4 ms·
A machine running and converting raw material into finished product (say, injection-molded plastic, or a part-picker-placer organizing or soldering on a PCB) ra
by NortySpock 7y ago
A machine running and converting raw material into finished product (say, injection-molded plastic, or a part-picker-placer organizing or soldering on a PCB) rapidly turns less-valuable-stuff into more-valuable-stuff. Value added.
Yes, there is some human labor in assembling and maintaining the machine, but I consider it largely divorced from human labor.
A computer server turns data into more-useful data, either by aggregating it, storing it in a convenient way, or routing it. Once set up, the computer can run for years without human intervention. Very little human labor there after initial setup, but value was added.
- benj111 7y agoTo return to your computer server example though, these things require so little labour add so little value[1], that they're very nearly / actually are free. A google search is free, posting a message to HN is free. I agree that as you add layers of machines, you get more divorced from the original labour, I was going to say that labour provides the lower bound, maybe my prior paragraph shows that isn't true, of course there are costs to those 2 activities, they just aren't borne directly by us. As I put in a sibling comment, it's a model, not suited to everything, but suited to evaluating buying v building an Atari emulator. [1] I suppose you could argue that computers add lots of value, but competition has reduced the price down to approximately the labour cost. I'm probably not using strictly economics terms here.