defined. You're saying the digitization of services has rendered unnecessary a lot of material needs. Counterpoint: it has enabled commercial transactions on an unbelievable scale, enabling smaller industries to reach wider audiences. Just because you mix in a fact with an anecdote doesn't make the whole argument better :)
  • pjmorris 7y ago
    The research referred to in the article is my evidence for what I called 'product shrinkage' and what the article calls 'reduced material needs', namely: He had found substantial evidence not only that Americans were consuming fewer resources per capita but also that they were consuming less in total of some of the most important building blocks of an economy: things such as steel, copper, fertilizer, timber, and paper. Total annual U.S. consumption of all of these had been increasing rapidly prior to 1970. But since then, consumption had reached a peak and then declined. The rolodex and the ice cream were just examples to ground the idea. I'm sure there's more to the story than spreadsheet-wielding MBAs, but I think it's reasonable to claim (and evidence can be provided for): 1) Spreadsheets have been used for two generations (VisiCalc, 1979) 2) MBAs are trained to optimize things like capital and labor costs, including the price and quantity of materials used in the products and services they manage.