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You're assuming most human beings are capable of doing knowledge-based work. I don't think this is true. The reason knowledge based workers make so much is prec

You're assuming most human beings are capable of doing knowledge-based work. I don't think this is true. The reason knowledge based workers make so much is precisely because the skills necessary to perform it are rarer than manual labor. Fully automating manual labor means a large class of people (possibly a majority) will not have any marketable skills from which to make a living. Furthermore, there are much fewer knowledge based jobs necessary to run an economy. At the end of the day, most knowledge work is a one-off thing. Once the program is written, it can be duplicated at no cost. Once the drug is discovered, that knowledge is spread for no cost. Of course there are many exceptions to this, but this is a trend. There is necessarily orders of magnitude fewer knowledge based jobs necessary to run an economy than labor jobs. When the automation revolution comes we're going to need a new basis for the economy because the current one just doesn't fit in that world.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
stretchwithme 16y ago
There are more knowledge-based jobs all the time. And more and more jobs all the time involve working with knowledge. It seems you assume that the economy cannot continue to evolve. I see no reason to conclude that. People will solve problems as they arise. Just because a program or drug has large IP costs and low marginal cost to produce doesn't mean its a fundamentally different thing. An oil well takes a lot of knowledge to find but not very much to profit from once you have. McDonald's franchise system took a lot of intellectual work to perfect, but making copies of restaurants is cheaper with more likely success than starting your own. A lot of things have a lot of IP involved and that's nothing new.
- hackinthebochs 16y ago
  Sure there is a lot of knowledge work associated with what you mentioned, and with most products out there. But there is a many-orders-of-magnitude difference between the manual labor aspect and the IP aspect of bringing a product to market. (I know I'm taking a leap here, but) I believe this scale difference is a necessary part of the equation. There has been a growth in knowledge based jobs precisely because of growth in population plus growth in productivity in the output of manual labor jobs. In a world where production costs are near zero because its fully automated, there is still the built-in costs of the materials themselves. This puts a cap at how cheap a product can become. Unfortunately, 60% of the population now has no money to speak of so even a fully "optimized" price is too much. There will potentially be many dirt cheap products but not nearly enough customers to buy them.
  - stretchwithme 16y ago
    Perhaps some concrete examples instead of abstractions and theories would help.
    - hackinthebochs 16y ago
      As I'm sure any discussion involving economics would :) I've given it a good think and I find it hard to come up with something concrete. In our current economy there is still the driving force of profit that creates jobs. All jobs that don't directly support the necessities of life, are either directly selling products to consumers or supporting companies directly selling products to consumers. There still has to be a mass of people to sell crap to for the economy to function. Under the assumption that all manual labor, factory and most service level jobs are gone, there is only a small market for non-essential products, which effectively puts a cap on the number of knowledge workers.
    - hackinthebochs 16y ago
      Browsing through the new section on HN I came across this: http://www.slate.com/id/2287531/ http://www.slate.com/id/2287531/. It seems to support my contention that technology itself does not cause economic growth.
reemrevnivek 16y ago
You seem to be assuming that knowledge-based workers can deplete the corpus of knowledge work. I don't think that's the case; once one program is written, another will be needed, once one drug is discovered, there will be still more diseases to cure and more side effects to eliminate. I'd even go so far as to say that knowledge work is growing and will continue to grow - The more you know, the more you know you don't know, right? There wasn't a need for working on computers or airplanes as short as a century ago. Now how many people are employed in those fields?
- hackinthebochs 16y ago
  My assumption is that growth in knowledge work is dependent on there being growth in disposable income for the population. In my scenario where a large portion of the population has no marketable skills and therefore can't find a job, this effectively puts a cap on the amount of knowledge work the economy can sustain. See my reply to stretchwithme for a further explanation of my thoughts on this scenario.
  - stretchwithme 16y ago
    The growth in knowledge is dependent on how much brain power there is. Everything we do is subject to improvement by anyone that cares to analyze and innovate. In the scenarios of those against technology 50 years ago, they also could not see how the economy would evolve or how people would adapt. But that lack of vision isn't proof that they were right.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

stretchwithme 16y ago

There are more knowledge-based jobs all the time. And more and more jobs all the time involve working with knowledge. It seems you assume that the economy cannot continue to evolve. I see no reason to conclude that. People will solve problems as they arise. Just because a program or drug has large IP costs and low marginal cost to produce doesn't mean its a fundamentally different thing. An oil well takes a lot of knowledge to find but not very much to profit from once you have. McDonald's franchise system took a lot of intellectual work to perfect, but making copies of restaurants is cheaper with more likely success than starting your own. A lot of things have a lot of IP involved and that's nothing new.

hackinthebochs 16y ago
Sure there is a lot of knowledge work associated with what you mentioned, and with most products out there. But there is a many-orders-of-magnitude difference between the manual labor aspect and the IP aspect of bringing a product to market. (I know I'm taking a leap here, but) I believe this scale difference is a necessary part of the equation. There has been a growth in knowledge based jobs precisely because of growth in population plus growth in productivity in the output of manual labor jobs. In a world where production costs are near zero because its fully automated, there is still the built-in costs of the materials themselves. This puts a cap at how cheap a product can become. Unfortunately, 60% of the population now has no money to speak of so even a fully "optimized" price is too much. There will potentially be many dirt cheap products but not nearly enough customers to buy them.
- stretchwithme 16y ago
  Perhaps some concrete examples instead of abstractions and theories would help.
  - hackinthebochs 16y ago
    As I'm sure any discussion involving economics would :) I've given it a good think and I find it hard to come up with something concrete. In our current economy there is still the driving force of profit that creates jobs. All jobs that don't directly support the necessities of life, are either directly selling products to consumers or supporting companies directly selling products to consumers. There still has to be a mass of people to sell crap to for the economy to function. Under the assumption that all manual labor, factory and most service level jobs are gone, there is only a small market for non-essential products, which effectively puts a cap on the number of knowledge workers.
  - hackinthebochs 16y ago
    Browsing through the new section on HN I came across this: http://www.slate.com/id/2287531/ http://www.slate.com/id/2287531/. It seems to support my contention that technology itself does not cause economic growth.

reemrevnivek 16y ago

You seem to be assuming that knowledge-based workers can deplete the corpus of knowledge work. I don't think that's the case; once one program is written, another will be needed, once one drug is discovered, there will be still more diseases to cure and more side effects to eliminate. I'd even go so far as to say that knowledge work is growing and will continue to grow - The more you know, the more you know you don't know, right? There wasn't a need for working on computers or airplanes as short as a century ago. Now how many people are employed in those fields?

hackinthebochs 16y ago
My assumption is that growth in knowledge work is dependent on there being growth in disposable income for the population. In my scenario where a large portion of the population has no marketable skills and therefore can't find a job, this effectively puts a cap on the amount of knowledge work the economy can sustain. See my reply to stretchwithme for a further explanation of my thoughts on this scenario.
- stretchwithme 16y ago
  The growth in knowledge is dependent on how much brain power there is. Everything we do is subject to improvement by anyone that cares to analyze and innovate. In the scenarios of those against technology 50 years ago, they also could not see how the economy would evolve or how people would adapt. But that lack of vision isn't proof that they were right.